Good Analysis Of Kashmir Incidents

[sikh supreme]

EDITORIAL: Murder in Kashmir: don’t get derailed!

Gunmen dressed in combat fatigues shot dead 23 Hindus in two remote villages of Doda district in Indian-held Jammu and Kashmir late Sunday night. In another incident, 12 Hindus who had been earlier kidnapped were also found dead. According to reports, the gunmen ordered the villagers to come out of their houses, then herded them into the house of a local village head, and opened fire at them, killing 22 people on the spot. The Indian union minister has pointed to a “particular outfit” without naming the outfit, but a “senior security official” said that “Lashkar-e-Tayba had over 350 militants operating in Doda district and 90 percent of them were foreigners”.

The bite has been put on Lashkar-e-Tayba and it has been made clear that it wasn’t a local outfit. On the other hand, the union home minister in New Delhi said that the massacre was clearly aimed at “derailing the peace process”. Understandably, the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, has condemned the incident which happened just days ahead of his meeting with the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC). Equally, Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokeswoman, Tasneem Aslam, has said the killings were “an act of terrorism and we condemn it”. In Indian-held Kashmir, the Hizb ul Mujahideen has said that it could be Indian troops who have done this sort of thing in the past to give a bad name to the freedom-fighters. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq too has condemned the attack and called for an “an impartial inquiry to expose the killers”.

Combined with the kidnapping and killing of a Hindu Indian engineer in Afghanistan by the Taliban, there is rising apprehension that such incidents could put a monkey-wrench in the process of normalisation of relations underway between India and Pakistan. As it is, the progress is slow and Pakistan has been officially complaining about India’s reluctance to address the “core issue” of Kashmir. In fact, Pakistan’s prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, has clearly indicated that any further development in bilateral trade will depend on India’s willingness to move to a solution of the Kashmir issue. From an opposite but potentially destabilising perspective, the opposition opinion in Pakistan is that Islamabad is moving too fast in its keenness to normalise with India, ignoring the fact that India is not budging at all from its old stance. Also, more ominously, the jihadi organisations now surviving under new names, have complained that Pakistan’s “flexibility” over Kashmir is not warranted at all, given India’s continued atrocities in Held Kashmir.

In light of all this, the latest massacre of innocent villagers is going to cast a shadow on the progress of peace talks between Islamabad and New Delhi. Both sides will adhere to their separate “narratives” over Kashmir. This has happened in the past, too. To this day, the massacre of Chittisinghpura has not been decided this way or that. Interestingly, however, one Indian publication, Speaking Peace: Women’s Voices Popular from Kashmir, edited by Urvashi Butalia, has bravely told the story as it was: In 2000, Sonia Jabbar went to Chittisinghpura, a village of 300 Sikh families near Anantnag, where a gang dressed as Indian army soldiers had lined up the men against the village walls and shot 36 of them. A Sikh eyewitness said he was sure the attackers were Indian army personnel; others said they were militants disguised as troops. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq was full of disbelief when he was told the story; he thought that Muslims could not do this sort of thing to Sikhs who were friendly. Then the Indian troops (real ones) herded together five innocent boys in an adjacent village, shot and burnt them, saying they were the militants who had massacred the Sikhs at Chittisinghpura.

Many Chittisighpuras have happened to destroy the chances of peace between India and Pakistan. This time the circumstances are extremely delicate, and negative “inferences” can be drawn more easily. For instance, just days before the incident, the chief of the Kashmiri Hizb ul Mujahideen in Pakistan, Syed Salahuddin, complained bitterly against President Pervez Musharraf’s “betrayal of Kashmir jihad” and vowed to carry on the fight for freedom. After that the United States banned the renamed Lashkar-e-Tayba in Pakistan, clearly sending a message to Islamabad that its continued high profile in Pakistan was not acceptable. The latest incident could either be the “revenge” of the jihadis or an Indian intelligence agency’s tactic to get Pakistan into more trouble with the rest of the world and blunt its drive to pressure India into sorting out the bilateral equation. Don’t let the peace-talks be derailed! *

SECOND EDITORIAL: Entertainment, history & culture

The popular Indian actor and intellectual Naseeruddin Shah said in Islamabad on Monday that Pakistani theatre did not reflect the country’s culture and history and that the country’s film industry and theatre “had not done justice to the nation”. He added that if Pakistani theatre wished to define its own identity it must project its historical identity.

Pakistani theatre today is mostly comedy. Its Falstaffian nature is in itself a comment on the state-induced false piety and the tyranny of an increasingly power-hungry clergy. The masses, tired of oppression — most of which now comes from society rather than the state — want entertainment. As for Pakistani film, it followed the Indian tradition of extreme romance manufactured out of a rupture from social reality. If one looks at today’s Indian film, most of it is pure entertainment without any relationship to Indian reality. That is not to say that realistic cinema is dead in India, but it stays not surprisingly on the margins. Cinema and theatre must above all be entertainment and then offer comment on society. In Pakistan, after years of Islamisation and jihad, the first step in the direction of comment is comedy, almost risqué in its cutting edge. The second step is the theatre of resistance represented by Ajoka; but then theatre will always be marginal to what the Pakistanis have been relying on for relief against ideology: videocassette, DVDs and cinema in the districts. Naseeruddin Shah represents the true theatre and cinema in India. What he sees in Pakistan is the beginning of a response to the ideological coercion of the state.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?p..._3-5-2006_pg3_1

[sikh supreme]

Indian Army and it's intelligence agenices have and are capable of organising these kind of terror tactics... I personally I think Chittisinghpura (martyring of our 40 Sikh kashmiri brothers) was the work of jihadi islamics. Who are attempting to ethnically cleanse non-muslims out of kashmir. Indian army/govt has nothing to gain from non-muslims to leave kashmir as it will become harder for them to control the muslim masses and land..

[Sabre Sword]

Indian Army and it's intelligence agenices have and are capable of organising these kind of terror tactics... I personally I think Chittisinghpura (martyring of our 40 Sikh kashmiri brothers) was the work of jihadi islamics. Who are attempting to ethnically cleanse non-muslims out of kashmir. Indian army/govt has nothing to gain from non-muslims to leave kashmir as it will become harder for them to control the muslim masses and land..

maybe, but at the end of the day, the indian goverment intends to portray the muslims and their organisations as terrorist cells, and to turn public opinion againts them.

this is nothing new. indian police and paramilitaries used to this all the time in punjab to portray khalistanis sikhs as terrorists.but the practis was done on a much larger scale

even the villagers knew it.

[sikh supreme]

Indian Army and it's intelligence agenices have and are capable of organising these kind of terror tactics... I personally I think Chittisinghpura (martyring of our 40 Sikh kashmiri brothers) was the work of jihadi islamics. Who are attempting to ethnically cleanse non-muslims out of kashmir. Indian army/govt has nothing to gain from non-muslims to leave kashmir as it will become harder for them to control the muslim masses and land..

maybe, but at the end of the day, the indian goverment intends to portray the muslims and their organisations as terrorist cells, and to turn public opinion againts them.

this is nothing new. indian police and paramilitaries used to this all the time in punjab to portray khalistanis sikhs as terrorists.but the practis was done on a much larger scale

even the villagers knew it.

different Jihadi groups aims are to a) kashmir succeed from indian and pakistan rule b) join with pakistan c) create a pan-araboc islamic area of rule (ie the khalifa - islamic superstate). Their objectives are mainly to fight with indian army personal controling that land mass, but killing non-muslims would not hinder their mission if it means they force thousands to flee (ethnic cleansing) like the hindu kashmir pundits have fled from kashmir (their native land). It makes the job for the jihadi's more easier militarly.

It's a dirty war... cloak and daggar tactics from both sides...