SRINAGAR, India -- Shortly before winning the presidency in 2008, Barack Obama said that as part of his drive to end the Afghanistan conflict, he'd take on one of South Asia's most intractable issues - competing claims to Kashmir by nuclear-armed rivals Pakistan and India - even if it meant wading into a "tar pit" with little chance of quick resolution.
Two years later, although Kashmir is simmering after months of destabilizing violence, the conflict is all but off the agenda as Obama arrives this weekend for his first presidential trip to India.
A humbling Election Day for the president and his Democratic Party over domestic economic discontent leaves little room for him to embark on another risky foreign peace initiative. India's rejection of outside mediation also makes it difficult for Obama to push the issue as he tries to woo leaders of the economic powerhouse.
But Kashmiri leaders are warning the president that it would be a strategic mistake to ignore the most dangerous spiral of violence to consume the picturesque valley in years.
"We are not asking the Americans to take a position against India or for Kashmir," said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the spiritual leader who heads Kashmir's umbrella group of secessionist politicians. "We are just saying that there is a general realization that India and Pakistan need to be pushed in terms of a dialogue."
More than 700,000 Indian forces keep a tight grip on the predominantly Muslim population that launched a revolt in 1989 and rose up again this summer in a protracted series of stone-throwing protests that left more than 110 people dead. Though the worst of the violence has subsided, Indian forces regularly arrest protest leaders and impose curfews on activist strongholds in Srinagar, Kashmir's summer capital, and its surrounding villages.
While India views Kashmir as strictly a bilateral matter with Pakistan, many see a resolution to the conflict as crucial to a stable and peaceful outcome in nearby Afghanistan.
"They are linked so much now that India and Pakistan are fueling ethnic tension in Afghanistan," said Muzamil Jaleel, a veteran Kashmiri journalist for the Indian Express daily newspaper. "If they don't do something it is going to be a huge headache."
Kashmir has been the spark for two wars since the British partitioned India between a mainly Hindu India and an overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan in 1947. Since 1989, at least 50,000 people have died in the fighting.
The Kashmir Valley is dotted with saffron farms, walnut orchards and cashmere shops that stretch out below the Himalayan mountains. Srinagar unfolds around a network of lakes and canals filled with scenic houseboats and picturesque gardens created by the ancient Mughals in their summer capital.
Since 1989, Pakistan's premier spy agency has fomented resistance by recruiting and training militants who are dispatched to destabilize the region along its eastern border.
Pakistan says the threat of war with India over Kashmir is the reason it has deployed much of its army on the Indian border rather than taking control over its border with Afghanistan, where Taliban insurgents who are trying to topple the U.S.-backed government in Kabul have sanctuary.
Obama, once viewed as a transformative leader determined to remake America's global image, especially in the Muslim world, has had many reasons for focusing most of his energies at home, starting with economic turmoil.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/11/04/1908817/obama-unlikely-to-wade-into-kashmir.html#ixzz14LRc2hcc
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