India, Pakistan and the Kashmir dispute

Gen. Musharaf’s new proposals are similar to what I had argued in the linked article and subsequent interacts.

It is time to Dissolve this issue to everybody’s satisfaction. Can it be done?

In that article, I argued:
“The Kashmir issue really has no solution that can resolve this problem to everyone’s delight. There are so many emotions, national egos, and political survival issues attached with it that neither the Congress nor the army would ink something that could bring an instant political death to one or the both parties.

No matter how people sift through many solutions out there, the probability of a resolution to everyone’s satisfaction is zero. The best course in such a situation is to find a way to dissolve the problem through some mutually agreed steps that would not provide the knives wielding opponents any chance to strike.”

It seems that both India and Pakistan have agreed to dissolve the issue as I had proposed here and in discussions with friends in the Pakistan Foreign ministry. The new proposals from Mushy have come about after Khurshid Kasuri spent couple of days in India sequestered with the Indian foreign ministery officails at Hyderabad Deccan House in Delhi under the guise of a private trip.

The beauty of the proposal is that India does not have to say YES or NO to it. It just has to continue working the action items proposed.

The situation in the ME is so fluid now that US cannot afford any escalation between India and Pakistan. Thus, tremendous amount of pressure is being brought down on both countries to work together in the face of the emerging realities in the region.
The US now sees India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan as a future block that will help control the emerging chaos in the ME and central Asia.

A military alliance between Pakistan and India, in the next five to seven years, would be the second largest military collaboration just behind NATO eclipsing even China and Russia. China or Russia may maintain their nuke arsenal superiority but the Subcontinent armies’ sit in the most important area of the world. They would quite simply overwhelm any threat to the oil and gas lines to the world.

After the destruction of Iraq is complete, Iran’s control of the oil and shipping lines has to be broken. The US may not be able to do it militarily now but I expect a major diplomatic and political onslaught by the current and the future US admin against Iran. Both Pakistan and India have certainly signed on that already.

Coming back to the Pak-India relations: The Indian approach for better trade relations first has proven wrong and the best course is to develop cultural relations first followed by the business relations after the cultural relations have stabilized.

Both have already agreed to a relaxation in travel situation. The next step would be to open airwaves for movies and cable tv channels. There is a fear in Pakistan of Indian cultural dominance through Indian movies and cable channels. I think people fail to see that the Pakistani TV channels have a potentially bigger audience in India that will immediately snap up Pakistan cable channels, if made available to them legally. The movie situation would work out in Pakistan’s favor too as that will generate business opportunities in small cities and towns in Pakistan. Studies have time again shown that the TV is much more influential medium than the movies.

It seems like exciting changes are coming in the subcontinent and for that cycle to complete, the rightwing Khasis/Nazi wanna be on the Indian side and the Fundos on the Pakistan side will have to be politically defeated.

ferozk #4

`` Just as only Nixon could go to China, no civilian leadership in Pakistan has, or will have, the courage to solve the Kashmir issue. The crux of the matter is that if there has to be change in the mind-set of the army, it will be a result of ``in-house`` change and not because the army has suddenly decided to obey a civilian leadership. Furthermore, it is a stale stable that suggests that Pakistani army is determined to hold on to Kashmir, because in the recent past, the threat orientation of the Pakistani army is not focused on Kashmir but internal problems and issues. ``

Nixon was elected twice as President of USA. There is no doubt to his political legitimacy.
Where does Musharraf stand with respect to his support in the Pakistani army ?

`` one of the names suggested for it was Mani Shankar Aiyar. ``

Mr Aiyar is a political reject whose only claim to power/fame is his ties to the Nehru family.

#17 HP sayeen, happy festivus to you on this occasion of signing the nuke deal by bush. one of the only 2 bush legislations passed by US congress (the other being vietnam trade pact).

I tried to follow your arguement but gave up after this:

``The Indian approach for better trade relations first has proven wrong and the best course is to develop cultural relations first followed by the business relations after the cultural relations have stabilized. ``

wtf is ``cultural relationships``? is it TV and movies? that to me sounds like pure bidness, restricted to entertainment media. Indian tv-films ``culture`` is already well known to pakis and old paki TV serials were very popular in india. so as far as improving cultural relationships, there is hardly anything that will improve, what will improve is business.

cultural realtionship sounds as vague and nosensical as the usual ``warm brotherly relations`` sentence in paki foreign ministry statements when refering to arabic or other islamic country relations.

Jang,

You are not ``endowed`` enough to understand what better endowed write. So dont even try...well actually you are now a lipstick..stick to some pig`s lips....

It`s high time to solve Kashmir issue n let people on both sides enjoy some peace

#20 shame HP.. you have some hi-faluting criticism of bania approach of better business ties and put some fluff of ``better cultural ties``. all you got in explanation is sexual innuendo? this is pathetic. i was expecting at least some name-dropping ;-)

Jang,

I know sometime it takes you longer to understand. That was my way of politely telling you off. I like to discus issues with educated people and not lipsticks.

Re: # 21

Peace has nothing to do with kashmir - even if you ``solve`` kashmir, another issue will invented by pakis to keep them going...

Peace will there only when paki jihadi mindset changes to secular/pluralistic existence... and that will happen when hell freezes over... :)

yet another Paki afflicted with MDP... :)

Please excuse my threadjack.
For information for Chowk staff and other cut and patse artist or the google hogs...


Copyright Tool
Will Scan Web
For Violations
By KEVIN J. DELANEY
December 18, 2006; Page B1
To deal with the mounting copyright issues swirling around video and other content online, a start-up founded by some respected Silicon Valley executives is taking a novel approach: combing the entire Web for unauthorized uses.

Privately held Attributor Corp. of Redwood City, Calif., has begun testing a system to scan the billions of pages on the Web for clients` audio, video, images and text -- potentially making it easier for owners to request that Web sites take content down or provide payment for its use.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116640468524853020V
vad_NNZP5t2TzfSNxAxbwGAo_20071217.html?mod=rss_free

#13 by jay1 on December 18, 2006 7:24am PT

Gay ji or Jay ji it is inaneiable right of any group of people to be free .American anthem also sings of LAND of the FREE.

You must be joking to be able to ,with you limited vision ,predict what can or will happen when you do not have correct knowlege of why it happened......

Balkanisation of europe did not happen b/c of minority Bosnia but majority Christians who killed 2 millions in ww2 alone and divided europe in the past.Prediction is NOt somthing thePUNDITS are accurate about may be in selecting marriage dates which invariAble end in Bride burning .Yopur PREDICTIONS are all wacko and yes people have right to chose there govt.

Nothing will happen. In a decade, iftar parties in Pakistan will be replete with dancing macaca style bashes, eating food made in Ganeshpati Desi Ghee and drinking McDowell`s with Limca.

Nothing new or insightful in this piece.

yawn

instead of this crap on kashmir, why cant we have a real macaca song and dance on chowk?

Ref tolkinin #27

[.....Yopur PREDICTIONS are all wacko and yes people have right to chose there govt.]

Absoluely.

And it is the PEOPLE of Pakistan who have chosen Iskandar Mirza, Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zia ul-Haq and most recently Pervez Musharraf.

When you Pakistanis have the right to choose your husband, then you can preach to others about te virtues of self-determination. Otherwise, you guys are shouting yourself hoarse for no reason whatsoever.

Ref Mullah32 #30

People are NOT interested in your family videos no matter how much pride you take in them.