As of this morning, November 29, 2008, more than 180 people have been killed in attacks in Mumbai.  At least four Americans are among the dead. What motivated the attackers, other than hate and a fundamental disregard for civilized behaviour? Kashmir. Yet, most American’s have no idea what Kashmir is. But they should, since it is one of the basic reasons why we are stuck in Afghanistan (to paraphrase John Kerry), and why Islamic terrorism came to America’s shores. Kashmir is the reason why Pakistan does not cooperate adequately with the US in the war on fundamentalist Islam whether that be the Taliban, Al-Queda, or what ever other form it takes.

Kashmir is a part, and I repeat a part, of the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), over which India and Pakistan have gone to war at least two times. Kashmir is not a homogenous state, but is actually composed of three very different regions. There is the Muslim valley of Kashmir, the desert plateau of Buddhist Ladakh, and the mountains of Hindu Jammu. History is important here, so allow me to expand on this.

When the British, in their infinite wisdom, decided in 1947 to partition Colonial India into India and Pakistan along religious lines, the idea was that Hindu areas would go to India, and Muslim areas would go to Pakistan. So far so good, with the exception that more than 1 million died in the process, but we won’t let that little bit of detail get in the way of the great legacy of the British Empire. But we do have to deal with the two other exceptions – the states of Hyderabad and J&K.

Hyderabad had a Muslim ruler and a Hindu population. The Muslim ruler, the Nizam, decided to join Pakistan, but India’s savior, Home Minister Sardar Patel, decided otherwise. He sent Indian troops, much against the wishes of the wishy-washy Fabian Socialist Prime Minister, Nehru, and secured Hyderabad (now Andhra Pradesh) for India.

The problem with J&K was the reverse. It had a Hindu king (pardon me, Maharaja) and a Muslim population. The people wanted to join Pakistan (or so Pakistan claimed), but the Maharaja was unsure. Impatient, Pakistan sent tribal fighters into J&K to force the Maharaja. It had the opposite effect, and the Maharaja appealed to India for help. That help came after he signed away his kingdom. Once the treaty of accession was signed, Indian troops moved in and kicked out the tribals from most, but not all, of Kashmir. Notice – Nehru did not object to this. Why? His forefathers were from Kashmir and emotions take precedence over correctness. A temporary peace treaty was signed between the two newly independent countries. A line of control (LOC) was established where Pakistan controlled part of J&K (also called Azad Kashmir) and India the rest (still called J&K).

The Pakistanis cried foul. They claimed that India was having the cake and eating it too by holding onto both Hyderabad and J&K. The issue was taken to the UN by a naive and foolish Nehru, where a resolution was passed to hold a free and fair referendum about Kashmir’s future. More than 50 years later that referendum has not been held. Indians claim that a referendum cannot be held so long as Pakistan holds on to parts of J&K. Pakistan won’t give Azad Kashmir back to India hoping that the referendum will be held.

So, India and Pakistan have gone to war two times over J&K (and a third time over Bangladesh). This enmity has been a boon to carnivores and arms merchants, who have played India and Pakistan against each other for their own material gain. But now the stakes are higher. The fourth war between the two countries will be a nuclear one.

That does not seem to bother Pakistan. Having lost the war in 1971 to India, resulting in half the country (then known as East Pakistan) being torn apart as a new country (Bangladesh), it has become desperate, obsessed and vengeful. After 1971, knowing it could not defeat India militarily it began to craft a new strategy – terrorism. And the idiotic Soviet Union played right into this by invading Afghanistan. Pakistan’s dictator, Zia Ul Haq, took advantage of this by aligning himself with Ronald Reagan’s determination to defeat the Evil Empire by helping creating the Islamic Mujahideen.

Ronald Reagan was fixated on USSR and did not understand that he his cure, in the form of carte blanche and billions of dollars to the Islamic Mujahideen, was worse than the disease. The long-term implication of this misguided policy was that Islamic fundamentalists, supported by Pakistan, came to power in Afghanistan. America, and the world, walked away. Pakistan did not. It’s spooks the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) soon created another even more fundamentalist group, the Taliban that ultimately won over the country. That gave the Pakistanis “strategic depth” and the ability to bleed India dry by sponsoring terrorism. The Jihadis that trained in Azad Kashmir to undertake ‘war by other means’ and the Taliban were born, bread, and nurtured by the same organization and source – the ISI. Their cross-fertilization was perhaps best illustrated by the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane that was taken to Kabul and the passengers freed after India shamefully released Kashmir terrorists. Mysteriously, the hijackers disappeared. So far, the ISI’s plan was performing brilliantly, but as the poet Burns said, men’s plans often go wrong. What went wrong for the ISI was that the Taliban gave sanctuary to Osama Bin Ladin, who was more obsessed with Israel, Palestine and the US than J&K.

I’d take option 3 – we need to have a clear resolution of this mess, and no half-hearted measures. That will be the only way to stop Islamic terrorism in South Asia, one that directly affects the US.