India has not paid any attention to the gestures that the Pakistan government has been making to placate India, such as granting it trade privileges, and it has been revealed on a website, Strategic Page, that the Indian Army is cooperating with the US Special Operations Command, and Israel, against Pakistan. That India is working against Pakistan is not surprising, given that it has long nursed a grudge against it, and according to the report, sees it as a hurdle to becoming a regional superpower. However, that the USA is working with India in this should be an eye-opener for those in Pakistan who favour the USA, especially those who are about to agree to the restoration of the supplies to NATO forces in Afghanistan through Pakistan, which was suspended after NATO gunship helicopters massacred 24 Pakistani soldiers on November 26. According to CBS News, Pakistan is about to restore this supply after it gets a fee for the passage. This fee would go towards road maintenance made necessary by the moving of these supplies. This impression, that Pakistan is willing to do anything if paid, including sacrificing its soldiers, is strengthened by the contempt of Pakistani sovereignty shown by the USA in its latest drone attack on North Waziristan on Friday, in which it killed 15 people.
The Foreign Office also found it necessary to say that Pakistan sought a solution of the Kashmir issue on the basis of the UN resolutions on the subject, which call for a UN-supervised plebiscite to allow the Kashmiri people the exercise of the right of self-determination denied them at Partition. If this objective is to be kept in view by Pakistan, it would prevent it from any compromise with the USA, which is bent upon cultivating India, so as to build it up as a regional counterweight to China, and thus is doing its best to back it in all its regional disputes, including that which it has with Pakistan, of which Kashmir is the core dispute. As one of the main objectives of Indian policy is to keep Kashmir off the negotiating table, and continue in illegal occupation of that part of the State it grabbed by force, the USA is backing them in that, by doing absolutely nothing to bring the Kashmir issue to the fore of international debate.
The problem Pakistan has is that its government has wrongly assumed that it has power because of the USA, and that that power depends on doing American bidding. There are intrinsic differences between Pakistan and the USA, most notably over the endgame in Afghanistan. While Americans see a role for India there once the USA withdraws, Pakistan does not. Also, whereas the USA wants to impose its own solution on Afghanistan, Pakistan wants a lasting stability to come to that country. It also wants that, before restoring the NATO supply, the USA should acknowledge its fault, something it is refusing to do out of sheer arrogance, and the belief that it is a superpower able to get away with virtually anything. The government should realize that it will have to go to the people of Pakistan, who do not approve this policy of supineness, and it will cost it dearly at the hustings. The government must also stop paying lip service to the Kashmir cause, and take practical measures to make the international community realize that it must take action to stop India’s continued defiance.