Pushing Kashmir toward Pakistan

[su-47]

Indian govt is making a terrible mistake in kashmir. this economic blockade has turned even neutral kashmiris against india. we have to lift this blocakde, and in my opinion, issue an apology to the people of kashmir.

 

[roadrunner]

Why stop here? Where did Islam come from? Saudi A.? So all the terrorism in the world can be traced back to Saudi Arabla.
But then that would be 'oversight'

Alright genius. You missed my point. That WOULD be oversight, just as saying all the venomous sects come from India would be, just as saying a person visiting Pakistan for a couple of weeks means that Pakistan has some link to terrorism. You will find a figure of 99% to be amazingly foolish, and it has been disproved. Why then the numerous congratulations for such a fictional post by the Indians? Lying is fine, but when one can prove it as fiction, it does nothing to help your case.

 

[Goodperson]

I could say all the world's terrorism that is caused by Muslim can be tied to India, since most of the venomous sects of Islam sprung from places within India. Therefore, everything traces back to India. However this would be oversight, just as your above comment is ridiculously foolish at best.

Indian Muslims are peaceful except for very few.

My friend why has image of Pakistan tarnished world over ? Most of the terrorist attacks have roots in Pakistan. Earlier when India used to accuse with evidence very few used to believe, Now quite a few of the nations who matter (NATO , US) have first hand experience.

Also sympathy factor is lost when such nation says it is the victim, History says you reap what you sow (grow).

 

[jaison]

i dont know why there is so much communal violence in the north,south india performs much better in communal harmony except for regional ones

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Indian Muslims are peaceful except for very few.

My friend why has image of Pakistan tarnished world over ? Most of the terrorist attacks have roots in Pakistan. Earlier when India used to accuse with evidence very few used to believe, Now quite a few of the nations who matter (NATO , US) have first hand experience.

Also sympathy factor is lost when such nation says it is the victim, History says you reap what you sow (grow).

You have enough Indian terrorists to commit all the bombings in India, for quite a few years now.

Your comment about "most terrorist attacks have roots in Inda" is also wrong, as RR ha already pointed out.

This same adminsitration wae also responsible for pushing out lies to further its agenda in Iraq, lets not be naive and pretend that it would be averse to doing the same to get Pakistan to follow wits demands in FATA.

As Pakistan has pointed out to Afghanistan, India and the US - if you have evidence, share it - you wouldn't want the perpetrators in the ISI getting away now would you?

And what has been the response?

Nothing. There is no evidence, if there is, why are the people responsible being protected?

 

[jaison]

Nothing. There is no evidence, if there is, why are the people responsible being protected?
ok then why did an american official came to pak and warned u for links with taliban

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Nothing. There is no evidence, if there is, why are the people responsible being protected?
ok then why did an american official came to pak and warned u for links with taliban

No need for theatrics. Are you privy to what he shared? Cooperation between various Taliban groups and the GoP is not a secret, it forms part of our discussion when analyzing how to best limit the TTP's influence.

One thing that can be said with certainty, the demands for evidence came after the visit to Pakistan and after the NYT articles, so it would be apparent that it has not been shared yet.

 

[Contrarian]

I'll won't take your 99 percent comment literally since you don't really need me to point out why that is highly flawed.

However why are some terrorists able to operate out of Pakistan, primarily the lawless area called FATA that the GoP has never really exercised control over, because of its special status in the constitution, continued from British days, and our proximity with Afghanistan.

But you get the general picture dont you? Why is it that most of the Islamic terrorism has some kind or other connection with Pakistan. The training camps run by the ISI to train terrorists for Kashmir and Afghanistan have been used extensively by almost any and every Islamic terrorist worldwide.

When law and order is missing, when LEA's are non existent, such areas will become havens for crime, and terrorism is one such crime.

Terrorists dont just come in and train themselves mate, they need training camps, camps which are operated by ISI and your military in a supportive role.

You are trying to construct an institutional relationship to terrorism when there is no evidence to that effect. The problems are of a lack of institutional systems - governing, social and economic.

So you are saying that those camps are run by individuals with no connection to the ISI?

Do you disagree that the major part of Islamic terrorism started when US started funding Pakistan to train the Afghans to throw out the Russians. After that was succesfully completed, Pakistan simply diverted the outflow of these trained terrorists from Afghanistan to Kashmir,and many new camps sprung up.

 

[Contrarian]

Indian govt is making a terrible mistake in kashmir. this economic blockade has turned even neutral kashmiris against india. we have to lift this blocakde, and in my opinion, issue an apology to the people of kashmir.

The economic blockade has NOT been imposed by the govt mate. They are just unable to remove it. Its by the people of Jammu. The Army is literally escorting trucks across the highways there. We cannot lift the blockade, its upto the people of Jammu.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

But you get the general picture dont you? Why is it that most of the Islamic terrorism has some kind or other connection with Pakistan. The training camps run by the ISI to train terrorists for Kashmir and Afghanistan have been used extensively by almost any and every Islamic terrorist worldwide.


Terrorists dont just come in and train themselves mate, they need training camps, camps which are operated by ISI and your military in a supportive role.


So you are saying that those camps are run by individuals with no connection to the ISI?

Do you disagree that the major part of Islamic terrorism started when US started funding Pakistan to train the Afghans to throw out the Russians. After that was succesfully completed, Pakistan simply diverted the outflow of these trained terrorists from Afghanistan to Kashmir,and many new camps sprung up.

Malay, the majority of your comments revolve around the camps, and as you rightly pointed out, the US was enthusiastically supportive of those camps while doing the exact same thing in Afghanistan, that Pakistan did in kashmir. Pakistan would not have taken the initiative to start a proxy war with the Soviets had the US not been involved.

So if you want to call Pakistan's support for insurgents in Kashmir 'terrorism', then do the same to the US, which has done even more in Latin America and was also responsible in large part for the camps in Afghanistan - read up on covert US interventions in LA.

 

[Contrarian]

Malay, the majority of your comments revolve around the camps, and as you rightly pointed out, the US was enthusiastically supportive of those camps while doing the exact same thing in Afghanistan, that Pakistan did in kashmir. Pakistan would not have taken the initiative to start a proxy war with the Soviets had the US not been involved.

Yes, Pakistan would not have been involved had US not been there, but once on a path, you need to know when to stop. And that time had come long before for Pakistan.

So if you want to call Pakistan's support for insurgents in Kashmir 'terrorism', then do the same to the US, which has done even more in Latin America and was also responsible in large part for the camps in Afghanistan - read up on covert US interventions in LA.

Yes, but look at how the US went about it. ITs not US that is suffering today, its Pakistan!
It was Pakistani Genral Zia, who decided to use terrorism as a state policy. Because he could not match India in the conventional arms race, he made terrorism a state instrument! This was the biggest mistake that Pakistan could make. I call what US has done in other parts of the world terrorism as well. But they have used other countries. They have not inflicted harm on their own society by radicalizing it.

The US left, and Pakistan continued to use those camps for its own ends, and created dozens of new ones. When i say that most of the Islamic terrorists have some link or another in Pakistan, it is because most of them have been trained there. Its because Pakistani governments have supported terrorists by providing safe havens, funds, arms.

Agno, just look at the Pakistani school textbooks, the radicalization has started even at such small levels. Being 'shaheed' or 'dying for your country' and 'Jehad' is glorified in such books. Fighting wars, dying is considered the best you can do.
Do you know the effect of that? Children at such small ages, when they read such stuff, these things are permanently engraved in their minds, and no amount of reasoning can remove such things. All this just because Pakistan wants to punch above its weight.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Agnostic do tell me, dont you think there is a reason why 99% of the terrorist attacks in the WORLD have some kind of link to Pakistan?

From where did you pull that out of?

 

[RabzonKhan]

Jammu flare-up and the ideology of hate

August 14, 2008

By Syed Ali Safvi

The land row and subsequent political and economic crisis have raised many a question and exploded many a myth. It has also exonerated Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s demand for a separate nation for Muslims. The father of the Indian nation, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, once said that India would be known by the way it treats its minorities.

If Gandhi were alive today, he certainly would have hung his head in shame after seeing his dream of Hindu-Muslim-Sikh unity being tethered by some Hindu fanatics who are hellbent on spreading communal animosity.

It has been proven time and again that the Indian state has failed to protect its minorities. The West Bengal riots, the Delhi riots, the 1984 Sikh riots, the Babri Masjid demolition, the Baghalpur riots, the Gujarat pogrom, and hundreds and thousands of such communal riots in a span of less than 60 years have exposed the underbelly of Indian secularism. Now, the Jammu region is in the throes of a communal flare-up, and if effective measures are not taken to douse the flames, the conflagration will engulf all of India, with disastrous consequences.

Protestors in Jammu have been given a free hand, as Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Chairman Yaseen Malik aptly put it, “Protestors are playing a friendly match with the police.” The attack on the Greater Kashmir (GK) Jammu office at Gandhi Nagar has underlined and attested to the truth in Malik’s proclamation. On the contrary, police are manhandling the protestors in the Kashmir Valley and resorting to extreme measures to quell their protests.

According to a report, police in Srinagar have been using a “sophisticated and dangerous weapon” called Rudra -– which is only allowed to be used in military operations -- on the unarmed peaceful protestors. This shows that the police and paramilitary forces have been using different modus operandi in the two regions.

India boasts about its tenets of secularism and democratic values, but it is just empty rhetoric that is not reflected in the realities on the ground. The world has seen how secularism and the “age-old history” of religious tolerance were trampled upon in Gujarat by the successors of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s ‘ideology of hate’. The seeds of communal hatred were sown by the members of the Hindu Mahasabha long ago, even before the very idea of Pakistan came into being.

Contrary to the common belief that Jinnah originated the two-nation theory, actually it was Savarkar who propounded the theory years before the Muslim League embraced the idea. Savarkar had commanded all the Muslims to leave ‘Bharat’ to pave the way for the establishment of Hindu Rashtra. When Jinnah introduced his two-nation theory, Savarkar announced, “I have no quarrel with Mr. Jinnah’s two-nation theory… It is a historical fact that Hindus and Muslims are two nations.”

“His (Savarkar’s) doctrine was Hindutva, the doctrine of Hindu racial supremacy, and his dream was of rebuilding a great Hindu empire from the sources of the Indus to those of the Brahmaputra. He hated Muslims. There was no place for them in the Hindu society he envisioned.” (Freedom at Midnight, by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins).

So the hate campaign against Muslims was well in place even before the partition of erstwhile British India. This and many other significant factors forced Jinnah to demand a separate nation for Muslims as he believed that Muslims would not be safe in India -- a prophetic declaration indeed! There is no denying the fact that Jinnah was secular to the marrow and would never have wished to cut ties with India, but circumstances compelled him to do so. However, he had not harbored grudges against India or its leaders. He had kept his house on Malabar Hill, thinking he could weekend there, while running his country from Karachi on weekdays, but destiny had something else in store for the estranged neighbors of the Asia Partition.

When Nathuram Godse pumped three bullets into Gandhi, a section of the Hindu community compared him with Judas. The writing was on the wall. The divide was evident. In some areas people mourned the death of Gandhi, and in other areas they distributed sweets, held celebrations, and demanded the release of Godse. Gandhi’s crime was that he had demanded security for Muslims.

The seeds of partition were actually sown by the stalwarts of Hindu Mahasabha, primarily the quartet of Savarkar, Gawarikar, Apte, and Nathuram Godse. Independent India’s history is testimony to the fact that in a conflict between the forces of secular nationalism and religious communalism, the latter has always ruled the roost. Secular forces have more often than not ended up playing into the hands of communal forces. Such has been the history of independent India, and it is again on display in Jammu.

Jammu has always been a communally sensitive region compared to the Kashmir Valley. Muslims of Jammu have borne the brunt of communal hatred before when Maharaja Hari Singh, with the help of the armed bands of the extremist militant Hindu party Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), slew thousands of Muslims and forced the exodus of over 100,000 Muslims from Poonch. Interestingly, while the government is making every effort to facilitate the return of Kashmiri Pandits back to Kashmir, nothing has been done to bring back the refugees of the Jammu exodus.

The authorities have miserably failed to protect the hapless Muslims in Jammu. The protestors are doing things at will, even when the so-called curfew is in place. The Hindu fanatics have wreaked havoc in Akhnur Tehsil (50 kilometers from Jammu) and the authorities are haplessly watching as mute spectators.

The State of Jammu and Kashmir has reached a stage where the integrity of the state is threatened.

The economic blockade imposed on the Kashmir Valley by Hindu fanatic forces has intensified the crisis. The Kashmir leadership is now exploring trade options via Muzaffarabad, something that should have been done long ago. Anyway, “deer ayad durust ayad” (better late than never). In the wake of the road blockade, it becomes imperative for Kashmir to explore alternative road links instead of being dependent on the current insufficient linkages. Through the Jhelum Valley road, Kashmir can restore its ties with China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. And there is one more benefit. It is the only route that is free of snow in winter owing to its low elevation. Therefore, it will ensure an uninterrupted flow of traffic year-round.

This route has historical significance, too.

“The Jhelum Valley route was, until the partition, the easiest route from the Punjab to Kashmir. It was also convenient for those who wished to proceed towards Attock and Peshawar from Kashmir. It also must have been used for Kashmir’s trade with Persia and western Turkistan. Hiuen Tsiang and Ou-K’ong entered Kashmir from the west by this route, and it is by this route that many learned scholars and Sufis from Persia and Turkistan came to the valley.” (Kashmir under the Sultans by Mohibbul Hasan)

There are also reports in the media that in Uri protestors have threatened to cut power exports to counter the economic blockade (GK, August 9). If political parties in New Delhi, irrespective of their political ideology, do not immediately intervene and make efforts to pacify the agitators in Jammu, the State of Jammu and Kashmir could very well be divided along religious lines. Here, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is seeking to play a major role. In the run-up to Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, the party is trying to get political mileage out of the land row, but its members must make sure that the situation does not get out of control. If that happens, as one of my friends said, “We would see the Red Army in Ladakh, the Green Army in the Valley, and the Saffron Army in Jammu.” Are we ready for that?

For the saner elements in the Kashmir Valley and Jammu, it is time to show resilience and commitment to religious tolerance. They should not succumb to the pressure and most importantly they must not play into the hands of divisive forces which are hellbent on dividing the state along religious lines. For the authorities, it is like one of those bad dreams where you leave the house and discover you’re not dressed properly. Nonetheless, it is high time they pull up their socks and do what is required.

The writer is a Kashmir-based journalist.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Yes, Pakistan would not have been involved had US not been there, but once on a path, you need to know when to stop. And that time had come long before for Pakistan.

The time to stop a particular policy comes about when a nation's interests are served. The US did not stop because it had moral qualms with the methods used, it has done this time and time again around the world, it did so because it had achieved its objective. For Pakistan, however, the US disengagement left a huge problem on its Western border, one that was exacerbated due to the links of a significant section of Afghanistans population with its own Pashtun population. It was not time for us to stop - its a question of protecting national interest, and any other country would have done the same.

Yes, but look at how the US went about it. ITs not US that is suffering today, its Pakistan!
It was Pakistani Genral Zia, who decided to use terrorism as a state policy. Because he could not match India in the conventional arms race, he made terrorism a state instrument! This was the biggest mistake that Pakistan could make. I call what US has done in other parts of the world terrorism as well. But they have used other countries. They have not inflicted harm on their own society by radicalizing it.

The US left, and Pakistan continued to use those camps for its own ends, and created dozens of new ones. When i say that most of the Islamic terrorists have some link or another in Pakistan, it is because most of them have been trained there. Its because Pakistani governments have supported terrorists by providing safe havens, funds, arms.

Zia did the same thing India did with the Mukti bahini in East Pakistan and what the US has done in countless nations time after time, as I have pointed out. Lets not single out Pakistan for criticism on this count and call it terrorism - if Pakistan supported terrorism, so did India and the US, agree upon that and we can proceed more evenhandedly.

To your points about extremists from various places training there, a lot of those extremists trained there while the US was involved, and at the time everyone thought it was a great way to get volunteers. The concerns did not really start rising until after the activities and connections of some of them came to light later. So again, singling out Pakistan as 'having links to most terrorism' is incorrect, since the involvement of the US would indicate that it too had links to much of the terrorism that Pakistan was linked too.

One last point on the camps - any time you support covert groups and activities, you run the risk of abuse of the system. The system was abused when the US was involved, and it was abused when only Pakistan was involved. The reason for the camps was support for the insurgency in Kashmir and training for first the Mujahideen and later Taliban volunteers - unfortunately they also ended up being used by other groups, and also by individuals who may have engaged in terrorism in India, beyond the insurgency. But that is an unavoidable cost, and it is a lesson that both the US and Pakistan have paid for.

Agno, just look at the Pakistani school textbooks, the radicalization has started even at such small levels. Being 'shaheed' or 'dying for your country' and 'Jehad' is glorified in such books. Fighting wars, dying is considered the best you can do.
Do you know the effect of that? Children at such small ages, when they read such stuff, these things are permanently engraved in their minds, and no amount of reasoning can remove such things. All this just because Pakistan wants to punch above its weight.

Thats just a complete digression form the subject. Lets not start ranting about every complaint in your mind about Pakistan now, which unfortunately these discussions on issues with Indians almost always tangentially go off on.

Pakistani textbooks may have their flaws (what curriculum does not have complaints against it?), but it is nothing like the hatred spawning system Indians make it out to be, nor does it have the systematic and deliberate hate inducing material some Saudi texts do. If that was the case, poll after poll would not show a majority of Pakistanis supportive of normalization and peace with India - they would be supportive of invading and conquering it and 'slaying all the infidels'. Nor would a majority of Pakistanis disagree with the tactics used by AQ and the Taliban.

I do not see anything wrong in glorifying martyrdom for your nation, I do see a problem with glorifying Jihad without taking into account the conditions and nuances the concept involves.

The system and curriculum that is a problem is the Madrassa system, and hopefully the attempts to regulate it will bear fruit. But that system too was not deliberately and systematically set up to become what it is now, it has morphed into its current status much like the Taliban morphed out of the chaos of post Soviet Afghanistan.

 

[Contrarian]

It was not time for us to stop - its a question of protecting national interest, and any other country would have done the same.

Zia did the same thing India did with the Mukti bahini in East Pakistan and what the US has done in countless nations time after time, as I have pointed out. Lets not single out Pakistan for criticism on this count and call it terrorism - if Pakistan supported terrorism, so did India and the US, agree upon that and we can proceed more evenhandedly.

I suppose you can call what India did with Mukti Bahini as terrorism. But the difference was that India was not encouraging its own people to go to such camps and fight for the greater good. Neither was it based on the 'religious jehad' concept that Pakistan used. It was a clear concept-to make East Pakistan free. It did not entail all the consequences of a global jehad. Whilst Pakistan chose that path, all the muslims the world over came to those camps to train for their jehad, and the governemnt only encouraged it in the name of Islam-that is the problem. Had Pakistan made it Kashmir specific and not made it a Jehad against Hindu's in Kashmir, things would not be this bad. Pakistan could have merely gone for the self determination/sovereignty route, but it chose religious extremism as a catalyst for its purpose. It encouraged its own people to join in. General Zia chose to radicalize its own population with Sharia laws and whatnot.

See, the point is that India had been howling that Pakistan was sponsoring terrorism against India for a decade but no one gave a damn. No one cared, at that time, the arguments were raised that one man's terrorist was another man's freedom fighter. And 'how do we define terrorism'. Then the 9/11 happened, and other terrorist strikes the world over. Then suddenly almost every terrorist strike had a Pakistan connection somehow. Had Pakistan limited itself to Kashmir and kept things on a low(local) level, things would not have been bad for Pakistan itself, but it chose to make itself the global camp or transit route. It chose to make terrorism an extension of the state instrument.

So Agno, no other country would have done the same, almost all other countries would have chosen a different way, a different path.

To your points about extremists from various places training there, a lot of those extremists trained there while the US was involved, and at the time everyone thought it was a great way to get volunteers. The concerns did not really start rising until after the activities and connections of some of them came to light later. So again, singling out Pakistan as 'having links to most terrorism' is incorrect, since the involvement of the US would indicate that it too had links to much of the terrorism that Pakistan was linked too.

One last point on the camps - any time you support covert groups and activities, you run the risk of abuse of the system. The system was abused when the US was involved, and it was abused when only Pakistan was involved. The reason for the camps was support for the insurgency in Kashmir and training for first the Mujahideen and later Taliban volunteers - unfortunately they also ended up being used by other groups, and also by individuals who may have engaged in terrorism in India, beyond the insurgency. But that is an unavoidable cost, and it is a lesson that both the US and Pakistan have paid for.

The US cut its losses or victory and left long ago mate. Pakistan continued on that path. Its not US who's having the problems Pakistan is having now is it?
The only problem US has is of spending money to sustain its wars. Pakistan however has problems of much greater magnitude.

Thats just a complete digression form the subject. Lets not start ranting about every complaint in your mind about Pakistan now, which unfortunately these discussions on issues with Indians almost always tangentially go off on.

Your call. However we are discussing terrorism and that encompasses the entire spectrum, including how its harming your society. Should you not wish to continue in this aspect, i will not post on this particular issue.

I do not see anything wrong in glorifying martyrdom for your nation, I do see a problem with glorifying Jihad without taking into account the conditions and nuances the concept involves.

The system and curriculum that is a problem is the Madrassa system, and hopefully the attempts to regulate it will bear fruit. But that system too was not deliberately and systematically set up to become what it is now, it has morphed into its current status much like the Taliban morphed out of the chaos of post Soviet Afghanistan.

The problem in Pakistan's case even in glorifying martyrdom for your nation is that Pakistan is an Islamic state, that entails and logically flows that dying for your nation is dying for Islam which guarentees heaven. Blowing up 5 Indians in a tank in a war is dying for your nation right? And that means that they get to goto heaven?

So if one person sees for example Musharraf as anti-Pakistani(and thus Un-Islamic-which a lot of people already do for storming Lal Masjid and for supporting WoT), he could also try and blow him up and think that he is becomming a martyr for the nation and he would also goto heaven.

The problem is Pakistan under General Zia has gone way to Islamic.

The Islamic terrorists are not that perverted as they are made to be...they believe that whatever horrific acts they do, its in the name of Islam and they would be rewarded in heaven. That is what im saying is wrong.

I hope your able to understand my line of thoughts on the subject, because even i get confused at times! lol.