26. October 2010 by admin.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has just returned from Kashmir. He appealed for peace and requested the “separatists” to return to the negotiating table. He held a series of conferences with the officials and political leaders. And as expected, he announced over Rs. 1000 crore sops to the state. Importantly, to score some misplaced points, he threatened the armed forces to behave properly in Kashmir, forgetting the fact that but for those forces he, or any Indian Prime Minister, would not have been able to land in the Srinagar valley.

But one fails to understand what did the Prime Minister achieve overall from his two-day Kashmir visit in concrete terms? Well, the media, both national and international, went overboard. The press in Pakistan, where our homer minister and foreign secretary are heading later this month, got enough material to comment on. But the separatists have not been impressed. And what is worse, the security forces have been greatly demoralized. It has become now quite routine for the civilian regime and elites in Kashmir to effortlessly raise their fingers at the Indian armed forces for all their troubles, thus providing fuels to the extremists and separatists. And on the flimsiest of pretexts, officials of the military and paramilitary forces are being framed and suspended.

Ironically, the Prime Minister has not deemed it fit to travel to other, and in a sense more turbulent, part of the country – the North East, particularly Manipur and Nagaland. People there have been facing a blockade for more than two months now. The government has totally mishandled the Naga issue, of late. If any part of the country needed the presence of the Prime Minister to assure the affected people and encourage their morale, it is North-East. But, Singh and his advisors do not think so. And that is perhaps due to the fact that a visit to North East will not attract headlines the way a visit to Kashmir will.

I have no problem with the “news-worthiness” of Kashmir. But what is worrying is that the central government and the dominant section within the strategic community in the country find it politically incorrect to reveal the real problem in the Kashmir valley from the viewpoint of India’s national interests. And that real problem is the growing Islamisation of the valley, which, in turn, makes any negotiated settlement of the Kashmir issue almost impossible. An “Islamic Kashmir” will have nothing to do with India. Let me explain this point.

Over the years, Kashmir has been witnessing what Bangladeshi scholar Abu Taher Salahuddin Ahmed says three principal trends – Indianness, Kashmiriness and Muslimness. The Indianness has been propagated by the federal forces of the country, be it the central government or national parties like the Congress and BJP. However, the problem in the state is due to the tussle between those believing in Kashmiriness and those loyal to Muslimness. Kashmiriness is an offshoot of the much talked about Kashmiriyat, which, while coexisting with Indianness, talks of inclusive or composite identity, binding all groups together and not offending any section. No wonder why despite being a Muslim-majority area, beef-eating, until recently, was virtually non-existent in the valley.

Of course, some scholars now point out that there were always differences between Muslims and Hindus (essentially Kashmiri Pundits) in their interpretations of the concept of Kashmiriyat. But those believing in the concept did promote coexistence. Majority of the Kashmiri Muslims, therefore, had no problems with the Hindus or for that matter with the Buddhists. And the important factor key to the success of the Kashmiriyat was the fact that overwhelming majority of the Kashmiri Muslims believed in Sufism or what is said the “Rishi tradition” that believed in saint and shrine worships. Of course, it was greatly facilitated by the fact that as was the case in other parts of the subcontinent, Muslims were essentially converts from the fold of Hinduism.

In contrast, the Muslimness always advocated the exclusive concepts in the valley. Promoted by the Wahhabi and Ahl-i-Hadith sects, this school relies more on the authority of the Quran and Hadith and totally opposed to the concept saints and shrine worships. This tradition or school has always been in minority in Kashmir, but it has been there always. It was behind the oraganisations like Muslim Conference and Kashmir Jamaat (KJ).

Needless to say that almost all the separatists and terrorist, including the so-called moderate separatist elements like Huriyat Conference, belong to the school of Muslimness. They have nothing to do with India. They believe in the theory of “Kashmir for Muslims”. Their essential argument is that they cannot coexist in a Hindu-dominated India.

Interestingly, these elements became active in Kashmir only after the 1979 Iranian revolution. It was after 1979 that one heard more and more of “liberation of Kashmir” and “Islamic revolution”. These elements became more vocal in politics also and formed many small political outfits. In September 1985, twelve such outfits came together to form the Muslim United Front (MUF). Soon the MUF claimed to provide an alternative to the National Conference of Farooq Abdullah on the ground that he “sold out” Kashmiris’ interests in the Accord with the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Since then, the political Islam has made firmer roots in the valley. The Pakistani support and assistance to the cause has greatly facilitated the cause. But what has really helped the Political Islam in the valley is the virtual politics of appeasement on the part of the central and state governments to the separatists. The likes of Atal Behari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh have wrongly believed that by pandering to the demands of the Huriyat and civil right activists, the situation will improve. But appeasement will never work with forces of “Muslimness”; it will rather embolden them and strengthen the cause of “Kashmir for Muslims”. Did not we hear the likes of Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah even saying during the agitation over Amarnath Yatra last year that Kashmir must not compromise its Muslim character?

Fortunately, even today the majority of the people in the state would like to remain part of India, as evident by the recent opinion poll, conducted by Chatham House (UK) on either side of the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir. The poll said that showed that only 2 per cent of the people of J&K want to be part of Pakistan. As many as 58 per cent of the 3,774 polled, in J&K and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), are ready to accept the LoC as a permanent “soft border” — an idea dating back to the famous “Simla Agreement” of 1972 between Indira Gandhi and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

That being the case, it is high time the Indian Prime Minister, whichever party he or she may belong to, stopped inviting the separatist leaders to the negotiating table. Because, any amount of concessions will not satisfy them. They just need to be ignored and their militant supporters need to be disciplined. They do not represent the majority. If they are imposing the so-called bandhs and people are listening to them it is mainly because of the fear they have generated in the people’s hearts and the self-imposed helplessness of our security forces.

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11. September 2010 by admin.

Rumors are circulating on the Internet and Indian media over the reported presence of Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, ostensibly to provide “protection for aid and construction workers”. It is not really unusual that the reports/news might be a bit over blown by the media, BUT China’s growing reassertion of territorial claims in the region will not go ignored by India and will give New Delhi and Washington another cause for cooperation. The prospect of greater U.S.-Indian defense cooperation and diminishing U.S. interest in Afghanistan will meanwhile drive Pakistan closer to China, creating a series of self-perpetuating threats on the subcontinent.Let us analyse the geopolitical implications on the subcontinent and relationship of India, Pakistan and China with each other and with United States. U.S. Pacific Command head Adm. Robert F. Willard is on a two-day visit to India to meet with the Indian defense leadership Sept. 9-10. Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony will follow up his meetings with Willard when he meets with U.S. defense leaders in Washington at the end of September. With an arduous war being fought in Afghanistan and India’s fears growing over Pakistan-based militancy, there is no shortage of issues for the two sides to discuss. But there is one additional topic of discussion that is now elevating in importance: Chinese military moves on the Indian subcontinent.Allegations over a major increase of Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops in northern Kashmir have been circulating over the past several weeks, with an Op-Ed in The New York Times claiming that as many as 7,000 to 11,000 PLA troops have flooded into the northern part of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, known as the Gilgit-Baltistan region. This is an area through which China has been rebuilding the Karakoram Highway, which connects the Chinese region of Xinjiang by road and rail to Pakistan’s Chinese-built and funded ports on the Arabian Sea. Though Chinese engineers have been working on this infrastructure for some time, new reports suggest that several thousand PLA troops are stationed on the Khunjerab Pass on the Xinjiang border to provide security to the Karakoram Highway construction crews. Handfuls of militants have been suspected of transiting this region in the past to travel between Central Asia, Afghanistan and China’s Xinjiang province, and Chinese construction crews in Pakistan have been targeted a number of times by jihadists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. That said, a large Chinese troop presence in the region is likely to serve a larger purpose than simply stand-by protection for Chinese workers.Pakistan responded by describing the reports as fabricated and said a small Chinese presence was in the area to provide humanitarian assistance in the ongoing flood relief effort. Chinese state media also discussed recently how the Chinese government was shipping emergency aid to Pakistan via Kashgar, Xinjiang province, through the Khunjerab Pass to the Sost dry port in northern Pakistan. India expressed its concern over the reports of Chinese troops in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, said it was working to independently verify the claims, and then claimed to confirm at least 1,000 PLA troops had entered the region.Such claims of troop deployments in the region are often exaggerated for various political aims, and these latest reports are no exception. It is still not known for sure the exact number of PLA troops in and around Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (known as Gilgit-Baltistan) and what percentage of those are combat troops. It has been reported that a convoy of approximately 110 Chinese trucks recently delivered some 2,000 metric tons of mostly food aid through the Khunjerab Pass to the Gojal Valley, an area devastated by recent flooding and landslides. Chinese Bridges and Roads Co. (CBRC) has been working on expanding the Karakoram Highway for the past three years and has roughly 700 Chinese laborers and engineers working on the project. The highway expansion is expected to be completed by 2013, but the deadline is likely to be extended as a result of recent flooding.Though, as per various media sources, on-ground reports so far track closest with the Chinese claims of flood relief operations, such relief and construction work can also provide useful cover for a more gradual buildup and sustained military presence in the region. This prospect is on the minds of many U.S. and Indian defense officials who would not be pleased with the idea of China reinforcing military support for Pakistan through overland supply routes.

What can be the intentions behind this build-up?

Though Pakistan, as per its typical characteristic, has reacted defiantly to the rumors, Islamabad has much to gain from merely having the rumor out in the open. Pakistan’s geopolitical vulnerability cannot be overstated. The country already faces a host of internally wrenching issues but must also contend with the fact that the Pakistani heartland in the Indus River Valley sits near the border with Pakistan’s much bigger and more powerful Indian rival, denying Islamabad any meaningful strategic depth to adequately defend itself. Pakistan is thus on an interminable search for a reliable, external power patron for its security, and its preferred choice is the United States, which has the military might and economic heft to buttress Pakistani defenses. However, Washington must maintain a delicate balance on the subcontinent, moving between its deepening partnership with India and keeping Pakistan on life support to avoid having India become the unchallenged South Asian hegemon.

Though Pakistan will do whatever it can to hold U.S. interest in an alliance with Islamabad — and keeping the militant threat alive is very much a part of that calculus — it will more often than not be left feeling betrayed by its allies in Washington. With U.S. patience wearing thin on Afghanistan, talk of a U.S. betrayal is naturally creeping up again among Pakistani policymakers as Pakistan fears that a U.S. withdrawal from the region will leave Pakistan with little to defend against India, a massive militant mess to clean up and a weaker hand in Afghanistan. China, while unwilling to put its neck out for Pakistan and provoke retaliation by India, provides Islamabad with a vital military backup that Pakistan can not only use to elicit more defense support against the Indians, but also to capture Washington’s attention with a reminder that a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan could open the door for Chinese military expansion in South Asia.Chinese motives in the Kashmir affair are more complex. Even before the rumors, India and China were diplomatically sparring over the Chinese government’s recent refusal to issue a visa to a senior Indian army general on grounds that his command includes Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. Such diplomatic flare-ups have become more frequent over the past couple of years, as China has used visa issuances in disputed territory in Kashmir and in Arunachal Pradesh along the northern Indian border to assert its territorial claims while trying to discredit Indian claims. Even beyond Kashmir, China has injected life into its territorial claims throughout the East and South China seas, much to the consternation of the Pacific Rim states.China’s renewed assertiveness in these disputed territories can be explained in large part by the country’s resource acquisition strategy. As China has scaled up its efforts to scour the globe for energy resources to sustain its elephantine economy, it has increasingly sought to develop a military that can safeguard vital supply lines running through the Indian Ocean basin to and from the Persian Gulf. Building the Karakoram Highway through Kashmir, for example, allows China to substantially cut down the time it takes to transit supplies between the Pakistani coast and China’s western front.China’s increasing reliance on the military to secure its supply lines for commercial interests, along with other trends, has thus given the PLA a much more prominent say in Chinese policymaking in recent years. This trend has been reinforced by the Chinese government’s need to modernize the military and meet its growing budgetary needs following a large-scale recentralization effort in the 1990s that stripped the PLA of much of its business interests. Over the past decade, the PLA has taken a more prominent role in maintaining internal stability — including responses to natural disasters, riots and other disturbances — while increasing its participation in international peacekeeping efforts. As the PLA’s clout has grown in recent years, Chinese military officials have gone from remaining virtually silent on political affairs to becoming commentators for the Chinese state press on issues concerning Chinese foreign policy.The PLA’s political influence could also be factoring into the rising political tensions in Kashmir. After all, China’s naval expansion into the Indian Ocean basin for its primarily commercial interests has inevitably driven the modernization and expansion of the Indian navy, a process the United States supports out of its own interest to hedge against China. By both asserting its claims to territory in Arunachal Pradesh and Kashmir and raising the prospect of more robust Chinese military support for Pakistan, the Chinese military can benefit from having India’s military focus on ground forces, which require a great deal of resources to maintain a large troop presence in rough terrain, while reducing the amount of attention and resources the Indian military can give to its naval modernization plans.

The Indian Response

There may be a number of commercial, political and military factors contributing to China’s military extensions into South Asia, but India is not as interested in the multifaceted purposes behind China’s moves as it is in the actual movement of troops along the Indian border. From the Indian point of view, the Chinese military is building up naval assets and fortifying its alliance with Pakistan to hem in India. However remote the possibility may be of another futile ground war with China (recall the Sino-Indian war of 1962) across the world’s roughest mountainous terrain, India is unlikely to downplay any notable shifts in China’s military disposition and infrastructure development in the region. India’s traditional response is to highlight the levers it holds with Tibet, which is crucial buffer territory for the Chinese. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent visit with the Dalai Lama was certainly not lost on Beijing. Chinese media have already reported recently that India is reinforcing its troop presence in Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, which flanks the Tibetan plateau. Singh also recently warned that India would have to “take adequate precautions” against Chinese “pinpricks” in Jammu and Kashmir, while maintaining hope of peaceful dialogue.The Chinese relief work in the area so far does not appear to have reached the level of criticality that would prompt India to reinforce its troop presence in Kashmir. However, tensions are continuing to escalate in the region and any meaningful shift in India’s troop disposition would carry significant military implications for the wider region.India has been attempting at least symbolically to lower its war posture with Pakistan and better manage its territorial claims by reducing its troop presence in select parts of Indian-administered Kashmir. If India is instead compelled to beef up its military presence in the region in reaction to Sino-Pakistani defense cooperation, Pakistan will be tempted to respond in kind, creating another set of issues for the United States to try to manage on the subcontinent. Washington has faced a persistent struggle in trying to convince Pakistan’s military to focus on the counterinsurgency effort in Pakistan and Afghanistan and leave it to the United States to ensure the Indian threat remains in check. Though the Pakistani security establishment is gradually adjusting its threat matrix to acknowledge the war right now is at home and not with India, Pakistan’s troop disposition remains largely unchanged, with 147,000 troops devoted to the counterinsurgency effort in northwestern Pakistan and roughly 150,000 troops in standard deployment formation along the eastern border with India.

The United States, like India, is keeping a watchful eye on China’s military movements on the subcontinent, providing another reason for the two to collaborate more closely on military affairs. Willard was quoted by the Indian state press Sept. 10 as saying that “any change in military relations or military maneuvers by China that raises concerns of India” could fall within U.S. Pacific Command’s area of responsibility, while also maintaining this is an issue for the Indian military to handle on its own. 

Though the United States is being exceedingly cautious in defining its role in this affair, it cannot avoid the fact that every time U.S. and Indian defense officials get together to discuss Pakistan and China, Islamabad’s fears of a U.S.-Indian military partnership are reinforced, drawing the Pakistanis closer to China. This combination of insecurities is creating a self-perpetuating threat matrix on the subcontinent with implications for U.S., Indian, Chinese and Pakistani defense strategy.

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30. September 2009 by admin.

Kashmir should be independent state: Gaddafi

From Rediff:
In a major diplomatic embarrassment to India, the maverick Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has supported the idea of an “independent state” for Kashmir and said that it should be a ‘Baathist state‘ between India and Pakistan. See the video.

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Muammar Al Gaddafi : Courtesy - http://www.toonpool.com/

“Kashmir should be an independent state, not Indian, not Pakistani. We should end this conflict. It should be a Ba’athist state between India and Pakistan,” the Libyan leader said in his address to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday.
Instead of his allotted 15 minutes, Gaddafi spoke for nearly 100 minutes during which he slammed both the United States and the United Nations, and termed the Security Council as the terrorist council.
Gaddafi opposed the induction of big powers into the UN Security Council, saying such a move would further tilt the balance of power.
In his first speech to the General Assembly, he said opening the doors of the UNSC for big powers would “add more poverty, more injustice, more tension at the world level”.
“There would be high competition between Italy, Germany, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Philippines, Japan, Argentina, Brazil…,” Gaddafi said during his more than one-and-a-half-hour long address.
Stressing that there must be equality among member states, he noted that since India and Pakistan were both nuclear powers, if India had a seat then Pakistan would want one as well.
“We reject having more seats,” said the Libyan leader since it would give “rise to more superpowers, crush the small people.”

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27. September 2009 by admin.

The [Pakistan] government has its hands tied behind its back by the army and the secret services. President Asif Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Gillani really want to destroy the jihadist movement, but they are not able to. The secret services [the ISI] have the means to end the jihadis and the Taliban, but they refuse to do so.”

“The army and secret services are playing a double game” Arif Jamal is a specialist on Pakistan for the University of New York. He is the author of a book published last week in the United States, Shadow War, The Untold story of Jihad in Kashmir. Interview by PHILIPPE GRANGEREAU
Liberation, Paris What is Pakistan? The policy of Pakistan is the Pakistani army, as it holds the real power in this country, in tandem with the secret services, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). However, the primary objective of the army is to conquer Kashmir [territory divided between India and Pakistan since 1947, editor’s note]. To achieve this, the army and the ISI supported militarily Kashmir jihadis and their Taliban allies. The Pakistani army is she double game? She has always played a double game. After 11 September, President General Pervez Musharraf has continued, through the ISI, to provide military and logistical support for jihadists in Kashmir and the Afghan Taliban - who were granted an almost complete freedom of action. They have raised significant funds in Pakistan, which has allowed them to return in force. What is the latitude of the democratic government of Pakistan?
The government has its hands tied behind its back by the army and the secret services. President Asif Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Gillani really want to destroy the jihadist movement, but they are not able to. The secret services [the ISI] have the means to end the jihadis and the Taliban, but they refuse to do so. The offensive launched by the army in Swat are they dressing?
The scenario is the same as what has happened so far in the tribal areas. The Pakistani media, under the influence of the ISI, give the impression that there is significant fighting. In fact, before the army attacks a village where the Taliban are hiding, the ISI warns them the Taliban ahead of time. The army destroys a few empty houses, sits down, then the Taliban come back. But the Army to sacrifice its soldiers … From the viewpoint of the ISI, if the death of hundreds of soldiers may serve their interest, the price is not too high. The Swat valley is a critical issue because if the jihadists continue to gain ground, they will have a corridor linking Afghanistan and Kashmir. No army can then dislodge an alliance between jihadists, Taliban and members of al-Qaeda which has a sanctuary in that part of the Himalayas Is it the Chief of Staff of Pakistan Army, General Ashfaq Kayani, who is pulling the strings? Prior to leading the army, he headed the ISI. He was master of the double game played by Pakistan in recent years and it has not changed. But even if he is sacked, the strategy will remain the same as the Kashmir dispute is not resolved. To get rid of Islamic terrorism, it is necessary to resolve the Kashmir issue. How could change the situation? At the speed where the Taliban are gaining ground, Pakistan could fall into the hands of the Taliban in two years. The army and the ISI have created a monster that is now out of control. The target of the Taliban is not Kashmir or Afghanistan, it is Pakistan. If the United States leave the Taliban, will they get their hands on nuclear Pakistan? Washington knows a lot about the Pakistani nuclear program. But it does not know everything, and there is the risk. http://www.averroespress.com/AverroesPress/Main/Entries/2009/5/26_The_Untold_Story_of_Jihad_in_Kashmir__Author_Ar if_Jamal_on_the_%E2%80%9CShadow_War%E2%80%9D.html

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