It’s time to evolve a strategy to address Kashmir’s problems, eliminate Pakistan from equation | The Indian Express

It’s time to evolve a strategy to address Kashmir’s problems, eliminate Pakistan from equation | The Indian Express

Written by Arun Prakash |Updated: April 3, 2019 8:02:40 am

The writer is a retired chief of naval staff.

It’s time to evolve a strategy to address Kashmir’s problems, eliminate Pakistan from equation

Absent a “Kashmir Strategy” in New Delhi, the army’s sacrifices to establish peace in the Valley have been in vain because a venal political class has never risen to the occasion to restore a functional civil administration.

The prolonged and vicious cycle of violence and response, orchestrated by a malign ISI, has succeeded in alienating and radicalising Kashmiri youth, placing the ball squarely in India’s court.

“Carthago delenda est” (Carthage must be destroyed) — a phrase incessantly mouthed by Senator Cato the Elder — was the manifestation of Rome’s visceral desire to wreak vengeance on its rival Carthage (in modern Tunisia), which had terrorised its lands for decades. The Third Punic War, fought with bows and arrows, resulted in the destruction of Carthage and a hundred and fifty thousand dead.