AfPak--and India: New great games

As a follow-up to this post,

AfPak: Top Americans come calling

this in the Wall St. Journal today:

Holbrooke of South Asia
America's regional envoy says Pakistan's tribal areas are the problem.

Then there's India, about whose activities in Afstan the Pakistanis are supremely sensitive (see also middle of this post). The Indians, for their part, have their own severe sensitivities about Kashmir, which they insist is a strictly bilateral issue with Pakistan:

U.S. Looks to Expand India Ties

NEW DELHI -- Two U.S. policy makers touted India's critical role in helping to solve the problems in Pakistan and Afghanistan, saying the growing bilateral relationship between the U.S. and India needs to expand to include more cooperation on regional and global issues.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Senior U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke, in India on Wednesday [April 8], said the country will play an important role along with the U.S. in helping to stabilize Pakistan andAfghanistan. Mr. Holbrooke held regional security talks with Indian officials after visiting neighboring Pakistan andAfghanistan.

"We can't settle issues like Afghanistan and many other issues without India's full involvement," Richard Holbrooke, U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said during an official visit here.

"India is a vital leader in the region," added Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, who accompanied Mr. Holbrooke to New Delhi after they both visited Kabul and Islamabad.

But their comments also served to highlight the extreme sensitivities the U.S. faces as it tries to pursue a cohesive diplomatic and military strategy aimed at eradicating Islamist militancy in Pakistan and Afghanistan without heightening tensions between three countries whose shared history is rife with violence and mutual suspicion.

When U.S. policy makers initially considered including Kashmir -- the disputed Himalayan territory that is shared by India and Pakistan -- as part of the U.S.'s new regional policy discussion, India balked. U.S. officials subsequently have taken discussion about Kashmir off the table, even though it remains a central flashpoint in tensions between India and Pakistan. Just this week, Indian troops and suspected militants have been fighting in Indian Kashmir; a gun battle Tuesday left two from each side dead.

Pakistani officials have complained that the U.S. needs to consider all conflicts in the region as it seeks to solve them.

Asked if part of the reason for his Indian visit was to press for the resumption of talks between India and Pakistan over the future of Kashmir, Mr. Holbrooke said, "We did not come here to ask the Indians to do anything. We did not come here with any requests."

Rather, he said, for the first time since India's partition in 1947, when the departing British split the country into India and Pakistan, the U.S., India and Pakistan "face a common threat and a common challenge, and we have a common task" in fighting terrorism and stabilizing Pakistan. U.S. officials view beating back a creeping insurgency in Pakistan as key to winning the war in neighboring Afghanistan...

Mr. Holbrooke also noted India's significant development projects and aid to Afghanistan [more here and here--the paramilitary Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force provides security for Indians working in Afstan, which cannot thrill the Pakistanis - MC] and said that better coordination between the U.S. and India in that country would bolster stability. There is "impressive foreign assistance in Afghanistan by India," Mr. Holbrooke said. "Simply by having a dialogue with your government, we realized both have the same priorities."

Yet Indian influence in Afghanistan is another key source of tension with Pakistan, which views India's involvement there as part of a potential encirclement of Pakistan by India [thus threatening Pakistan's "strategic depth" vis-à-vis India - MC]. U.S. officials last year said Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the country's premier spy agency, played a role in the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, which killed at least 41. Pakistan denied any involvement.