While the US-India Strategic and Commercial Dialogue went on both in Washington and New Delhi, speaking in the Indian capital on Wednesday US Secretary of State John Kerry made remarks that will not help the cause of peace and stability in the region. Although he acknowledged that Pakistan had made progress in the fight against extremism in recent months and that "it is difficult to take it on step-by-step", he repeated the do-more mantra - this time relating not only to his country's interests in Afghanistan but also India's. "It is clear that Pakistan has to work to do in order to push harder against its indigenous groups that are engaged in extremist activities," he said, and that Islamabad needed to act against groups such as the Haqqani network and Lashkar-e-Taiba. As regards the Haqqanis, what Pakistan can and must do is to deny them sanctuaries, ie, if they are still here. The issue though is not so simple considering that both Washington and Kabul want Pakistan to use its resources to bring the Taliban to the negotiations table. Sirajuddin Haqqani is a deputy leader of the Afghan Taliban. Surely all concerned understand the complexities involved. The 'do-more' mantra seems to be aimed at shifting the blame to this country for failures in Afghanistan.
The US Secretary of State has been visiting India at time of great unrest in Kashmir. Since July 9, when a local resistance fighter Burhan Wani was killed by the Indian security forces, Kashmiri people have risen against Indian rule. There has been not a single day of peace in the Valley. Most districts in Held Kashmir remain under curfew, and mobile services suspended. Foreign journalists are barred from entering the area. 80 Kashmiris were killed in the first 39 days of the uprising, and the toll since has kept mounting. Thousands have been injured, hundreds from pellet gun wounds in many cases blinding young people for life. Amidst such suffering Kerry should have condemned India's human rights violations; instead he merely talked of the right to peaceful protests. Clearly, human rights are useful for shaking the finger at adversaries like Russia and China, not strategic partners like India.
Kerry also said Islamabad should not feel isolated by talks between the US, India and Afghanistan scheduled for next month in New York. Obviously he was aware that Pakistan would be watching anxiously, although such trilateral talks were held back in 2013 as well. Giving India a role in Afghanistan at this point in time is a recipe for prolongation of conflict and instability. It is an open secret that India has been using its diplomatic facilities in Afghanistan to foment trouble in the restive Balochistan province, and also trying to undermine the China Pakistan Economic Corridor. The US and India just signed an agreement to use one another's military bases, as part of the US encirclement of China policy. But India cannot use any of the US military bases in the Middle East without the consent of host governments. It can have access to US' bases in Afghanistan to threaten this country with a two-pronged attack. Such plans can only exacerbate tensions in the region. There is no questions about that Pakistan has a major role in returning peace to Afghanistan. Hence a wise policy for Washington would be to keep its strategic partner out of Afghanistan, until normalcy returns to that war-ravaged country.
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