PEACE between Pakistan and India could help unlock another conflict with even higher stakes for the US: the war in Afghanistan. Indeed, a growing chorus of experts has begun arguing that the road to Kabul runs through Kashmir (Jonathan Tepperman, Newsweek, Feb 10, 2010) that the US will never stabilise the former without peace in the latter.

Suddenly, bringing Pakistan and India together seems to be very much in America’s interest. Which makes the Trump administration’s determination to avoid the issue increasingly hard to fathom.

The people of Kashmir do not want anybody to take a partisan side. Kashmiris are convinced, nevertheless, that impartial observers would support the Kashmir cause based on universal principles, democratic values, rule of law and international justice. It is time all parties concerned — Pakistan and India and the Kashmiri leadership — sat together and chalked out a strategy for the sake of peace and stability in South Asia because negotiation, not violence, is the only way to resolve the Kashmir conflict.

Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai
Washington

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2017