Pakistan and India - Lets Compromise

his Excellency @ # 128:

About Kashmir, there is a realization on part of Pakistan itself that under the present geo-strategic situation that has emerged subsequent to 9/11, our policy needs a total revamping. In general, our principled stand on Kashmir has been acknowledged since we have not been given a shut-up call.

1. We would have been given a total snub by the world if Indian stand were principled. Since they have economic returns to offer the world, the weight would have fallen decidedly in their favor. Pakistan would have been made a total outcast. This has not happened.

2. If Pakistan had more economic interests to offer than India, then Kashmir would have been decided in its favor.

3. That the USA and the West are soft on both India and Pakistan proves that one of them had a moral advantage (Pakistan) and the other had economic advantage (India. That could not be Pakistan).

What I am trying to say here is that Pakistan might have decided to put Kashmir on the back-burner to concentrate on economic development first. Remember that we can always revisit the issue at an opportune time ;)

The current Government is striving for economic stability and development, for strengthening democracy under a controlled environment to begin with to give continuity of policy and for social development of the masses, which I believe should have been there from the very beginning.

The 90s, generally known as the lost decade for Pakistan, are the ones that gave a huge advantage to India over Pakistan, because the latter erred on all the three above-mentioned areas.

Tahmed 32 at # 123:

In addition to my comments to His Excellency in the previous post, I believe that the Government is on the right track, except for Islamic parties, basically Jamaat-e-Islami, who are bent upon destroying every thing.

In tribal areas, there is a proverbial fight between the brain and the heart that is going on. People generally feel that what General Pervaiz Musharraf has done is right. But then their emotional self takes over, under the mis-guidance of our Islamic parties, over issues like Nizam-e-Mustafa and Islamization / Talibanization. I think that in tribal areas, Pushtoon belt of Balochistan and in the NWFP we need Jihad against illiteracy. The Government should be devoted 7x24 basis to educate the public on the Change in geo-strategic situation and the need for changing our response to it.

Talking to independent economists, I believe that in another 5 year Pakistan`s economy will really take-off. Positive signs are already there in terms of macro-economic improvement. How these will be realized at public level remains to be seen.

In the meantime, I suggest that you and Pakistanis settled in the USA remain tuned in to Geo TV of Pakistan (Jang Group of newspapers) for their programs on Pakistan`s economy and budget 2003 that will start soon. The Geo programs are re-telecast in the USA and the transmission quality some times is poor, but you will be able to get a good picture of overall situation.

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HisExcellency #128
This robber baron mentality is foolish - its never a good long term solution for anyone to offer quid pro quo to career extortionists.

Meanwhile Kashmiri MUSLIMS who are PDP (ruling political party) members continue to be killed by Pakistan-funded and trained terrorists- as reported by yesterday`s Dawn.

http://www.dawn.com/2003/05/10/welcome.htm

Its evident the thickheaded Pakistani establishment still thinks that it can make J&K into another Afghanistan, - ie, decimate all civic institutions including political parties, killing political party members so that Pakistan`s own chosen fundamentalists can then rule.


The problem with this plan is, India is not Afghanistan, neither is India - Soviet Union - as the ISI and Pakistani Army and their paaltu fundamentalists will continue to discover.


http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_12-5-2003_pg8_2

‘Only Jihad can guarantee world peace’

``...LAHORE: Leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami said here on Sunday only jihad could guarantee world peace and the Kashmir issue was still alive only because of jihad. They also urged the government not to compromise on Kashmir. Qazi Hussein Ahmad, Ameer JI addressing a seerat conference at Nishter Town said the people in Indian-administered Kashmir were fighting for their right of self-determination. He said the JI would not allow the closure of jihadi camps. He said the real issue between India and Pakistan is Kashmir, not trade. JI General Secretary Syed Munawar Hassan said at a training workshop of party workers that the fall of Communism was a result of jihad and now through jihad an Islamic system should be established throughout the world. “Only then can there be peace,” he added. ..``

Even when Pakistan had democratic governments (1988-1999), India refused to talk about Kashmir, free political prisoners or open up Kashmir to the rest of the world. Therefore, the Indian argument that ``we will not talk to Pakistan because Pakistan is not a democracy`` is quite a non-starter. Armitage`s recent declaration that infiltration is down from a year ago, is enough to indicate the American mood on India`s stance.

This brings us to the bottomline: Why should Pakistan PERMANENTLY halt support to Mujahideen, when India even refuses to even TEMPORARILY give the Kashmiris the rights that were promised to them 56 years ago?
India must offer Pakistan a quid pro quo in comparable terms for the process to proceed to its next logical level. Neither Paksitani politicians nor the Army is foolish enough to reverse its support for Kashmiri struggle permanently, without third-party guarantees of Indian concessions. As the events of 2001/2 demonstrate, even Americans have limited leverage with Pakistan on Kashmir Policy.

I do not believe that the present communalized Indian leadership has the courage and commitment to offer such a quid pro quo. Therefore, the present thaw (IMHO) is tactical, not strategic. History proves that each round of bilateral talks is followed by a round of violence.

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It is rather unfortunate that the original posters` thoughts were hijacked and transformed into elementary school antics by people trying to prove that the other country is worse than theirs. How does this help the current impasse? It doesn`t. All countries have their own problems, including India and Pakistan. If Jehadis and Mullahs with their madressahs are blemishes for Pak, then BJP with its ultra right wing RSS, and morons like Bal Thackeray aren`t exactly doing India any favor. It is incredulous that Mr. Modi continues to be the CM of Gujarat after last years horrendous activities.
Interestingly, its been almost 20 years since the 1984 riots(massacres) of over 10,000 Sikhs. Not a single person has been convicted and jailed. In fact, some of the instigators now enjoy prominent positions with the congress party.
In Pakistan, things are no better. the chairman of PGPC (the governing body of Pakistan`s gurudwaras) is a muslim General. Nice.
The sane thing to do at this time would be to proclaim the LOC as the international border, and to allow Kashmiris freedom of movement from one segment to another. This festering issue should be solved by the two countries involved. Involving third parties would be nothing short of disaster. I am reminded of a joke here. Two cats were walking down a street and they came upon a piece of roti (bread). Both wanted all of it, and soon a fight ensued concerning whom the roti belonged to. Luckily, a monkey happened to be nearby. SO they approached him. ``Can you help us?`` they said, and explained their predicament. Sure, said the monkey. ``Give me the roti, I`ll break it in half and give it to you both.`` The cats agreed. After doing so, the monkey observed that one piece was bigger than the other. So he took a bite. Now the other was bigger. so he took a bite from it. This continued on till there was no roti left.

ahmedzai #118 Good to hear from you. I am glad we are in agreement on the value of having the US introduce democracy in Iraq. This effort may or may not succeed, but it is good to see the US is making an effort. I also hope that peace comes to the middle east and the palestinians and israelis start to live in peace. 50 years of killing over a piece of land is enough.
I wonder how you found things in the frontier (I recall you were planning to visit some rural areas there over the past month) with the new provincial government and the elected local officials in place.

For a real taste of secular, democratic and peace-loving pakistanis...
(and these clowns give us poor, backward indians lectures all the time..)

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/12/international/europe/12BRIT.html?pagewanted=print&position=

What Drove 2 Britons to Bomb a Club in Tel Aviv?
By SARAH LYALL


ERBY, England, May 8 — Something changed Omar Khan Sharif, sent him in a new direction, and Derby`s older Pakistani population cannot begin to fathom what it was.

But the radicalization of the well-educated, thoroughly Westernized Mr. Sharif, 27 — the forces that led him from Derby to Tel Aviv, where he is wanted on charges of helping to carry out a suicide bombing in a beachfront nightclub on April 30 — make a certain sense to the younger, second-generation immigrants born and raised here. Mr. Sharif was angry, they say, for reasons that would be all too understandable to Muslims everywhere.

``In a way, I sympathize,`` said Mohammed Zahid, 23, an automobile-plant inspector with a broad Midlands accent, who was strolling down Normanton Road, near where Mr. Sharif lived with his wife and two daughters. ``When you see what`s happening in Israel, something comes into your mind, something just goes.``

On a fine spring day on a pleasantly bustling street, such an explanation seems partial at best. As Sarfraz Bashir, 31, a college graduate in between computer jobs who was helping out at the Jamia Mosque on Rose Hill Street, put it: ``In the U.K., you can have a proper job and a proper education. We have everything here — why ruin it?``

Along with another Briton, Asif Mohammed Hanif, 21, Mr. Sharif is said to have entered Israel as a tourist, via Jordan, using his British passport. There, the two checked into a hotel, donned explosive belts and made their way to Mike`s Place, a jazz club next to the United States Embassy.

Mr. Hanif`s explosives detonated, killing him and three others and injuring at least 50 more, the authorities say; Mr. Sharif`s explosives failed to go off and he managed to slip away. He and Mr. Hanif now enjoy the dubious notoriety of being the first British suicide bombers to strike within Israel.

Mr. Sharif`s wife, sister and brother are under arrest in London, charged under antiterrorism legislation with failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism.

Publicly, what Mr. Sharif is accused of doing has been roundly condemned here. But scratch beneath the surface in Derby, and people begin to talk about Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel and the oppression of Islam.

``Some people take Islam deeper than others,`` said a young man on Normanton Road, by way of explaining Mr. Sharif`s motives. He declined to give his name, but said he was 19 and an unemployed second-generation Pakistani.

``Killing people is wrong, obviously, but if he was doing it for God himself — then fair enough,`` said the man, checking his cellphone for the time, so he could get to the bank before it closed. ``You have to be pretty brave to do something like that, to hold a bomb in your hand and blow yourself up.``

Across the street, a group of hair-gelled youths in Nike and Reebok sweatsuits perched on a railing and commented on the events involving Mr. Sharif. Inside, the older proprietor of a fast-food restaurant dismissed their comments with contempt, but talk they did.

``What he`s done is very good, and they won`t ever find him,`` said Basu Hussain, 18, taking a break from his job at Lick`n Chick`n, a fast-food outlet. ``We should all get together and kill all the Jews.``

Derby seems an incongruous crucible for such talk and for a suicide bomber, and Mr. Sharif an unlikely candidate for a position usually filled by young, unmarried men politicized from birth by virtue of growing up in places like Gaza or the West Bank.

Derby has always prided itself on the good relations between white Britons and Muslims of Pakistani descent, the preponderance of the 8.4 percent of the population identifying themselves as Asian. Although the unemployment rate among young Muslims is disproportionately high, there has been no ethnic violence of the sort that has taken place in other northern and midlands towns in recent years.

The British National Party, a right-wing political group that has gained ground in local governments by capitalizing on Britons` fears of Muslim outsiders, has no presence here. Al Muhajiroun, a Muslim group that advocates overthrowing Western democracies, regularly tries to recruit believers here, but most Derby Muslims — although by no means all — dismiss it out of hand.

Mr. Sharif grew up in the heavily Pakistani Normanton district. It is here, in a neat Victorian row house with a large garden in the back, that his father, Mohammed, a prominent businessman originally from Kashmir who owned a laundry, a kebab restaurant, and other shops, moved with his wife and six children about 20 years ago. Both parents have since died.

In a country where many immigrants stick to their native languages at home, the family spoke English among themselves and wore Western clothes, said Hamida Akhtar, 54, who lives down the street on Breedon Hill Road and was a close friend of Mrs. Sharif. ``They were very respectable and nice,`` she said.

The family emphasized education for their children, and Omar, the youngest, was perhaps particularly privileged. Although he attended state schools (the equivalent of American public schools) in Derby for most of his childhood, between 1986 and 1988 he went to Foremarke Hall Preparatory School, set on acres of woods, fields and ponds about 20 minutes outside the city.

At 18, he enrolled in college in London, and came back transformed. He wore a beard and clothes that identified him as a religious Muslim. He prayed five times a day.

``He used to be dressed like this,`` Ms. Akhtar said, pointing to her husband, Mohammed, who was wearing a suit and tie. ``Suddenly, he was changed.`` He had a new wife, too, named Tahira Tabassum, who wore a traditional Islamic head scarf.

In recent years, too, Mr. Sharif began spending more time with the local representatives of Al Muhajiroun, a group based at the Finsbury Park mosque in London that has several regional offices around Britain. Its leader, Omar Bakri Mohamed, told the Derby Evening Telegraph that Mr. Sharif had attended regular ``ideological discussions`` with the group at St. James`s Center, a community center on Malcolm Street. ``I first noticed him because he could understand Arabic, which he said he had studied in Syria,`` Mr. Mohamed told the paper.

The group has recently played down its links to violence, modifying public pronouncements in a way that seems aimed at consumption by the Western news organizations. But it has spoken very differently in the past, encouraging Britons to go to Afghanistan to fight on behalf of the Taliban, for example.

In 2000, it held a rally through the streets of Normanton, with placards urging the killing of Jews.

Last year, it sponsored a celebratory conference marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11 bombings; a fading notice advertising the event, with a picture of the burning twin towers and the words ``a towering day in history,`` is still stuck to a post outside the Rose Hill Street mosque.

The Finsbury Park mosque, Al Muhajiroun`s London base, is well known as a center for espousing anti-Western ideas. Among those who have passed through its doors are Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, convicted in the United States of trying to carry out a suicide attack on a plane in 2001.

Most Muslims here tend to avoid people from Al Muhajiroun, who regularly waylay them as they leave the mosque after Friday Prayers.

``The literature they put out is embarrassing for mature members of the community, people who have more understanding,`` said Fareed Hussain, a member of the Derby City Council. ``Not only do they they put out propaganda against Jewish people, but also against Indian people, Sikhs and Hindus.``

But there are very real fears that they are offering something that young men, particularly the underemployed and frustrated, want to hear.

It is a hard time to be Muslim in this country. Many Muslims are particularly unhappy about the harsh antiterrorism measures introduced here in 2000 and tightened in 2001, which give broad powers of arrest and detention and have been used too enthusiastically, in the minds of some, by a government eager to demonstrate its antiterrorist credentials.

``We`re extremely worried about young people being susceptible to their message,`` Shokat Lal, general secretary of the Pakistani Community Center, said of Al Muhajiroun. ``The people in these groups present themselves as positive role models — they make you want to participate and be part of something.``

Mr. Lal said young men across Britain were at risk. ``Muslim, and particularly Pakistani, youth at the moment seem to fall within two categories,`` he said. ``Either they join a fundamentalist group, as Sharif did, or they get involved in drugs and crime.``

One young Derby Muslim who admires what Mr. Sharif is said to have done is Shaban Yasin, 17. He works at a halal fish, chips and kebab shop that caters to all manner of multiethnic culinary tastes. Suicide bombing, he said, is the ``wrong way`` to kill the Jews, adding that, ``We should find out the best way to kill them, and do that.``

Mr. Yasin grew up in Derby, too, and said that his parents, immigrants from Pakistan who settled here happily, had retired and were ``living it large`` on their British pensions. But, he said, he considers himself a Muslim first and foremost.

If he was to blow himself up for the cause, he said, ``I think my parents would be proud of me.``

#121 sridhar

I wouldnt waste my time arguing with people who have no experience of democracy and are in fact ruled by a military dictator. For example, what are the views of the various Pakistani Generals on social and cultural matters? You and I will never know and no one is going to reveal their poisonous belief systems. Yet the military is the single largest component of Pakistani goverment. But we will never discuss that because......?????

This is a standard trick of people who have no real interest in understanding how democracy actually works in India (developing country) or the western countries (developed countries). These folks use the openness of democratic societies to criticize them while living happily in societies run Sheikhs, Generals, Dictators, etc. As you should be well aware, between India and Israel there is not a single functioning democracy.

You will never see this discussed anyplace. It is so much more fun to say: look at the bad things Advani said during his campaigns (no matter that 100 journalists are running around looking to make a scoop about him) or Sharon is a murderer (no matter that there is complete press freedom and transparency is Israel).

re:#112 by ahmadzai

``You have extremists elected to power in India. The 2 most fanatic of them all i.e. Advani and Joshi hold the most influential positions in the Government.``
Welcome to democracy. I need to give you a little pep talk on what democracy is all about. You Pakis have little idea how democracy functions.
In a democracy, every view has a place, even extremist views. So, LK Advani has some extremist views but does he do a good job of being a good home minister? I bet he does. MM Joshi has some strong nationalistic views about what history books should say. That does not make him an extremist. We are not talking about a Nazi Germany like situation in India. If you read your history books (ie if history is still taught in Pakistan), you will realise that in a Nazi Germany, Jews did not have a right to vote, did not have a right to own property, were systematically isolated, ghettoed and finally eliminated.
Is this what is happening to muslims in India? We have at least 2 Indian muslims interacting in this Chowk. May be they can enlighten us as to what kind of discrimination they feel in a hindu majority state.
Look at the plight of Kashmiri Pandits. They are the original inhabitants of Kashmir and have lived there for millenia. Today, they live in some ramshackle tents in the outskirts of Delhi and hope to go back home someday. This is happening to hindus in a hindu majority country. Did the rest of hindus vent there anger against rest of muslims? I did not hear any such thing happening.

Now, what is happening in that benighted nation called Pakistan? What rights do the Ahmediayas have? Why are sunnis killing shias in Karachi? Was not Pakistan made for muslims like you, so that you can breath freely without hindus breathing on your neck? Why are you guys killing each other now?
It is when idiots in this chowk talk about rights of minorities, when such rights do not exist in their own country, that i feel my blood boiling and head spinning in a tizzy. When Pakistan has a people`s democracy and is not ruled by a tinpot dictator, you will sound more real talking about such rights. Right now, enlightened people in Pak must concentrate on how to get rid of this Whore who is ruling your country. But, then i believe he is still popular and will continue to bleed your country until it is beyond redemption. You may continue to blame India for all your ills until then.
Sridhar

Re: ZafarA # 92

Insightful comments, with far reaching consequences for India.

Ciao

tahmed32:

Salam to you.

I don`t know what was the final take of the readers on your really nice write-up of a month ago in favor of American invasion of Iraq from the democracy point of view, but I would like to say that I had agreed with you then and even if you might have changed your opinion, I am of the view that democracy is the best bet for Muslim countries.

Pakistanis do not get tired of talking about unity of Ummah and lend support to some far-fetched concepts like reviving the Caliphate in this regard. However, I believe that if democracy comes to the Muslim countries, there would be a unity of sort, not on the basis of religion alone, but on humanitarian basis. How?

See in case of democracies in the middle-east, it would have been so hard for the US-UK forces to invade Iraq. None of the parliaments would have allowed waging of war on a dictatorial Iraq from their soils. Even a pro-US Turkey had problems, because of its democratic set-up to support US-UK. Other Muslim countries who backed out from open support to invasion were Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Malaysia - all democracies - under public pressure.

Similarly, on other humanitarian issues like Israeli atrocities against Palestinians and Indians against its minorities, all Muslim countries would have castigated and boycotted Israel and India regardless of their economic interests.

Considering the above, I thought I would lend support to your original concept of introducing democracy with the support of the USA.

Hope to exchange views with you off and on.

Cheers.