What's new

Kashmir | News & Discussions.

So, is new media only reinforcing old stereotypes?


  • Total voters
    44
India learns how not to play US games

September 21, 2010
Seeking Kashmir Peace, India Feels Anger of Residents
By JIM YARDLEY

SRINAGAR, Kashmir — The Indian members of Parliament left their shoes on the floor beneath a wall covered in photographs of slain Kashmiris. The five men sat cross-legged on the floor of the headquarters of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, staring into a throng of television cameras as they delivered a carefully scripted message of reconciliation.

“We have come to get your counsel,” said Ram Vilas Paswan, a member of Parliament, turning to the leader of the Liberation Front, a former guerrilla fighter named Yasin Malik. “What is the way out? What is the way to stop the bloodshed?”

For more than 100 days, in which Indian security officers have killed more than 100 Kashmiri civilians, the Indian government has seemed paralyzed, or even indifferent, as this disputed Himalayan region has plunged into one of the gravest crises of its tortured history.

Unable to quiet the unrest, or even fully understand it, Indian leaders this week sent the equivalent of a peace delegation to Kashmir. Members visited a hospital and met with politicians, business leaders and even separatists like Mr. Malik before returning to New Delhi on Tuesday night to confer with the prime minister.

Unlike the rest of India, where Hinduism is the predominant religion, the majority of Kashmiris are Muslim.

India often views Kashmir through its rivalry with Pakistan, with both countries controlling portions of the region and each claiming its entirety. Yet Indian officials concede that this latest unrest is different, a domestic Kashmiri revolt against Indian rule, unlike past insurgencies sponsored by Pakistan.

If the delegation’s two-day visit proved anything, it was that the way out of the crisis would be very uncertain, complicated by historic distrust, a rising Kashmiri demand for political independence and seething anger within the younger generation toward the heavy security presence on the ground.

Indeed, the delegation, led by India’s home minister and comprising members of Parliament from major political parties, got a firsthand look at the suffocating government curfew that has choked the entire region since the latest cycle of protests and police shootings broke out more than a week ago. When delegation members visited the hospital, they were jeered, according the news reports.

The delegation’s procession of white Ambassador sedans passed along empty streets and shuttered shops, with officers posted every 50 yards with machine guns. If the delegation had come to reach out to Kashmir, it was extending its hand through barbed wire
.

“It is humiliating,” said A. H. Punjabi, a vice president of Kashmir’s chamber of commerce. On Monday morning, Mr. Punjabi traveled about 6 miles to testify before the delegation at a half-day hearing. Although the streets were empty, and Although he had a special curfew pass, he was stopped more than 20 times by officers during his trip, which took more than an hour.

“I was telling them that I have to attend this delegation meeting,” he added. “But they wanted to know who I was, with which organization.”

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, after being briefed by the parliamentary delegation, is expected to announce some sort of package or policy response on Kashmir. But with many Kashmiris calling for a bold initiative addressing their aspirations to self-determination, it is unclear how far Mr. Singh can go.

Many Kashmiri leaders are calling for the repeal or easing of special laws that protect soldiers and security officers and grant near immunity in shootings — laws that many people say have led to human rights violations. But military leaders are resisting changes, and hard-liners in the political opposition warn that weakening the laws would amount to a political victory for Pakistan.

The immediate political question is the fate of the government in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which is led by Omar Abdullah of the National Conference Party. Elected in December 2008, Mr. Abdullah, the scion of a Kashmiri political dynasty, presented himself as a fresh, honest face, one who would bring jobs and push New Delhi to make concessions on issues like political autonomy and scaling back the security presence. He became a political ally of Rahul Gandhi, the heir to the governing Indian National Congress party, and even appeared on the cover of the Indian edition of GQ magazine.

But Mr. Abdullah’s popularity has cratered, and his critics say his inexperience and inattention allowed the crisis to spin out of control. His critics also equated his frequent absences — his wife and children live in New Delhi — to disregard. The situation is a major political problem for the Congress-led central government, which is allied with Mr. Abdullah’s party and placed his father in the cabinet.

“You had a moment of hope, and then after 18 months, the hope collapsed,” said Amitabh Mattoo, an analyst with a specialty in Kashmiri politics. Initially, leaders in the central government made public declarations of support for Mr. Abdullah, but in recent days speculation has arisen that the state government may soon be replaced.

“This guy was just not able to grasp that something was happening and it needed to be managed,” said a senior official in the prime minister’s office, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “How to deal with a street demonstration? That should not be micromanaged from Delhi.”

The steadily rising death toll is the most lethal measurement of the governmental failure to quell the crisis. As of Tuesday, at least 107 people had been killed, often in confrontations between stone-throwing protesters and security officers returning lethal fire.

In addition, local journalists say state officials blocked the distribution of newspapers and prohibited several local television channels from providing news coverage after they broadcast video of the funeral processions of protesters or of officers firing on crowds. One person said electricity and water were shut off in his entire neighborhood because some people had thrown stones.


“Why would we trust them?” said one man who had slipped out Sunday evening, despite the curfew. “There is no reason to trust India. There is a huge trust deficit. The press is seized. The people are caged.”

Mr. Malik, the separatist leader, discounts any suggestion that Kashmir is inflamed merely because of bad governance or mismanagement. After listening to the visiting parliamentary delegation on Monday night, Mr. Malik recited a long litany of broken promises from Indian leaders going back to the founding of the nation in 1947. Ultimately, he argued, the only thing that will pacify Kashmiris is a political solution, involving Pakistan, to fulfill the region’s desire for self-determination.

“Do not give them a sense of defeat,” he said. “Give them a sense of hope. Or you will push them to revolution



Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

India needs to meet with the intelligentsia of Kashmir and ask what they want. Ask clean and reputable leaders what they want. Then just go with it. I saw pictures of the Kashmir valley. It doesnt look like India. It looks like another backward, religiously extreme area. These guys are simply interested in religious control over the Kashmir valley. They dont talk about education or infrastructure. And they dont talk about how exactly they'll make kashmir viable after independence. Much like a rush to create Pakistan has resulted in an unviable state that is almost ungovernable now, Kashmir will devolve into anarchy if the administration is headed by religious/religion motivated people. At the very least, India should make sure that Kashmir Valley becomes a moderate Muslim state much like Malaysia or Egypt or Turkey and not extremist states like Afghanistan or Pakistan. Talks can be held on issues such as adoption of a secular constitution etc. in Kashmir. The first thing to do is to spin off Kashmir Valley as a separate entity from the State and put in place a government elected by their people there. Then monitor the situation for 15 years to see if the government gets influenced by religious extremists and tips over into a fundamental type entity or another ungoverned area posing grave threats to the world. After the 15 year period, India could hand over completely administration to the locals, sign some treaties for mutual respect (including a nuclear free zone, a a Japan style non-maintenance of defense forces, visa free travel etc.). If the federation concept of India is not working for these people (I for one dont see any "evil" designs by India as claimed by some pakistani members; I only see the Indian incompetence in governance, which has been the norm since its independence), then they should govern themselves, but not for religious reasons. Rejoinders should be there like any shia-sunni confrontation should mean that Kashmir Valley should revert to Indian administration. It is possible to give the people of kashmir a chance to govern themselves and prove their credentials to the world. Perhaps, India can do that.
 
.
India has a legal right over Kashmir, recognized by both Pakistan and the UN, so essentially its Pakistan thats occupying Kashmir, India is well in its legal territory.
Pakistan demands the self-determination of Kashmir. Or am I somehow mistaken?
 
.
Pakistan demands the self-determination of Kashmir. Or am I somehow mistaken?

Yeah demands self-determination, but only to the extent that Kashmir joins Pakistan, the govt gives no right to Kashmiris to be independent, thats your govt's stand.

Legally, theres no right or claim for Pakistan to be be occupying Kashmir. Pending the plebiscite, India has the right to Kashmir, thats what Pakistan and UN agreed to in '48. Pakistan pulls back first then the India conducts plebiscite under UN directions, remember its not a binding compulsion on India to conduct plebiscite, thats what the UN said.
 
.

Sameer Rah was beaten by Indian paramilitaries and flung into a poison ivy bush. The hopes of 2007 seem a world away.

A few days back I travelled to Batamaloo neighbourhood in Srinagar, the capital city of Indian-controlled Kashmir. Coils of barbed wire blocked the desolate roads; thousands of Indian soldiers patrolled the streets to enforce a strict military curfew. I couldn't reach the man I wanted to meet and finally managed to speak to him on the phone.

On 2 August Fayaz Rah, a 39-year-old fruit vendor from Batamaloo, had lunch with his wife and three children. Outside, Indian troops enforced the curfew. Yet the children would find a clearing or a courtyard to play cricket or imitate the adults and raise a slogan for Kashmir's independence from India. His youngest son, eight-year-old Sameer, took two rupees for pocket money from his father and stepped out to join his friends near his uncle's house.

Young Sameer walked into a lane and impulsively shouted a few slogans for Kashmir's independence. He didn't realise a group of Indian paramilitaries was around. They caught the eight-year-old and beat him with bamboo sticks, some blows striking his head. They then threw the boy into a clump of poison ivy bushes, but a crowd gathered. The paramilitaries called a police truck, which drove Sameer to the nearby hospital. Meanwhile, police and paramilitaries teargassed the crowd.

"Someone told me that a child has been killed," said Fayaz. He called a friend in the local police and mentioned that his son, who had left home wearing a yellow T-shirt, had not returned. His friend arrived at his door with an ambulance. "I saw my boy on the ventilator," Fayaz sighed. Doctors tried for hours to revive him, but couldn't save Sameer. "There is no justice in Kashmir," Fayaz told me. "Now the police claim my son died in a stampede."

It is getting harder to keep track of the deaths. In recent years, the hot guerrilla war over the region that began in 1990 first gave way to a cold peace, then, in the past two years, waves of mass protests. The summer of 2008 saw the biggest demonstrations for Kashmir's independence from India in two decades; they were put down by force, with 60 deaths and more than 500 injuries. In the past three months, Indian forces have killed 106 Kashmiri protesters and bystanders, mostly teenagers.

The current fighting broke out as a protest against the killing of a 17-year-old student, Tufail Mattoo, in Srinagar. He was returning home from tuition and was hit by a teargas shell the police fired to disperse a crowd that had gathered to protest at another death. The situation has produced a Palestinian-style intifada in which young boys battle Indian troops with stones, and the soldiers shoot to kill.

India, meanwhile, continues to garrison half a million soldiers in Kashmir, nearly three times the number of American troops in Iraq at the peak of the occupation. India's half-century-old Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which was extended to Kashmir in 1990, gives troops the legal authority to shoot any person they suspect of being a threat, and guarantees immunity from prosecution. To bring a soldier before a civilian court requires the permission of India's home ministry; more than 400 such cases are still waiting for it.

In the absence of justice, or any progress in the negotiations between India and Pakistan over the region's future, despair in Kashmir has grown. Walls all over the region are painted with slogans: We Want Freedom! India, Go Back! Protesters are killed, and with every death more protests follow. The number of injured is believed to have risen to more than 1,000.

Hospitals have been facing a serious shortage of medicines and the impossibility of conducting various medical tests that depend on private pharmacies and medical facilities. Many doctors aren't able to reach hospitals. Over the weekend Dr Bashir Chapoo, a senior eye surgeon, told me that the troops hadn't let him travel to his hospital in central Srinagar for more than a week. Seventeen of his patients had pellets stuck in their eyes. I called him yesterday. "I am still stuck at home. Most of my patients have left the hospital now. I have no idea where they are," Dr Chapoo said. Two had already lost their eyesight.

The military curfew continues with a few hours break once a week. The usual bustle of Kashmiri mornings has been replaced by an eerie silence; my street belongs to stray dogs and chirping birds. The morning papers stopped publishing after the troops attacked the newsagents. It is a world away from the hopeful spring of 2007, when back-channel talks between Indian and Pakistan diplomats – encouraged by Manmohan Singh, India's prime minister, and Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president – seemed to be close to bearing fruit. The solution they had agreed on would have resulted in a largely autonomous Kashmir with soft borders between the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled regions, and the gradual demilitarisation of Kashmir. But the talks lost steam when Musharraf lost power, and broke down after the 2008 attacks on Mumbai, orchestrated by Pakistani militants.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq – head of the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, a coalition of separatist groups – championed the peace talks without any results. But now such moderates find themselves marginalised. The influence of the separatist hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani has risen; he is now viewed as the most substantial powerbroker in the region. The only lull in the recent protests occurred when he appealed to the protesters to stay home.

After several high-profile meetings last week, Singh's government rejected even moderate demands such as repealing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act – even though a committee set up by Singh four years ago recommended doing so. Scaling back troops from residential areas wasn't even discussed.


The Indian government did, however, despatch a delegation of parliamentarians to Kashmir for a fact-finding mission. The group arrived at Geelani's Srinagar home on Monday afternoon, accompanied by scores of television crews. The Kashmiri leader enumerated his preconditions for peace talks: New Delhi should accept Kashmir as a dispute, free Kashmiri political prisoners, and withdraw its troops. Soldiers guilty of civilian killings must be punished, and their blanket protection withdrawn. India is not willing to concede any of these demands, but the meeting provides at least a sliver of hope that the conversations so close to producing results three years ago might begin again.

What the Singh government does next will be its big test. Various analysts and political figures have suggested unconditional, result-oriented talks with the Kashmiris and a revival of the dialogue with Pakistan. It may well be the only way to save Kashmir – and India itself – from future calamities.
 
.
and were is the US, it came to afghanistan to give freedom to afghans, it came to iraq, to provide freedom, ot came to indonesia to give freedom to east temorians, it gave freedom to kosovo, etc it came to veitnam to provide freedom, but no freedom for kashmiris??

only where they interests lye??
 
. .
India needs to meet with the intelligentsia of Kashmir and ask what they want. Ask clean and reputable leaders what they want. Then just go with it. I saw pictures of the Kashmir valley. It doesnt look like India. It looks like another backward, religiously extreme area. These guys are simply interested in religious control over the Kashmir valley.
Just to bolster your argument, here is an interview of Asiya Andrabi.

'Based on Islamic teachings, we are fighting against India. I am telling you that this is Islam, this is my religion. I don't believe in Kashmiriyat, I don't believe in nationalism. I believe that there are just two nations—Muslims and non-Muslims. I am a Muslim; I am least bothered whether I will be called a Kashmiri. I'm Andrabi, I'm from the Syed dynasty. I'm not actually Kashmiri, I'm Arab, my ancestors had come from Arabia to Central Asia. I believe in Islamic nationalism.

So as far as our ideology is concerned, Kashmir is not a part of India because united India was divided on the basis of religion. No one can deny this fact. We want our future too to be solved on the basis of religion.'

Such are the separatist intelligentsia. Such are the separatist leaders. They say Kashmiri movement is the movement of peoples. And then they wave Islamic flag and drive out minorities.
 
Last edited:
.
First: Nothing is happening unless India gives its nod

Second: US/international community is not fool to lend its support for the creation of another 'afghanistan' bordered by three big countries vying for influence and control over its territory.:pop:
 
.
Krishna slams Pakistan over Kashmir
Krishna slams Pakistan over Kashmir
NDTV Correspondent, Updated: September 23, 2010 08:30 IST

New York: External Affairs Minister S M Krishna has strongly dismissed Pakistan's attempts to raise the issue of Kashmir at the United Nations.

Pakistan on Tuesday urged the United States to pressure India over Kashmir, saying recent unrest showed that New Delhi and not Pakistan sponsored terror was to blame for violence in the state.

Speaking exclusively to NDTV, S M Krishna says Pakistan has to end its illegal occupation of certain parts of J & K before interfering in India's internal issues.

Here is what Krishna told NDTV:


NDTV: At this international forum, Pakistan seems to be trying to internationalise the recent violence we have seen in Kashmir. The Pakistani Foreign Minister Qureshi, speaking in New York has asked the US to mediate. What is your response to this?

Krishna: Kashmir is an internal matter of India. We have taken certain actions in terms of assessing what needs to be done in Kashmir. As far as Pakistan is concerned, they are in illegal occupation of certain parts of J&K. I think that it is desirable that they vacate that first and then start advising India about how to go about doing things in Kashmir. An all-party delegation has just returned from Kashmir after having wide range of discussions, across the board, from all shades of opinion. The government of India is fully conscious about its responsibilities. There are institutional mechanisms and individual mechanisms, which will be put in place so that the genuine grievances of the people of Kashmir will be addressed. It happens in other parts of the country also. Whenever such strife is there we do the same mechanism so we will follow that.
 
.
Don't we already know that, the Pakistani obsession with Kashmir.

Lets see what it has done to Pakistan-
-Permanent enmity with India,
- lost half of country due to that,
- permanent arms race with a worsening economy,
- still high on Kashmir with half the country under water.
- supported US on afghanistan in hope of using the assets against India in kashmir, results haven't been good so far.
- More focus on Kashmir than own people in frontier regions causing lesser control of government in own territory.
- Provinces calling for seccesion alleging not enough focus is on them, obviously as the PM said, its on Kashmir.
- Country a de-facto military state with the military hardset over Kashmir.

Phew, somebody new to kashmir would think either kashmir is made of gold or sitting on oil that people would want it so badly.

Instead of all the above reasons i think one reason is enough, Kashmir doesn't belong to India and Pakistan has every reason to have concern for it. Now you make your theories but the fact doesn't change that Pakistan consider Kashmir to be disputed territory and would continue to support Kashmiri no matter how many times you repeat the rant of integral part.

:)
 
.
Legally, theres no right or claim for Pakistan to be be occupying

Who says? Bharat? Not acceptable.

Pending the plebiscite, India has the right to Kashmir, thats what Pakistan and UN agreed to in '48. Pakistan pulls back first then the India conducts plebiscite under UN directions, remember its not a binding compulsion on India to conduct plebiscite, thats what the UN said.

I think this is all BS. Until end the rant of integral part of India it doesn't matter whether Pakistan has control of AJK or not. Once you accept IOK as a a part of disputed territory you have the right to accuse us of "illegally" occupying AJK.

:)
 
.
Let Pakistan concentrate on its core issue Kashmir. Let them forget all the existing issues within its own boundary. India is now way ahead of Pakistan in terms of development and growth. With prime focus on Kashmir, this gap will widen in future. Unfortunately, it seems people from Pakistan don't understand the core issue their country is facing. And politicians are exploiting common people sentiments, to divert from real issues.
 
.
Instead of all the above reasons i think one reason is enough, Kashmir doesn't belong to India and Pakistan has every reason to have concern for it. Now you make your theories but the fact doesn't change that Pakistan consider Kashmir to be disputed territory and would continue to support Kashmiri no matter how many times you repeat the rant of integral part.

:)

We don't have to rant it again and again. The silence of major international powers in itself proves that Kashmir is a dead horse at least when it comes to international issues.
 
. .
The core issue actually is water and greater access to /from China coupled with the option of applying pressure on India from the North
 
.

Pakistan Affairs Latest Posts

Back
Top Bottom