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Monday, January 8

India-Pakistan-China: Siachen glacier and Pakistan-India peace negotiations

Today's essay will be posted at noon. In the meantime you can get a crash course on the history of India's appeasement of Pakistan and analysis of where things stand now from Baron Bodissey's The peace process in Kashmir at Gates of Vienna.

My only quibble is with Sarla Handoo's observation that Pakistan's president is "not bothered by terrorism." He's bothered by it, but he's more bothered by China's arm twisting. Negotiations on the Siachen glacier need to be seen in that light.

Bottom line: The United States of America has a history of being a fickle friend to Pakistan, but China is always there. You can bet that Pakistan's government is watching very closely the US discussion about whether the US should withdraw soon from Iraq. Their reasoning is that if the US leaves Iraq in the lurch, Pakistan is next up.

I can't quibble with these observations by the Baron:
Exchange “Israel” for “India” and “Egypt-Jordan-Syria” for “Pakistan”, and you have the Palestinian problem in a nutshell:

> Mujahideen irregulars are employed as proxies to fight on behalf of an outside Islamic country.

> A militarily superior foe is pressured by the Great Powers to relinquish strategically important territory to a weaker enemy after attaining a clear military victory.

> A moral equivalence is established between the aggressor and the defender, so that “both sides” are continually urged into a “peace process” which notably disadvantages the defender, but fails to attain an actual peace.

> The conflict is never resolved. It continues year after year, decade after decade, with the implication that only more concessions by the original defender to the original aggressor can ever bring it to a close.

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