Kamran Shafi

The writer is a retired army officer and a freelance columnist

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk

Readers will recall that I have often said that Pakistan and India were quite similar in that both the countries were badly led; had inefficient and corrupt bureaucracies (both civil and military) and politicians; and were known for talking big for no apparent reason at all. They will recall too that I have always said that both the countries are unfit to be nuclear powers when they cannot even (I repeat myself) run a bus company jointly or severally.

Please look at the current dangerous situation both countries find themselves in, particularly because of Indian arrogance, which has everything to do with recent American overtures to it, and for the fact that India finds Pakistan vulnerable because of the situation on our country's Western borders. It wants to milk our discomfiture to the maximum to meet its own ends, with nary a thought about its own inherent weakness i.e., the situation in Indian-held Kashmir. Just see how it has ratcheted up the ante, and see where it has landed itself.

Whilst the international media has been cognisant of the human rights violations within Indian-held Kashmir and has written much about it, the heightened Indian-led danger of the two countries actually going to war at a time that they are both nuclear-capable has turned the world's attention even harder onto Kashmir. In two long pieces over the past two days, The New York Times reporter Somini Sengupta has written revealingly and well. In the first piece entitled "Pakistan may be unable to calm Kashmir", whilst writing that the Indians hold Pakistani-sponsored (my words) militant groups responsible for the trying to "drive India from Kashmir" the writer says:

"Even if foreign fighters stop entering, many militants among the local population in Jammu and Kashmir, India's only predominantly Muslim state, say they will continue the fight against India on their own." Talking about the Indian allegation against the Jaish-e-Muhammad and the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the writer goes on: "But while the Indian authorities blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba for the attack on the army base today, another Kashmiri group, Jamiat-ul-Mujahedeen, based in the Pakistani side of Kashmir, claimed responsibility.

Some Kashmiri groups welcome the Pakistani crackdown on groups like Jaish and Lashkar. To rid the valley of those outsiders, they say, would only aid their movement, in large part because it would defang the Indian contention that the fighting in Kashmir is nothing more than a Pakistani plot. Kashmiris took up arms long before the Pakistani-based guerrillas arrived, these local groups say, and they will carry on long after they leave, so long as India denies them a chance to decide their own fate - independence or allegiance to India or Pakistan. "'For Kashmir it is a right decision," said Yasin Malik, the leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, a onetime armed insurgent group that harbours equal enmity for Pakistan and India and advocates independence. "'It is an indigenous movement. It should remain in the hands of the Kashmiri people.'"

And that, "Group affiliation seems to matter little to the people of Sonarkalipora, a village just west of here. On Monday the village buried three men. A large, fiery crowd of people from there and beyond paraded down the twisting dirt roads, carrying the dead on their shoulders and filling the air with shouts for freedom.

One of the dead, Nazir Ahmed Khan, 18, was from the village, about an hour's drive west of Srinagar. Without a word to his family, he had run off just over a week ago to join the Islamic fighters. Of the others, one was from near Jammu, in the southern portion of this state. The last was a Pakistani, Indian officials said. All three, they said, were members of Jaish-e-Muhammad. The teenager from the village ran off and joined Jaish-e-Muhammad after his father and older brother were arrested and tortured by the police, something that human rights groups say happens with alarming frequency".

"The three who died, local and foreigner alike, got a martyr's funeral in Sonarkalipora, a tinderbox procession of rage and grief. 'Martyrs, we salute you,' the women sang. Little boys, skinny as twigs, squeaked "Jaish" and "Lashkar" and giggled. Shouts of 'Pakistan' mixed with shouts for freedom.

Young men declared that they, too, were ready to sign up with the militants - any militants - foreign, domestic, it did not matter. "'For us it's one and the same,'" said a young man, who like the rest declined to give his name for fear of his life. "'Jaish or Hizbul. Whoever is fighting for jihad, we don't make a distinction.'"

If this is not a damning indictment of India; if this is not over-whelming proof that a homegrown insurgency is raging in Indian-held Kashmir what else is? This is not all. A second piece by the same writer appeared a day later (on Thursday, January 10th) entitled "Left orphaned by war: The city and its children", which says: "Some of them don't know how their fathers were killed. Not many remember their fathers at all. They know only that one day their mothers packed their clothes, told them to tend to their studies and had them ferried from their villages to the orphanage here. For all the gloom that has descended over this city, it is a cruel twist that its name in the ancient Indian language Sanskrit means city of the sun. Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir, is at the heart of the disputed territory between India and Pakistan, the spoil for which they are poised to fight their fourth war.

"No other place has been as pulverized by the rivalry between the nations. And today, with the soldiers of India and Pakistan lined up along their 1,800-mile border, no other place likely will. "'In both the nations, the governments are thriving on Kashmir,'" observed Abdur Rasheed, a retired government official here who helps support dozens of women and children who have lost their men to the conflict. "'This is the battleground. We are the sufferers. Who else?'" The dispute over Kashmir, which has gone on for more than 50 years, has spawned a violent insurgency, pitting guerrilla fighters against Indian soldiers and paramilitary outfits. India accuses Pakistan of fomenting the insurrection in Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state. Pakistan, as well as many Kashmiris, accuse India of hindering their right to self-determination.

The conflict has left a terrible human toll here - the orphans are but one of many examples.

That toll is visible on virtually every street corner in this city. Paramilitary forces stand bunkered behind stacks of sandbags on every other block. Abandoned apartment houses have been taken over by security forces. "The latest indignity heaped upon the people of the valley is a severing of their connections to the world beyond. Kashmiris awoke on New Year's Day to discover that their Internet connections had been snapped. The long distance telephone shops that the vast majority of people use to talk to friends and family outside the state have had their long distance connections suspended, too. There is no word on when service will be restored."

So, there it is. How now can India say that its Kashmir problem will just go away if Pakistan does this or that? How can that so-called "world's largest democracy" put the entire blame on to Pakistan, when it will even disconnect the people of Kashmir from the rest of India?

No sirs, the time certainly is here that India realised it just cannot hold on to Kashmir when it forces the Kashmiris to live under such a repressive regime. It is also time that Pakistan understood that it will have to pull a rabbit out of its hat so to say, to pull the rug from under India's feet. Specially in view of the fact that because India is a massive market for the industrialised world, that world is not about to pressure India to comply with the UN resolutions on Kashmir, morality be damned, which call for a plebiscite in which the Kashmiris would vote for either India or Pakistan. Let it announce that as a party to those resolutions, it is willing to give the Kashmiris a third choice: independence. And let it do that without fear that the Northern Areas and Azad Kashmir might vote to go to India. Everyone and Charlie's aunt knows what is happening in Indian-held Kashmir.