What the CIA should tell Obama on Kashmir ?

B. Raman is an expert on security and anti-terrorism operations. He headed the Counter-Terrorism Division of the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) for six years. He has been a member of various special task forces related to security and intelligence issues. An internationally acclaimed writer and lecturer, he regularly contributes articles to various national and international publications on security-related topics.

From November 5, 2008, US President-elect Barack Obama started receiving from the Director National Intelligence (DNI) a daily brief on the state of the world the previous day called the President's Daily Brief (PDB).

The CIA would do well to incorporate the following in its PDB to Obama.

There is amazement - and confusion - in India over reports that one of the first acts of the President will be to appoint former President Bill Clinton as his Special Envoy on the Kashmir issue to facilitate a settlement between India and Pakistan.

Also read: Will President Obama be good for India?

Well-informed sources in India say that if the President-elect wants to severely damage the developing Indo-US relations he could not have thought of a better idea than to meddle in Kashmir. So many Americans----Presidents, Presidents-elect and defeated Presidential-aspirants---- thought they could help in finding a solution to the Kashmir issue and burnt their fingers and damaged Indo-US relations.

This started from Adlai Stevenson, who after losing the election to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, proceeded to Srinagar ostensibly for a houseboat holiday on the Dal Lake and tried to meddle in the affairs of the State by suggesting to Sheikh Abdullah, the then Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir, that he should seek independence and promised that the US would support him.

When the Indian Intelligence Bureau informed Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minister, of Stevenson's secret discussions with Abdullah, he sacked Abdullah. Adlai Stevenson became persona non grata with the Indian political class and public.

Also read: Hey Ram: Let`s give away Kashmir

When Clinton became the President in 1993 he could not resist the temptation to have a go at settling the Kashmir issue. He chose as his secret emissary not a distinguished American, but an old college mate of his called Robin Raphael, who was posted as a junior diplomat in the US Embassy in New Delhi. Her American colleagues in New Delhi used to allege that after Clinton took office, she used to go around projecting herself as if she was a trusted adviser to Clinton, who took her into the State Department.

Our Indian sources say that she had two "achievements" to her discredit. She instigated the formation of the Hurriyat , a hotch-potch of anti-New Delhi Kashmiri personalities, which added to the existing mess.

She also encouraged the formation of the Taliban in 1994 with the help of her close personal friends Benazir Bhutto, the then Prime Minister, and Asif Ali Zardari, the present President of Pakistan. She even met Mullah Mohammad Omar, who subsequently designated himself as the Amir of the Taliban, secretly and sought his help for a project of the Unocal for a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via the Herat area of Afghanistan.

Also read: Kashmir: Postcards from the edge

According to the sources, her misadventures in Kashmir further damaged Indo-US relations and her godmothering the Taliban inexorably set in motion the train of events that led to Osama bin Laden shifting from Khartoum to Jalalabad in 1996 and launching from Afghanistan the terrorist strikes outside the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in August 1998, the attack on USS Cole off Aden in October,2000, and the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US homeland.

Our Indian sources say that in the history of Indo-American relations since India became independent in 1947, there have been more instances of meddling by Democrats than by Republicans. They feel that Democrats seem to think that they understand sub-continental affairs better than anybody in the US and find it difficult to resist the urge to meddle.

According to them, that is why Indian security agencies feel uncomfortable when the White House has a Democrat as incumbent. They say that if one draws a graph of terrorism in J&K, one would find that it tends to go up when a Democrat is the President.

Also read: Also read: A diary of Kashmir’s murky politics

At a time when India and Pakistan are on the road to slowly mending their bilateral relations, Indians are amazed that the President-elect oblivious of the past misadventures of the US in the sub-continent should be thinking of one more.