Post 370 Kashmir has no place for UN office

Recent strikes by Pakistan Air Force in Afghanistan, the last was on Christmas Eve, are a grandchild of the Cold War triggered by American diplomat George Kennan's 8,000-word telegram from Moscow in 1946 that was realpolitik in its most clinical form; he scorned democracy and saw no American interest in defending American values far from home.

- MN Sabharwal

The debate in foreign policy around values versus interests is unresolvable. Yet, America's partnership with Pakistan, a superb supplier of talent, treasure and time for radical Islam, indicates the inability of countries to calculate long-term self-interest. Meanwhile, improved prospects for peace in Kashmir must trigger the closing of a redundant Cold War relic—the United Nations (UN) office in Srinagar.

Kennan's Grand Strategy created unusual partnerships. China hosted two American signals intelligence facilities—Korla and Qitai—to monitor Soviet missile testing. America's Pakistan partnership was partly enabled by India's mistake of asking for UN intervention in Kashmir in 1948.

The UN viewed Kashmir as a bilateral dispute in which religion favoured Pakistan's claims while ignoring the constitutional legality of Hari Singh's accession and the diverse aspirations of Jammu, Ladakh, Kashmir, and Gilgit.

Pakistan embracing the western Cold War alliance was rewarded by 13 favourable UN resolutions on Kashmir between 1948 and 1957, a United States (US) President ignoring his team's warning of genocide in Dhaka (masterfully chronicled in Blood Telegram by Gary Bass), and liberal financing for the garrison state. Pakistan's awaam still bears the punishment of this reward.

History remembers 1989 as the end of the Cold War. But most Russians (according to a survey by Levada Center) remember that year not for the fall of the Berlin Wall but for the humiliation of an Islamist insurgency (in Afghanistan) defeating a superpower (the USSR).