During his presidential campaign Barak Obama in an interview to Time magazine said that working with Pakistan and India to try to resolve their Kashmir conflict would be a critical task for his administration’s efforts to try to counter growing instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“Kashmir in particular is an interesting situation where that is obviously a potential tar pit diplomatically,” Obama told Time. “But, for us to devote serious diplomatic resources to get a special envoy in there, to figure out a plausible approach, and essentially make the argument to the Indians, you guys are on the brink of being an economic superpower, why do you want to keep on messing with this? … I think there is a moment where potentially we could get their attention. It won’t be easy, but it’s important.”
However, when the Obama administration announced appointment of special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, the official Terms of Reference did not include either India or Kashmir.
India vigorously, and successfully, lobbied the Obama transition team to make sure that neither India nor Kashmir was included in Holbrooke’s official brief.
“When the Indian government learned Holbrooke was going to do [Pakistan]-India, they swung into action and lobbied to have India excluded from his purview,” Foreign Policy quoting unnamed sourced reported.
The US media extensively reported that Holbrooke was originally tasked as the special envoy for Afghanistan, Pakistan “and related matters,” code for India and Kashmir but on the morning Holbrooke’s posting was announced, “related matters” had been deleted from the description.
Before the appointment of Holbrooke, Bill Clinton was rumoured to be appointed as the special envoy for South Asia, whose mandate would have included Kashmir.
“The Indians freaked out at talk of Bill Clinton being an envoy to Kashmir,” said Daniel Markey, a South Asia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.
At an off-the-record Aspen Strategy Group meeting held at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, D.C. in early December (2008), a high-level delegation from India told American foreign policy experts – including three officials who were part of the formal Obama transition team – that India might pre-emptively make Richard Holbrooke persona non-grata if his South Asia envoy mandate officially included India or Kashmir, people familiar with the meeting said.
Among the Obama transition figures who attended the meeting, held as part of the Aspen Institute’s US India Strategic Dialogue were: former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig; Kurt Campbell, the director of the Aspen Strategy Group; and former Pentagon official Ashton Carter, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School.
“They [India] are the big fish [in the region],” Daniel Markey, a South Asia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations said. “They don’t want to be grouped with the ‘problem children’ in the region, on Kashmir, on nuclear issues. They have a fairly effective lobbying machine.
They have taken a lot of notes on the Israel model, and they have gotten better. But you don’t want to overstate it. Some of the lobbying effort is obvious, done through companies, but a lot of it is direct government to government contact, people talking to each other. The Indian government and those around the Indian government made clear through a variety of channels because of the Clinton rumours and they came out to quickly shoot that down.”
Once Holbrooke’s name was floated, the Indian lobbying campaign became even more intense.
India’s hired lobbyists were deployed to shape the contours of the U.S. diplomatic mission. According to lobbying records filed with the Department of Justice, since 2005, the government of India has paid BGR about $2.5 million.
BGR officials who currently work on the Indian account, who according to lobbying records include former Senator Chuck Hagel aide Andrew Parasiliti, former U.S. State Department counter proliferation official Stephen Rademaker, former Bush I and Reagan era White House aide and BGR partner Ed Rogers, and former House Foreign Affairs committee staffer Walker Roberts. Former U.S. ambassador to India Robert Blackwill, who previously served as a lobbyist for India, left BGR in 2008 for the Rand Corporation. In addition, the Indian embassy in Washington has paid lobbying firm Patton Boggs $291,665 under a six-month contract that took effect Aug. 18, according to lobbying records.
“BGR has been a registered lobbyist for the Indian government since 2005,” FP quoting a Senate staffer reported. “The Indian government retained BGR for the primary purpose of pushing through the Congress the civil nuclear cooperation agreement between the United States and India – hence the strategic hires of Bob Blackwill, the former U.S. Ambassador to India, and Walker Roberts, a senior staffer on the House Foreign Affairs Committee responsible for vetting past such agreements. BGR continues to actively lobby on behalf of the Indian government – their lobbyists sought to influence a recent Senate resolution on the Mumbai attacks. So I would be very surprised if BGR were NOT involved here.”
Whatever the case, the evidence that India was able to successfully lobby the Obama transition in the weeks before it took office to ensure Holbrooke’s mission left them and Kashmir out is testament to both the sensitivity of the issue to India as well as the prowess and sophistication of its Washington political and lobbying operation.
