Kashmir | News & Discussions.

[Spitfighter]

Kashmir is a bilateral issue and India will not tolerate any foreign interference/meddling in Kashmir.

India has restated its position several times. Pakistan has to clamp down on terrorism, then and only then is reconciliation possible.

Pakistan has to learn to look beyond Kashmir and focus on eliminating 'non state actors'. Try as they might, India will simply not let Pakistan link its responsibilities in the WoT to Kashmir.

In any case, Pakistan is in no position to pressure India, India will make moves when it deems them to be appropriate. Pakistan is caught between a rock and a hard place and will have to readdress it's strategic outlook.

 

[Muradk]

You phrased it wrong.
you said
Pakistan has to learn to look beyond Kashmir and focus on eliminating 'non state actors'. Try as they might, India will simply not let Pakistan link its responsibilities in the WoT to Kashmir.

But you should have phrased it like this
Pakistan has to learn to look beyond Kashmir and focus on eliminating RAW. Try as they might, India will simply not let Pakistan link its responsibilities in the WoT to Kashmir.

 

[FireFighter]

An independent Kashmir is much better than a Bharat Occupied Kashmir.

An independent Kashmir would be much more like independent Bangladesh run by Indian stooges. India has worked hard in preparing the stooges but their hardwork has gone down the drain due to insurmountable sacrifices of the Kashmiris.

I dont agree with the concept of a "free independent Kashmir". That will never happen so long as Congress or BJP are in power in India that thrive on making profits out of dividing people. Given BJP/Congress's history of making mischief with neighbouring countries for their religious/economic benefit, you think they'd let an independent Kashmir run on its on?

Either Kashmir would be under the shadow of India, or an independent state under the protection of Pakistan, it cannot be a sovereign state..

Unless you equip the Kashmiris with Nukes, ghauris and F16s ...

I say let us free all Indian Muslims at once and be done with it. Let them make one more Pakistan and live in peace as current Pakistan is doing.

You don't even have to free Muslims or any religious class that feels insecure and unprotected under the BJP/Congress rule.

It's not even about Muslim for that matter. It's all about Social Justice for the minorities. Try adding that in your dictionary before we continue ...

 

[FireFighter]

Waist to time taking this issue infront of the UN. Done it been there but nothing WHY because we Pakistani are still in denial that Kashmir wants to be a part of Pakistan, They don't want to join us they want a separate state all together. And buy the time this sinks into our thick skulls we would have worsen our relations with India.

Speaking of social justice and talking about someone's rights is never a waste of time. It takes guts and lots of courage to speak on behalf the oppressed, especially at the international level. And I believe Musharraf let us down in that regard after the Kargil war.

Pakistan should back the Kashmir issue even if they dont want to join us. We should back them given that no other country backs them.

They're in far worse conditions than the Palestinians were in Gaza.

 

[ouiouiouiouiouioui]

both countries has to accept the controlled territories

 

[Omar1984]

both countries has to accept the controlled territories

and continue to see this?

http://www.defence.pk/forums/kashmir-war/33872-kashmir-activist-discovered-dead.html

http://www.defence.pk/forums/kashmir-war/32137-more-unmarked-graves-discovered-held-kashmir.html

http://www.defence.pk/forums/kashmi...d-war-indian-army-accused-torture-terror.html

http://www.defence.pk/forums/kashmir-war/31790-2-killings-stoke-kashmiri-rage-indian-force.html

http://www.defence.pk/forums/kashmi...ainst-land-occupation-troops-rock-valley.html


There will never be peace in South Asia until Kashmir dispute is resolved.

 

[Developereo]

both countries has to accept the controlled territories

No, my Indian-pretending-to-be-French friend, the people of Kashmir need to decide their own future.

 

[SalmanNadeem]

Surprising how your hearts bleed more for citizens of a foreign country than your own long-suffering Balochis at the hands of your own armed forces and intelligence agencies.

The decades of propaganda drilled into your heads seems to have worked.

 

[EjazR]

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

Pakistan crisis leaves Kashmir peace process in limbo

* Envoys had reached ‘secret’ 5-point agreement over Kashmir settlement * Indian newspaper says Musharraf’s interest in reaching settlement overridden by troubles of saving own job

SRINAGAR: Pakistan’s political crisis has left efforts to find a solution to the decades-old dispute over Kashmir with archrival India in limbo, analysts and politicians say.

Peace talks which started in 2004 are officially continuing but with turmoil in Islamabad all hopes of a short-term breakthrough have been abandoned.

The tumult in Pakistan is “a temporary setback to the peace process,” said Noor Ahmed Baba, head of the political science department at Kashmir University in Srinagar.

“The peace process has been disrupted by the developments but once things stabilise there, both countries will resume the process,” Baba said, calling the drive “irreversible”.

However, Pakistan’s political churning has come at an unfortunate moment for talks between the neighbours, South Asia expert Prem Shankar Jha said.

5-point agreement, kept secret: Special envoys appointed by both sides for back-channel talks had arrived at a “five-point agreement” outlining the contours of a settlement over Kashmir, Jha wrote in Indian news magazine Outlook.

The agreement “contained a framework for joint management of common issues like water, power, communications and defence,” with the de facto Line of Control border dividing Kashmir into Indian- and Pakistani-administered regions “progressively softened,” he said.

Though the formula was ready to be unveiled in March-April, both governments decided to keep the agreement secret, preferring to wait for a more “propitious” moment that never came, Jha said. “Today, Kashmir is the last and most expendable thing on Pakistani leaders’ minds.”

An Indian official confirmed that “the five-point formula had been agreed,” and that “it was kept away from the public eye because of reservations expressed by some sections” within the Indian government.

New Delhi has kept a close eye on events in Pakistan since November 3, but has refrained from openly backing any particular political leadership. Opinion in Muslim-majority Indian Kashmir, however, is firmly behind Musharraf. “Musharraf’s presence helped improve relations between India and Pakistan,” said ex-Kashmir chief minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed.

Musharraf is credited with supporting a slew of measures to stabilise the fragile ties between India and Pakistan, at loggerheads since 1947.

However, Pakistan’s troubles have meant that Musharraf has had no time to pay attention to the peace process. “Events in Pakistan have set back the peace process and put Kashmir on the backburner,” said Greater Kashmir newspaper editorial columnist Mohammed Ashraf. “Until there’s some normalcy in Pakistan, parleys must wait.” Musharraf “seemed very sincere in ending this mad conflict but now his very survival is in question,” he added. Violence has eased since India and Pakistan began the peace talks, but more than 42,000 people have been killed in the insurgency, officials say. Human rights groups estimate the deaths at 60,000 with 10,000 missing.

‘Musharraf’s interest in talks overridden’: “Musharraf used to take a personal interest in the talks but now he himself is in trouble trying to save his own job,” said Tahir Mohiudin, editor of Kashmir-based Urdu weekly Chattan.

Moderate Kashmiri separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said “only a stable Pakistan can have a serious dialogue with India over Kashmir. Presently it seems the dialogue process is on hold.

 

[EjazR]

DAWN.COM | World | The four-point formula

The spokesman of the United Jihad Council (UJC) Syed Sadaqat Hussein’s belated attack on June 28 on the four-point formula on Kashmir, reeks of factual error and unrealism. Gen Pervez Musharraf neither succumbed to the US and Indian pressure nor did he make ‘a U-turn on Pakistan’s stated policy on Kashmir’ when he propounded the formula.

Much worse, partition pure and simple, was offered by Prime Minister Firoz Khan Noon to Henry Cabot Lodge, US envoy to the UN, in Karachi on Feb 10, 1958. The Z.A. Bhutto–Swaran Singh talks (1962-63) centred on partition lines. President Ayub Khan abandoned plebiscite in 1962. Not one country in the world talks of the UN resolutions or advocates plebiscite today.

It is equally wrong to say that ‘none of the Kashmiri leaders ever endorsed’ the formula and that even the Government of India did not take it seriously. None other than the UJC’s chairman, Syed Salahuddin, endorsed it on Feb 27, 2007 albeit as a ‘first step’, in a talk with the media at Muzaffarabad. Syed Sadaqat Hussein should not forget that. He himself had faxed the remarks to the media in Srinagar.

Close on the heels, Mirwaiz Maulvi Umar Farooq said on March 20, 2007, ‘The Hurriyat Conference will soon strengthen its public contact programme to make people aware of the four-point formula of President Musharraf and take them into confidence on the on-going peace process.’

By then the president’s popularity in Pakistan had plummeted low. However, Indians noted with chagrin that the sentiment in the Valley, across the board, was strongly in his favour. Why? Because he had brought the Kashmir dispute to the very outskirts of a solution. Both sentiments deserve understanding and respect.

On May 2 last, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh revealed ‘Gen Musharraf and I had nearly reached an agreement, a non-territorial solution to all problems but then Gen Musharraf got into many difficulties with the chief justice and other forces and therefore the whole process came to a halt’. The general has uttered the same regret.

It would be reckless to drown the baby of an achievement in the bath water of partisanship or discard it because Musharraf had acted arbitrarily at home. His recent remarks on the Hurriyat’s failure to give any concrete proposal on a solution, which the UJC spokesman criticised, are perfectly valid. Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s voice is stuck in the groove of an old gramophone record — he has no use for CDs or DVDs — while the Mirwaiz keeps promising to reveal a road map but never delivers. Visiting journalists from Pakistan were astonished to find an absence of intellectual creativity on the subject in the one place from which it could be expected, the once vibrant Kashmir University. True, its students and faculty have suffered a lot and the university has been undermined by the state. But slogans of old are no substitute for realistic proposals.

For long, India and Pakistan were stuck on the status of the LoC. India wanted it to be made an international border. Pakistan consistently, and very understandably, rejected that disastrous proposal. The Musharraf–Manmohan Singh consensus has resolved this impasse by brilliant creativity — the LoC will be made ‘irrelevant’, just a line on a map as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on March 24, 2006 in Amritsar. The state of Jammu and Kashmir will be reunited de facto.

That, by itself, will be a revolutionary change in a situation frozen for six decades. But it would be coupled with other measures, no less revolutionary, in a package deal. President Musharraf told Geo TV on Oct 23, 2006: ‘Self-governance with a joint management system at the top for both sides of the LoC, and you make the LoC irrelevant.’ The four points were not hatched in a day. He had been throwing up ideas since 2003, if not earlier. So did Prime Minister Manmohan Singh since he came to office in May 2004. Their ideas converged and the back channel gave them concrete shape. ‘We worked very hard on that,’ the prime minister said on May 2. The ideas were codified as the four points only in September 2006 in Musharraf’s book Line of Fire. He amplified them in a TV interview some time ago: ‘There was a fair amount of agreement that we need to give maximum (power) to the people of Kashmir so that they have a feeling of governing themselves’; i.e. self-rule, short of independence. The ‘joint mechanism was to oversee that self-governance and also discussing whatever we have not devolved to the people of both sides’.

Only people callous to the sufferings of the helpless people of Kashmir would sniff at these gains. The basics are agreed; but there is room for a Kashmiri input on crucial issues — how free will be the movement across the LoC? What rules will be made to ensure free movement to the rural poor? The bus is a cruel joke. The powers and composition of the joint mechanism are of crucial importance. There can and must be a consultative assembly comprising legislators from both parts of J&K as provided in the Northern Ireland agreement. Inputs have come from the unionists. The separatists feel comfortable with slogans of old. The people of Kashmir languish while politicians battle for their support.

 

[EjazR]

Just to clarify the Five points are :

(1) Phased withdrawal of troops
(2) Local Self - governance
(3) No changes in Kashmir borders
(4) A joint supervision mechanism in Jammu and Kashmir involving India, Pakistan and Kashmir.
An additional point added later was
(5) Cross LoC trade

 

[gubbi]

An independent Kashmir is much better than a Bharat Occupied Kashmir.

and Pakistan occupied Kashmir (aka Azad Kashmir) and Aksai Chin. The whole shebang.

 

[gubbi]

After thinking about it I agree that Pakistan should not play this card.
Not because it wouldn't work. I think it would work and achieve Kashmir's liberation, but the cost would be too high for Indian Muslims.

First, in an India v/s Muslims confrontation, the Indian Muslims would be put in a very difficult position -- not least because anti-Muslim elements within India would exploit the situation.

And also, no matter which way the conflict was resolved, especially if Kashmir became independent as a result of Muslim pressure, the Indian Muslims would forever be punished for it by the rest of India.

I disagree with this assessment. Indians following the Islamic faith are proud of being Indians first and then proud of their faith, in that order.
Lets for a moment decipher a view of Indian Muslims vs Pak Muslims: people think,
1. Pak Muslims are a patriotic lot, love Pakistan and not the global Islamic Jihad struggle propounded by the likes of AQ. Other minorities in Pakistan - Hindus, Sikhs etc are very patriotic Pakistanis adn do not like India.
2. Indian Muslims, on the other hand, do not actually like India, are suppressed by the majority Hindus, and due to this alleged suppression, are afraid to express their views of universal Muslim brotherhood. Given a chance they would rather support the Global Islamic Jihad, and Pakistani Muslims rather than India.
Does that make sense to you? Pakistani Muslims are true believers because they support Pakistan, not AQ, but otoh, Indian Muslims due to their pride in being Indian and not supporting global Islamic Jihad have diluted their faith and do not deserve a coveted place among the faithful?

I seriously dont understand why Pakistanis have this strange misconception that Indian Muslims would support non-Indians against India and not be patriotic to India. How does that even make sense to you guys, eh?

Thats why I said in my previous post that this India vs Muslims is a non-issue on practically all grounds, except in the minds lacking powers of simple deductions and commonsense. Indian Muslims are Indians!! And Mighty Proud of It!!

I say dont insult your faith by denigrating your fellow brothers because they are faithful to their country rather than to your country!

But maybe it can be done in a roundabout way. Saudi Arabia nudging Uncle, Pakistan nudging the Panda, OPEC nudging the Bear, and everybody breathing down India's neck. I admit it's a long shot, but we may have to find a non-military, non-UN solution.

Now that's a very wily thought! I like it, and seriously my respect for Pakistan would go through the roof is you guys can pull such a thing off.
However, given the current situation and a projected future based on today's growth, do you really think world's power blocks would like to create friction with India?
Secondly, if you look closely, this game is already being played out, the only difference is that Pakistan is at the receiving end of it. Just check how vehemently Pakistani authorities denied that Pakistan had anything to do with Mumbai attack last year. Now they all sheepishly agree that the plan was hatched in Pakistan and was executed by Pakistanis (albeit non-state actors). Didnt all the countries put pressure on Pakistan to accept what Indians said (even if you still refuse to accept the evidence collected by Indian and foreign agencies.)? Now who succumbed to the pressure?
I see Kashmir issue going down a very similar pathway. I shall then say, 'I told you so'!

Btw, I really liked Muradk's post. Pakistan really needs to up its economy than concentrate on Kashmir and drain/lose all the opportunities along the way.

 

[gubbi]

...................................................... self delete

 

[dabong1]

Waist to time taking this issue infront of the UN. Done it been there but nothing WHY because we Pakistani are still in denial that Kashmir wants to be a part of Pakistan, They don't want to join us they want a separate state all together. And buy the time this sinks into our thick skulls we would have worsen our relations with India.

Well i for one and the majority of my family want kashmir to be part of pakistan.