A fascinating piece in The Washington Post is headed, "Indo-Pakistan proxy war heats up in Afghanistan.""Across Afghanistan," we are told, "behind the obvious battles fought for this country's soul, a shadow war is being quietly waged. It's being fought with spies and proxies, with hundreds of millions of dollars in aid money and ominous diplomatic threats."

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I feel an application for a grant from the EU coming on.

'Study into the effects of a localised nuclear conflict on CO2 emissions' or 'How I learned to stop emitting and learned to love the bomb'

If we leave Afghanistan, there is a risk that al Queda will return and plan a new attack. The obvious solution is to cut a deal with India whereby she will guarantee no al Queda in exchange for our support in struggle with Pakistan. In the end, India will dominate Pakistan anyway, so we might as well bless Indian South Asian dominance right now. In the long run, India is the regional power (not Iran) and a bulwark against Chinese influence.

Indeed an obvious solution, but a dangerous one. Pakistan could retaliate by invading India.



That is one of the reasons why we are anxious not to upset India. But India is not that stable. It has a major insurgency in its eastern states, has border disputes with China and a continuing "cold war" with Pakistan. Leaving India to rule the roost could end up with a major regional conflict. Might do anyway, if we get global cooling and food shortages.

The reason we are in Afghanistan and give huge amounts of money to Pakistan, is because of the revival of Islamic Jihad. Confronting India, I suppose means, that we pressure India to give in to Pakistsan. That, in my opinion, would be the worst thing to do, for it will further invigorate the Jihad.

The Jihad was never dead ... the crazies just learnt how to use aeroplanes and went global. But the extreme Hindu sects are just as crazy. The issue about India is to stop it provoking Pakistan ... they are as bad as each other.

May well be, but...
Hindu nationalist crazies are a different dish of Dhal from their Islamic counterparts & represent no threat to Western 'values'. Pakistan is a major player in mindless violent Jihad against Britain in particular where it already has an established & active fifth column.
My views on Afghanistan were made clear on these pages some years ago. Whatever the perceived dangers emenating from that area we were stupid to get involved on the ground. Costly lives & treasure have been flippantly & callously thrown at an insoluble problem.
Can anyone honestly say that the situation there is any better than it was before we intruded?

This is straight from the textbook (if there is such a thing) on how empires crash. The human race (well at least the political elite) does not seem to have learned that butting out is the optimum behaviour for success.

Meanwhile, in Switzerland life goes on as it has, more or less uninterrupted for the last 800 years. The Swiss have made a study of butting out, and as a result they are the wealthiest (and most boring) people on the earth.

Switzerland - good example. Switzerland is what the mountainous Afghan-Pak border could be like, if it were full of reserved Swiss people, rather than wild Pashtun.

India, Pakistan and China recieve aid from us . This should stop , at least while they have nuclear weapons .

I suspect that in the days of William Tell, that the Swiss (Hun) were pretty wild... They just grew up.

This Russian device would be a dangerous weapon to fall into either India or Pakistan's hands if their proxy cold war in Afghanistan were to go hot. See:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... dders.html

Mind you I wouldn't want Iran, Hizbollah, Hamas, or Chavez or N Korea to have it either!

Watchet

That is scary. Of course, it could just as well be used against its Russian makers. This dosen't seem very high-tech. If the Iranians can make a bomb and a missle, how difficult would it be to put it in a box? The obvious solution is deterrence, ie if one of our aircraft carriers is destoryed, Tehran goes up in smoke. Of course, that apporach is typically not a part of the peace studies curriculum, and so wouldn't be part of any Obami response.

BTW: this is the best piece every written on the "peace studies" nonsense which motivates the leftist view of international relations. Most conservatives have no clue why the Obami behave as they do. The Bawer article is very illuminating.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_peace_racket.html

I don't think the modern Swiss people are close to the Hun, they're genetically close to the French, Germans, Italians.

The Pashtun are probably still breeding warriors faster than they are getting killed off. On the Swiss model to civilised behaviour, they should contract out their aggressive young men to foreign armies. Their wildest sons became Reisläufer to feudal states, and got slaughtered on the battlefield. You have to wonder the same thing about the Swedes, whether they reformed voluntarily or whether their production line of bad boys ran out of juice.

The Indian Hindu extremism is a form of history-revisionist 'pangs-for-lost-glory' type of nationalism. It is at its core- a form of inward looking.

Even within the BJP and the Sangh Parivar which represents the mainstream face of this movement, this is a fringe element which makes a lot of noise and captures media attention worldwide.

Most of Southern India cares not one whit for Pakistan. People there are upset and passionately agitated by Pakistan no doubt, but not as the North Indians are. I've seen people get riled up - mainly during cricket matches. :)

In North India - the Indo Pak situation is really like a fight between brothers. As we all know - a feud in the family can be the bloodiest.

I wish the West (UK/US) would stop arming India and Pakistan. Maybe the UK is getting its revenge for its unceremonious exit from the region this way...?

A well-armed Pakistan cannot be a bulwark against India. As long as its population wallows in its homogenous medieval religiosity.