India and Pakistan remain caught in a dangerous deadlock over Kashmir. Pakistan-backed terrorists continue daily provocations against India, and an increasingly frustrated Indian government feels that it has no recourse short of full-scale war. The only way out is for both sides to accept that their current strategies are not working and to start talking. And only the United States can help them do that.
K. Shankar Bajpai served as India's Ambassador to Pakistan, China, and the United States, and as Secretary of the Ministry of External Affairs. He was a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation in 2002.
EVER ON THE BRINK
As one of the world's longest-suffering victims of terrorism, India had high hopes for the U.S.-led campaign against global terrorists that emerged in the wake of the September 11 attacks. But well into the second year of this "war," and despite full support for U.S. actions, India finds itself harder put to counter the violence inflicted on it. At the same time, the source of that violence, Pakistan, seems better placed to get away with it.
This bizarre situation arises from the importance of Pakistan to the ongoing effort to secure Afghanistan. Pakistan joined the campaign against the Taliban, its erstwhile client, in part due to international pressure but also in part because Afghan extremists were swiftly becoming a threat to Pakistan's own security. It is of course an old Wild West custom for the sheriff to co-opt the gunslinger in hunting bigger outlaws -- and the Afghan campaign resembles nothing so much as a Wild West manhunt writ large. But problems arise when he who helps the good guys also keeps his ties with the bad ones. The military government of General Pervez Musharraf doubtless confronts severe obstacles in any effort to root out Islamic extremism on its own soil. Islamists carry weight in the country and are said to be beyond government control. In addition, the army feels an irresistible temptation to use terrorists in its campaign against India in the state of Jammu and Kashmir (referred to hereafter as Kashmir). As a result, Pakistan has sought to let what India calls cross-border terrorism in Kashmir continue, as though exempt from the international war against terror.
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India's growing economic and diplomatic prominence is unlikely to be derailed by its territorial dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir. But given the risk that the Kashmir issue could spark a nuclear war, it is in India's best interest that it be resolved. Washington should use its influence with Islamabad to broker an agreement and thereby cement its growing strategic partnership with New Delhi.
In the aftermath of September 11, the Indian government under Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has acted decisively to support the U.S. war on terrorism and put pressure on archrival Pakistan. But these are not the only items on Vajpayee's post-911 agenda: to hold on to power, his government must also handle domestic political crises, defuse Hindu-Muslim tension, and recharge a faltering economy.
Whatever its other consequences, last winter's brief war in South Asia broke the mold that since 1947 had cast India-Pakistan relations into a continuing confrontation punctuated by three military conflicts. Now, for better or worse, the subcontinent with its 700,000,000 people has been transformed into a ménage à trois, linking together three national members in new relationships.

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