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U.S. Should Pay Greater Attention to Pakistani-Indian Rift Over Kashmir

Howard B. Schaffer, a former top State Department official on South Asia, says Washington should seek to prevent tensions in Kashmir from complicating U.S. security interests in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

By experts and staff

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  • Howard B. Schaffer
    Deputy Director and Director of Studies, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University, Deputy Director and Director of Studies, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University
  • Bernard Gwertzman
    Visiting Fellow

One of the oldest of the world’s unresolved questions deals with Kashmir, and this goes back to 1947 when both Pakistan and India got their independence from Britain. Why has the Kashmir question not been resolved?

Does the Kashmir question arouse great visceral interest inside India?

I didn’t know there was still talk about an independent faction.

Talk about the various efforts at resolving this.

You and your wife, who’s also an expert on South Asia,wrotein theWashington Timesthat the United States, even though we’re in a lame-duck period now, ought to get energized on this subject. What can the United States do, realistically?

The new president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, said that he would have “good news” on Kashmir soon and that he intended to work with “all our neighbors” to tackle the problems faced by the region.

Now, politically in the United States I haven’t heard either Barack Obama or John McCain say a word about this.

But whoever becomes the next president is going to have a whole list of problems to deal with in the foreign field. How high is this one?

The Indian government, of course, has just gotten approval of this India-U.S. civil nuclear agreement, which faces opposition in the U.S. Congress. They’re having their elections in the spring, so is there much Prime Minister Singh can do?