American failed diplomacy with India backfiring in Iraq - Former Rumsfeld aide slams US-Pak alliance
Pam Bhandari, Indiadaily corresponent on International politics

The recent US policy on preferring Pakistan over India has backfired in Iraq and will continue to do so. What is needed in Iraq is an army that does not mind dirty warfare like the one Indian Army won in Kargil four years back. Recently a battalion of the new Iraqi army refused to go to Fallujah earlier this week to support US Marines battling Muslim insurgents for control of the city, a report in the Washington Post said. Citing senior US army officers in Baghdad, the newspaper said the incident is casting new doubt on US plans to transfer security matters to Iraqi forces. 

As the US feels the heat in Iraq, a former official with defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld has slammed the administration for granting the Major Non-Nato Ally status to Pakistan, a “desperately failed state” instead of closing a strategic deal with India that would have led to some 17,000 Indian peacekeepers in Iraq. 
“What the US really needs to concentrate on is developing an entirely new alliance with such emerging powers as China, India and Russia,” said Thomas Barnett, who served in the Office of the Secretary of Defence from 2001 to 2003. 
“Messy wars require allies who don't mind getting dirty. Last year, India almost sent 17,000 peacekeeping troops to Iraq. Imagine what a different coalition we would have today if we had been able to close that strategic deal,” said Barnett, the author of The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twentyfirst Century. “What would it have taken on our part? Probably a much closer security relationship with New Delhi at Pakistan’s expense.”

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