State of Intransigence in the Kashmir Conflict

Re “As Kashmir Boils, Keep Heat on Pakistan,” Commentary, Aug. 7: Selig Harrison is so off the mark when he advises the Bush administration to “get Pakistan to keep its hands off” Kashmir as a means of finally resolving the Kashmir issue. Whether Pakistan can do more to stop “infiltration” by militants has less to do with resolving the 55-year-old Kashmir conflict than whether India can admit that a problem of national self-determination cannot be solved by military force, no matter how overwhelming and how brutal.

In Kashmir, as in the Palestinian territories, when the problem is finally seen by the powers that be as a quintessential question of self-determination and the freedom of a whole nation of people, only then will such problems ever come close to a final resolution. And another round of sham elections will not help in this regard.

Saif M. Hussain

Woodland Hills

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Harrison’s commentary clearly documents the duplicity in American foreign policy. While India has remained a secular democracy since its independence in 1947, Pakistan has rarely had free elections and is an Islamic state where non-Muslims do not have equal rights. A few months ago, dictator Pervez Musharraf “won” a rigged election, with more than 90% of the public’s support.

The state of Jammu and Kashmir is one state in India, and while there is corruption throughout Indian local, state and national governments, people have a right to change the government through the ballot.

The Islamic separatist movement is an anti-democratic movement to establish another Islamic state on India’s border--not a movement for better rule.

Mihir Meghani

Fremont