With Greenland off the market, Donald Trump can kill two birds with one stone by buying Kashmir

While the rest of the world ridicules US president Donald Trump over his apparently well-intentioned offers to buy sovereign and autonomous nations, his foot-stomping over Denmark’s refusal to sell Greenland to him (because of the mildly inconvenient fact that Greenland belongs to Greenland), has given us at Special Forces an idea. India and Pakistan, both of whom Trump claims to be ‘bffs’ with, have fought at least three wars over the Kashmir Valley since they won Independence from the British in 1947. Trump, who meddled with bilateral relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbours as if it was pencilled into his agenda,  claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had requested him to mediate in the issue. [caption id=“attachment_7207721” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File photo of US president Donald Trump. Reuters[/caption] Most likely caught off guard by having to  _correct_ an exaggeration , the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) denied that the conversation had ever taken place and set the record straight. “We have seen US president Donald Trump’s remarks to the press that he is ready to mediate, if requested by India and Pakistan, on the Kashmir issue. No such request has been made by Narendra Modi to the US president.” Trump’s offer of mediation shocked India, Pakistan, most of the world, and probably even the US president himself (let’s not even consider the resigned White House staff), because it has been America’s consistent position to encourage India and Pakistan to resolve differences over Kashmir bilaterally. But Trump’s suggestion may not be so far off base, after all. We knew there had to be a greater-good reason for the Centre’s contentious decision to scrap Article 370 in conflict-ridden Jammu and Kashmir. A decision which, even to those living under a rock, was likely to see a kickback of unprecedented violence , had to have had more purpose than to just assert more power over a community. Getting rid of the legal provision — arguably the ‘only bridge’ India had with its own semi-autonomous region — stripped the state of its special status which had allowed it to self-govern. The law also kept ‘outsiders’ out, by disallowing them to buy property or land in the state. Now that the context — which was almost impossible to recount in brief and worth it if you made it this far — is in place, here is the brilliant idea: With Kashmir now open to the highest bidder, the Trump Tower owner can finally stake a legitimate claim and have his dream of being the ‘Only Contemporary US President Who (almost) Bought A Country’ actually come true. And, of course, if time allows it, attempt to complete the small task of solving the Kashmir issue.