For your edification: Kashmir

GINOBIFFARONI

Monday, January 11, 2010 4:42 AM

from this book

http://www.amazon.ca/American-Raj-America-Muslim-World/dp/1554702216

Kashmir: The Forgotten Jihad

For much of the Islamic world, the long bitter dispute over Kashmir, the suffering of Kashmiri Muslims, and the anti Indian jihad that has raged there since 1989 is the least emotive of the causes inflaming Muslim public opinion. It is also in a region well beyond the reach of the American Raj. So why then include it in this book? Because Kashmir represents probably the most dangerous current threat to world security : the ongoing risk of nuclear war between old enemys India and Pakistan. Kashmir has poisoned relations between India and Pakistan for over half a century, led them into three full scale wars, and continues to pose the danger of a nuclear exchange between them that could instantly kill an estimated 2 million people, injure 100 million and contaminate the entire globe with radioactive dust.

An Arab foreign minister once told me, " Nearly all the worlds worst problems are the fault of the British imperialists " An exaggeration, to be sure, but his comment has some validity. Two of the worlds most dangerous and intractable conflicts, Palestine and Kashmir were the result of Britians colonial geopolitical constructions. The conflict over Kashmir, Indias only state with a Muslim majority, dates back to the catastrophic partition of India by Great Britain in 1947. A year later Britains partition of Palestine would provoke another series of wars.

With 11.2 million inhabitants, mostly of Indo-European origin,though with a significant Titbetan Mongol minority in Ladakh, Kashmir is larger in population than half the worlds nations. Today, it is divided into three parts. the largest with 8.5 million inhabitants controlled by India; 2.5 million people in the Pakistan controlled portion of Azad Kashmir; and a huge chunk of sparsely populated frigid mountain territory annexed by China during the 1950's known as Aksai Chin, which lies at a mean elevation of 5000 meters.

Britains hasty, poorly planned partition of India led to horrendous atrocities and massive population displacements as uprooted Muslims ran the gauntlet of hostile Hindus and Sikhs to reach the new state of Pakistan, and as Hindus and Sikhs fled Punjab and East Bengal to India. An estimated one million people died in the communal carnage which neither the British nor even the venerated Mahatma Gandhi were able to stop.

The princely mountain state of Kashmir was left to decide whether to join the new states of India or Pakistan. 80% of the population wanted to join Pakistan, while its Hindus, Sikh, and Buddhist minoritys wanted to join India. The Hindu maharaja of Kashmir opted to join India against the wishes of the states Muslims. Violet riots ensued in which, Kashmiri nationalists claim 200,000 Muslims were slaughtered - a fiqure that seems exaggerated. Both Pakistan and India rushed troops into remote Kashmir. After indecisive fighting in which India gained the upper hand the newly founded UN imposed a ceasefire in 1949. India ended up controlling 2/3 of Kashmir, including the famed Vale of Kashmir, and Pakistan 1/3.


more later if anyone is interested.



Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists

Life is like a jar of Jalapeño peppers.
What you do today, might Burn Your Ass Tomorrow"

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FREMDFIRMA

Monday, January 11, 2010 12:55 PM

Very, I just don't have anything much to offer on the topic but "hmmm.."

-F

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GINOBIFFARONI

Tuesday, January 12, 2010 9:16 AM

Ok, time to type


The UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for a plebiscite to determine the future of Kashmir. Pakistan readily agreed, knowing any free vote would favor it. India, determined to hang on to strategic Kashmir, rejected the plebiscite, and set about integrating Kashmir into the Indian union. Delhi has resolutely blocked any international intervention in the Kashmir dispute to this day.
Kashmirs Muslims repeatedly staged uprisings and protests against India's often harsh and corrupt rule - a rule, however, that was not much more brutal or corrupt than Pakistan's rule over the distant other half, east Pakistan ( today Bangladesh ) The Indian run administration in Kashmir routinely rigged elections and ignored local demands for autonomy, or for opening links to neighboring Pakistan.

In 1989, a quite unexpected explosion of long festering unrest occurred among Kashmiri Muslims that caught both India and Pakistan by complete surprise. A religious progression to a local shrine turned into a protest, which turned into a riot against Indian rule, and soon into a spontaneous armed insurrection. Delhi rushed army troops, paramilitary police infamous for cruelty, corruption and looting , and battalions of regular police to counter the spreading rebellion. India repeated the extremely harsh tactics, such as torture, extrajudical executions, hooded informers, and hostage taking it had successfully used a few years back to crush the Sikh independence movement in Punjab.
As fighting spread, small numbers of veteran mujahidin from the anti Soviet struggle in Afghanistan began infiltrating across the ceasefire line, known as the line of control, which constitutes the internal border of divided Kashmir, and went into action against Indian security forces. In short order, Pakistan's powerful intelligence service, the ISI, organized important material support for the Kashmir Muslim mujahidin and their foreign jihadist supporters.

As I saw firsthand, the ISI opened a score of training camps and supply depots in Azad( Pakistan ) Kashmir, and across Southern Afghanistan that supported the uprising in the Indian controlled portion of the state. When the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, it claimed that many of these ISI run training camps in Afghanistan were Al Qaida terrorist training camps. It would have been too embarrassing to admit what Washington called terrorist camps were actually being run by one of Americas closest Allies, Pakistan.

India immediately accused Pakistan of cross border terrorism, and accused Islamabad of engineering the Kashmir insurrection. Some of the more than twenty Kashmir insurgency groups were indeed run by the ISI, but others were not. Some sought total independance for Kashmir from both India and Pakistan, earning them deep hostility from both Delhi and Islamabad. Pakistan routinely jailed leaders of the moderate Jammu and Kashmir liberation front ( JKLF ) that advocated an independant Kashmir state which happened to include much of Pakistans strategic northern regions of Gilgit and Baltistan.

Fought among often densely populated civilian areas, the struggle in Kashmir quickly became marked by atrocities, brutality, war crimes and routine violations of human rights. Indias 400,000 regular troops in Kashmir maintained tight discipline, but its half million or so paramilitary soldiers and special police acted with brutality and indiscipline that far surpassed their already notorious reputation for such behavior in India. Indian security forces found themselves attacked from all sides, and confronted by a sullen, hostile civilian population. Their ostensible Muslim allies betrayed planned security operations to the resistance. Women and children planted bombs. Muslims suspected of collaborating with Indian authorities were murdered. In short order, as is inevitable in all guerrilla wars and counterinsurgencies fought amongst civilians, Indias soldiers and police turned even more brutal, vindictive, and demoralizes. Torture and executions became the norm, entire villages we

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NIKI2

Tuesday, January 12, 2010 5:06 PM

Fascinating. Anything posted here seems to turn into a discussion of war and/or politics. That wasn't my intention, nor was it my intention when posting the thread on Afghanistan. But I'm finally getting that discussing war or politics is the most interesting thing to everyone here and those topics are the only ones that will start a discussion; and any topic NOT on war or politics slides down unnoticed or gets turned into a discussion of war and/or politics.

While there's nothing wrong in my book with discussing war or politics, there is so MUCH more going on in the world, it seems a shame to be focused on just those two things. Ah, well, no harm in keeping on trying, so I'll just keep on truckin'...