India’s Anti-Maoist Operations: Where are the Special Forces?

By Bibhu Prasad Routray

Synopsis

Poor standards among its police force and the lack of specialised units within its para-military is hampering India’s counter-Maoist efforts. The objective of neutralising the military might of the extremists looks, for the moment, an unrealisable goal.

Commentary

ANDHRA PRADESH, the only Indian state which was successful in defeating the left-wing extremists (Maoists), did so using its specialised counter-insurgency force, the Greyhounds. Raised in the late 1980s, the ability of the Greyhounds to take the fight into the Maoist stronghold areas was crucial in draining the extremist strength. By 2005, the Maoists had little option after losing hundreds of their cadres, but to flee Andhra Pradesh into the safety of the neighbouring states, where security operations have been far less intensive. Since then, the Greyhounds experiment of raising special force units to counter Maoists has been replicated in different states and also within the para-military Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) — but unsuccessfully.

Lack of Sustained efforts

With the constant prodding of the government in New Delhi, some states like Maharashtra and Orissa have raised special counter-Maoist units. Some others like West Bengal are still ‘in the process of’ raising them. States like Bihar are managing by re-employing former Army personnel within its Special Auxiliary Police units. States like Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh have tended to manage their anti-Maoist operations with their regular police personnel, renamed as ‘special task force’, who have undergone training in the counter-insurgency and guerrilla warfare schools. Twenty such schools, in addition to the one currently operational in Chhattisgarh, are being raised by the government.

The ineffectiveness of such specialised or semi-specialised units is clearly rooted in the continuing dependence of the states on the central paramilitary forces. Over 70 battalions of such forces are currently deployed in various states as part of the anti-Maoist ‘Operation Green Hunt’. The easy availability of these central forces for the states, at almost a nominal deployment and maintenance cost, is creating an unenviable situation — the states are paying inadequate attention to modernise their own police forces. In addition, states have regularly defaulted in paying for the deployment of such forces.

Same rot within the paramilitary

The paramilitary CRPF, raised with a mandate to manage normal law and order situations, has the experience of countering militants and insurgents in Kashmir and the northeastern states. But the Maoists are proving to be a different and difficult challenge.

Following the 1999 Kargil conflict in Kashmir between India and Pakistan, New Delhi’s Task Force on Internal Security had recommended modelling the CRPF as the primary strike force for counter-insurgency (CI) operations.. This recommendation had been accepted in 2000 by the then National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. Since then, enormous funds have been made available to the CRPF to augment its size as well as its capacities. However, former CRPF officers, including a former chief of the force, accept that a plan to achieve the objective is yet to be formulated. There is no indication that the CRPF, which has grown to 210 battalions after continuing expansions, is anywhere close to being a specialised CI force.

A series of setbacks suffered by the CRPF in Maoist attacks has compelled the force not only to go on the defensive, but also to centralise its operations. As a result, local commanders’ capacity to innovate and launch swift counter-attacks, which are critical in counter-insurgency operations, have been put on hold.

Clearance from the CRPF regional headquarters in Kolkata, which takes at least a day to receive, has been made mandatory before the personnel embark on any CI operation acting on intelligence leads. Maoists have been extremely mobile in their approach. A day’s delay in obtaining clearance has virtually turned the CRPF into an inspecting unit rather than a combat force.

In 2008, the government set up a 10 battalion specialised counter-Maoist unit within the CRPF. The unit was fashionably named Combat Battalion for Resolute Action (COBRA). Home Minister P Chidambaram did not like the acronym. But the name stuck. The personnel underwent a year-long specialised training in the counter-insurgency and guerrilla warfare schools and were deployed in phases in the Maoist-affected states. Actual achievements of the COBRA are operational secrets. However, by any standard, this is too small a unit to make any impact on the Maoists who have spread out over a vast territory. In addition, in the absence of adequate support from the state police forces, the actual capacity of the COBRA forces, has been marginalised.

Stress from continuous engagement could also be growing within the COBRA. Recently, a COBRA personnel deployed in Chhattisgarh fled the force after killing a civilian, disfiguring his face and planting his official identity card on the dead body to fake his own death. Separately, another COBRA personnel was arrested for alleged involvement in a series of crimes perpetrated by a criminal gang.

No Intelligence, No Capacity

The CRPF’s setbacks are partly linked to the weak or non-existent human intelligence apparatus within the state police forces and also to the poor operational camaraderie the two forces share. Attempt to set up CRPF’s own intelligence unit has been a long- pending ambition. Frequent verbal duels have been reported between the CRPF and the police authorities. In August, New Delhi transferred a top CRPF officer overseeing Operation Green Hunt after his spat with the top police officer of Chhattisgarh State. Frequent changes in the CRPF’s leadership have disrupted continuity of policies and programmes for augmenting the capacity of the force.

The government aims to turn the course of the war with the Maoists within the next few years. However, with the security forces receiving regular setbacks and the country still struggling to raise specialised counter-Maoist force units, such an objective appears far too difficult to achieve.

Bibhu Prasad Routray is a Visiting Research Fellow in the South Asia Programme of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He previously served as a Deputy Director in the National Security Council Secretariat, Prime Minister’s Office, New Delhi.

The 8 year old innocent was killed by Indian Police

Where are the so called agencies of human rights and the directors of Facebook who defend the freedom of speech against us only

The 8 year old innocent was killed by Indians during current protests. I haven’t heard any NGO protesting working for childhood protection. Have you?

Baramulla Kashmir | PEOPLE CARRY THE BODY OF NINE-YEAR-OLD TARIQ AHMAD

Can you imagine these kids can be involved in terrorism?

Would someone care about the rights children have? Where are the human rightist?

Even Indians consider Dupatta as a weapon of terrorism…………

So many cowards behind a single journalist…
Freedom of speech vocalists are silent here

Can this old man be dangerous for hundreds of thousands of Indian troops deployed in valley?

Indian paramilitary soldiers beat a Kashmiri civilian during a protest in Srinagar, India, Wednesday, June 30, 2010. Authorities brought new areas under curfew in the Indian portion of Kashmir on Wednesday to control the worst street violence in a year, triggered by the killing of 11 people allegedly by government forces over the past two weeks. (AP Photo)

A young innocent Kashmiri student, aged 22, shot dead at point blank range by the draconian CRPF. They had promised a revenge killing after a trooper was shot dead by militants in the same location: The Slaughterers awarded one hundred rupees and promotions for killing the innocent Kashmiri.

Pulling Fingernails Won’t Turn Kashmiris Into Indians, Pleads Arundhati Roy

• Pity that nation that jails those who ask for justice’
• ‘No one should be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians’

India’s most famous novelist meets with the husband and brother of two Kashmiri women raped and killed by Indian Army soldiers. All major Indian newspapers warn Roy of imminent arrest on sedition charges.

BY ARUNDHATI ROY | Monday, 25 October 2010.
WWW.PAKNATIONALISTS.COM

SRINAGAR, Indian-Occupied Kashmir-I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir. This morning’s papers say that I may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on Kashmir. I said what millions of people here say every day. I said what I, as well as other commentators have written and said for years. Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a call for justice. I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world; for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven out of their homeland; for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I visited on garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; for the Indian poor who pay the price of this occupation in material ways and who are now learning to live in the terror of what is becoming a police state.

Yesterday I traveled to Shopian, the apple-town in South Kashmir which had remained closed for 47 days last year in protest against the brutal rape and murder of Asiya and Nilofer, the young women whose bodies were found in a shallow stream near their homes and whose murderers have still not been brought to justice. I met Shakeel, who is Nilofer’s husband and Asiya’s brother. We sat in a circle of people crazed with grief and anger who had lost hope that they would ever get ‘insaaf’ – justice – from India, and now believed that Azadi – freedom – was their only hope. I met young stone-pelters who had been shot through their eyes. I traveled with a young man who told me how three of his friends, teenagers in Anantnag district, had been taken into custody and had their finger-nails pulled out as punishment for throwing stones.

In the papers some have accused me of giving ‘hate-speeches’, of wanting India to break up. On the contrary, what I say comes from love and pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians. It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one. Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free.”

Arundhati Roy is an Indian novelist and Booker Prize recipient. She is opposed to her country’s occupation of Kashmir. This comment was published by SOS Kashmir

Hearings on Kashmir Held in the European Parliament

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, in conjunction with the Kashmir Centre.EU, conducted a Hearing on Kashmir in the European Parliament. Hosted by Chris Davies the hearing entitled Kashmir The Full Truthtook place on the afternoon of the 13th of October.

Introductions were made by Chris Davies MEP (UK ALDE) and Ivo Vajgl MEP (Slovenia ALDE) followed by presentations from Barrister A. Majid Tramboo – Chairman of Kashmir Centre.EU, H.E. Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan – Prime Minister of Azad Jammu & Kashmir (AJ&K), H.E. Mr. Jalil Abbas Jilani – Ambassador of Pakistan to the EU, Belgium and Luxembourg, Ms. Shireen Mazari – Director General of the institute of Strategic Studies and presently the Editor of the Nation in Pakistan, General Ashok Mehta- Former General in the Indian Army, now a respected commentator on Security and issues, writer, and Defence Analyst.

Chris Davies MEP, co-initiator of the hearing, opened by asking how India, who claims the people of Jammu & Kashmir are citizens of India, can actively engage in such human rights abuses. He went on to say that this is not a situation that the international community can ignore. We need to urge these governments to renew their efforts to reconcile their differences, and offer the services of the European Union as facilitators.

In his summary, Ivo VAJGL (Zares, Slovenia) the other co-initiator of the seminar, said: “Some aspects that I have witnessed today show similarities to the situation we experienced in former Yugoslavia, namely in Bosnia-Herzegovina. By studying them we might get closer to an implementable solution. What generally inspires me is the principle of self-determination, which is also at stake in Kashmir. Overall, the tolerant way in which views have been exchanged this afternoon is encouraging.”

Barrister A. Majid Tramboo discussed three main facets of the Kashmir problem and said that for more than six decades, the Kashmir conflict has been knowingly projected as one of the most intractable problems of international politics. These facets were Self-Determination, Human Rights and Regional Security.

The respective resolutions of the United Nations Security council are undoubtedly the documents of reference for a durable and internationally acceptable solution. This perception has been confirmed, and the time of their adoption, by both India and Pakistan. The resolutions are clearly declaring, the people of Jammu and Kashmir to determine their own future through a “fair and impartial plebiscite under the auspices of the United Nations”. However, no steps have ever been taken towards the implementation of the resolutions and the commitments made to the Kashmiri people.

So far, however, in spite of all the declarations of goodwill and the readiness to negotiate, not much has been achieved in moving forward. What is needed in this historical constellation are bold steps to lead both countries away from the traditional enemy stereotypes and the attitude of deep mistrust.

Most unfortunately, violence continues unabated in the IHK. Only over the last 10 weeks or so 118 young people between the ages of 9 years and 34 have been killed in peaceful assemblies through live ammunition by the Indian Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).

In the interim what needs to be achieved, as a short and medium term measures and which is likely improve the confidence are: (a) the opening of the border along the CfL must not consist of sporadic events only, (b) communication lines have to be opened on a payment basis and (c) the movement of people and goods over the CfL must be facilitated and improved; so far there have been too many bureaucratic hurdles to these promising practical measures.

Mr. Tramboo also suggested that India and Pakistan should form a working group on Kashmir, that includes representatives of the people of Kashmir, in order to discuss and implement the required measures to find a suitable, lasting and durable solution.

H.E. Sardar Attique Khan said that the Kashmir situation had reached genesis and that a solution needs to be found as soon as possible. Pointing out that Kashmir was surrounded by three of the worlds nuclear powers he said that prolonging the Kashmir dispute could have potentially disastrous consequences in terms of regional and global security.

The result of the Government of India denying the 13 million people of Jammu & Kashmir the right to self-determinaiton has been a peaceful indigenous uprising against their deprivations. Over the past five months the actions of the Indian Government in Jammu & Kashmir have driven the people to starvation and curfew has curtailed all shopping and schooling.

On the 25th of September 2008 the Prime Minister of India declared that the Government of India was willing and ready to settle the issue of Jammu & Kashmir through talks with Pakistan but even now that pledge remains to be taken up seriously.

Political leaders in J&K are routinely denied the right to travel outside of the country and some are denied medical treatment.

H.E. appealed for immediate food aid to J&K to prevent starvation and urged the European Institutions and the International Red Cross to take immediate and decisive action to avoid a catastrophe.

H.E. Mr. Jalil Abbas Jilani said that it was clear from both sides that a war between Indian and Pakistan would have devastating affects and each side was aware of this as they sought to find enduring peace. There is a realisation that they need to forge co-operation to meet unconventional threats such as poverty, water, population control, food security and environmental issues.

In a joint statement on the 24th of January 2004 both the governments of India and Pakistan said that they would find a just settlement to the issue of Kashmir that was to the satisfaction of India, Pakistan and the people of Kashmir.

This process can only be taken forward by building trust and avoiding propoganda. Using propaganda has not succeeded in moving the process forward and there is no choice but to take the real isses relating to Kashmir, including water, head on. There should be no more time wasted on discussions, we should work together to try to resolve the issue for good. Confidence building measures can only go so far and we have reached that point.

Ms. Shireen Mazari has been to the European Parliament on three separate occasions to discuss the issue of Kashmir and has yet to see any tangible results. The current lockdown in Kashmir just perpetuates the consistent desire to end occupation by Indian forces and to achieve freedom after 63 years. In the past few months over 110 young people have been killed and some 3000 have been injured with even more being detained without charge of trial under the PSA. Each time that there has been an uprising in Indian Held Kashmir the government of Pakistan has been caught napping and has failed to act correctly on the international stage.

The current stance of India that the Kashmir dispute is not an internaional matter is ridiculous. In the late 1940′s India took the matter of Kashmir to the UN under chapter 6 which by its very definition makes it an internaitonal matter. Ms. Mizari questioned what had now changed to make India no longer want the matter to come under international and impartial investigation.

Ms. Mazari further noted that recent attempts to have dialogue with Kashmiri leaders was a cynical ploy in order to prop up the Indian position prior to the visit of Barak Obama in the coming months.

General Ashol Metha discussed the right of the people of J&K to a plebiscite. He noted that on the 5th of February 1994 the Indian representative to the security council made it clear that the government would under no circumstances allow that to take place. Mr. Mehta, having spent 15 years serving as a senior member of the Indian military in J&K, said that no Indian troops ever engaged with the civilian population so reports of such deaths or human rights violations were fictitious, he did however conceded that fake encounters, the practice of staging a confrontation with a person in order to have just cause to kill them, did take place.

Thousands fled India-controlled Kashmir. Are they better off in Pakistan?

By Issam Ahmed

While an insurgency raged against Indian authorities in the early 1990s, thousands of young men, including Rana Altaf’s father and uncle, were arrested by authorities, beaten, and tortured. Fearing for their lives, they eventually crossed the line of control that separates Indian-controlled Kashmir from the Pakistani side. They trekked on foot for three days over treacherous snowy terrain in a group of 60 people from neighboring families, avoiding Indian landmines.

“We knew if we turned back we faced certain death. They would have shot us,” recalls Rana’s father, Abdul Rasheed. Rasheed says he was arrested three times and interrogated by a man he remembers as “Major Sharma” who threatened to have him killed if he did not give up the names of militants hiding in his village. Rasheed insists he had nothing to do with the armed struggle in which an estimated 84,000 civilians lost their lives.

Seventeen years later, like many who made similar treks, the family lives in a make-shift shanty on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan administered Kashmir. Though they count themselves lucky to be alive, the family’s dream of a welcoming Pakistan was short lived.

“We’re grateful to Pakistan but we’re always made to feel different. The people here don’t like us, don’t mix with us, and it’s hard to get a job,” says Rana who has not yet received Pakistani citizenship or an ID card, and is therefore not entitled to attend college or legally seek employment. Rana’s mother, Sobia, complains that the family struggles for food each month as the men find informal work only occasionally.

A better option?

Some 35,000 Kashmiris fled from India-controlled Kashmir during the 1990s to settle in Pakistan, according to government estimates. They traveled difficult terrain and long distances to a country that claimed to speak for the beleaguered Kashmiri people. Years later, however, it has not yet granted citizenship to up to 40 percent of the migrants, mostly from the second or third generations. Most migrants live in camps and subsist on government handouts of about $8 a month per person.

“These are a group of people who bring into focus a humanitarian factor of the whole Kashmir dispute. The fact that these people have been living for 20 years in camps remains virtually unknown,” says Marjan Lucas, a Senior Program Officer at Dutch nongovernmental organization IKV Pax Christi who has been campaigning on behalf of the migrants.

Ms. Lucas suggests the government has been slow in awarding citizenship rights to the migrants because to do so would mean negating their right to self-determination. The Pakistan government continues to insist the 1948 United Nations Security Council Resolution calling for self-determination is the only acceptable mechanism through which to solve the Kashmir dispute with India.

“They were invited and told to stay until the dispute was resolved. When they came they were welcomed but it was expected that their stay would be temporary so Pakistan said ‘We don’t have to give you ID cards because you have the right to self-determination.’ ” This situation continued and continued and they’re still in the same situation they were in when they arrived, and now the third and fourth generations have been born within the camps.”

‘We want to go back home, but only after the Indian Army has left’

At Rana’s residence, a make-shift shanty home with a corrugated iron roof, on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad city, three families crowd into two rooms and subsist on government welfare checks of $17 per person per month. Not one of the family possess a Pakistani ID card- including Rana and his younger brother Mushtaq, who was born in Muzafarrabad.

“We left our lands, our properties, our animals and businesses to come here,” says Abdul, the family head. “We want to go back home, but only after the Indian Army has left. What business do they have in Kashmir?” he asks.

Few can afford to visit or contact relatives back home

Only 1 percent of the total population of Kashmir claims to have been able to visit friends of relatives on the other side in the last five years, according to a recent poll by the Chatham House think tank in London.

Having left behind their possessions, almost none of the migrants have been able to return to meet loved-ones, and some have not even been able to afford to make telephone contact. The much-touted bus service between the two Kashmirs, launched as part of peace efforts between India and Pakistan in 2005, is “just for show” they say, as bureaucratic hurdles make travel impossible for the common man.

A people without a home, ‘it’s like we don’t exist’

At the Manak Piyan camp at Muzaffarabad, home to some 2,000 migrants, a school teacher who asked not to be named because of his past membership in a militant group supported by Pakistani intelligence, says: “Nobody wants to take responsibility for us, it’s like we don’t exist.” Before fleeing India, the teacher studied at the Srinagar SP college.

He finally got his ID card seven years ago, after a long struggle with red tape. Some members of the community petitioned the High Court in 2005 for citizenship rights, but the court’s ruling extended only as far as a few dozen individual cases. Other migrants were granted citizenship in 2006 in the run-up to the Azad Jammu Kashmir state elections, in what some felt was a cynical ploy by politicians to garner votes.

Mir Abdul Rasheed Abbasi, a member of the AJK parliament, acknowledged delays in granting citizenship to the migrants but said that poor record keeping and fraudulent petitions for benefits are partly responsible.

The school teacher and other migrants here say they once fought India as members of the Inter Services Intelligence backed Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. He says he was taken to Khost in Afghanistan for training under the command of pro-Pakistan Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He walks with a prosthetic left leg after hitting a landmine during one of his sorties with militants back into Indian administered Kashmir.

Not your average jihadi

But he is not a run-of-the-mill jihadi: He is a staunch supporter of women’s right to education and work. He also says he is especially grateful for the work of Christian charities in the region and simply wants the world to recognize his struggle. “Our right to fight the occupying forces is guaranteed under the United Nations Charter,” he says, adding: “We want to go back home but we are hostages to our situation. Though we respect the people of AJK, their government does not favor us.”

Many within the camps still hold out hope for an independent Kashmir, and view armed struggle as necessary. Some find they do not fit in Pakistan because of cultural and linguistic differences – migrants speak the Kashmiri language whereas many of the locals speak a dialect of Punjabi. Some migrants are too proud to accept a Pakistani ID, says Lucas of Pax Christi. The community itself is not classed as “refugee camp” by the UNHCR.

For these reasons, Lucas says that her organization, along with Pakistan’s Mass Welfare Foundation, hopes to “stimulate the debate amongst the migrants (about) what future they want for themselves.”

Similarities can be drawn between the plight of the Kashmiri migrants in AJK to the struggle of the “Kashmiri Pandits” – Kashmiri Hindus of Brahmin heritage, who were driven out of Indian administered Kashmir en masse during the uprising in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Up to 400,000 Kashmiri Pandits are believed to be displaced.

“Groups like these tend to become exploited for propaganda purposes. The Indian establishment chose to use the Pandits as proof of the racist oppression of Muslim Kashmiris, to put them forward and say ‘these are the victims of Islamic terrorism,’ ” says Lucas.

“Pakistan has so far not exploited the Kashmiri migrants in a similar way, and this is very commendable,” she says. “But that might also be to avoid drawing attention to the conditions in which they are living in the camps.”

Kashmir curfew thwarts separatist march

SRINAGAR, India – Thousands of Indian police and paramilitary forces enforced a strict curfew in Kashmir on Tuesday, preventing a planned march to protest at the house arrest of a hardline separatist leader.

Kashmir authorities imposed a strict curfew in Srinagar and other towns

The organisers of recent anti-India protests in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley had called for the march to Syed Ali Geelani’s house in the region’s summer capital of Srinagar to protest against his detention.

Geelani is the head of a hardline separatist faction that has been spearheading protests against Indian rule since early June that have left some 110 protesters and bystanders dead.

Kashmir authorities imposed a strict curfew in Srinagar and other major towns on Tuesday to stop the march taking place.

“The situation at this hour continues to remain under control throughout the Kashmir valley,” a police statement said Tuesday afternoon, adding the curfew had been imposed to “maintain law and order.”

The valley has recently witnessed some of the biggest demonstrations since the eruption of an armed insurgency in 1989.

The protests were triggered on June 11, when a 17-year student was killed by a police teargas shell.

The killing sparked a cycle of violence, with every subsequent death sparking further protests.

The unrest has subsided in recent days after India announced several measures to appease local anger.

Sixteen security bunkers have been removed from Srinagar, 50 jailed protesters have been released and justice has been promised to the families of those killed.

Curfew as hardline Kashmir separatist calls protest

A day-long curfew has been imposed by the authorities in Indian-administered Kashmir to foil a protest march called by a hardline separatist group.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani (arms raised) has long been a thorn in the side of the Indian Kashmir authorities

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who is under house arrest, has urged demonstrators to march to his residence in Srinagar.

More than 100 civilians have been killed since June in protests, but it has been nearly a month since the security forces fired on protesters.

This is the first curfew in Kashmir for more than a week.

Mr Geelani’s calls for shutdowns have frequently brought life in the valley to a standstill, says the BBC’s Altaf Hussain in Srinagar.

The authorities say Tuesday’s curfew has been imposed to avoid a situation in which police would have to open fire.

Last month, the federal government announced measures to address surging violence in the valley.

They included compensation for families of those killed during recent clashes between pro-separatists and Indian security forces.

India starts removing some bunkers in Kashmir

By Izhar Wani

SRINAGAR, India - Security forces started removing some security bunkers from Indian Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar on Tuesday in an effort to ease tensions in a region racked by deadly protests.

An Indian security step-down is part of plans to defuse deadly street protests

“The process of removing some 16 security bunkers from Srinagar has started,” Prabhakar Tripathi, a spokesman for the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), told AFP.

The plan to remove the bunkers was announced last week in Srinagar after a meeting of top officials from the state, the Indian army, paramilitary forces and the intelligence agencies.

The move is part of an eight-point plan put forward by India’s Home Minister P. Chidambaram to try to defuse deadly anti-India street protests that have left some 110 protesters and bystanders dead since early June.

Local authorities also decided to release dozens of people arrested for throwing stones at security forces.

Checkpoints, bunkers and harsh military laws that give security forces sweeping powers to carry out arrests and destroy property in Indian Kashmir are seen by local politicians as fuelling a sense of occupation in the region.

The security infrastructure is a legacy of a 20-year separatist insurgency that has left an estimated 47,000 people dead, but militant violence has fallen to its lowest levels since the uprising began.

“The removal of security bunkers from Srinagar is an acceptance of the fact by India that militancy has gone down,” said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the head of the moderate faction of the region’s main separatist alliance.

“It is a welcome step but there is a need to remove more bunkers from Srinagar and other towns,” he told AFP. “The step should not be a symbolic one. The change should be visible on the ground and a step towards demilitarisation of the region.”

India has an estimated half million troops in the Himalayan region, which is divided between India and Pakistan and has caused two wars between the estranged South Asian neighbours.

Also Tuesday, medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) said it had resumed counselling traumatized victims of unrest in Indian Kashmir after suspending its work last month because of the violent street demonstrations.

“We’re dealing with a population already heavily traumatized by over two decades of violence, and today people are continuing to suffer psychologically,” said Maria Veerart, MSF’s Mental Health Officer in Kashmir.

Veerart said the organisation had resumed visiting victims of the recent violence and had provided counselling to 50 people since last week.

A wave of anti-India street protests began on June 11 when a 17-year old student was killed by a police teargas shell.

Since then, more than a 100 people have died in the violence, though the intensity of the demonstrations has fallen sharply in the last 10 days.

Games India Isn’t Ready to Play

By PANKAJ MISHRA
http://www.nytimes.com

Mashobra, India: ON Friday afternoon, public spaces across north India were flooded with policemen and paramilitaries. Thousands of alleged “troublemakers” were arrested. The sending of bulk text messages from mobile phones was banned. These precautions had nothing to do with the opening on Sunday of the Commonwealth Games, the athletic competition among the nations of the former British Empire that so many Indians have hoped would be their country’s symbolic coming out as a world power.

Rather, the police were out in force because an Indian court had pronounced its verdict on the site in the town of Ayodhya that has been long claimed by Hindu nationalists as the birthplace of Lord Rama. The government did not want a repeat of the horrific mob violence that in 1992 had followed the destruction by Hindu nationalists of a 16th-century mosque standing on the land in question.

Shortly after the verdict, which split the disputed site unequally in favor of Hindus and to the detriment of Muslims, I went for a walk through the Himalayan village near my home. Even here, 600 miles from Ayodhya, people seemed to be playing it safe, the market partly closed, and shopkeepers clustered around television sets behind shutters.

Only the migrant laborers, who have come hundreds of miles from central India to the Himalayas, were still at work, men, women and even children carrying heavy stones on their heads at the construction projects that litter the hillsides.

Easily identified – the parents small and thin and dark, and the children with distended bellies and rust-brown hair that speak of chronic malnutrition – these migrant laborers have been a regular sight here for some years, building summer homes for the affluent of Delhi all day, and then huddling under tin shacks at night.

I stopped to talk to a couple I know. All morning news channels had been working themselves into a frenzy of fear and anxiety. Even the more sober commentators fretted whether our “rising economic superpower” would be torn apart again over the question of whether the mythical Lord Rama was born in a ramshackle provincial town.

But the laborers hadn’t heard of the court verdict. As colder weather approaches, their greatest anxiety seemed to be to protect themselves: the punitive rains this summer have blown away the roofs of their living quarters. And it seemed only right that these helots of India’s globalized economy should be indifferent to the possible despoiling of India’s image in the West.

So who is anxious over India’s image in the wealthy world? That particular burden is borne by India’s small affluent elite, for whom the last few months have been full of painful and awkward self-reckonings. Certainly, the fear of violence over Ayodhya was only the latest in a long line of reminders that, as the columnist Vir Sanghvi put it, “as hard as we try to build a new India … old India still has the power to humiliate and embarrass us.”

Since June, a mass insurrection, resembling the Palestinian intifada, has raged in the Indian-held Valley of Kashmir. Defying draconian curfews, large and overwhelmingly young crowds of Kashmiri Muslims have protested human rights abuses by the nearly 700,000 Indian security forces there. Ill-trained soldiers have met stone-pelting protesters with gunfire, killing more than a hundred Kashmiris, mostly teenagers, and ensuring another militant backlash that will be exploited by radical Islamists in Pakistan.

A full-blown insurgency is already under way in central India, where guerrilla fighters inspired by Mao Zedong’s tactics are arrayed against a government they see as actively colluding with multinational corporations to deprive tribal people of their mineral-rich lands. In recent months, the Maoists have attacked the symbols of the state’s authority – railroads, armories, police stations – seemingly at will, killing scores of people.

Yet the greatest recent blow to wealthy Indians’ delusions on the subject of their nation’s inexorable rise has been the Commonwealth Games, for which Delhi was given a long and painful facelift. For so many, the contest was expected to banish India’s old ghosts of religious and class conflict, and cement its claims to a seat at the high tables of international superpowers.

But the games turned into a fiasco well before their scheduled opening. Two weeks ago, a huge footbridge connected to the main stadium collapsed. The federation that runs the games has called the athletes’ housing “uninhabitable.” The organizers have had to hire an army of vicious langur monkeys to keep wild animals from infesting the venues. Pictures of crumbling arenas and filthy toilets are circulating more widely than the beautiful landscapes of the government’s “Incredible India” tourism campaign.

As the ratings agency Moody worries that the debacle has “tarnished” India’s image, commentators here angrily hunt for blameworthy politicians and officials over what they call “national shame.” The contrast to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, in which the Chinese government largely overcame controversy and staked a claim to a dominant place in the world order, is all too depressingly clear.

These shocks to the Indian self-image are traumatic. But then the illusions about the new India have been too blinding. Vigorous economic growth, high-profile Indian businessmen congregating at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, and the greater visibility of successful and articulate Indians abroad have combined to make India, or English-speaking Indians, anyway, appear a perfect fit for the Western model of modernity – a “roaring capitalist success story,” as Foreign Affairs described the country in 2006.

It has helped our self-image, too, that Indians have many democratic institutions that are missing in most non-Western countries. Thus the major narrative that has developed internationally about democratic India in recent years assumes it to be more “stable” than authoritarian China. Yet Beijing faces no political problems as severe as the many insurgencies in central India and Kashmir, or tragedies as great as the waves of suicides of tens of thousands of overburdened farmers over the last two decades.

Certainly, the narrative of India as vibrant democracy and booming economy suppresses more than it reveals. Business-lounge elites around the world revel in statistics about economic growth and Indians rising up Forbes’s rankings of billionaires. At the same time, they simply ignore the alarmingly deep and growing inequalities of income and resources in India.

The newspaper Financial Express estimated that the private wealth of the 49 Indians on the Forbes list is nearly 31 percent of India’s gross domestic product – a ratio that makes them three times more crucial to the Indian economy than their billionaire counterparts in the United States are to the American economy. In July, a United Nations report revealed that there are more poor people in just eight Indian states than in all the 26 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, with the large state of Madhya Pradesh comparable in intensity of deprivation to war-ravaged Congo.

India not only lives, as the cliché goes, in several centuries at once; it is also a land of multiple narratives, which continuously and often painfully overlap. The Commonwealth Games, the showcase of India’s progress, uprooted as many as 100,000 of the most deprived Indians in Delhi no less ruthlessly than the Chinese cleanse their ultramodern cities of the ungainly poor.

The laborers building the vacation retreats of the privileged in my village – part of the explosion of cheap labor that has helped build private fortunes in India and abroad – are refugees from the part of India where longstanding feudal cruelties are now compounded by the battles between Maoists and multinational corporations seeking precious minerals.

Well-to-do Indians fear that Hindu nationalists emboldened by the verdict on Ayodhya might scare off foreign investors. But it was Hindu nationalists who, coming to power in 1998 through successive bloody anti-Muslim campaigns, followed policies that expedited the country’s grossly uneven economic development and entrenched corporate special interests in India’s politics.

More fatefully, the Hindu nationalists exploded nuclear bombs underground and threatened Pakistan with all-out war, creating a legacy of hard-line nationalism – which the Indian military in Kashmir and successive governments in Delhi have embraced.

Certainly, the four million Muslims of Kashmir, who every day suffer the brutalities of what’s arguably the world’s largest military occupation, cannot be blamed for failing to make meaningful distinctions between Hindu nationalists and the current government, led by the more moderate Congress Party. Their fate remains that of a minority kept under perpetual siege by a paranoid nation-state.

Like hundreds of millions of other voiceless Indians, the migrant laborers in my village are even less able to distinguish between the oppressions of old feudal India and the pitiless exploitations of the new business-minded India. I wonder if the recent destruction of their fragile shelters doesn’t hold some symbolism. Perhaps the greatest danger to India’s image is that they may one day cease to cower in those shacks, and, like their counterparts in central India, erupt in armed revolt.

This summer’s setbacks to India’s image may soon fade from memory. But their lesson for the rhapsodic narrators of India’s modernity seems clear. “There is no document of civilization,” Walter Benjamin once wrote, “which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” This is the melancholy truth that all narratives about “rising” India must acknowledge if they are not to be trumped by pictures of a collapsed bridge and a leaking toilet.

Pankaj Mishra is the author of “Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond.”

Mirwaiz slams inconclusive Kashmir APC

AFP / Express

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, has slammed the All Parties Conference (APC) on Kashmir and said that Kashmiris will not accept any solution but independence.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said that there could be no dialogue until a draw down of Indian troops and a release of prisoners. PHOTO: AFP

He said he would have supported the conference if it had focused on the Kashmir resolution, but that the meeting had a limited agenda. He said India should first put an end to human rights violations in Kashmir.

“Kashmiris are fighting for freedom, not just protesting,” said Mirwaiz. He added that there could be no dialogue until a draw down of Indian troops in the region and the release of prisoners.

“The meeting is a cosmetic and half-hearted measure,” said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. “Our focus continues to be on the bigger issue of resolving the Kashmir dispute.” Another senior leader, Javed Mir, scorned the idea of a fact-finding mission and contrasted the response to the Kashmir violence with the reaction to recent floods in the nearby region of Leh.

“When the natural tragedy struck Leh recently, every Indian who matters, be it the prime minister, the president, Sonia Gandhi and Raul Gandhi visited the grief-struck people. But no one bothers to visit Kashmir,” he said.

‘Dialogue is the only way to peace in Kashmir’

Earlier, speaking at the all parties conference that was held in India to try to forge a consensus on how to defuse escalating tension in Kashmir after the worst violence in three months of protests, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that he is ready to speak to anyone who shuns violence and that dialogue is the only way to peace in the Kashmir crisis.

“The only path for lasting peace and prosperity in Jammu and Kashmir is that of dialogue and discussion,” Singh added. “Those who have grievances against the government have to talk to the administration,” he said. “But it is also true that meaningful dialogue can happen only in an atmosphere free from violence and confrontation.”

Singh said he was “shocked and distressed” by deadly protests in Kashmir and called for calm to enable talks on the crisis to take place. He said some of the escalating demonstrations, which began in June, “may have been impulsive or spontaneous” but he also pointed the finger at “certain groups” for orchestrating them.

India’s government said that it would send a cross-party delegation to Kashmir to gather information about the unrest that has left 93 people dead in the last three months.

The decision was the main outcome of the crisis meeting, with no consensus reached on withdrawing a tough military law in the region.

The Armed Forces Special Power Act enables the army and paramilitary forces to detain suspected militants indefinitely and is seen as fuelling a sense of injustice and military occupation for Kashmiris.

The fact-finding mission will help inform policy making, the government said.

However, a date for the mission’s visit was not given and there were few details as to its remit, other than an order to meet different sections of the population and gather opinions.

No senior ministers or mainstream national political figures have visited the Kashmir Valley since the unrest began three months ago. Kashmiri leaders dismissed the meeting as a public relations ploy.

New Delhi has in the past blamed Pakistani groups and hardline separatists for stirring up trouble in Kashmir, which is divided between India and Pakistan.

“I was shocked and distressed to see young men and women – even children – joining the protests on the streets,” Singh said at the opening of a meeting of political parties called to debate ways of easing tensions in Kashmir.

His comments came as police opened fire on another demonstration in the disputed Himalayan region on Wednesday, killing two people and injuring at least 11 others.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who admitted last week that he was “groping” for a response, is chairing the all-party meeting at his residence, with the government under pressure to show leadership in the worsening crisis.

One measure under consideration is the partial withdrawal of a tough military law in the region, which grants the armed forces immunity and is seen as fuelling a sense of injustice for Kashmiris.

The cabinet discussed this at a meeting on Monday, but decided against taking a decision on a day that saw the worst violence since mass street protests began in June. Seventeen protestors were killed in police shootings and one police officer died in the mob violence.

“Ultimately we thought that before we take a final decision, we should take into confidence all major political parties,” Defence Minister AK Antony told reporters on Tuesday. “It is better to involve everybody.”

A strict curfew imposed in all major towns and troublespots in Kashmir since Sunday remained in place. There were no reports of clashes overnight or early Wednesday.

Politically, the ruling Congress party is hemmed in by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) main opposition group, which sees any concession on autonomy or security as a betrayal of the nation. “Kashmir is in turmoil due to wrong policies of the state and the centre and the need is to have more forces, but the Congress is looking to reduce the number of security personnel” in Kashmir, BJP spokesman Shahnawaz Hussain said. “The BJP wants total peace in Kashmir prior to any talks and it is of the opinion that unless this happens any form of talks is useless.”

The prime minister warned last week that there “is no royal road to success” and that he “can’t pull a rabbit out of a hat” in Kashmir, which is part of the northwestern state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).

Many before him have tried and failed, producing a deadlock that dates back to the partition of the subcontinent in 1947, when the Muslim-majority region was split between India and Pakistan. It has triggered two of the three wars between the nuclear-armed nations and remains an enduring source of tension in South Asia.

The Hindu newspaper criticised 77-year-old Singh in an editorial on Wednesday, saying the protests had made a “bonfire” of his “vanity project” of finding a solution to the 60-year problem. Singh has doggedly pursued peace talks with Pakistan, argued in favour of reducing the military presence in Kashmir and repeatedly offers talks to all parties in Kashmir that reject violence.

“Each of these enterprises ended in impasse,” said The Hindu. “By talking big while having little to offer, New Delhi has unwittingly fanned the flames in J&K,” it said. “Firm, generous-spirited action to win over the people is needed.”

For three months, young Kashmiris have thrown stones at security forces, defied strict curfews and held anti-India rallies, resulting in clashes that have left 88 people dead. The frustrated new generation has become the focus of resistance to Indian rule, superseding the militants who made the region one of the most dangerous places on Earth in the 1990s.

Since 1989, an anti-India insurgency has plagued the part of Kashmir ruled by New Delhi, claiming an estimated 47,000 lives.

But militancy has fallen to its lowest level for two decades and New Delhi estimates there are now just 500 militants active in the region, a fraction of the thousands previously.

More people have died at the hands of the security forces this year than in militant attacks. A majority in Indian Kashmir, where New Delhi has an estimated 500,000 troops, favour independence for their region, according to a recent poll.

Bihar: Falsehood, Infirmity & Death

By Ajai Sahni

“We will saturate the Naxal-prone areas with development”, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had grandly intoned in November 2009, outlining his ‘strategy’ to neutralize the Maoist insurgency, his head entirely wrapped up in clouds. Rejecting the Centre’s declared policy of dealing with the Maoists with a firm hand in ‘massive and coordinated operations’, and the proposal for a Unified Command (themselves poorly conceived, entirely under-resourced and far from successful initiatives), Kumar argued, that “enforcement action alone” would only lead to “wider alienation” and make “heroes out of the leaders of the extremist organisations… leading to only symptomatic treatment, leaving the underlying disease to reappear in more virulent form.”

The ‘symptoms’ that Kumar chooses to wilfully ignore have, however, now delivered a resounding slap in the face to his Government, brought his administration to its knees, even as more lives among the State’s beleaguered and directionless Security Forces (SFs) have been wasted to blind stupidity.

On August 29, 2010, at least seven SF personnel were killed, and another seven injured, in a ‘combing operation’ gone wrong, when they were attacked by cadres of the Communist Party of India – Maoist (CPI-Maoist), their numbers variously estimated at between 300 and a thousand, in the Kajra Police Station area of Lakhisarai District. ‘Intelligence reports’ had indicated ‘Maoist presence’ in the forest, but had omitted any assessment of Maoist strength in the area, leading the Bihar Police ‘search teams’ into a lethal trap – a pattern repeated in almost every major massacre of SF personnel by the Maoists in recent years.

The matter did not end there. The Maoists abducted four Policemen – Sub Inspectors Rupesh Kumar and Abhay Yadav, Assistant Sub Inspector (ASI) Lucas Tete, and Havildar Ehtesham Khan – after the encounter and ratcheted up the stakes by demanding the release of eight prominent Maoists in Bihar’s jails: Jai Paswan, Vijay Chourasia, Prem Bhuian, Pramod Barnawal, Ramvilas Tanti, Ramesh Tirki, Arjun Koda and Rattu Koda.

The Maoists then executed Lucas Tete in the night of September 2, after two ‘deadlines’ given by them had passed without response from the Government – beyond appeals for the release of the abducted Policemen – and warned that the remaining hostages would also be killed unless their comrades were released. On September 6, however, the three surviving Policemen were released after Chief Minister Kumar had announced safe passage for the Maoists out of the area in which they had been substantially contained by augmented Forces.

It is significant that the decision to release the remaining Policemen came after the heavy redeployment of a combination of Forces – Bihar Military Police (BMP), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the Special Task Force (STF) and the Special Action Force (SAF) – from four adjoining Districts in combing operations, and the virtual sealing off of the Maoists’ escape routes. The seething anger in the SFs suggested the possibility of sweeping vendetta killings – an outcome that the Maoists were apparently eager to escape.

Nitish Kumar has attempted to extract victory out of this present disgrace, and has emphasised that “no deal was struck with the Naxals”. He concedes, nevertheless, that “there is no guarantee that such incidents will not be repeated.”

Kumar has been posturing and mouthing hackneyed nonsense about the Maoists being “part of our society” and that they had been “misled into violence”, for years now, even as he has presided over perhaps the most anarchic State in India. A degree of optimism had certainly asserted itself during the first years after Kumar took over as Chief Minister in November 2005, but the natural torpor of governance in Bihar appears to have reasserted itself since. In the interim, his Government has projected itself as conciliatory towards, and has been seen as weak by, the Maoists, who increasingly use Bihar as a favoured safe haven from the relatively worsening operational environments in the neighbouring States, particularly of West Bengal and Jharkhand (though elements from Chhattisgarh have also found safety there).

It is significant that the Naxalites have orchestrated at least 13 significant incidents of abduction since the formation of the CPI-Maoist in September 2004, and before the August 29 incident. At least three of these have ended in the death of hostages:

June 17-19, 2009: CPI-Maoist cadres, who had abducted two personnel of the Chhattisgarh Armed Force (CAF), Ram Bhuwan Patel and Dhanjay Verma, from a hilly stretch in Bijapur District, Chhattisgarh, on June 17, killed them and dumped the bodies on a roadside in a forested area. Police said the victims’ throats were slit with sharp edged weapons.

September 30, 2009: Six CPI-Maoist cadres abducted Police Inspector (Special Branch) Francis Induwar, posted in the Khunti District, Jharkhand. On October 3, the Maoists demanded the release of their senior leaders Kobad Ghandy, Chhatradhar Mahto and Chandra Bhushan Yadav. On October 6, the Jharkhand Police found the decapitated dead body of Francis Induwar on the Jamshedpur-Ranchi Highway, with a note from the Maoists saying that they could expect more of the same treatment if their demands were not met.

June 19, 2008: Three Special Police Officers (SPOs) were killed by the CPI-Maoist in the Banda Police Station limits of Dantewada District, Chhattisgarh. The SPOs had been abducted along with five Policemen following an encounter in the forests, seven kilometers away from Konta town, on June 18. The SPOs were taken to a Maoist camp in the forests blind-folded where they were asked to distance themselves from the Salwa Judum and the Police. Five of them were then let off and three others – Gopal, Bhadru and Lakshmaiah, were shot dead and their bodies abandoned near Banda village.

In two of the 13 incidents, the release came after Maoist demands were conceded. In the remaining eight, the abducted persons were released after various durations in captivity. None of the preceding incidents occurred in Bihar.

Nevertheless, Bihar has seen a steady worsening of Maoist-related violence over the past five years, after an earlier peak in 2005, when a total of 106 persons (25 civilians, 29 SF personnel and 52 Maoists) were killed. Total fatalities have, since, climbed from 40 in 2006, to 49 in 2007; 71 in 2008; 78 in 2009; and 53 in 2010 (till September 5, 2010). Crucially, the ratios of civilian and SF to Maoist fatalities have been adverse in every year after 2005, clearly demonstrating the loss of initiative that has resulted from the Nitish Kumar Government’s declared policy position, and the rising threat to civilian lives and property.

Bihar is among India’s poorest States, and it takes an extraordinary capacity for delusion to believe that the cumulative developmental deficits and the sheer enormity of the population under poverty can quickly be transformed by any ‘strategy’ to ‘saturate’ affected areas with ‘development’, even if the most extraordinarily well oiled machinery of governance was in place. In Bihar, administration is a disaster and a national joke. Nevertheless, such fantasies continue to secure political endorsement, even as fundamental tasks of providing a modicum of security to life and property are comprehensively ignored.

In a remark that is both extraordinarily callous and obtuse, Nitish Kumar reportedly declared “All’s well that ends well”, after the release of the three surviving hostages.

All has certainly not ended well for the seven Policemen killed in the encounter on August 29, and for their families; or for ASI Lucas Tete and his family.

Crucially, nothing has ended in Bihar: the Maoist rampage continues; the infirmity and ambivalence of the state and its agencies persists; endemic poverty and backwardness remain unchanged; administrative incompetence and corruption has not migrated out of the State. Yet, Kumar is, once again, mouthing fantastical nonsense about the Maoists ‘joining the national mainstream’ by participating in the coming State Assembly elections. Such a depth of incomprehension, or, perhaps more accurately, of falsification, can only bring more death.

India’s brutality has turned Kashmir into a living hell

By Giorgiana Violante

This is the first time in weeks I have had access to the internet. I have not been allowed to receive or send text messages for three months. Just like all Kashmiris my telephone has been barred from such contact. The local news channels have been banned. India controls everything here. And then kills it. The situation is horrific. Over these months of food rationing and persistent curfew whereby all is closed and the streets totally deserted in utter silence, suddenly a protest arises and then spreads throughout the whole city in a surge of frustrated and famished rioters shouting ‘AZADI AZADI AZADI’ (freedom) until it dissipates suddenly into a cacophony of gunshots and clouds of teargas.

Police brutality in Kashmir

I observe all this going on at a safe remove of only one metre by a big thick brick wall interrupted by the Mevlana Rumi gate to Kashmir University, where I am residing. I see through the iron bars hordes upon hordes of protesters being shot at randomly, and I stand there repellently incapable of doing anything. An endless cycle of silence and violence. The Indian army own total control and freedom to shoot at will, to shoot to kill, anyone whom they choose to.

Last week a seven-year-old child was beaten to death. You cannot accidentally beat a seven-year-old to death. It is not like a bullet that goes astray. I cannot see how a stone thrown by a seven-year-old child can do sufficient damage to any man to warrant his being beaten to death. Children in this part of the world are tiny. A seven-year-old is the size of a three-year-old westerner. So what kind of person beats a tiny child to death when his stone throw must carry so little force that it barely deserves a shrug? This is such a common occurrence here.

The other day I left the university grounds to visit a professor only one minute away. True there is curfew but his house is in a private road attached to the university so I thought I would risk it. When I returned a roofless sumo vehicle full of ten Indian army thugs laughing and shouting came charging through the street waving their batons and guns. They headed for an old man and tried to hit him and then they knocked a four-year-old boy off his tricycle. For fun. He was only 50 centimetres outside his house’s garden so that hardly counts as disobeying the curfew and yet they charged at him on purpose. They knocked him off the tricycle and then headed for me, which as a western woman I did not expect.

I am living here within the deserted university grounds, alone with the security guards and a few random professors and clerks. The university was evacuated three months ago when the troubles commenced and the students and school children all over the valley have experienced, as they always do, a great void in their education.

The Indian army gun down eleven-year-old girls banging on the doors of pharmacists when it is clear that their disobedience of the curfew is purely out of desperation. How can a full grown man gun down and kill an eleven-year-old girl banging on a pharmacy door in an empty street? A woman kneeling on the pavement covering her face with her hands had her hands beaten to a pulp and they had to be amputated. Two weeks ago, on a Friday, I heard the usual impassioned pleads for freedom hailing from Hazratbal Mosque, which is just outside the university. For an hour the calls of ‘Azadi’ escalated and escalated until suddenly I heard a spray of gunshots. The shots continued sporadically over the next hour. I later found out that the mosque was raided by the army and people were beaten severely. Some died, of course.

The Indian army have the right and the freedom to behave like this, invading places of worship simply because of impassioned calls for freedom by a people who are being totally crushed and obliterated. This sort of thing happens every day. Total abuse of power by the occupying forces. But the people of Kashmir have no right to retaliate. Nor the freedom to even leave their homes. I cannot bear my complete and utter uselessness in this situation. As a rich westerner even I cannot get food. The other day myself and seven boys shared two carrots between us and a handful of rice.

So how can these Kashmiris be managing when they have not been able to open their businesses for three months? How can they even have the money to afford food, even if there WAS food to be had from somewhere? You risk your life in order to get food. How can you get food without leaving home? Yesterday a young boy working as a clerk in the university showed me his mauled arms and the gash in his thigh. His arms were black and purple with crusted blood from last week. His legs were obscene. Flesh made hell.

‘I went to get medicine’ he said, ‘and the army caught me’. I smiled and said, ‘Oh you people are always getting caught on the way to get medicine. Rubbish it was medicine. You went to get biscuits.’

‘Aren’t biscuits medicine?’ he replied, smiling the same smile as mine.

Last week as I circled the admittedly beautiful university grounds, a forest of chinar trees and endless rows of roses in full bloom, moghul gardens outside every department (Why are these gardens perfectly tendered? Given the situation outside how do these people have the strength and hope to even care to tend their gardens? Everything here is death and hopelessness. I would have expected the gardens to have been left to run to desolation), I saw a thin little old man with a cotton bag full of lumps. Usually one doesn’t see bags. Certainly not ones with lumps in them. Not in these conditions. My mind viciously wondered how he got the food? Who he got it from? Had he bribed one of the army pigs at the university gates? I suddenly realised I was frowning and in a very ugly-minded manner. The ugly things hunger does to a person’s mind is shocking. His bag was probably full of dirty laundry.

Sometimes someone will address me angrily as I pass by, something along the lines of:

“Hey you, America! Why aren’t you helping us? You do something.”

“What can I do?” I reply, “I’m neither a politician nor a journalist. I’m just trapped here like you.”

“But you’re a Westener. You see how things are here. We have been living like this for twenty years. When you go back to your country you tell them. You ask them why they aren’t helping us.”

“It’s your own fault,” I reply. “Why should we bother saving your country when its got no natural resources worth raping? All you’ve got is apples, goats and saffron. You’re doomed.”

A few seconds of silence will be followed by a warm invitation to tea. Muslim hospitality. At this time when every tea leaf is precious these people will share even their last few crumbs of powdered milk with you. And you sit there sipping the tea wondering how and where they managed to procure it and how much it cost them in beatings.

Bullets and stones

Asif Ezdi

When Abdul Ahad Jan, a Kashmiri police official, hurled a shoe at Omar Abdullah at a ceremony in Srinagar to celebrate India’s Independence Day, he became an instant hero. Ahad also waved a black flag and chanted, “We want azadi,” The Indian authorities immediately declared him to be mentally disturbed but thousands of Kashmiris descended on his home village to congratulate his family. Women showered flowers on Jan’s wife and kissed and hugged her.

Omar Abdullah tried to laugh off the incident, saying that hurling a shoe was better than hurling a stone. But for the Kashmiris this is no laughing matter. They have been facing not shoes – or stones – but bullets from an occupying force which has been given the license to use lethal force to keep demonstrators off the streets and enforce curfews. Since June this year, when the current wave of protests began, nearly 60 Kashmiris have been killed, most of them youngsters and teenagers, some mere children. Scores have been injured, some maimed for life.

Abdullah’s Indian masters are also unlikely to have been amused by the shoe-throwing incident. They have been rattled by the mass scale of the demonstrations and especially the breadth of the support the protesters enjoy from the general public. Besides the youth, women have also been demonstrating on the streets with their pots and pans and have joined in throwing stones, the only “weapon” available to the unarmed population, at the hated occupation force. The New York Times wrote on 12 August that Delhi has been facing an intifada-like popular revolt against the Indian military presence that includes not just stone-throwing young men but their sisters, mothers, uncles and grandparents.

Indian officials have tried to belittle the scale and significance of the Kashmiri protest. Contrary to all evidence, Home Minister Chidambaram has said the protests were confined to Srinagar and “perhaps some other towns.” India has also pointed its finger at Pakistan for instigating the mass movement. Chidambaram said on 30 June that Lashkar-e-Taiba was behind the mass protests. In a statement in Parliament on 6 August, he went further and hinted that official agencies in Pakistan could be behind the protests. “Pakistan appears to have altered its strategy in influencing events in Jammu and Kashmir,” Chidambaram said. “It is possible that they believe that relying upon civilian unrest will pay them better dividends.”

At a meeting of the Congress Working Committee on 17 August, leaders of India’s ruling party expressed worry at what they saw as a “new chapter” in the history of separatism in Kashmir. There are good reasons for Delhi to be worried because the Kashmiri intifada signals the complete failure of India’s attempt spanning six decades to give legitimacy to its occupation of Kashmir. It also illustrates the truth of the maxim that what has been won through force and fraud can only be kept through more force and more fraud.

The response of the Manmohan Singh government to the mass protests has been to come up with some old tricks. On India’s Independence Day, he invited anyone “who abjures violence” for talks, offered greater autonomy to the state “within the ambit of the Indian constitution” and promised more jobs for the youth and more money for development. These “offers” were quickly rejected by the Hurriyat leaders who pointed out that their struggle is for azadi, not for autonomy, jobs or money.

In his speech on India’s Independence Day last year, Manmohan Singh had claimed that people of all areas of Jammu and Kashmir had participated in elections to the State Legislative Assembly in 2008 and the Lok Sabha in 2009. That was proof, Manmohan asserted, that there is no place for separatist thought in Jammu and Kashmir. The current resurgence in the Kashmiri movement for azadi has now proved this to have been an empty boast. As the New York Times noted, Kashmir’s demand for self-determination is sharper today than it has been at perhaps any other time in the state’s troubled history.

Clearly India has failed completely in winning the hearts and minds of the Kashmiris. But the silence of the international community at India’s bloody response to peaceful protests shows that it may be winning the diplomatic battle. The only significant voice raised against the excesses of the Indian occupation forces was a bland statement by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressing concern at the situation in Kashmir and calling on all to exercise the utmost restraint. Ban quickly backtracked when India protested.

The US and other major Western countries, which are usually quick to denounce human rights violations elsewhere, have been mum over Indian brutalities in Kashmir to avoid riling Delhi. Before becoming president, it is true, Obama considered appointing a special envoy on Kashmir, but he quickly gave up the idea when Delhi rejected the proposal out of hand. Obama’s interest in Kashmir, short-lived as it was, in any case did not arise from a concern for the rights of the Kashmiri people. Rather it was aimed at reducing Pakistan-India tensions so that Islamabad might be more forthcoming in responding to Washington’s demands for the deployment of the Pakistan army on the western frontier in support of the US war in Afghanistan.

The US is a strategic partner of India and has been assiduously cultivating the country. It is therefore naïve on the part of Pakistani leaders to keep seeking Washington’s mediation on Kashmir. We also need to realise that any intervention by Washington would be in favour of cementing the status quo. What we should be doing instead, loudly and publicly, is to urge Washington and the international community to use their leverage to press Delhi to end its human rights abuses in Kashmir.

At the same time, we will have to redefine our own Kashmir policy. Musharraf’s sellout in the back channel talks with India from 2005 to 2007 caused a setback to the Kashmiri freedom struggle. Foreign Minister Qureshi’s statement last March that Pakistan was reverting to its old stand on Kashmir was reassuring because it suggested that this government would repudiate the deal that Musharraf was negotiating.

But in his talks with Krishna in July, Qureshi gave a different message, apparently at Washington’s behest. According to the Indian side, he told Krishna that Pakistan regarded the “gains” made in back-channel talks under Musharraf as “important and useful” and would not put them “at naught.” The Indians see this concession as a major plus from the otherwise unproductive meeting.

The government would do well to clarify its position on this issue. Otherwise, it will lay itself open to the charge that it is trying to keep the Pakistani public in the dark on this important matter. An unambiguous statement from the government that it rejects the deal under which Musharraf was prepared to barter away the right of the Kashmiris to self-determination would also give a boost to their movement for azadi.

The government has so far been very timid in expressing support for the Kashmiri intifada. During his nine-day junket in France and Britain, Zardari did not utter the K-word even once. He may be forgiven because his interests and priorities lie in another field. But the reticence of the prime minister, the foreign minister and especially the Foreign Ministry is indefensible. If we are serious about extending political, moral and diplomatic support to the right of the Kashmiri people to self-determination, as we keep saying, the government will have to come out boldly in support of those who are braving Indian bullets to demand this right and mobilise international support for their demands.

Not only the government but also Parliament, political parties, the media and the civil society have a responsibility in this regard. The least they can do is to break their silence and proclaim their solidarity with the unarmed Kashmiri men, women and children who have decided to take their destiny in their own hands and are defying brute force.

The writer is a former member of the Pakistan Foreign Service.

Email: asifezdi@yahoo.com

The Bleeding Vale of Kashmir

By Brig Asif Haroon Raja

The cauldron of Kashmir continues to simmer and smolder in view of India’s scorched earth policy. Appalling human rights abuses and atrocities have been committed against civilian population. According to recently published Human Rights report, between 1989 and June 30, 2010, the number of Kashmiris killed at the hands of Indian security forces stands at 93,274. Additionally, there have been 6969 custodial killing, over 107,351 children have been orphaned, 22,728 women widowed and 9920 women gang raped. 11735 persons were arrested and 105861 houses or structures in use were razed.

Kasmir is bleeding; India competing with Israel

Ever since indigenous armed resistance commenced in Indian Held Kashmir (IHK) in 1989, India has been incessantly holding Pakistan responsible for the uprising. It portrayed the freedom struggle as terrorist movement wholly aided by Pakistan. India didn’t take into account the hard realities that Kashmiris had sustained the cruelties of Indian forces for too long. They had been repeatedly duped and promise of plebiscite made by Jawahar Lal Nehru made in 1948 remained unfulfilled. They had got fed up of the puppet state regimes imposed upon them and the lackluster approach of Pakistan towards their cause.

They got inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 followed by Palestinian intifada in 1987 and grand victory of Mujahideen against a super power in Afghanistan in 1988. These events catapulted the otherwise insipid and terrorized Kashmiris who would not pick up courage to even protest against abuses of Indian security forces. This was evident from their poor response to Operation Gibraltar launched By Pakistani irregulars in August 1965 aimed at helping the Kashmiris to realize their dream of freedom from India. Kashmiri youths from 1990 onwards were a transformed lot, fully motivated and charged up. No amount of brutal force and torture applied by Indian forces would break their will to fight back.

Few thousand Kashmiri Mujahideen kept over 700,000 regular and paramilitary forces in a spin and Kashmir became a bleeding wound for India. They showed their extraordinary grit and firmness during the Kargil conflict in summer of 1999 where in conjunction with irregulars of Northern Light Infantry, they kept the might of Indian Army at bay for ten weeks. The US and G-8 countries had to intervene to force Pakistan to vacate the occupied heights. After suffering humiliation at Kargil, India had to suffer another embarrassment when its ten-month military standoff failed to intimidate Pakistan and it had to withdraw its forces in October 2002.

India sought assistance from Israel how to deal with Kashmiri militants and learnt new methods of torture but to no effect. By 2003, Indian troops employed in IHK had become fatigued and demoralized. Cases of indiscipline, soldiers firing at seniors, desertions, suicides, and mental disorders rose phenomenally. Hospitals got filled up with malingerers and psychiatric cases. Recruitment in Army dropped radically despite announcing better pay packages. Kashmir became a dreaded station and none liked to be posted there. It was under such unsavory conditions that Indo-Pak peace treaty facilitated by USA was signed in January 2004.

In his exuberance to appease India so that an amicable solution to Kashmir dispute and other disputes of Siachin, Sir Creek and dams on rivers could be found, Gen Musharraf took several steps to remove Indian concerns. He gave a written pledge that he would not allow Pakistan soil for exporting terrorism. He banned six Jihadi outfits engaged in supporting freedom struggle in IHK and ceased their funds. By restoring peace in Kashmir, he allowed India to fence the Line of Control (LoC) and also took stringent measures to curb movement across the LoC.

All Parties Hurryat Conference (APHC) got split between moderates and extremists, former led by Mir Waiz and latter by Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Moderates agreed to hold negotiations with Indian leaders and to workout an out of box solution as proposed by Musharraf which was outside the realms of UNSC Resolutions. Musharraf’s one-sided initiatives delivered severe blows to the indigenous struggle waged by Kashmiri armed freedom fighters that had intensified in 2003-04. Indian leaders started admitting after 2005 that cross border infiltration had reduced to a trickle. Instead of appreciating efforts put in by Pakistan Indian military claimed that stringent measures adopted by them had not only blocked movement of foreign terrorists but also the insurgency in IHK.

Peace along LoC and in IHK helped India to use Afghan soil to export terrorism into Pakistan and to create situation similar to IHK. India created and supported terrorist outfits for Balochistan and FATA to destabilize Pakistan. It was also able to hold general elections in the state in 2007 which brought in pro-India National Conference and Congress in power. Since the voters’ turnout was over 50%, Indian leaders started to brag that foreign sponsored insurgency had almost been quashed and there was no need for negotiations. They once again reverted to their uncompromising stance that Kashmir was integral part of India and its further division was out of question. The only leeway they wanted to give was to treat LoC as permanent border between two Kashmirs. The Kashmiris once again felt let down by Pakistan, betrayed by India and ignored by the world as they had felt in 1989.

There was also resentment among younger generation of Kashmir against their leaders for getting hoodwinked by Indian sweet talk and damaging the movement. The movement got reignited on a dispute over land being allotted to Amarnath Shrine Board in summer of 2008 and economic blockade imposed by Hindus in Jammu. The whole Valley resounded with slogans of Azadi (freedom) and pro-Pakistan slogans. Hundreds of thousands of people defied curfews and heavy presence of security forces. Soldiers and policemen fired straight into the crowds killing scores of people but protests continued unabated. It was the first manifestation of democratic, non-violent protests as note by Arundhati Roy.

Intensity and resoluteness of unarmed protests by Kashmiris in Srinagar and other major towns of the Valley unnerved India and the state government. Protests over India’s black laws and oppressive and unjust policies continued for months but neither Pakistan nor the world took any note of their plight. Policy of picking up suspects, putting them in secret dungeons and torturing them, fake encounters and rape continued unabatedly. The second bout of unarmed protests took place in the summer of 2009, which were ruthlessly dealt with by Indian forces disregarding that the protestors had no arms.

Fresh wave of mass agitation against India’s rule in J&K spearheaded by unarmed teenagers have spread across Kashmir Valley since last June. Intensity of protests is growing with each passing day. In June 2010 alone, 33 people were killed including four children. 572 people were tortured and injured and eight women were molested. 59 Kashmiris, mostly teenagers including an eight-year boy have been killed till 14 August by CRPF and Police. Each killing is fuelling more anger and they are coming out on streets in greater numbers.

It is high time for champions of human rights to listen to the cries of Kashmiris and take stock of atrocities perpetrated by Indian forces, killing small kids and old men and raping Kashmiri women with gusto. Peace in South Asia will remain illusive without a solution to Kashmir dispute, which has also bred extremism and terrorism in the region. Indian leaders must come out of their uncompromising and stubborn mode by fulfilling the pledge of their reverend leader Nehru and hold a plebiscite in Kashmir. Farce of Aman ki Asha and other deceitful games would work no more. Resolution of longstanding Kashmir dispute will usher in peace and prosperity in South Asia, which is primed for a bigger explosion because of discontentment and burgeoning poverty. The UNSC and USA should let go their duplicitous policy and act before it is too late.

Brig Asif Haroon Raja an Member Board of Advisors Opinion Maker is Staff College and Armed Forces War Course qualified, holds MSc war studies degree; a second generation officer, he fought epic battle of Hilli in northwest East Bengal during 1971 war, in which Maj M. Akram received Nishan-e-Haider posthumously. He served as Directing Staff Command & Staff College, Defence Attaché Egypt and Sudan and Dean of Corps of Military Attaches in Cairo. He commanded the heaviest brigade in Kashmir. He is lingual and speaks English, Pashto and Punjabi fluently. He is author of books titled ‘Battle of Hilli’, ’1948, 1965 & 1971 Kashmir Battles and Freedom Struggle’, ‘Muhammad bin Qasim to Gen Musharraf’, Roots of 1971 Tragedy’; has written number of motivational pamphlets. Draft of his next book ‘Tangled Knot of Kashmir’ is ready. He is a defence analyst and columnist and writes articles on security, defence and political matters for numerous international/national newspapers/websites

Time to get ‘Kashmir’ centre stage

By Air Commodore® Khalid Iqbal

Freedom from India

As a matter of routine, thousands of people defy round the clock curfews in the Indian held Kashmir (IHK) urban areas, burning police vehicles in the streets, shouting ‘Azadi,’ or freedom, and chanting anti-India slogans. Scores of innocent Kashmiris are killed from past several months in IHK, which continues to be illegally occupied by India since 1947.

In this context, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon’s recent statement on Kashmir was refreshing. His spokesperson said, “In relation to recent developments in Indian-administered Kashmir, the secretary-general is concerned over the prevailing security situation there. The secretary-general welcomes the recent resumption of foreign minister-level talks between India and Pakistan. He encourages both sides to rekindle the spirit of the composite dialogue and to make renewed efforts to address outstanding issues, including on Jammu and Kashmir…”

This comment is perfectly in order. UNSG is expected to monitor and react to situations developing in the disputed areas, especially those on UN agenda like Kashmir and Palestine. Pakistan had welcomed the UNSG calling on India for “restraint” in the occupied part of the State of Jammu and Kashmir as well as voicing concern over the whole situation and asking for revival of the composite dialogue between Pakistan and India.

The statement was issued by the UN chief’s spokesperson Farhan Haq, who the Indian media wasted no time in pointing out as being of Pakistani origin. An annoyed Indian foreign ministry sought a clarification from Mr Ban’s office.

Surprisingly, UNSG disowned these remarks under Indian pressure. These comments had been officially issued by his spokesman, not just casually or informally uttered. Now the UNSG’s spokesman has declared that the remarks were not those of the UNSG but a “guidance” prepared by the UN Secretariat. Even if the UN Secretariat was issuing “guidance”, it could not be done without the approval of the UNSG.

The remarks were just to express concern over violence and killing of innocent civilians in an occupied territory and to reemphasise the resumption of a dialogue between the two member states of the UN. Hence, there was no need to disown these remarks.

This retraction came as a disappointment not only for the Kashmiris but also for all proponents of Human Rights. It is distressing that the UN and the office of the Secretary General is increasingly becoming an ineffective tool in the context of peace keeping.

Pakistan had not anticipated the extent to which the UN would emerge as a weakling of a new class, given that the Kashmir issue is part of the UNSC agenda and there are unambiguous resolutions of the Security Council calling for a plebiscite in Kashmir.

Kashmir is back under focus as a home grown uprising in IHK is fast getting out of India’s control, and as a corollary, there is a phenomenal rise in the killings of innocent teenagers at the hands of the Indian military apparatus of state terrorism. Bulk of the martyrs is the youth.

Kashmiris have shown to the world that generation after generation they continue to resist Indian occupation. It is time for the international community to implement its commitment for a plebiscite as reflected in the UNSC resolutions.

Rising to the occasion, an increasing number of US Congressmen are now becoming convinced about the gravity of Kashmir issue. They are routinely raising the issue of Kashmir and the need for its settlement. ‘The Kashmiri-American Council and Association of Humanitarian Lawyers’ recently held its ’11th Annual International Kashmir Peace Conference’ in Washington. Theme of the conference was “India-Pakistan Relations: Breaking the Deadlock over Kashmir”.

Over 300 participants from diverse backgrounds from India, Pakistan, Jammu & Kashmir, England, Europe and the

A Kashmiri woman pelting the armed Poilce

United States, with different viewpoints, participated in the deliberations. These delegates unanimously adopted the Washington Declaration, its main points are: ‘there must be an early, just and durable resolution to the Jammu & Kashmir dispute taking into account the aspirations of the people of Jammu & Kashmir; the said resolution must be with the participation of all the three parties to the dispute i.e. India, Pakistan and people of Jammu & Kashmir ; the participants acknowledged the right of Kashmiri Pandits and all other migrants and displaced persons who left the State since 1947 to return to Kashmir with dignity and honour; that the normalization of relations between India and Pakistan will go a long way in finding such an amicable solution to Kashmir; the participants expressed grave concern over the deteriorating human rights situation in Kashmir and urged the Indian government to withdraw its armed forces from civilian populated areas and establish an impartial commission with immediate effect to investigate the recent killings in a transparent manner; the participants condemned the efforts to muzzle the press and further expressed need to restore the right to assemble and freedom of expression; the participants also condemned the draconian laws like the Indian Armed Forces Special Powers Act, the Disturbed Areas Act and the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, and demanded withdrawal of these laws’.

The political situation in Jammu and Kashmir has worsened over the last few months, which has in turn strengthened the existing culture of impunity in the region. There is an evolution of an ‘Intifada’ of the Palestinian model in IHK for the first time. It is a manifestation of spontaneous outburst of anger by the youth; women participation in this stone pelting activity is snowballing pretty fast. The unprompted anger is transforming into an organised political movement.

Over the past few weeks, the response by the security forces has been such that even ambulances have not been spared. Media reports indicate that at least at three places, the CRPF fired on ambulances. Moreover, journalists with valid curfew passes have also been attacked.

Many local and international human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights have documented the systematic violations of human rights by Indian security forces.

The ongoing situation is in contravention of International law, humanitarian law as well as fundamental guarantees provided by the Indian Constitution, including the right to life.

Hopefully, UNSG would soon convene the meeting of UNSC to review the situation in Kashmir before the situation in IHK escalates into a full blown genocide.