The most vital region in this world today, for U.S. interests at least, remains a maze of cloud-shearing piles of rock and sweeping valleys, both checkered by impoverished towns and men clutching AKs — but this pile is hundreds of miles from Kabul.
So the logic follows: One can not tolerate an unstable Afghanistan for fear that it will become the Mecca of a perverted Islam once more; and, one cannot hope to stabilize Afghanistan without also addressing Pakistan; and Pakistan, we must understand, has almost no hope of winning its internal battle with a radicalized Pashtun militia known as the Taliban unless it engages its entire military in the exercise.
But the bulk of the Pakistani military remains tied down in the Punjab, protecting the heartland from an Indian invasion; according to Farukkh Saleem, executive director of Pakistan’s Centre for Research and Security Studies, 80 percent to 90 percent of Pakistan’s military assets are in use countering the Indian threat.
Sameer Lalwani, a colleague of mine at the New America Foundation, has put forward a net assessment of the nation’s capacity to wage a counter insurgency (COIN) campaign in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the Northwest Frontier Province.
Leaving aside the strategy of COIN for the moment, Lalwani — comparing the terrain, population size, language difference and a range of other factors — contends that an effective campaign will require 370,000 to 430,000 more troops than presently involved. It’s a redeployment that’s unconscionable to the Pakistani military; such a move would leave Pakistan vulnerable to its vicious rival.
Thus, Kashmir, the dispute at the center of the bloody fissure between India and Pakistan, remains the most important region to the U.S. interests — and, ironically, it exists as one of the few conflicts over which we cannot wield significant influence.
There has not been a call for U.S. mediation, the boisterous Indian population likely won’t stomach American pressure, and there is no need to reiterate the loathing Pakistanis feel toward the United States. Particularly, the Pakistani military — with whom power ultimately resides and which has the capacity to undermine any progress — is well steeped in distrust of the U.S.
The conflict was born from the bloody partition of India and Pakistan as the queen’s bankrupted empire sought to liquidate following World War II. Though it receives less attention than the sister conflict born from the death of the British realm — Israel/Palestine — it is likely the more severe of the pair. Between 35,000 and 50,000 have died since 1989, when the Mujahadeen victors in Afghanistan sought to make the princely state into the next theater of holy war.
Kashmir is the most important example of why the U.S. cannot afford to accept the anarchy we find and allow to simmer in many parts of the world. Somalia, Juarez, Haiti: We have become too globalized and are combating problems too transmittable for the humble foreign policy that George W. Bush espoused as a candidate.
Indeed, the defining struggle of our time — unlike those of previous generations, which pitted competing imperial aggressions and ambitions and competing capitalist and communist ideologies against one another — our challenge and foe exists outside the state system; it is the battle against lawlessness, backwardness and statelessness.
One can’t help but think: Had John F. Kennedy’s attempt to negotiate a solution with Prime Minister Harold McMillan for Kashmir in 1963 proven fruitful, we might be living in a substantially less terrifying world. Perhaps it ought to be a lesson to us. Mediate and assist more, even if interests do not appear to be at stake — who knows when they might be.
Brian Till, a columnist for Creators Syndicate, is a research fellow for the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington.
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