A Young Turk in Kashmir

Today a young man steps onto the national stage in India in a role that will lead him onto the international stage as well. Omar Abdullah is the third generation of the leading political family of Kashmir. In a state riddled with conflict, corruption, unemployment, and environmental destruction, the young leader of Kashmir’s National Conference party, and now chief minister of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, represents the hope of a new generation. He is to the political microcosm of India what Barack Obama is to the macrocosm of international politics. Two weeks after Abdullah takes the oath in Jammu and Kashmir, Obama will take the oath of office in Washington. It is likely that these men will meet soon. Obama has made it clear that he sees the resolution of the conflict situation in Kashmir as being vital to international security. Abdullah sees the rooting out of the endemic corruption in his state as the vital foundation stone to conflict resolution, closely followed by economic restructuring. Obama sees both the rooting out of corruption and economic restructuring in the region as floodgate policies that could stem the terrorist feeder system of neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan. Afghanistan has the dubious achievement of being placed 176 amongst 180 in the world table of corruption, according to the German based organisation International Transparency. Pakistan comes in at 134. If it was a nation state Kashmir would jockey for position between Afghanistan and Somalia at 180th. Obama has four years to put into play a Central and South Asian foreign policy that could become a model for undermining militant Islam with fiercely defended economic restructuring. Abdullah has longer, six years, to do the same in Kashmir as domestic policy. It is the chat of a coffee shop in Srinagar, Café Arabica, the main cappuccino and media gossip joint in town, as to when the two Young Turks will meet.