Is Kashmir key to Afghan peace? ------- Barack Obama says resolving the Indian-Pakistani dispute over Kashmir will be a goal of his presidency

NEW DELHI; and ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - As part of his push to find new solutions to the war in Afghanistan, President-elect Barack Obama is considering a new diplomatic push on Kashmir, reversing eight years of American silence on the issue.

Mr. Obama has argued that Pakistan will not fully commit to fighting the insurgency it shares with Afghanistan until it sheds historic insecurities toward India. Talks about Kashmir, the central point of contention between the two nuclear rivals, are among the "critical tasks for the next administration," Obama said in an interview last month with Time magazine.

It is a strategy that worries Indians, who suggest the Pakistani Army is blackmailing Obama to support its claims. Yet security analysts say the Afghan insurgency has roots in the power struggle between India and Pakistan and cannot be solved without a regional approach.

"It will be very hard to put Afghanistan on a long-term positive path without alleviating some of the Indo-Pakistan tensions," says Xenia Dormandy of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

Such ideas would appear to fit well with the doctrines of Gen. David Petraeus, who oversaw a significant improvement in law and order in Iraq. He is now the commander of American forces in the entire region, which includes Afghanistan.

General Petraeus has been an open advocate of regional diplomacy as a key counterinsurgency tactic. On Oct. 15, he told a round table of Washington Post reporters that in seeking solutions to Afghanistan, "there may be opportunities with respect to India."

The goal would be to build a level of trust between India and Pakistan, freeing Pakistan from its historic rivalry with India, with which it has fought three wars. The surest way to do this, Obama has said, is to find a solution to Kashmir – the state split between each but claimed in full by both.

"We should try to resolve the Kashmir crisis so that [Pakistan] can stay focused – not on India, but on the situation with those militants," he told MSNBC on Oct. 31.

Obama went further in the Time interview, mentioning he has spoken with former President Bill Clinton about becoming a special envoy to the region – a comment that has been front-page news in India and Pakistan.


Both Obama and his top South Asia adviser, Bruce Riedel, have spoken of the need to be discreet. In a 2007 teleconference for the journal Foreign Affairs, Mr. Riedel said: "I would urge the administration to seize the opportunity to quietly, but forcefully, push for a resolution there."

Indeed, many experts say the enmity – for which Kashmir is the most potent symbol – has shaped security in the region, including Afghanistan.

Rivalry plays out in Afghanistan

For years, the mutual mistrust has led India and Pakistan to play their own version of the Great Game in Afghanistan. India has consistently been Afghanistan's main ally in the region. But Pakistan sees Afghanistan as its strategic backyard, which under no circumstances can be yielded to Indian influence.

"Pakistan is the only country in South Asia that stands between India's complete hegemony in this region," says Fahmida Ashraf, an analyst at the Institute for Strategic Studies in Islamabad.

In Afghanistan, the Pakistan-backed mujahideen chased out the Soviet Union, India's ally. Then the Pakistan-backed Taliban took control of the country, preventing it from falling into the hands of pro-India Northern Alliance warlords.

This proxy war continues. India has taken the provocative step of opening consulates in two cities sitting on the border with Pakistan – Jalalabad and Kandahar.

Indian intelligence agencies are using these consulates as bases. though it has never made this evidence public.

"India wants to destabilize [Pakistan's tribal areas] and Balochistan," said Rahman Malik, a Pakistani government security adviser during a trip to Washington.