Was this a fact-finding mission that the CRS was pushing for sometime with the Government of India?
We just asked the embassy if it was possible and they had someone who could travel up there with us — a foreign service official — who was very well connected. So we had some great meetings. Based on your findings, is this going to generate a CRS report? Not specifically on this trip. But I’ll incorporate a lot of the findings into my other reports. What were your impressions? What were the perspectives you gained in the valley? The major thing is that I came away with a much more optimistic view of the problem because the majority of those I talked to there were confident and optimistic about the long-term trends. Meaning that things are getting better for the Kashmiri people over the years and the outlook for an actual government-to-government — Delhi-to-Islamabad — resolution seems closer than ever before. This was a major revelation for me because I went in feeling that Kashmir was an intractable problem and (laughing) very happy that I was not responsible for solving the probl
