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| Robert Gate’s visit shifts focus from Kashmir to Kabul | | |
ABID SHAH
NEW DELHI, JAN 20: The visit of the US Defence Secretary Robert Gates here that began since yesterday is going to have a direct bearing on Kashmir.
Unlike India and Pakistan that are too obsessed by their respective positions on Jammu and Kashmir, America is keen for both the countries to focus on Afghanistan instead of fighting over Kashmir.
Robert Gates will also visit Pakistan after concluding his Delhi mission aimed at greater military cooperation between India and Washington. And during his talks here with the Prime Minister and Foreign and Defence Ministers he gave enough hints regarding the primacy of securing Afghanistan since the gravest threat for both India and Pakistan emanate from the rugged Afghan hills where deadly Islamist fighters have been regrouping as India and Pakistan squabble among themselves.
The question is what does this mean from the point of view of Kashmir since America has been projecting the futility of continuing conflict over this between India and Pakistan. There are no visible answers to this. Yet there are indications that American agenda is underway as both India and Pakistan compete to position themselves in the right side of the Americans.
And as a result of this the Kashmir issue for which the Hurriyat has been fighting so assiduously for years, in fact decades, is finding itself as becoming a burden that both India and Pakistan now prefer to drop to sideways in order to answer US call to focus on Afghanistan.
Yet it is not that Hurriyat leaders mainly Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Syed Ali Shah Geelani are unaware of the goings on whether in New Delhi or Islamabad vis-à-vis Kabul. And, thus, they have decided to brave relegation of a so close an issue to their hearts as resolution of Kashmir albeit with a bold face. And, thus, they indicate their readiness to give a quiet burial to much touted quiet diplomacy that until recently was flaunted to ignite hope for a truce between them and New Delhi where taking Islamabad on board was mentioned but not insisted as a precondition as is the case now.
Efforts to elicit opinion on this were only vaguely replied by a close associate of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. Bhushan Bazaz who runs Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Forum and is close to Mirwaiz indicated here on Wednesday that Union Home Ministry led quiet diplomacy was heading to a deadlock while lamenting that both India and Pakistan were going to lose an opportunity to bring peace and accord to Kashmir because of their inability to come to at least talking terms.
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