The statement made by U.S. President Barak Obama that disputes between India and Pakistan, including Kashmir, could only be resolved between the two countries themselves, and there can be no intervention from outside, has caused disappointment to separatists in Jammu and Kashmir. However, Obama’s statement should help the separatists to accept the truth.  

The leader of the hardline Hurriyat faction, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, said the statement showed the ‘bias of the international community’ against Muslims. 

Yasin Malik, the chief of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, said western countries had persuaded separatists to give up violence on the assurance that they would help find a solution. Barak Obama’s stand is ‘unfortunate’, and his words are like rubbing salt upon our wounds, he added. 

The leader of the moderate faction of the Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Moulvi Umer Farooq, accepted that President Obama’s statement was in line with the Hurriyat stand, but had missed to add the fact that Kashmir is a party to the dispute. He said the Hurriyat did not want the U.S. to intervene, but be a facilitator in the dialogue process. 

We would urge the U.S. to exercise its good offices to bring India, Pakistan and Kashmiris to the negotiating table, he said. 

The separatists had based their hopes on a possible intervention by the United States on the statements made by Obama during his 2008 campaign for the presidency. Obama’s objective then was to bring back American troops from Afghanistan after establishing peace there. He expected Pakistan to assist in the process.

The  impression was that a ‘solution’ to the Kashmir issue  was the price that Pakistan had to be paid  for extending support  to NATO in the offensive against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Obama’s statement was not against the objectives pursued by India. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, and later his successor, Dr. Manmohan Singh, have consistently made efforts to improve relations with Pakistan, and made efforts to resolve issues like Siachen and Sir Creek, and to promote people-to-people contact. 

Manmohan Singh has also taken steps through back channel negotiations to find a solution to various issues. These negotiations made considerable progress, and the impression was that Dr. Singh would be visiting Pakistan to conclude an agreement. He had hoped to make the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir ‘irrelevant’, by promoting trade and by ensuring easier travel across the border.

Unfortunately, the political scene in Pakistan has witnessed an upheaval with the exit of President General Pervez Musharraf.  Radical elements have become more powerful in Pakistan.  India was at the receiving end with the 26/11 attack on Mumbai in 2008.

The interrogation of Ajmal Kasab, who was captured, and the evidence given by David Coleman Headley, indicate that state agencies in Pakistan were involved in the planning and execution of the attack in Mumbai. These have now been confirmed by Abu Jundal, who was arrested on his arrival in New Delhi from Saudi Arabia.  .

President Obama has now realized that Pakistan has not been providing the promised assistance in fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.  Pakistan’s duplicity became evident when the United States found out that Osama Bin Laden has been living with his family in Abbottabad, near a military garrison.  The U.S. conducted a surprise attack in May 2011 in which Osama was killed.

The United States has been conducting drone attacks on Taliban bases along the Afghan border with Pakistan. In one of the attacks, on November 24 last year, about 28 Pakistani soldiers were killed, following which, Pakistan blocked access to NATO supply routes that were being used to carry supplies to defence bases in Afghanistan.

The supplies from Karachi to forward areas in Afghanistan, however, have resumed since July 3 after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ‘apologised’ to Pakistan. Relations between the two countries, however, are still frosty.     

As far as the United States stand on Jammu and Kashmir is concerned, it has seen many changes over the years.  Initially, when the issue came up before the United Nations on February 4, 1948, the then U.S. Permanent Representative Warren Austin, said: “The external sovereignty of Kashmir is no longer under the control of the Maharaja.  With the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India, this foreign sovereignty went over to India, and is exercised by India.”

Former American diplomat and South Asia expert Dennis Kux discloses in his book - Estranged Democracies - that the United States changed its stand under British influence, particularly influenced by Cold War politics. 

During the years when John Foster Dulles was U.S. Secretary of State, when Pakistan joined the western alliance against the Soviet Union, Washington supported Islamabad.  In 1971, Pakistan assisted President Richard M. Nixon to establish contact with China. 

Pakistan, under President Zia-ul-Haq provided bases to the United States and helped train insurgents when the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan.  The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spent millions of dollars on covert operations, helping the Pakistan military train and arm fighters to halt the Soviets from extending their hold over Afghanistan. 

Pakistan learnt how to conduct a proxy war, salted away weapons and equipment, and unleashed such a war in Punjab in early eighties, and towards the end of the decade, in Kashmir

With the withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan, the Taliban established its rule there. The early nineties saw U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robin Raphael supporting Pakistan’s objective in the region.  The United States became aware of Pakistan’s duplicity following the invasion of Kargil in 1999.  Both India and Pakistan had become nuclear powers by that time.

Pakistan became an active ally of the United States following the attack on the New York Trade Centre.  The United States poured in millions of dollars in Pakistan for assistance in the ‘War on Terror’.  It has taken the United States almost a decade to find out that Pakistan has been practicing duplicity. 

For nearly a decade, Pakistan has been making a show of fighting the Taliban and supporting the NATO in its operations, while simultaneously providing assistance to the Taliban.

President Obama is unlikely to make the mistake that the United States did in the nineties, when it withdrew from the region after the withdrawal of Soviet forces.  As of now, the United States and its allies will maintain their bases in Afghanistan and ensure that Pakistan and the Taliban will not reestablish themselves there. 

The region is facing a new strategic situation and it is time the separatists in Kashmir realize what is in their interest.  President Obama appears to have decided that the Kashmir issue can no longer be used as a ‘pressure point’ in the conduct of its policies in the Indian sub-continent.