Obama's Kashmir Conundrum (Guardian, UK)

Richard Holbrooke, newly appointed US peace envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, gained a reputation for robustness when negotiating an end to the Bosnian war. But after getting off to a remarkably bad start in his new job, he will need all his fabled toughness – plus large measures of unaccustomed finesse and tact – if he is to make any sort of headway.

Holbrooke's position was undermined before he began by a determined Washington lobbying campaign by the Indian government. According to a well-sourced account in Foreign Policy magazine, not denied by the White House, Barack Obama and his advisers were persuaded to drop their idea of creating a South Asia envoy whose remit would include India as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Obama's shift came despite campaign pledges to seek "region-wide" solutions to the linked problems of terrorism, Islamist extremism, weapons proliferation, and poverty. Specifically, Obama suggested a future US envoy should address the problems of divided, majority-Muslim Kashmir, home to radical Islamists and source of long-running tensions and occasional fighting between India and Pakistan.

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