What's new

Is India losing Kashmir?

Max

ELITE MEMBER
Joined
Nov 3, 2014
Messages
8,411
Reaction score
-3
Country
Pakistan
Location
Pakistan
Is India losing Kashmir?
_95775517_mediaitem95775516.jpg
Image copyrightEPA
Image captionSchoolgirls have participated in protests against Indian rule
As India's most restive region stares down the abyss of what a commentator calls another "hot summer of violence", the doom-laden headline has returned with a vengeance: Is India losing Kashmir?

Last summer was one of the bloodiest in the Muslim-dominated valley in recent years. Following the killing of influential militant Burhan Wani by Indian forces last July, more than 100 civilians lost their lives in clashes during a four-month-long security lockdown in the valley.

It's not looking very promising this summer.

This month's parliamentary election in Srinagar was scarred by violence and a record-low turnout of voters. To add fuel to the fire, graphic social videos surfaced claiming to show abuses by security forces and young people who oppose Indian rule. A full-blown protest by students has now erupted on the streets; and, in a rare sight, even schoolgirls are pelting stones and hitting police vehicles.

Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, who leads an awkward ruling coalition with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), rushed to Delhi on Monday to urge the federal government to "announce a dialogue and show reconciliatory gestures".

Reports say Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh told her that they could not "offer a dialogue with separatists and other restive groups in the valley" while fierce violence and militant attacks continued.

Former chief minister and leader of the regional National Conference party Farooq Abdullah warned India that it was "losing Kashmir". What Mr Abdullah suggested was unexceptionable: the government should begin talking with the stakeholders - Pakistan, the separatists, mainstream parties, the minority Kashmiri Hindus - and start "thinking of not a military solution, but a political way".

_95775525_mediaitem95775524.jpg
Image copyrightABID BHAT
Image captionPolitical leaders say Kashmir needs a political and 'not a military solution'
With more than 500,000 security forces in the region, India is unlikely to lose territory in Kashmir. But Shekhar Gupta, a leading columnist, says that while Kashmir is "territorially secure, we are fast losing it emotionally and psychologically". The abysmal 7% turnout in the Srinagar poll proved that "while your grip on the land is firm, you are losing its people".

So what is new about Kashmir that is worrying India and even provoking senior army officials to admit that the situation is fragile?

For one, a more reckless and alienated younger generation of local youth is now leading the anti-India protests. More than 60% of the men in the valley are under 30. Many of them are angry and confused.

Five things to know about Kashmir
  • India and Pakistan have disputed the territory for nearly 70 years - since independence from Britain
  • Both countries claim the whole territory but control only parts of it
  • Two out of three wars fought between India and Pakistan centred on Kashmir
  • Since 1989 there has been an armed revolt in the Muslim-majority region against rule by India
  • High unemployment and complaints of heavy-handed tactics by security forces battling street protesters and fighting insurgents have aggravated the problem
_95627211_e1e527b1-dabc-45da-91a5-f36e17554c85.jpg

Ajaz, a 19-year-old student in Budgam, told me that hope had evaporated for his generation "in face of Indian oppression" and he and his friends did not "fear death". When I took him aside after a while to ask about his ambitions in life, he said he wanted to become a bureaucrat and serve Kashmir.

"It is wrong to say that the Kashmiri youth has become fearless. He just feels alienated, sidelined and humiliated. When he feels like that, fear takes a backseat, and he becomes reckless. This is irrational behaviour," National Conference leader Junaid Azim Mattoo told me.

Secondly, the new younger militants are educated and come from relatively well-off families.

Wani, the slain militant who headed a prominent rebel group, hailed from a highly-educated upper-class Kashmiri family: his father is a government school teacher. Wani's younger brother, Khalid, who was killed by security forces in 2013, was a student of political science. The new commander of the rebel group, Zakir Rashid Bhat, studied engineering in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh.

_95775523_mediaitem95775522.jpg
Image copyrightABID BHAT
Image captionThere have been clashes between protesters and security forces this summer
Thirdly, the two-year-old ruling alliance, many say, has been unable to deliver on its promises. An alliance between a regional party which advocates soft separatism (PDP) and a federal Hindu nationalist party (BJP), they believe, makes for the strangest bedfellows, hobbled by two conflicting ideologies trying to work their way together in a contested, conflicted land.

Fourthly, the government's message on Kashmir appears to be backfiring.

When Mr Modi recently said the youth in Kashmir had to choose between terrorism and tourism, many Kashmiris accused him of trivialising their "protracted struggle". When BJP general secretary Ram Madhav told a newspaper that his government "would have choked" the valley people if it was against them, many locals said it was proof of the government's arrogance.

Fifth, the shrill anti-Muslim rhetoric by radical Hindu groups and incidents of cow protection vigilantes attacking Muslim cattle traders in other parts of India could end up further polarising people in the valley. "The danger," a prominent leader told me, "is that the moderate Kashmiri Muslim is becoming sidelined, and he is being politically radicalised."

The security forces differ and say they are actually worried about rising "religious radicalisation" among the youth in the valley. A top army official in Kashmir, Lt-Gen JS Sadhu, told a newspaper that the "public support to terrorists, their glorification and increased radicalisation are issues of concern".

_95773953_mediaitem95773952.jpg
Image copyrightAFP
Image captionThe young people in Kashmir say they are angry and alienated
One army official told me that religious radicalisation was a "bigger challenge than stone pelting protesters". He said some 3,000 Saudi-inspired Wahhabi sect mosques had sprung up in Kashmir in the past decade.

Most Kashmiris say the government should be more worried about "political radicalisation" of the young, and that fears of religious radicalisation were exaggerated and overblown.

Also, the low turnout in this month's elections has rattled the region's mainstream parties. "If mainstream politics is delegitimised and people refuse to vote for them, the vacuum will be obviously filled up with a disorganised mob-led constituency," Mr Mattoo of the National Conference said.

In his memoirs, Amarjit Singh Daulat, the former chief of RAW, India's spy agency wrote that "nothing is constant; least of all Kashmir". But right now, the anomie and anger of the youth, and a worrying people's revolt against Indian rule appear to be the only constant.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-39702303?ocid=fbind
 
Last edited by a moderator:
. .
In Kashmir, brutality of videos deepens anger against India
By AIJAZ HUSSAIN
Associated Press

APRIL 26, 2017 — 8:20AM
SRINAGAR, India — One video showed a young Kashmiri man strapped to a patrolling Indian army jeep as a human shield against stone-throwing protesters. Others showed soldiers beating local men with sticks as other troops stood by with guns drawn.

As Shabir Ahmed watched the crude clips, captured on cellphone cameras and uploaded to Facebook, he felt terrified. They reminded him of his own 2001 detention by Indian army soldiers who suspected him of being a rebel sympathizer; he said they subjected him to beatings, waterboarding and drinking water mixed with chili powder.

"For two nights I couldn't sleep. I was not shocked but exhausted" after watching the recent videos, said Ahmed, 38. "I have suffered a great deal in torture by soldiers. Suddenly, I felt as if demons reopened my old wounds and started haunting me."

Rights groups have long accused Indian forces of using systematic abuse and unjustified arrests in Indian-controlled Kashmir. The Indian government has acknowledged the problem exists, but denies it is part of a wide strategy to intimidate residents.

Kashmiris have been uploading videos and photos of alleged abuses for some years, but several recent clips, captured in the days surrounding a violence-plagued local election April 9, have proven to be especially powerful and have helped to intensify anti-India protests.

"Welcome to the world of social media," said Siddiq Wahid, historian and former vice chancellor of a Kashmir university. "You don't need verification and you don't need proof. The optics are so clear."

On Wednesday, authorities ordered internet service providers to block 22 social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter, and popular online chat applications for one month "in the interest of maintenance of public order."


The government has often halted internet service in the region in the past in an attempt to prevent anti-India demonstrations from being organized. But this is the first time authorities have shut down social media following the circulation of videos of alleged abuse by Indian soldiers.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Center for Internet and Society, an advocacy group for internet access and free speech based in the Indian cities of New Delhi and Bangalore, said the order was a "blow to freedom of speech" and "legally unprecedented in India."

"It not only violates the Indian constitution but also violates international law," he said.

One video shows a stone-throwing teenage boy being shot by a soldier from a few meters (yards) away. Another shows soldiers making a group of young men, held inside an armored vehicle, shout profanities against Pakistan while a soldier kicks and slaps them with a stick. The video pans to a young boy's bleeding face as he cries. Yet another clip shows three soldiers holding a teenage boy down with their boots and beating him on his back.

The video that drew the most outrage was of young shawl weaver Farooq Ahmed Dar tied to the hood of an army jeep as it patrolled villages on voting day. A soldier can be heard saying in Hindi over a loudspeaker, "Stone throwers will meet a similar fate," as residents look on aghast.


"When they were driving me around, they were saying, 'We will shoot (you),' and were throwing stones at my head," Dar told The Associated Press. "I was told not to talk. In one of the villages, an elderly man begged for my release but they didn't listen to him."

Police have since registered a criminal case against unnamed Indian soldiers in that case, for the first time citing a video as evidence. In addition, an army "internal inquiry has been initiated into the jeep video," according to spokesman Col. Rajesh Kalia.

But India's top law officer, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, lauded soldiers for managing to defuse a "nasty situation" by containing the protests and saving the polls.

"Why so much noise?" he asked about the complaints. "Military operations cannot be subject of such discussions on social media," Rohtagi told the Hindustan Times newspaper.

Students across Kashmir have been rallying this month at anti-India demonstrations, facing off against heavily armed riot police and paramilitary soldiers.


"Most students like me use social media, and some among us use stones to protest against India. Our brothers (militants) use guns for the same purpose," said Aslam, a 22-year-old science major at the University of Kashmir who gave only his first name out of fear for police reprisals.

Viral videos showing police officers beating civilians or soldiers forcing children to do push-ups in public have "not only outraged the residents here, but also strengthened their belief that the remedy lies in relentlessly seeking justice to end these foul practices," said Khurram Parvez of the Jammu-Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society.

The rights group has conducted decades of research and estimates that at least 200,000 people have been tortured during Kashmir's decades-long separatist conflict fueled by anti-India sentiment among a mostly Muslim population and a deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops.

Kashmir's troubles began in 1947, with the first days of Indian and Pakistani independence, as the two countries both claimed the region in its entirety. They have since fought two of three wars over their rival claims, each administering a part of the territory divided by a heavily militarized line of control.

On the Indian side, most public protest was peaceful until 1989, when armed rebels rose up demanding the region's independence or merger with Pakistan. Nearly 70,000 people have been killed in that uprising and the ensuing military crackdown.


Among the angriest now are Kashmiris under 35, who have grown up in a politically radicalized society amid the brutal armed conflict and high unemployment. They are also among the most tech-savvy and engaged in social media, and make up two-thirds of the territory's population of nearly 13 million.

Anti-India rebels have also adopted social media. One charismatic rebel commander, Burhan Wani, became a household name thanks to his rousing Facebook posts. His killing last year by Indian forces sparked demonstrations and street clashes across Kashmir.

Meanwhile, pro-India activists appear to have countered with their own videos, including two recently circulated showing militants forcing people to chant anti-India slogans at gunpoint.

Authorities have charged three men with attacking an Indian paramilitary soldier after they were allegedly seen in a video heckling the man.

The Indian chapter of Amnesty International has condemned videos from both sides for inciting anger and violence, and urged an investigation.


Indian police and paramilitary officials accuse agitators of using social media to instigate violence.

"There is misuse of social media by the people who are inimical to the peace," said the region's police director-general, S.P. Vaid. He refused to comment on media reports that the government was considering a ban on social media sites like Facebook and popular online chat application WhatsApp.

Kashmiris accuse India of doing too little to combat abuses. Military courts-martial have convicted 164 soldiers since 1990, punishing them with jail or dismissal from military service, according to an army officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with media. He said 96 percent of the more than 1,000 complaints received since 1990 were found to be false and fabricated.

The state government itself cannot pursue abuse cases involving soldiers without permission from New Delhi, which has never been granted despite state requests to prosecute more than 50 cases in the last two decades of alleged murder, rape and other abuse.

In the past, Indian authorities have dismissed videos and photos showing alleged abuse as propaganda stunts aimed at destabilizing the India-based administration. Some in Kashmir believe they were actually leaked by military authorities themselves to intimidate locals.


One observer, New York-based Kashmiri scholar Mohamad Junaid, posited that the "distribution of these videos is also about a fragile masculinity reasserting itself" over a population that has once again begun to aggressively challenge Indian rule.

He and other experts warned that India's heavy-handed rule and inability to placate local protesters were pushing the region toward a dangerous impasse.

"The decision in New Delhi seems to be to push Kashmir and Kashmiris to the wall, said Wahid, the historian. "It's only to be expected the resentment is going to reach new heights."

http://www.startribune.com/in-kashmir-brutality-of-videos-deepen-anger-against-india/420445253/
 
.
One army official told me that religious radicalisation was a "bigger challenge than stone pelting protesters". He said some 3,000 Saudi-inspired Wahhabi sect mosques had sprung up in Kashmir in the past decade.

If not for these kind of things and the whole religious angle played by the separatists, The liberation struggle in Kashmir would have a far greater support from the wider global community
 
.
They are losing it , i can't say for sure but they will lose it eventually .. Inshallah
 
.
Is India losing Kashmir?
soutikbiswas.png

Soutik Biswas
India correspondent
  • 26 April 2017

  • _95775517_mediaitem95775516.jpg
    Image copyrightEPA
Image captionSchoolgirls have participated in protests against Indian rule
As India's most restive region stares down the abyss of what a commentator calls another "hot summer of violence", the doom-laden headline has returned with a vengeance: Is India losing Kashmir?

Last summer was one of the bloodiest in the Muslim-dominated valley in recent years. Following the killing of influential militant Burhan Wani by Indian forces last July, more than 100 civilians lost their lives in clashes during a four-month-long security lockdown in the valley.

It's not looking very promising this summer.

This month's parliamentary election in Srinagar was scarred by violence and a record-low turnout of voters. To add fuel to the fire, graphic social videos surfaced claiming to show abuses by security forces and young people who oppose Indian rule. A full-blown protest by students has now erupted on the streets; and, in a rare sight, even schoolgirls are throwing stones and hitting police vehicles.

Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, who leads an awkward ruling coalition with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), rushed to Delhi on Monday to urge the federal government to "announce a dialogue and show reconciliatory gestures".

Reports say Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh told her that they could not "offer a dialogue with separatists and other restive groups in the valley" while fierce violence and militant attacks continued.

Former chief minister and leader of the regional National Conference party Farooq Abdullah warned India that it was "losing Kashmir". What Mr Abdullah suggested was unexceptionable: the government should begin talking with the stakeholders - Pakistan, the separatists, mainstream parties, the minority Kashmiri Hindus - and start "thinking of not a military solution, but a political way".

_95775525_mediaitem95775524.jpg
Image copyrightABID BHAT
Image captionPolitical leaders say Kashmir needs a political and "not a military solution"
With more than 500,000 security forces in the region, India is unlikely to lose territory in Kashmir. But Shekhar Gupta, a leading columnist, says that while Kashmir is "territorially secure, we are fast losing it emotionally and psychologically". The abysmal 7% turnout in the Srinagar poll proved that "while your grip on the land is firm, you are losing its people".

So what is new about Kashmir that is worrying India and even provoking senior army officials to admit that the situation is fragile?

For one, a more reckless and alienated younger generation of local youth is now leading the anti-India protests. More than 60% of the men in the valley are under 30. Many of them are angry and confused.

Five things to know about Kashmir
  • India and Pakistan have disputed the territory for nearly 70 years - since independence from Britain
  • Both countries claim the whole territory but control only parts of it
  • Two out of three wars fought between India and Pakistan centred on Kashmir
  • Since 1989 there has been an armed revolt in the Muslim-majority region against rule by India
  • High unemployment and complaints of heavy-handed tactics by security forces battling street protesters and fighting insurgents have aggravated the problem
_95627211_e1e527b1-dabc-45da-91a5-f36e17554c85.jpg

Ajaz, a 19-year-old student in Budgam, told me that hope had evaporated for his generation "in face of Indian oppression" and he and his friends did not "fear death". When I took him aside after a while to ask about his ambitions in life, he said he wanted to become a bureaucrat and serve Kashmir.

"It is wrong to say that the Kashmiri youth has become fearless. He just feels alienated, sidelined and humiliated. When he feels like that, fear takes a backseat, and he becomes reckless. This is irrational behaviour," National Conference leader Junaid Azim Mattoo told me.

Secondly, the new younger militants are educated and come from relatively well-off families.

Wani, the militant who was killed last July, headed a prominent rebel group and came from a highly-educated upper-class Kashmiri family: his father is a government school teacher. Wani's younger brother, Khalid, who was killed by security forces in 2013, was a student of political science. The new commander of the rebel group, Zakir Rashid Bhat, studied engineering in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh.

_95775523_mediaitem95775522.jpg
Image copyrightABID BHAT
Image captionThere have been clashes between protesters and security forces this summer
Thirdly, the two-year-old ruling alliance, many say, has been unable to deliver on its promises. An alliance between a regional party which advocates soft separatism (PDP) and a federal Hindu nationalist party (BJP), they believe, makes for the strangest bedfellows, hobbled by two conflicting ideologies trying to work their way together in a contested, conflicted land.

Fourthly, the government's message on Kashmir appears to be backfiring.

When Mr Modi recently said the youth in Kashmir had to choose between terrorism and tourism, many Kashmiris accused him of trivialising their "protracted struggle". When BJP general secretary Ram Madhav told a newspaper that his government "would have choked" the valley people if it was against them, many locals said it was proof of the government's arrogance.

Fifth, the shrill anti-Muslim rhetoric by radical Hindu groups and incidents of cow protection vigilantes attacking Muslim cattle traders in other parts of India could end up further polarising people in the valley. "The danger," a prominent leader told me, "is that the moderate Kashmiri Muslim is becoming sidelined, and he is being politically radicalised."

The security forces differ and say they are actually worried about rising "religious radicalisation" among the youth in the valley. A top army official in Kashmir, Lt-Gen JS Sadhu, told a newspaper that the "public support to terrorists, their glorification and increased radicalisation are issues of concern".

_95773953_mediaitem95773952.jpg
Image copyrightAFP
Image captionThe young people in Kashmir say they are angry and alienated
One army official told me that religious radicalisation was a "bigger challenge than stone pelting protesters". He said some 3,000 Saudi-inspired Wahhabi sect mosques had sprung up in Kashmir in the past decade.

Most Kashmiris say the government should be more worried about "political radicalisation" of the young, and that fears of religious radicalisation were exaggerated and overblown.

Also, the low turnout in this month's elections has rattled the region's mainstream parties. "If mainstream politics is delegitimised and people refuse to vote for them, the vacuum will be obviously filled up with a disorganised mob-led constituency," Mr Mattoo of the National Conference said.

In his memoirs, Amarjit Singh Daulat, the former chief of India's spy agency RAW wrote that "nothing is constant; least of all Kashmir". But right now, the anomie and anger of the youth, and a worrying people's revolt against Indian rule, appear to be the only constants.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-39702303
 
.
No...not even nearer.

First Kashmir is much larger than valley. You have Jammu, Ladhak, North Kashmir and Central Kashmir. There are no protests going anywhere except in the valley. Second, India is not too strict with the protesters as it is giving space to the descent. India becoming stricter may bring calm faster but with long term implications. Third, a 4 to 5 million people in the valley, confined to 100* 100 Sq Km, is not a big number or area that India cannot control.

So Kashmir will be there with India, unless Pakistan decides to attack India to take away Kashmir. In that case who ever win the war will have the full Kashmir to itself.
 
.
Back
Top Bottom