To take the last question first: there was, if not some forward movement, at least a hiatus in things getting worse in Kashmir after the Kargil War in 99. The most extreme of the groups - Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad - both of which have to be considered part of the al-Qaeda network, were relatively inactive. There seemed to be a bit of space opening up within the All-Party Hurriyat Conference for non-Jihadi groups to assert themselves. Figures like Lone were starting to speak out quite dramatically against the Pakistani takeover of the Kashmiriyat movement.
Now consider the post-9/11 situation. Taliban and al-Qaeda are taking it on the chin in Afghanistan. Musharraf has made public pronouncements against "Islamic extremists." The U.S. is proclaiming victory in the war on terror. IF you're al-Qaeda or the ISI, how do you demonstrate that you're still in business, that the war is far from lost? You show yourself able to continue to strike in other places. Air strikes starting in Afghanistan? Attack and destroy the state legislative building in Srinagar. Taliban driven from power? Launch an assault on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi? U.S. envoy visiting South Asia? Launch a fresh assault in Kashmir and show the world that the U.S. envoy will do nothing in response. The escalation of terrorist attacks in Kashmir - and now further into India - has been a by-product of our war in Afghanistan.
The BJP-led government in India thought, naively, in the days after 9/11 that the U.S. was serious about "destroying al-Qaeda". Since they knew very well that al-Qaeda's network of camps was not localized in Afghanistan but stretched throughout northern Pakistan into Kashmir, they immediately offered India as the staging area for the war. They hoped at the least to swing the U.S. towards India and away from Pakistan, and at most to extend the war against al-Qaeda into Pakistan itself.
But this war was never about "destroying al-Qaeda". It was about declaring a quick "victory" in Afghanistan and using that to further entirely different foreign policy aims. The principal-agent problem you noted earlier is entirely a propos. Maybe "we" ought to destroy al-Qaeda, but if "we" is the U.S. government then it's clear that "we" have never intended to do so.
MM
>>> dhenwood at panix.com 05/22/02 12:32PM >>>
Michael McIntyre wrote:
>The story in the Guardian understates the depth of the disaster in
>Kashmir. Lashkar-e-Toiba, the group responsible for the attack
>noted below, is not simply a group of nasty Pakistani-based
>militants; it's an arm of al-Qaeda. This attack, timed to coincide
>with a U.S. diplomatic visit to the region, was intended to send a
>signal: we're still in operation, and the U.S. will do nothing to
>stop us.
>
>The solution proferred is far too simple: just tell Musharraf to
>call off the dogs. Musharraf doesn't have the power to call off the
>dogs. Were he to try to withdraw support from the militants, shut
>down the camps, put an end to the attacks, he would be removed from
>power within days. Not that he has any desire to: this is, after
>all, the general who launched the Kargil offensive in 1999.
>
>Meanwhile, Kashmir chafes under martial law, a decade of "encounter
>killings" between Indian forces and putative militants has left tens
>of thousands of victims, and the BJP government in Gujarat continues
>its pogrom of Muslims. The massacres in Gujarat have quietly
>eclipsed the massacres in Palestine, but scarcely anyone notices.
>
>To top it all off, within days we could see the sort of
>no-holds-barred warfare between India and Pakistan that we have not
>seen in more than thirty years - this time with nukes.
>
>We've really stirred the shit this time, haven't we?
I don't get your argument here. If Lashkar-e-Toiba is an arm of AQ, then isn't that an argument for supporting AQ's eradication? Just what's this pot "we" stirred and how? WITBD, IOW?
Doug