War Now and, Forever?

cutandpaste #50 Welcome to chowk. I agree wholeheartedly with your letter - it is time we started appreciating India as a wonderful neighbor with a rich culture, and start appreciating the many talented individuals this country of 1 billion produces. There will always be Pakistan haters in India, but let us not let them decide our attitude to India - and there are many fine people in India (as you indicate from the examples you provide).

tahmed321 # 40

Some of the truest words on Kashmir. Except that the malady is better characterized as the Partition Obsession rather than Partition Hangover.

There is an unwillingness to recognize each other as equal human beings. An unbelievably pathological mindset urges us to continue separating people in a world that is becoming more and more intertwined.

The handiest trick in this game is to denounce the other as the rapist, killer, murderer, unclean, lier so on and so forth. We the gullible are willing to believe the half-truths and outright lies of our ``ideologically committed`` opinion-makers because those lies and half-truths make us feel good; they confirm to us that ``we`` are good and ``they`` are not.

Kashmir`s misery is that it has become a tool in this sordid game. If Kashmiris die, if their future, the future of their children becomes bleak, who cares? After all, we get to paint each other as evil.

All this is rather sickening. And since I have lived in Kashmir - not just in Srinagar but in parts of Kashmir currently most ``infested`` with insurgency - it is also rather heartbreaking.

Tariq Ali: Do we have to wait for a war to bring these politicians to their senses?

http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=112671

`On one level, it would suit both sides to have a small war. But who could guarantee a small war?`

04 January 2002

Despite pleas of the new pro-Western regime, Afghanistan is still being bombed. Innocent people die every day. Osama bin Laden is still at large, but attention has already shifted to Pakistan. The destabilising effects of the war in Afghanistan were always likely to be felt here first. The reasons are obvious.

The Pashtun population in Pakistan`s North-Western Frontier Province shares linguistic and ethnic ties with the region that formed the principal base of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The same brand of Deobandi Islam is strong on both sides of the border. It is worth stressing that there was less actual fighting on the ground in the last three months than there has been over the last quarter century. The bearded ones chose not to fight. A sizeable section of the Taliban forces simply came back home to Pakistan. Some of them are undoubtedly demoralised and happy to be alive, but there is probably a large minority that is angered by Islamabad`s betrayal and is eager to link up with the armed fundamentalist groups already in the country.

The leaders of the most virulent jihadi sects have been arrested, but who will disarm their militants? Until late last year some of the Islamist leaders were boasting that they had chosen 20 cities on which Islamic laws would be imposed. The unstated threat was clear. If any authority attempted to interfere, they would unleash a civil war. When the latest Afghan war began, Washington made no secret of its fear that a massive Western intervention in Afghanistan that overtly used Pakistan as a launching-pad might trigger major unrest or even a coup against a collaborationist regime. The US did everything to maintain decorous appearances for General Musharraf, Pakistan`s ruler, while making sure of the practical compliance of Islamabad. In return for this, sanctions were lifted and money and the latest weaponry began to flow into Pakistan once again.

But now that the Taliban have been defeated, can anyone be sure that the various fig-leaves will really insulate Pakistan from the indignation of the faithful? Everything depends on the unity of the officer corps. To some degree, if one difficult to gauge, Sunni fundamentalism has also penetrated the ranks of the armed forces. Across the country, radical Islamism of one kind or another is a vocal, if minority, force. General Musharraf`s military regime itself is, moreover, a very recent and none-too-strong creation, with little positive civilian support.

The abandonment of its own creation in Afghanistan will be a bitter pill for many in the army, especially at junior levels of command, where religious influence is strongest. However, even more secular-minded officers are not pleased at the outcome. The Taliban takeover in Kabul was the Pakistan army`s only victory. Privately the ruling elite – officers, bureaucrats and politicians – congratulated each other for having gained a new province. It almost made up for the 1971 defection of Bangladesh. As if to rub salt into the wounds, the Northern Alliance and its Washington-selected Prime Minister, Hamid Karzai, have just declared their intention of forging close relations with India, as was the case from 1947-89. This has further weakened the position of the general ruling Pakistan.

It is true that, at more senior levels, the American crusade against the Taliban has been seen as a godsend. For at a stroke it has allowed the Pakistani generals to recover their traditional regional priority for Washington, assured them of credits they desperately need and lifted opposition to their nuclear arsenal. Unlike its Arab counterparts, the Pakistani army has never seen a coup mounted by captains, majors or colonels – when it has seized power, as so often, it has always done so without splits, at the initiative and under the control of its generals (a tradition of discipline inherited from the Raj).

At all events, short of a break in this long-established pattern, it seems unlikely that the top-brass of the Pakistani regime will suffer much from the pieces of silver with which they have been showered. However, the scale of the Pakistani defeat is such that, once the flow of money and weapons ceases, General Musharraf might well be toppled from within. Power-hungry generals have never been a rare commodity in Pakistan.

This is what makes the tension with India potentially dangerous. The irony is that Pakistan is led by a secular general and India by a fundamentalist Hindu politician: an ideal combination to make peace. Yet on one level it would suit both sides to have a small war. General Musharraf could prove that he was not a total pawn. And Atal Bihari Vajpayee, India`s Prime Minster, could win an election. The Kashmiris would continue to suffer. But who could guarantee a small war?

The fact is that Pakistan`s infiltration of jihadi groups, such as the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed, into Indian-occupied Kashmir has created an alternative military apparatus that Islamabad funds and supplies but can`t fully control – just like the Taliban. It`s obvious that the attack on the Indian Parliament was carried out by one of these groups to provoke a more serious conflict. Some of the jihadis don`t much care for Pakistan as an entity. Their aim is to restore Muslim rule in India. Crazy? Yes, but armed and capable of wreaking havoc in both countries. If General Musharraf won`t deal with the menace, Mr Vajpayee will.

If Washington can wage its ``war on terrorism``, why can`t Delhi? Just because it can`t get retrospective sanction from the UN? But as any Second World politician will tell you, for UN read US. The threat of an Indo-Pak war has concentrated minds in Washington: how to give the Indians their pound of flesh without destabilising Pakistan? Perhaps the time is coming when General Musharraf can be sacrificed in the name of a return to democracy in Pakistan. The problem is that no civilian politician in Pakistan is strong enough to challenge the army, which has ruled the country longer than any political party.

The real solution lies in Kashmir, the cause of a dispute that could lead to nuclear conflict. Kashmiris have suffered long enough. The brutality of the Indian occupation made many of them turn to Pakistan, but the behaviour of the jihadi infiltrators has shocked most Kashmiris. The very thought of Talibanisation has led many educated professionals, male and female, to flee. They would like to be rid of both sides.

An autonomous Kashmir, which shares sovereignty with both India and Pakistan, and even China, could become a haven of peace in the region. Sooner or later the situation will require some such solution, but do we have to wait for a war to bring politicians to their senses?

Autonomy for Kashmir is the answer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,627302,00.html

The stakes are now so high that India, as well as Pakistan, must see sense

Martin Woollacott

Friday January 4, 2002

The Guardian

The attack on the Indian parliament which has led to military confrontation between India and Pakistan in Kashmir was, some Indians say, probably aimed at killing their prime minister and other leading politicians. But in the political rather than the physical sense, the attack was aimed much more at the leadership of Pakistan than it was at that of India. That is why the Indian reaction needs critical examination. It has included demands that the leaders of the covert groups responsible be arrested and in some cases handed over to India, a claim of dissatisfaction with the detentions that have followed and a rushing of troops and missiles to the front line.

General Pervez Musharraf is engaged upon an extraordinary reversal of Pakistani strategic policy, forced upon him initially by events in Afghanistan, but which cannot be confined to that country. A changed approach to Afghanistan, a changed approach to Kashmir, a changed approach to India, and a changed approach to Islamist parties and movements in Pakistan itself are all part of the broader shift which is in prospect, although far from assured.

Pakistani policy in Afghanistan was aimed at closing off that country to India, which once enjoyed influence there, and at using its remote places and Islamist militants to help in a deniable covert war in Kashmir. The supposed purpose was to detach the Indian part of Kashmir, or at least keep India in a state of constant discomfort until the balance of advantage changed, as with Pakistani covert aid for other rebels in the Indian union. Beyond that, for some zealots, perhaps danced the hope that the huge Muslim community in India would be radicalised.

It was less a realistic scheme to win Kashmir than a wrecker`s project and a rationale for the dominance of the armed forces and the intelligence services within Pakistan. Even though they had failed in the wars with India, lost East Bengal and proved inept when they seized political control, they still claimed they had a cunning long-term plan to come out even against India. Musharraf was part of this culture, benefited from it, and is indebted to some of the more Islamist elements within the officer corps.

He is in power today because he was able to represent the Kargil disaster in 1999, when the Pakistanis were forced to withdraw from positions that they and Kashmiri militants had seized in Indian Kashmir, as entirely the fault of Nawaz Sharif, the then prime minister. In reality it was the joint responsibility of both the political and the military leadership, very much including Musharraf himself. But he is an opportunist and by Pakistani standards a realist, and it seems that he recognises that times have changed.

He is now faced with a sharp divergence between his interests and those of what is probably still the greater part of the Pakistani establishment on the one hand and those of the militants that Pakistan has long encouraged and used on the other. The raid on the Delhi parliament, like the earlier attack on the Kashmir assembly, were surely aimed either at embroiling him in a new confrontation with India or at producing an upheaval in Pakistan in which he and his new policies would be discarded.

If India humiliates Musharraf by forcing the pace of the repudiation of extreme Islamists on which he may now be riskily embarked, it could come to regret it. As the journalist and analyst Nayan Chanda has pointed out, to demand a complete end to support for armed struggle in Kashmir, including support for genuinely local and religiously moderate groups, is something ``no Pakistani ruler can risk without a demonstrable quid pro quo from India``.

Indian policy ought to be bent toward producing that quid pro quo rather than bullying Pakistan into concession after concession. Perhaps, beneath the military show, some rethinking is going on and perhaps the Americans, and Tony Blair during his visit, may be able to encourage it. But there is an Indian irrationality over Kashmir as dismaying in some ways as that of Pakistan. It is not too much to say that India, by its cavalier and in the end brutal approach in Kashmir, over the years extinguished what was initially probably a slight majority in favour of the New Delhi connection.

Perhaps the desire now of most of the inhabitants for independence, a desire which pleases neither India or Pakistan, could be parlayed into a substantial autonomy which could be made acceptable to Kashmiris, Indians, and Pakistanis alike. What was impossible or improbable before has to be considered now because, as the attack on the Indian parliament showed, the stakes have increased so hugely.

m.woollacott@guardian.co.uk

Reply #: 39

harimau

1/Who was the P.M. when Mt.Batten was sent to hand over the power.

2/ Churchill was the Brit representative to carry out the promise given by the BRITISH .

3/ ww2 was over 6 yrs in duraion & various brit represented british over that period.ONE OF THE REASON OF CHURCHILLS UNPOPULARITY WAS THAT HE FORESAW THE BEGINNING OF DOWN FALL OF EMPIRE OVER WHICH SUN NEVER SET.

4./He otherwise was the hero who won the ww2 ,there was only the instrument of carrying out the promised independence ,which he did not feel very happy about (just like the HINDIANS dont feel happy about giving plebescite to kashmiris)

HOWEVER despite his dislike he (churchill)like a STATESMAN which neither ADVANI nor Atal ji is ,He carried out the promise(BY THE G.B)

While under garb of criticism & disowning of Congress by BJP (diifference in party) YOU HINDIANS ARE NOT HONOURING NEHRUS PROMISE WHO WAS INDIAN REPRESENTATIVE AT THAT TIME.

The instituion remains same ,churchil was representative only ,at that time .true.But election result is more emotional than rational.

Dont ever accuse without proof ....ill eat you alive

Arab media

http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=11720

India should balance power with caution

By Siraj Wahab, Arab News Staff

Out of the incredible richness of Indian culture rise two images that have immense idealistic power. One is a small bald-headed man in a dhoti and owlish wire glasses who symbolizes for millions around the world the power of peace and non-violence. The other is the Taj Mahal, which shimmers white in the quiet light of a full moon. It is one man’s physical expression of the strength of love.

The posturing and saber-rattling by both India and Pakistan mock the ideals of the former. Khaki camouflage cloth, a dirty shroud for the engines of war, may now besmirch the latter, hiding its whiteness, the very symbol of the purity for which it was built. ``The Taj shines as far as 25 miles away and is especially visible on moonlit nights,`` said a tourism official in Agra last week. ``It could become a target.``

How overwhelmingly sad and poignant that is! Mahatma Gandhi would weep to see a symbol of love becoming a target rather than an inspiration.

Recent Western rhetoric in the ``war on terrorism`` may well be the petard on which both India and Pakistan hoist themselves. When a group of extremists attacked the Indian parliament and killed 14 people (including themselves) two weeks ago, India voiced the suspicion that they were Pakistanis. Now India claims to be at war against ``state-sponsored terrorism,`` arguing that if the US was within its right to destroy the terrorists who attacked it, then India is within its right to destroy the terrorists who attacked New Delhi. What will happen if Pakistan adopts the same attitude with respect to Kashmir?

India seems not to have learned certain lessons from its own history. How can it claim to have the right to ``teach Pakistan a lesson?`` From where did it acquire such a right? Perhaps the Indian leadership is adopting the somewhat cynical approach that ``history is not what happened, but what was written — usually by the winners.`` Are they desperate to ``win`` over the Kashmir issue, and then write history as they want it to be? This is where folly resides.

The certainty is that Kashmir is the problem for both India and Pakistan. To attempt resolution by the threat of war is unlikely to work. India is part of the global community. The last world superpower, the United States, sought a larger role in India well before Sept. 11. India is a major recipient of American investment and Delhi knows that largesse demands various kinds of return. America has bought influence with its generosity. It will not react kindly if threats, rather than responsible fairness, become the norm in regional politics.

India aspires to be a superpower in the region. That position incorporates the responsibility to exercise power with magnanimity and good intent. Threats and the desire to settle old scores — often from within the ranks of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s leadership — are a result of the inability of some elements to accept the partition of India in 1947. These very elements will in every way obstruct progress toward a peaceful solution of the problem.

It seems that India is combining two issues in a slightly unfocused attack. One is Pakistani-backed Kashmiri fighters and the other is the Pakistani state’s share in the intransigence that both sides are exhibiting over Kashmir. Both are high-profile issues and offer easy options for justifying protests and possible action. By using the justification of ``the war on terrorism`` to attack alleged training centers in Pakistan, India can flex its military muscle with the double bonus of going with the flow of anti-terrorist opinion and demonstrating the strength of its own military.

The muscle-flexing would certainly bolster the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party that currently leads the government and which is especially suspicious of Muslim Pakistan.

Key elections in Uttar Pradesh scheduled for next month supply an extra incentive for the party to engage in some image building.

Does this, however, bring the resolution of the Kashmir problem any closer? Or does it simply increase the danger of India’s choosing some kind of retaliation? In the wake of the September attacks, India felt itself more self-consciously to be a superpower, but the attacks should have provided reasons for meaningful negotiation toward a mutually beneficial relationship with Pakistan.

The United States is in a position to assist both India and Pakistan, making use of its current fortuitous connections with both. These also provide the opportunity for a third party to separate the two issues — militant activity and territory — and apply pressure to both sides to focus distinctly on each issue.

Once the two have been separated, there is a possibility of Pakistan’s turning its attention to the extremists and India’s taking a less intransigent stand on Kashmir. There may well be deeper and subtler reasons than ``terrorism,`` behind India’s flexing its military muscle. It is one of the oldest political tricks in the book — well-known to the ancients — to take public attention off internal problems. In addition, there are questionable motives behind the creation of the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO), which widens police powers and has the effect of alienating Muslims and other minorities, yet at the same time does nothing for security. And what can possibly be gained by the rewriting and alleged ``Talebanizing`` of school history books by a ministry under the Hindu zealot, Murli Manohar Joshi? Proponents argue that the rewriting removes a secular bias; opponents say that it leaves out inconvenient truths and is biased toward Hinduism. Perhaps it is simply a case of history’s being written by the winners. In the same vein, what’s happening now might be a case of trying to manipulate events to determine Kashmir’s future.

* * *

(sirajwahab@arabnews.com)

Arab media

The conflict in the subcontinent

http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=11746

By Amir Taheri, Arab News Staff

Unless something unexpected happens within the next days, it seems as if India and Pakistan may be pulling back from the brink of war. This is good news for both countries and for everyone else.

The last thing the world needs is another war in the subcontinent with both sides capable, theoretically at least, of using nuclear weapons. The latest heat-up started with a terrorist attack against the Indian Parliament building in New Delhi. This was clearly aimed at killing almost the entire top echelon of Indian political leadership. A similar plot had been hatched against the Russian Parliament in Moscow in 1998. In both cases, the so-called ``Arab Afghans`` were blamed. In both cases, the aim of the plotters was to push an old conflict into a new degree of intensity. Small terrorist outfits with little popular support but lots of money and logistical means were trying to seize control of the situation. In both cases the terrorists’ aim was to exclude the mass of the people from the political process.

In Chechnya, the terrorists sidelined the democratically elected government of President Aslan Maskhadov and provided Russia with a pretext to move against it. In Kashmir, the terrorists sidelined the legal Kashmiri parties campaigning for self-determination through democratic means.

The damage that the terrorists did to Chechnya’s long-term national interests, not to speak of the suffering of its people, is beyond calculation. Had the terrorists not intervened, the country would have been able to consolidate its autonomy, build independent institutions, and develop new relationships not only with Russia but with the European Union as well. What the terrorists deliberately ignored is that Russia is a burgeoning democracy in which public opinion counts. It is, therefore, possible to convince Russian voters that recognizing Chechnya’s right to self-determination is in the interest of both nations. But when Chechnya is turned into a terrorist threat in the heart of Moscow, it is inevitable that Russian voters will support politicians who preach force.

The same thing is happening in Kashmir. Kashmir’s chances of exercising self-determination were better two decades ago than today. During the 1980s, the Zia ul-Haq regime in Islamabad transformed the issue of Kashmiri self-determination into a quarrel between India and Pakistan, thus excluding the people of Kashmir from the equation. Zia needed this to prop up his unpopular military regime that required supposedly Islamic credentials to justify its repressive and often corrupt polices. Once Zia was gone, the weakness of successive Pakistani governments and their inability to develop an efficient policy on Kashmir opened the way for self-styled `` Mujaheds`` in search of holy wars. By the mid-1990s radical groups linked with the Taleban and the Al-Qaeda gang had emerged as main players in Kashmir, at least as far as violence was concerned.

The emergence of these groups coincided with the coming to power in New Delhi of a coalition government dominated by radical Hindu chauvinists. That government needed Jaish-e- Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba to justify its repressive policies in Kashmir. As always in history, terror and repression were Siamese twins.

The Indian government’s current game plan is simple. It pursues three objectives. The first is to persuade the world, especially the United States, that the issue of Kashmir is about nothing but terrorism. Still trying to absorb the shock of Sept. 11, most Americans have automatic sympathy for any nation that claims to be a victim of terrorism. The second objective is to exclude the people of Kashmir from the scene. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee harps about ``the threat to India’s national security``, which is real, but makes no mention of the legitimate demands of the people of Kashmir. The third objective is to destabilize President Pervez Musharraf’s government in Islamabad by pushing it into an open conflict with powerful Taleban-style forces within Pakistan. By destabilizing Musharraf, India hopes to prevent the re-emergence of Pakistan as a key ally of the United States in Southwest Asia. For the first time, India itself hopes to fill that slot to counterbalance its more threatening neighbor, China.

India’s strategy has a subtext also. This consists of the fact that many within the Indian ruling elite have never swallowed the emergence of Pakistan as an independent state. At the time of partition, the Indian ruling elite that had inherited the British imperial mentality saw India as the successor to the British Raj in the subcontinent. They ignored the fact that India, a geographical expression, had never existed as a single state and that most of the areas that now form Pakistan had been attached to the Raj as a result of British conquest.

There are signs that Washington is developing a serious interest in Kashmir for the first time. An American mediation may well be on the cards this year. As newcomers to an old conflict, the Americans would do well to remember a number of key points.

The first is that rivalry and ill feelings between India and Pakistan have roots unrelated to Kashmir. The two major wars fought between the two neighbors were only incidentally affected by Kashmir. The 1965 war was over the Rann of Kutch area, hundreds of miles from Kashmir that both armies regarded as a strategic prize. The 1971 war was provoked by Islamabad’ crazy policy in what was then East Pakistan and India’s opportunism in seeking to carve Pakistan in two.

The second point is that Kashmir is occupied by both India and Pakistan. In neither part of the divided country have the people been given a chance to decide their status. There is no evidence that Kashmiris under Pakistani rule are better off than their brethren under Indian occupation. This point must be emphasized because an improvement in India-Pakistan relations will not necessarily mean a better deal for the people of Kashmir.

Yet another point is that only a consolidation of the democratic process in India and the development of democracy in Pakistan could ensure peace. In working democracies, war cannot be caused by the fantasies and/or ambitions of ruling elites.

India is already a democracy with solid institutions that have withstood many challenges, including emergency rule under Indira Gandhi and the advent of radical Hindus to power. The only way that an Indian government can drag that country into war is by claiming that it is fighting terrorism.

Pakistan, on the other hand, has never managed to live under democratic rule for more than a few years at a time. For most of its half-a-century of existence, various military chiefs, seeking legitimacy with reference to nationalism or religion, have ruled it.

One must always be suspicious of generals who seize power and promise to build democracy. This writer has met and interviewed three such Pakistani military rulers already: Field Marshal Muhammad Ayub Khan, Gen. Muhammad Yahya Khan and General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. All three promised to build democracy. All three failed to deliver. All three ended in disgrace or death.

Will Gen. Musharraf be different? No one knows for sure.

For some strange reason, however, this writer believes that he will be. This is, perhaps, because the world has changed. It is also, again perhaps, because Musharraf has nowhere to go but to pluralism. He cannot revive Ayub’s farce of `` basic democracy``. Nor can he build anything with Yahya’s caricatural nationalism. Zia’s Islamism, on the other hand, is the last thing that Pakistanis want.

Thus Musharraf is left with one option: the development of pluralist politics backed by the armed forces — the so-called ``Turkish model`` which is not the best imaginable but the least bad under the circumstances.

Re: Romair

``...He (Advani) has presented a case which would not hold up in any Indian court, if an Indian citizen was involved, due to lack of evidence...``

Romair, you still don`t get it do you? This is what the NY Times is reporting on the `evidence` provided:

QUOTE

``...Mr. (Jaswant) Singh responded today that Pakistan`s demand for evidence was just a ``subterfuge.`` He read aloud a two-page memo that outlined evidence that India said it gave Pakistan during the last eight years against fugitives wanted for bomb blasts that killed more than 260 people in Bombay in 1993, for the hijacking of an Indian Airlines jetliner in 1999 and other crimes. The evidence he listed included flight manifests, photographs of suspects and information about explosives manufactured in Pakistan and found in the possession of Indian suspects now believed to live in Pakistan...``

This evidence will be certainly enough to initiate proceedings in an Indian court.

END QUOTE

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/04/international/03CND-INDI.html?searchpv=nytToday

All of this has been sitting gathering dust in Pakistan Army`s trash cans. So, much so, that even native Pakistanis are convinced, and will take issue with your statement. You see, even your countrymen will not believe your lies anymore. (Have you read Ayaz Amir`s latest column in Dawn? If not, here is another clear-thinking Pakistani for your reading pleasure):

QUOTE (from Shafqat Mahmood, Former Pakistan Senator, Federal and Provincial Minister):

It is no secret that the armed forces or at least some of its elements have had a very special relationship with the Jihadi groups. One unusually poignant example was provided when the Jaish leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, was sprung from an Indian jail after the Kandahar hijacking. Here was a person who owed his freedom to a crime and I naively expected that he would be locked up on return to Pakistan. There was not even a pretence towards it. He was allowed a free run and even formed a new fighting force, the Jaish-e-Mohammad.

There are other examples of official mollycoddling of these groups. When the military government banned all public meetings and processions, the political parties were taken to task if they violated this ban. Not the Lashkar-e-Taiba. It descended on the Mall in Lahore in the summer of 2000 and blocked it from the High Court to Regal chowk. No action was taken against its workers or leaders. Hafiz Saeed, who has now been arrested, staged a mock demonstration of the Lashkar`s attack on Delhi`s Red Fort in front of an Eid congregation at the Gaddafi Stadium. I am told that General Musharraf was privately furious but the fact is that no action was taken against him.

These are just a few publicly known samples of soft treatment. What happened behind closed doors can only be guessed at. One thing is not a conjecture though: it was not uncommon in private gatherings to hear some important people describe the Jihadis as Pakistan`s reserve army.

END QUOTE

http://jang.com.pk/thenews/jan2002-daily/04-01-2002/oped/o5.htm

Note to readers: Jaish-e-Mohammed laid claim to a suicide bombing of the J&K Assembly which killed 40 people (mostly civilians), only to offer a clumsy retraction later. LeT is the prime accused behind the attack on the Indian Parliament last month.

BTW Romair, you have not yet enlightened us with your viewpoint on whether the attack on the Parliament was a `terrorist` act, or a manifestation of `freedom struggle`? Take a wild guess as to how curiously I am awaiting your response.

re: sarwar

you are one irritating cut-n-paste dude...links with a couple of sentences would suffice...

shammi #41
``Did you consider all of these options when you stood up on the soap-box right here on Chowk and said that Pakistan should facilitate and encourage infiltrators to enter India (a nuclear armed state, just like Pakistan)? ``

Infiltrators `affectionately` called jihadis, lets not forget. ROmair is essentially saying, ``since BJP is a Hindu party, its upto us to continue engaging and killing members of the Indian military when and where we choose inside India, just don`t all stand in a line at the border like this, it makes us angry, also then we have to pay out pensions``.

I think the solution is jihadis should be indoctrinated to fight for God AND country and at the border itself. Soem curriculum changes are called for.

hamidm #25 ``......somehow, and i don`t have any idea how, this kashmir thing has to be decided ``

the kashmir thing will be resolved once we realize that it is the tip of the iceberg. The hidden part of the iceberg is what I call the ``Partition Hangover`` whereby many Pakistanis and Indians continue to view each other as natural enemies like the dog and cat or the snake and the mongoose. What we need is to get over it, and see each other the way we really are: neighbors, with appreciation for what we share with one another (language, culture, history) and appreciation also for our differences. We must WANT to be good neigbors and good friends before we can become that. We do this, and Kashmir will disappear as an issue with the LoC accepted as a de facto border. Kashmir will remain split - no big deal: Panjab and Bengal were split too and that has never bothered anyone.

Chowk is a great place to contribute to such start chipping away at the underground part of the iceberg by building up good relations between Indians and Pakistanis. And I hope more and more chowkies will see it this way and the congenitally incapable ones (the jays and the urstruly`s) and their message of hate will become increasingly insignificant.

#: 29

warpster

syed #8 writes

``...What evidence do you have that ``hindu`` fascism is on the rise? For your information, there is a clear separation between religion and state in India, notwithstanding occasional tomfoolery (such as attempts to introduce Astrology as a university subject). The same, obviously, cannot be said of Pakistan where thousands of `` madrasa schools`` poison minds with anti-hindu, anti-India propaganda. Hopefully your leaders are cleaning up these ``schools``. ``

WAPSTER Sb.

What was the name of BJP before ?

JAN SANGH

What was its origin?

HINDU MAhASABHA

What was its origin?

Shayama Prasad Mukherjee (muslim Hater)founded RSS

Mr.WAPSTER,may be ppl with short term memory will be bowled & dumbfounded by your retort ``What evidence do you have...?``

Tell me if Jaish terrorist group changes its name to Al Furqan ,would you be satisfied with the ban only on name JAISH & not the very same people under different name?

Same is the situation.Mr.RASTOGI sits on your University Grant Commission deciding what Indian muslims should & should not learnAFTER KILLING A MUSLIM GIRL because she was too beutiful & causing fight among the RSS rioters in 47 .HE CONFESSED TO SHOOTING THAT GIRL POINT BLACK ,.He not only remains not convicted but sits on chair provided by the fascist communalist bjp Jan Sangh Hindu Mahasabha with more fascist parties like SHIV SENA ,RSS,BAJRANG DAL,

THE hindutva party ,THE SANGHI PARIVAR has been less than 3 yrs in power .This is the evidence ,in 3 years they have done nothing except tamper with TRUTH by fasifying books officially ,brought the country to nuclear war with Pakistan,exacerbated the mayheim in Kashmir,.What ever India is b/c of its size & people THERE IS NOTHING GREAT ATTRIBUTED TO THE HINDUTVA GOVT.How many instituion of learning have they opened??,How many new local enterprise have prospered by govt policy?.why more & more indians are opting to leave the country for work & business?

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Title: Respect For Other Religions

Author: Anees Jillani

Publication: Jung , Pakistan

Date: April 6, 2000

There lives even now a Hindu owner of a middle-sized Hotel in New Delhi who has a Muslim wife. She was married at the time of partition, was abducted, raped but later rescued by the armed forces. Her Muslim husband who had by then migrated to Pakistan was contacted by organisations handling repatriation of such women but he refused to take her back. She was lucky that she came across her present husband while living at one of the rehabilitation centers in early 1948. The young Hindu businessman married her and rescued her from the centre. He insisted that she could retain her religion. Wife of a prominent Pakistani was similarly abducted during partition. Many years later, she came into contact with a Pakistani who had gone to a tailor`s shop in Delhi. Working almost as a slave and without any access to the outside world, she stitched her husband`s name on a piece of cloth and secretly gave to the Pakistani. The latter managed to contact the husband in Pakistan but the husband, who had by then remarried, refused to have anything to do with her wife.

Karan Thapar, a conspicuous Indian Journalist, who recently interviewed General Musharraf on Door Darshan and who was given the general`s tie for praising it, narrated another interesting experience in one of his columns. He was watching an open-air theater about the Kargil war (Indians have nothing better to do than harp on this theme for the past one year now) when he started hearing two Indian jawans disapproving of a scene. Two Pakistani jawans had been captured by the Indians and after a thorough interrogation, they were shown as criticising Pakistan, its leadership, and its military. The Indian jawans sitting in the audience, who themselves had participated in the Kargil war, told Thapar that such a thing can never happen. Jawans even of an enemy can never criticise their own country, military and its leadership. The Indian media, and even some of the senior Indian army personnel, can routinely be seen praising the valiant performance of some of our soldiers during the Kargil war.

The moral of the story from the above three anecdotes is that not all Hindu Indians are rascals and villains; and not all Pakistani Muslims are angels going straight to heaven via Lahore. Both India and Pakistan are big nations in terms of their populations; and thus comprise all sorts of people. If India has produced Bal Thakeray, then it also has Nirmala Deshpande who led a 36-member women peace mission to Pakistan from March 25 to 31. We all know of similar contrasts in our country. What, however, distinguishes Pakistan from India in this respect is the presence of a Muslim community almost the size of Pakistan living within India. It simply cannot be ignored in a democratic-cum-secular setup. I first visited India in 1985 and found quite a few Muslims still cheering the Pakistani cricket team in a match against India. Not anymore. When asked now about their plight in a Hindu-dominated India, they say that they are fine; worry about your own self. Most of them are more perturbed about the state of mohajirs in Karachi than Hindu-Muslim riots in India.

This is, of course, not to say that India is a perfect example of secular model in the comity of nations. Far from it. It is a country where forces preaching Hindutva are in power and where the Babri mosque was demolished on December 6, 1992. However, what goes to the Indian system`s credit is the fact that the same Hindutva forces had to tone down their rhetoric and even their agenda to remain in power and win elections; construction of Ram mandir is no longer on NDA`s (National Democratic Alliance`s, of which BJP is a constituent) agenda and manifesto. The Indian premier himself called the day of destruction of the mosque the saddest day of his life and there are criminal cases pending against none other than the home minister himself for being involved in the destruction.

Since we have a selective memory, few would recall that some Pakistanis demolished many temples as a reaction to the mosque demolition. Have you heard of any Pakistani ever arrested for destroying those temples or attacking the Hindus? There is a BJP government in power in the state of Gujarat that permitted its civil servants to join Kuppahali S Sudarshan-led RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh); the state government justified its action on the ground that RSS is not a political but a cultural outfit. This permission led to such an uproar in the Lok Sabha and such condemnation by the print media that the BJP eventually bowed to public pressure and withdrew the authorisation on March 8, 2000. The above anomalies may not be written or talked about in Pakistan but the world community is not deaf, nor is it dumb. They see India as a Third World country attempting to maintain democracy and secularism; they all wish it well because this is the system that most of them also subscribe to. On the other hand, ours is a country which is gradually shifting into the hands of mullahs who talk of Islamic bombs and missiles and who wish to rule the whole world. What an irony because, at present, they cannot even rule themselves. They see India as a country where even the minority communities surpass the population of their own nations and then there is Pakistan where even a single conversion of a Hindu or a Christian is reported in all the major dailies, including the English ones.

We can no longer have it both ways. We cannot aspire to be a fortress of Islam and wish Clinton and Tony Blair to be our best friends. If we want to be Green Fortress, then we will have to content ourselves with Afghanistan`s Mulla Omar and survive like Afghanistan. No one in the world is asking us to change our religions. Islam, in fact, is the second largest belief in many of the countries. All that the world asks us to do is to respect other faiths as well. It is not good enough to say that minorities enjoy full protection of the state. The minorities in Pakistan cannot vote with us; they cannot be elected with us; they cannot become ministers; they are almost non-existent in our armed forces and civil service and the judiciary.

Most important of all, we wish all of them ideally to convert to Islam for their spiritual salvation. I am not so worried about theirs as our own religion because our scale of corruption increases manifold just before Eid during the holiest of holy days in Islam.

Pakistan seeks China`s support amid tensions

BY KARL SCHOENBERGER

SAN JOSE Mercury News

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf played his China card Thursday, visiting Beijing on the eve of a three-day regional summit in Nepal at which mounting tension between India and Pakistan is expected to overshadow the ordinarily low-key annual meeting of South Asia`s leaders.

Musharraf stopped in Beijing on Thursday for talks with Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, taking a circuitous route to Nepal for the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation summit that starts today. It is his second visit to Beijing since nine Indians died when five gunmen carried out a suicide attack on India`s Parliament on Dec. 13, which sparked the saber rattling that is menacing regional stability and possibly undermining the final stage in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Although the meeting between Musharraf and Zhu was not designed to yield a significant statement of support by China for its old Cold War ally, Pakistan is likely to benefit from a symbolic message to India`s leadership, analysts say. Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee have said, however, they will not discuss peace during their weekend in Katmandu.

``China is Pakistan`s regional security guarantor,`` said Rafiq Dossani, a senior research scholar at Stanford University`s Asia-Pacific Research Center. ``It can`t help mediate in the India-Pakistan border crisis, but it allows General Musharraf to make concessions to India and negotiate from a position of strength instead of weakness.``

Musharraf has responded to mounting pressure from the United States to meet New Delhi`s demands that he crack down on militant separatist fighters based on the Pakistan side of Kashmir. He has arrested the leaders and about 100 followers of the two groups that India blames for the attack on Parliament, and has shut down the military intelligence units that influenced their guerrilla activities in predominantly Muslim Kashmir.

``Pakistan hopes for peace, opposes war and is willing to work to ease the current tensions through dialogue,`` Musharraf told Zhu during their meeting, according to China`s Xinhua news agency.

India and Pakistan have fought two major wars and one brief conflict over Kashmir since the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947, motivated by geopolitics as well as deep-rooted religious animosity.

China, an emerging nuclear superpower, has given Pakistan missile technology and believed to have furnished the nuclear weapons know-how that has enhanced military parity with India. Both countries joined the so-called ``nuclear club`` just three years ago when they tested their first weapons within weeks of each other.

Pakistan has been a strategic ally to China since the early 1960s, serving as a counterweight to India`s influence in the region when China and India had emerged from their own border war and viewed each other suspiciously as political and economic rivals, Dossani said.

But now, China sees India, with a population of about 1 billion, as a huge marketplace for its light industrial exports and an economic partner once tariffs fall under World Trade Organization rules, which will soon apply to both nations.

``It`s already beginning to be a flood,`` said Dossani, who recently visited his native India. ``People really want to buy the kinds of goods the Chinese have to sell, and India has the information-technology services that China needs.``

China exported about $1.5 billion in goods to India in the first 11 months of 2001, mostly electronics, chemicals, textiles and minerals, according to Xinhua.

Beijing officials have reacted publicly to the Kashmir crisis with restraint, expressing sympathy to New Delhi over the attack on its Parliament and condemning terrorism without taking a position on Vajpayee`s angry recriminations of Pakistan for its alleged involvement.

``As the neighbor and friend of both India and Pakistan, we follow closely the development of the situation,`` the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement last week. ``It is our hope that the two sides will exercise restraint to avoid further escalation of the tension, properly handle the relevant issues through dialogue and consultations to jointly safeguard peace and stability of this region.``

The diplomatic dance is subtle, and complicated, analysts say. China doesn`t want to withdraw strategic support from its loyal Pakistani ally, nor does it want to offend its promising new economic partner in India. At the same time, it is exploiting the rhetoric of international condemnation for terrorism to justify a crackdown on a small Islamist separatist movement in the northwest province of Xinjiang. China says that as many as 1,000 ethnic Uighur rebels have received training in Afghanistan, a claim that U.S. officials dispute.

During his state visit to China in mid-December, Musharraf assured Chinese leaders that Pakistan`s close relations with China would remain strong, despite the new alliance with Washington in the war on terror. He also pledged support for China`s police actions in Xinjiang.

China`s understated peacekeeping role in the India-Pakistan crisis might be compared to the two-tiered diplomacy that the United States employs on the issue of Taiwan, said Richard Baum, a political-science professor at the University of California-Los Angeles. On one level, Washington acknowledges Beijing`s ``one China`` claim that Taiwan is a renegade province, but the story changes when the old friend is threatened militarily.

``The Chinese realize they have their own interest in seeing peace in the region, but I don`t think they can do anything to mediate directly in this dispute,`` Baum said. ``So they`re trying to be evenhanded and preach mutual tolerance and good will, and at the same time continue to sell arms to the Pakistani side.``

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