Pleas For Sanity as Sabres Rattle Over Mumbai Mayhem

All you uber Pakis -- this should make your chests swell up in pride

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5bjN3Q6aA8

All very well said but the fact remians that at some point Pakistan has to do some house keeping and sweep out those creating mayhem at home and abroad.Going on harking back to Afghan war and USA etc is akin to falling back into old patterns of habitual denial of responsibilty.Already the Pak govt is beginning to sound like a wound up toy with its,"where is the prrof,where is the proof,where is the proof?"rhetoric.

Re: # 1260
Ekal...
"they are all convinced India is deliberately killing them, and are intent upon killing us back (so they say)...."
The matter is not such. Pakiland is almost entire beduine followers. so the civilised population is very less. How can India create trouble in Pakiland? This is simple logic and these beduin followers also understand that. But the problem is when you are engaged in crimnal activity, the best way to defend yourself is to point finger at others too...means, I am criminal, but the other party is also engaged in such act....muslas are very nasty creatures....otherwise, a head of the state would not have made sweeping comment like "scum" etc....

Aha_snark, this for your consideration tomorrow. We are focussing too narrowly on this point but I will enlarge the discussion later.

"that would be necessary to stop the water flow to pakistan (and such a mechanism i would assume would be"

But I don't want it stopped , just significantly reduced.

Are you saying , that in your considered opinion, we have no structural way of reducing the flow without necessarily stopping it altogether ?

LOL, goodnite aha_snark

Whether it is the poor sods in the NWFP and FATA or educated sods of karachi - they are all convinced India is deliberately killing them, and are intent upon killing us back (so they say).

Sooner or later, that is the basic problem we have to remove on a long-term basis. :)

publius,
i read the decades-old treaty when the entire baglihar project fracas started a few years ago. we are definitely allowed to put in place run-of-the-river hydroelectric plants in place. as far as I can recall, there is a provision in the treaty for those hydroelectric plants to have a sort of a sluice pool (i'm pretty sure i'm getting the name wrong) to assist electricity generation. however, such a pool is very different from the familiar cachment area we see in large gravity dams like the bhakra-nangal etc.

now, the debate was that the "sluice pool" overstepped the limits of what was permitted under the agreement. The way it ended up was that raymond lafitte, the swiss expert ruled in favour of india on some points and in favour of pakistan on another point. it's a highly technical ruling and as far as I can see, the Indus water sharing system regime is working and has worked through all the wars that india and pakistan have been in.

update: i'm almost totally alseep but i did some research; the fact of the matter is that raymond lafitte completely upheld the design of the dam. there were some cosmetic alterations to the dam that india had itself proposed that he asked should be made. pakistani assertions that the water is being choked off are completely ludicrous; if india was indeed doing so, do you think pakistan would not be screaming about it in the UN??? the world bank neutral expert ruled on the dam. it cannot store water for irrigation. the matter ends there. regular pakistani inspection teams visit the dams and all other similar structures. if any alterations were made, they would be raising hell - and they would be entitled to raise hell.

" Lafitte has firmly rejected Pakistan’s desired reduction of the Baglihar pondage from 37 million cu m to 6.22 m cu m to convert the project from a peaking to a “constant (base) load� station, thus defeating both purpose and viability. However, he has marginally reduced the project’s designed pondage based on a different calculus."

http://www.bgverghese.com/Baglihar.htm

the thing about this stupid choking water off rumour is that like the "raw is responsible for marriot" rumour, there is absolutely no proof apart from a whisper campaign. like our dear masadi and the geniuses at brass tacks, if one is convinced that there is a conspiracy theory, every thing that supports yoru worlview is instantly 100% credible, everything that disagrees with it is part of the conspiracy.

eklavya
sirji, there are poor sods in the NWFP and FATA who believe that polio vaccines cause male impotence and that they are part of a zionist plot to destroy muslims; they kick out any vaccination teams, as a result polio is making a comeback.

the fact that morons believe that india is doing X Y Z shouldnt affect or doing or not doing X Y or Z.

BJ2
When i said they'll nuke us if we dam the indus, i meant that if we made an unambiguous move to build the sort of water storage/control mechanism that would be necessary to stop the water flow to pakistan (and such a mechanism i would assume would be massive and easily detectable) then it would be a clear threat to pakistan's very existence and would be a threat to the lives and livelihoods of millions of the poorest pakistanis. as it stands now, the baglihar dam does not threaten pakistan. on the contrary, it will actually be providing power to the kashmir valley.

publius,
that quote about 7000 cusecs is an obscure opinion piece from a disgruntled pakistani. it's also from cobrapost.com .

aha, are you in India? It must be very late for you then. Go to sleep, we will discuss it another time. :)

Re: # 1251 eklavya

I see your point. It's a question of judgement, I agree. At some point a determination is arrived at that the current situation is less palatable than a complete breaking up and re-ordering.

to answer your question, i really don't know. I'm not saying it's an impossible state of mind to reach; i just don't know.

however,

sans a plan for foolproof detection and sequestering of all NBC material, such a plan is incomplete. i'm v. sleepy so forgive me if i've asked you this, but what would such a plan for NBC material sequestration look like?

I think the nuclear issues weighs extremely heavily on aha_snark's mind.

It might be useful to first set that aside, and then discuss what India should be doing. Then we can include the nuclear element and see what should or should not be done.

----------------

On water issue itself:

Let's remember that we are dealing here with a nation that ALREADY FULLY BELIEVES we are starving it of water, and parching its lands.

In fact, that firm belief is one of the reasons why normal Pakistanis like aasif are willing to kill hundreds of Indians in cold blood. Or at least support those who do.

Given that fact, what do we get by NOT depriving Pakistan of water?

(I myself do not propose that because I see India's fight strictly and immediately with Pakistani state, not with people most of whom are as much victims of Pakistani state as the rest of us).

Re: # 1250

[But this will never happen because the moment we start to dam the Indus, the Pakistanis will nuke us.]

Snark, go easy on that afeem!

Aha_Snark also consider this
"Under the Indus Water Treaty, India can use the waters of the Chenab for hydro-electric generation, but not for irrigation or any other consumptive use. In violation of this provision, the Baghliar Dam will allow India to draw up to 7,000 cusecs (cubic feet per second) of water a day from the Chenab river for irrigation purposes, thereby reducing the quantum of river flows available to Pakistan"

Now if this is true and if we can draw 7000 cusecs then by further modifying the Baghliar dam etc can't we draw more ?

The broad point here is not damning per se, but creatively using the rivers in India to punish Pakistan without necessarily creating a conventional war.

I don't see any reason to conclude that nothing like that can be done.

Aha_Snark,

First even though I don't know enough about the techincal issues involved I am presuming that we can control the level of punishment we can inflcit and the amount of water available to Pakistan by controlling the design etc. Please show me evidence that we can't do that.

Second you say "because the moment we start to dam the Indus, the Pakistanis will nuke us"

That is most panicky statement that I have read so far.

Just as a point of principle I believe in prudence and realism and I of course would not recommend India to go through with any action that rises to that level.

But I see no reason to simply assume a nuclear response without exploring that option in great detail.

Now on the question of crime, imposing severe hardship on Pakistan is morally just for the reasons I have already stated before.

By undermining the Pakistani state, of course, actively working toward a goal of freeing Pakistan's natural nations to find their own genius without being handicapped by others - as best explained by romair in one of his posts.

-------

For now, let's leave the fear of Pakistani nuclear weapons aside.

aha_snark, is there any point beyond which you will conclude that working with Pakistani state is an futile exercise, and a focus on actively undermining and breaking up the current Pakistani state will be a better option for everyone than trying to work with it?

Essentially, what will it take for you to reach that conclusion?

Re: # 1249 publius

Before the canal system built by the British, much of the Punjab was dry wasteland on which nothing much grew. After the canal system was put in place, the area came to beome the bread basket of India.

The Indus system is the prime irrigator of the lands of Pakistan. Block it and some consequences include:

a) drinking water will grow scarcer unavailable
b) crops will fail, leading to famine, mass poverty and unknown numbers of starvation deaths.
c) assured economic and national collapse will stare pakistan in the face. It will not get any money from cotton exports the next year, one of the export mainstays of pakistan. but more immediately, hundreds of millions of Pakistanis will be deprived of food, water and the means to earn a living. it is beyond doubt that untold numbers of poor pakistanis will die or will suffer terribly.

I may agree or disagree with you on other points, but on this one, I am completely sure: damming the Indus will be a gross crime against humanity.

Keeping in mind the consequences noted above, there is nothing trivial about this "technicality" that you speak of. We will not be in a state of war, we will have committed a massive, unspeakable international crime. In the study of International Law, such an act is clearly spelt out as an act of war, of aggression.

But this will never happen because the moment we start to dam the Indus, the Pakistanis will nuke us. Please realise that acts of war deserving of nuclear reprisal do not have to be confined to those involving gunpowder and missiles.

To my mind, an actual nuke of a pakistani city would be less of an act of war than damming the Indus. It's not even an option. India will never ever do it. It is nothing but an idle fantasy. You might as well imagine Israel and Pakistan teaming up to nuke America.

"I posted that stopping the Indus would be a violation of the Indus Water Treaty, forbidden against International law and a crime against humanity. You seemed to impliedly defend such an act in post # 1117 by talking about how the point was moot. In any case, if that was not your intention, I apologise"

I will respond to the rest later but just a quick response to this one. I was talking about a shooting war .

I am completely in favor of building dams on western rivers i.e withdrawing/violating IWT. This(technically a state of war maybe) does not involve mass killing( far less mass murder) so there was no point in bringing mass murder up. Anyway that was my point.

I will respond later to the rest.