It looks like Imran Khan is about to become Pakistan's prime minister (OP)
Salaam
Change in Pakistan, wonder if he will make a difference?
here's what we can expect of him
Even a genuinely reformist candidate in the state has to find some kind of accommodation with the military – but that appeasement also carries the risk that the occupant of the presidential palace will find his middle class followers disillusioned
It is tempting to see the rise of Imran Khan in Pakistan as a sort of counterpart to the En Marche! phenomenon in France that propelled Emmanuel Macron to power. As Mr Khan enjoys a surge in support for his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Pakistan Movement for Justice, or PTI), and every chance of winning the elections this week, there are some parallels between the young French president and the youthful (though 65-year-old) Mr Khan.
Mr Khan enjoys a legendary charisma, mostly born of his cricketing prowess, as if Gareth Southgate or Harry Kane were running to be prime minister of Britain. We know him in Britain too as the former husband of Jemima Goldsmith, and thus brother-in-law to her brother Zac.
He has glamour, then, and a common touch that has seen his party make inroads in the populous Punjab, without which none can rule in Pakistan. Mr Khan has also made radical, reformist noises, pledged to rid his land of endemic corruption, and, more predictably, attacked the United States from its drone powered incursions into the Islamic Republic’s territory.
Mr Khan, in other words, promises much, and, like Mr Macron, founded and still leads his own political party, which at times is not much more than a fan club for its handsome head. (Though the basically populist PTI is much older than En Marche!)
Mr Khan and the PTI has done well in recent years in building support, mainly at the expense of two older parties, the vaguely progressive Pakistan Peoples Party, currently led by another member of the Bhutto dynasty, and the more conservative Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N), whose ex-leader, and former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, was recently jailed on corruption charges.
All, however, is not what it seems. Mr Khan is widely regarded as being an ally of what remains the most powerful institution in the country and the only one, according to Mr Khan, that functions effectively – the army.
The generals, a ruthless though stabilising force in Pakistani society, are reportedly “pre-rigging” the election in Mr Khan’s favour, including the arrest of Sharif (which is not to say that the move was unjust). It seems that the PTI has suffered less from electoral violence than some of its rivals, including a terror attack at a rally in Baluchistan that killed 149 people.
Condemning corruption is not consistent with being cosy with the Pakistani army, a body that controls substantial chunks of the economy and has plenty of money and the muscle to get its way, on a national scale and by way of kickbacks and petty corruption and abuse of power. The army has frequently intervened in Pakistani politics, subverted democracy, and collaborated with religious extremists, including the Taliban in the 1980s, when young men such as Osama bin Laden were based there to fight America’s proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
The legacy of that haunts Pakistan to this day. The result is that even a genuinely reformist candidate in the state has to find some kind of accommodation with the military; but that appeasement also carries the risk that the occupant of the presidential palace will find his middle class followers disillusioned. If he chooses instead to challenge the army, then, like Mr Sharif, he may find himself more or less gently deposed.
Pakistan’s endemic problems with graft and corruption go a long way to explaining its long-term disappointing economic performance, despite a recent spate of growth. That matters in a predominantly young nation of some 200 million, and which must look with envy at what its neighbours India and China have been able to achieve in recent decades.
If Mr Khan is unable to do much about the corruption, then he will find the economy works way below its potential, and foreign investors, already wary of political instability and the backwash of violence from Afghanistan, will prefer to put their euros, yen and dollars into India.
Without economic growth, better public infrastructure, and opportunities, unemployment, health and education are harder to come by. Pakistan’s severe social problems, including the treatment of women and human rights generally, will remain intractable without money, something Mr Khan, a prominent philanthropist, at least shows awareness of.
Last, Mr Khan is no better placed to deal with tribalism than his rivals. He too enjoys a regional base of support in Punjab, and has had to rely on old-school defecting politicians from other parties and prominent families to bolster his support. He optimistically describes these mercenary politicians as “electables”, though corruptibles might be a better sobriquet.
Pakistan, then, may change under Mr Khan, and for the better, but it will take formidable skill to make this happen. Mr Khan has won for Pakistan many times on the cricket pitch; he will find his new job a much stickier wicket.
When the Ottomans attack Timur first? I dont know this.
Whether you knew it or not, they did.
format_quote Originally Posted by anatolian
And what was he doing in Anatolia? It was an Ottoman land.
He did not take any Ottoman land by force until the Ottoman Empire attacked him.
format_quote Originally Posted by anatolian
He captured several Muslim cities and messacred people in them.
There was nothing wrong with him capturing Muslim cities, it enabled the unification of most of the Muslim world. Muslims from Anatolia to the Indus all lived in one political unit, subhan'Allah.
As for the massacres, he only did that to cities which resisted him. Those that joined him were spared.
format_quote Originally Posted by anatolian
Timur just didnt want a second Muslim sultan and sultanate on the planet during his reign as far as we understand.
Re: It looks like Imran Khan is about to become Pakistan's prime minister
Salaam
Rapid escalation in hostilities between Pakistan and India. PAK armed forces have performed well. Lets pray it doesnt get out of control.
Some background.
Blurb
Tensions in Kashmir have been rising. India launched airstrikes on Pakistani soil for the first time since the 1971 India-Pakistan war. Pakistan claims to have shot down 2 Indian jets and captured one pilot. OGN will be keeping you updated.
Blurb
Spokesman Raveesh Kumar says that India has "unfortunately lost" a MiG-21 and that the pilot is missing. He said India is assessing the situation and acknowledged Pakistan said it was holding the pilot.
Israel’s fingerprints are all over India’s escalating conflict with Pakistan
Signing up to the ‘war on terror’ – especially ‘Islamist terror’ – may seem natural for two states built on colonial partition whose
security is threatened by Muslim neighbours
When I heard the first news report, I assumed it was an Israeli air raid on Gaza. Or Syria. Airstrikes on a “terrorist camp” were the first words. A “command and control centre” destroyed, many “terrorists” killed. The military was retaliating for a “terrorist attack” on its troops, we were told.
An Islamist “jihadi” base had been eliminated. Then I heard the name Balakot and realised that it was neither in Gaza, nor in Syria – not even in Lebanon – but in Pakistan. Strange thing, that. How could anyone mix up Israel and India?
Well, don’t let the idea fade away. Two thousand five hundred miles separate the Israeli ministry of defence in Tel Aviv from the Indian ministry of defence in New Delhi, but there’s a reason why the usual cliche-stricken agency dispatches sound so similar.
For months, Israel has been assiduously lining itself up alongside India’s nationalist BJP government in an unspoken – and politically dangerous – “anti-Islamist” coalition, an unofficial, unacknowledged alliance, while India itself has now become the largest weapons market for the Israeli arms trade.
Not by chance, therefore, has the Indian press just trumpeted the fact that Israeli-made Rafael Spice-2000 “smart bombs” were used by the Indian air force in its strike against Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) “terrorists” inside Pakistan.
Like many Israeli boasts of hitting similar targets, the Indian adventure into Pakistan might owe more to the imagination than military success. The “300-400 terrorists” supposedly eliminated by the Israeli-manufactured and Israeli-supplied GPS-guided bombs may turn out to be little more than rocks and trees.
But there was nothing unreal about the savage ambush of Indian troops in Kashmir on 14 February which the JeM claimed, and which left 40 Indian soldiers dead. Nor the shooting down of at least one Indian jet this week.
India was Israel’s largest arms client in 2017, paying £530m for Israeli air defence, radar systems and ammunition, including air-to-ground missiles – most of them tested during Israel’s military offensives against Palestinians and targets in Syria.
Israel itself is trying to explain away its continued sales of tanks, weapons and boats to the Myanmar military dictatorship – while western nations impose sanctions on the government which has attempted to destroy its minority and largely Muslim Rohingya people. But Israel’s arms trade with India is legal, above-board and much advertised by both sides.
The Israelis have filmed joint exercises between their own “special commando” units and those sent by India to be trained in the Negev desert, again with all the expertise supposedly learned by Israel in Gaza and other civilian-thronged battlefronts.
At least 16 Indian “Garud” commandos – part of a 45-strong Indian military delegation – were for a time based at the Nevatim and Palmachim air bases in Israel. In his first visit to India last year – preceded by a trip to Israel by nationalist Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu recalled the 2008 Islamist attacks on Mumbai in which almost 170 civilians were killed. “Indians and Israelis know too well the pain of terrorist attacks,” he told Modi. “We remember the horrific savagery of Mumbai. We grit our teeth, we fight back, we never give in.” This was also BJP-speak.
Several Indian commentators, however, have warned that right-wing Zionism and right-wing nationalism under Modi should not become the foundation stone of the relationship between the two countries, both of which – in rather different ways – fought the British empire.
Brussels researcher Shairee Malhotra, whose work has appeared in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, has pointed out that India has the world’s third largest Muslim population after Indonesia and Pakistan – upward of 180 million people. “The India-Israel relationship is also commonly being framed in terms of a natural convergence of ideas between their ruling BJP and Likud parties,” she wrote last year.
Hindu nationalists had constructed “a narrative of Hindus as historically victims at the hands of Muslims”, an attractive idea to those Hindus who recall partition and the continuing turbulent relationship with Pakistan.
In fact, as Malhotra pointed out in Haaretz, “Israel’s biggest fans in India appear to be the ‘internet Hindus’ who primarily love Israel for how it deals with Palestine and fights Muslims.”
Malhotra has condemned Carleton University professor Vivek Dehejia for demanding a “tripartite” alliance between India, Israel and the US – since they have all suffered “from the scourge of Islamic terrorism”.
In fact, by the end of 2016, only 23 men from India had left to fight for Isis in the Arab world, although Belgium, with a population of only half a million Muslims, produced nearly 500 fighters.
Malhotra’s argument is that the Indian-Israeli relationship should be pragmatic rather than ideological.
But it is difficult to see how Zionist nationalism will not leach into Hindu nationalism when Israel is supplying so many weapons to India – the latest of which India, which has enjoyed diplomatic relations with Israel since 1992, has already used against Islamists inside Pakistan.
Signing up to the “war on terror” – especially “Islamist terror” – may seem natural for two states built on colonial partition whose security is threatened by Muslim neighbours.
In both cases, their struggle is over the right to own or occupy territory. Israel, India and Pakistan all possess nuclear weapons. Another good reason not to let Palestine and Kashmir get tangled up together. And to leave India’s 180 million Muslims alone.
Pakistan Ready To Talk With India To End War No One’s Talking About
ED MORRISSEYPosted at 8:01 pm on February 28, 2019
The world edged uncomfortably close to a nuclear war this week — and none of the principals in the conflict were named Trump, Putin, or even Michael Cohen. Pakistan and India have opened fire on each other in an escalation of the dispute over the Kashmir province, the first such clash of arms between the two in twenty years. Pakistan captured a downed Indian pilot after shooting down a sortie over Pakistan’s territory, and are now offering to repatriate him as “a gesture of peace”:
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan says he will release a captured Indian pilot tomorrow as a gesture of peace.
“We have captured a pilot of India. As a gesture of peace we are going to release him to India tomorrow,” said Khan. “I did try yesterday to talk to Narendra Modi only to de-escalate this situation. But this de-escalation effort should not be considered as weakness.”
He told lawmakers in the country’s parliament he hoped the international community would play its part in de-escalating tensions with India.
Modi did not sound a conciliatory note in return. He accused Khan of having “evil designs” on Kashmir and seemed to hint at an escalation rather than calm:
Speaking to party workers in a video conference on Thursday, Modi did not respond to an offer of dialogue from Khan, leaving open the possibility of further escalation between the two nuclear-equipped armies.
“The enemy tries to destabilise us, carries out terror attacks,” Modi said. “Their motive is to stop our growth. Today, all countrymen are standing like a rock to counter their evil designs.”
The two leaders have been exchanging taunts and demands over the last several days. Modi called on Khan this weekend to account for the initiating incident, a suicide attack on Pulwana on February 14th in India-controlled Kashmir that killed 42 soldiers. Modi reminded the Pakistani leader of his claim to be a “son of a Pathan” who will “speak true and do true”:
On Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi threw a challenge to his Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan, asking him to act honourably by bringing to justice those responsible for the Pulwama terror attack. Addressing a rally in Rajasthan’s Tonk, PM Modi recalled the phone call he made to Mr Khan to congratulate him for winning the Pakistani elections last year.
He said “I told him there have been plenty of fights between India and Pakistan. Pakistan got nothing. Every time, we won. I told him let us fight against poverty and illiteracy. He told me, ‘Modi ji, I am the son of a Pathan. I speak true and I do true’. Today, the time has come for him to stand true to his words. I will see whether he stands true to his words or not”.
Yesterday, Khan urged Modi to start discussing peace or at least a truce. In a speech covered by NDTV, the Pakistani PM warned that neither country can afford “miscalculations,” given their nuclear status:
Speaking to local television channel Geo News on Thursday, Shah Mehmood Qureshi said that if the gesture will ease soaring tensions, Pakistan is prepared to return the Indian air force pilot it captured after downing “two fighter jets” over Pakistani airspace in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
“I am sending a message to India: if the return of this pilot allows for a de-escalation, then Pakistan is ready to consider it,” Qureshi said. …
India has handed over its files on the deadly February 14 bombing to Pakistan, Foreign Minister Qureshi confirmed on Thursday.
“Today, [India] has sent a dossier … we have received it, we will examine it, and now come and speak to us on the basis of this dossier,” the foreign minister said.
Khan warned that if Modi didn’t take steps to dial down the tensions, the result “won’t be in my control.” That’s a rather chilling statement from one nuclear power to another. News of the conflict even intruded on the nuclear talks that captured most of the world’s attention in Hanoi. Trump told reporters that the US and other nuclear powers have already begun trying to calm both nations:
The US president, Donald Trump, who was addressing a press conference in Hanoi at the same time Modi was speaking, hinted that diplomatic efforts had begun behind the scenes.
“They have been going at it and we have been involved,” Trump said. “We have some reasonably decent news, hopefully it’s going to be coming to an end, this has been going on for a long time, decades and decades.”
The conflict between India and Pakistan goes back farther than the Korean War, and appears more likely to go hot. Pakistan’s dalliance with radical Islamist terror networks comes in large part from their Kashmir strategy. It makes little difference to India under those circumstances that the suicide bomber was a native Kashmiri. Pakistan’s provocations in the region and its alliance with groups like the jihadist terror network in which the bomber claimed membership provides a constant source of tension. And not just in India, either; Afghanistan is not far west of Kashmir, where the US has fought since November 2001 against the Taliban and its Islamist terror allies.
It’s in everyone’s interest to get India and Pakistan talking in earnest about settling the Kashmir question … even if few are actually talking about it.
Re: It looks like Imran Khan is about to become Pakistan's prime minister
Its the problem anyway, there is no citizentship of Kashmir. They are a disputed people. India should recognize the muslim idendity of Kashmiris that take part in India.
Re: It looks like Imran Khan is about to become Pakistan's prime minister
Salaam
Another update
Why has Kashmir been forgotten?
Amid all the talks of India-Pakistan war, the issue at the very heart of present tensions has been completely ignored.
"What are they saying about jung [war] over there? Does it look like it will happen?" For days now our families in Kashmir have been asking us the same questions, hoping that here in New Delhi, we would have some answers.
Uncertainty and fear took over our home region on February 14, when a suicide attack in the Pulwama district of Indian-administered Kashmir killed more than 40 Indian soldiers. We were quickly and collectively denounced as national traitors, harassed and attacked across Indian cities. The Indian media and political elite called for "revenge" and started beating the drums of war.
The Indian government imposed a curfew, cut down the speed of the internet and deployed more troops in Kashmir. The police and security agencies carried out hundreds of overnight raids, arresting political leaders and activists. Jamaat-e-Islami, a political and religious organisation, was banned.
Meanwhile, the Indian military was put on high alert and raids were launched on targets in Pakistan, which prompted a Pakistani response. Heavy shelling across the Line of Control (LoC) which separates Indian- from Pakistan-administered Kashmir began.
Many Kashmiris were forced to flee, others started to stock up on food and other basic goods, fearing an escalation. Big red crosses were painted on rooftops of hospitals in the hope that the fighter jets constantly circling above would not hit them.
The Kashmiri people, who have already lived through decades of daily aggression against their bodies, homes, psyches, and memories, are now facing the real possibility of an all-out war.
It is in such circumstances that our families have been calling and messaging us from miles away, hoping to hear from us some soothing words. Every day, they have been recounting how their nights are spent counting the number of jets in the sky. Every day, we have been wondering if we should go home and face the war together with our loved ones.
Meanwhile, headlines about an India-Pakistan "confrontation", "escalation" and an "impending war" have been dominating local and international media. News broadcasts have followed every detail of the Indian and Pakistani military actions, the attacks and the counter-attacks, the claims and the counter-claims. Reporters have documented every statement, every new development. Pundits have dissected every aspect of the conflict - from war capabilities to army structure, to weaponry and from military strategies to geopolitical realities.
Yet somewhere in all this noise about conflict and war, a simple fact has been left out: that Kashmir is the place where it is all being fought out. The Kashmir issue and the plight of Kashmiri people have been somehow rendered irrelevant, even though the current conflict between India and Pakistan has everything to do with the disputed region.
When international media talks of the history of India-Pakistan antagonism, it fails to recognise the fact that Kashmiris have borne the brunt of it. When Indian media talks about "terrorism", it fails to mention the fact that Kashmir is one of the most heavily militarised zones in the world.
There was a certain irony in calls by Indian officials and public figures calling for Pakistan to uphold the Geneva Convention in its treatment of the captured Indian pilot. In Kashmir, India has failed to apply not just the Geneva Convention, but much of international law for that matter. Kashmiris are still being jailed on political charges and used as human shields, while the United Nations resolution which mandates a referendum on self-determination to be conducted in Kashmir is yet to be implemented.
The current anti-war activism in India is limited to small demonstrations and #NoToWar posts on social media. The elephant in the room is once again being ignored. No one is talking about what true peace would actually entail.
Dominant narratives propagated by the Indian state and the mainstream media are muffling Kashmiri voices. At this moment, it is important to hear them speak and tell their stories of war. The killings, torture, enforced disappearances, sexual violence, mass blinding through the use of pellet shotguns, and everyday harassment in Kashmir cannot be swept under the carpet and ignored. This violence needs to be made visible because continuing or escalating the current security policies of the Indian government will only result in disaster.
Indians have to realise that there will be no peace until the Kashmir issue is resolved. If they truly want "no war", then they have to push first and foremost for the demilitarisation of Kashmir. And if they want international law respected, they should do so as well and hold the plebiscite mandated by the UN. Kashmiris should be allowed to decide their own fate.
Pakistan vows militant crackdown after Kashmir bombing
Dozens of members of militant groups have been locked up in a new security crackdown, including close relatives of the leader of the banned outfit claiming last month's Kashmir bombing, Pakistan said.
Pakistan's interior ministry said 44 members of proscribed organisations, including a brother and son of the Jaish-e-Mohammad leader Masood Azhar, were “taken into protective custody”.
The announcement came a week after India launched air strikes against what it said was a JeM training camp inside Pakistan plotting an imminent attack. The strike and a later jet dogfight brought the neighbours to their worst military confrontation in two decades.
Pakistan is widely accused of harbouring and sponsoring militant groups to project power in India and Afghanistan. Western officials have judged previous crackdowns to be mainly for show. JeM has been banned in Pakistan since 2002, but according to a US State Department assessment last year, it was still able to recruit, fundraise and train freely.
A statement released on Tuesday said Pakistan had “decided to speed up action against all proscribed organisations”.
Gen Talat Masood, a former senior military officer, said he believed this crackdown would be serious, because the government and military had come to view the groups as a liability.
He said: “Even if they had any utility at one point, now they don't and they are a drag.”
Threats to put Pakistan on a terrorist financing blacklist unless it takes more action have also weighed on the government and powerful military establishment, he said. Pakistan's economy is already groaning under a balance of payments crisis and can ill afford international sanctions.
“I think this time it will be more effective,” he said.
JeM claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing of a paramilitary police convoy in Pulwama in Indian-controlled Kashmir on February 14. At least 40 died.
Azhar's brother, Mufti Abdul Rauf, and his son, Hamad Azhar, were among those detained. Azhar himself is “unwell to the extent that he can't leave his house, because he's really unwell", Pakistan's foreign minister said last week.
Re: It looks like Imran Khan is about to become Pakistan's prime minister
Salaam
Another update.
Blurb
OGN interviews Kashmiri analyst Sheikh Mubashir, who lives in Srinagar, about the reasons for the escalation between Pakistan and India and how it is affecting the Kashmiri people.
Re: It looks like Imran Khan is about to become Pakistan's prime minister
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Two different perspectives on the recent conflict.
Blurb
Who benefited more from the recent situation in South Asia?
Blurb
The last time Pakistani and Indian warplanes bombed each other’s territory was in 1971. More than 10,000 troops perished, and Pakistan was torn apart, resulting in the new state of Bangladesh. Yet, at the time, neither Islamabad nor New Delhi had developed the nuclear arsenals that they wield today.
So, when Indian jets breached Pakistan’s airspace on February 26th, it marked the deadliest point of friction in South Asia in decades. But, how did the two countries come so close to the edge of madness and what exactly happened?
Re: It looks like Imran Khan is about to become Pakistan's prime minister
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Another update. An Old documentary, this was made in 1998
Blurb
A ceasefire line was mapped out in the lower country but the politicians didn’t bother to negotiate a boundary here. It is after all, uninhabitable. But as the power struggle escalates, every bit of territory counts. The high altitude combat is costing each side $730 million dollars a year. At 19,000 feet both sides lose on average two soldiers a day to oxygen deprivation or frostbite. Those that are tough enough to survive often go mad with the ‘Siachen Syndrome’ - a result of the isolation, the constant bombardment, and the grim reality of having to kill the only other human beings they may see in their three month posting.
Caught in the crossfire, a shell explodes overhead. Aimed at the small valley town of Athamuqam, these shells are designed to spray hundreds of deadly metal fragments. India’s test of a nuclear artillery shell has the population daily expecting Armageddon. We meet a truck-full of Kashmiris fleeing the besieged town in search of food. There is nothing low-key about this fighting; it’s incessant and deadly. The K2 postings are a lesson in the lengths India and Pakistan are prepared to go, to secure the next victory in Kashmir.
Re: It looks like Imran Khan is about to become Pakistan's prime minister
Salaam
Another update.
Blurb
Off the Grid goes to India-administered Kashmir where daily humiliation by Indian forces seems to be pushing more and more people towards militancy.
The episode features an interview with the father of the Pulwama suicide bomber, testimonies of pellet-gun victims (Including an 18 month old girl), and a Kashmiri student who was forced to leave his campus after retaliatory attacks on Kashmiris following the Pulwama attack.
Re: It looks like Imran Khan is about to become Pakistan's prime minister
Salaam
Another update.
Blurb
Pakistan’s current economic situation is very worrying, and prime minister Imran Khan will have a mountain to climb to get the economy back to its feet.
Almost all financial indicators have seen a downward trend, with the growth rate falling by almost 50 percent, and is expected to go down even further next year, which will be the country's lowest in the past 10 years.
The Pakistani rupee has lost a fifth of its value against the dollar since the beginning of this fiscal year, as well as inflation expected to reach a 10-year-high. If these trends continue, Pakistan could be facing a major economic crash in the next years.
Tensions have soared along the volatile, highly militarized frontier between India and Pakistan in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, as India deployed more troops and ordered thousands of visitors out of the region.
Indian firing Sunday along the Line of Control that separates Kashmir between the rivals wounded a woman as the ongoing skirmishes spread fear in border villages, Pakistani police said. The frontier residents on the Pakistani side are either moving out to safer places or have begun construction of new bunkers, with some strengthening existing shelters near their homes.
Pakistan and India, who both claim Kashmir in its entirety, routinely blame each other for initiating border skirmishes, but the latest ones come amid the Indian government’s evacuation order of tourists and Hindu pilgrims and a troop buildup in its part of the region.
The measures have sparked fears in Kashmir that New Delhi is planning to scrap an Indian constitutional provision that forbids Indians from outside the region from buying land in the Muslim-majority territory. In recent days, Hindu-majority India has deployed at least 10,000 troops in Kashmir, with media reports of a further 25,000 ordered to one of the world’s most militarized regions.
In Pakistan’s portion of Kashmir, Mohammad Fareed, a retired government employee in Tufrabad village near the Line of Control, said he had spent over $3,000 to construct a concrete bunker for his family of 10. “It looks like the situation is getting bad,” he said, adding that the recent shelling and the dropping of cluster bombs had created massive fear.
“People are using their savings to build bunkers. After all, if you live you will do other things,” said Fareed.
Mohammad Altaf, a trader dealing in construction material, confirmed that people were buying concrete blocks and crushed stone to construct bunkers in and around their homes.
But Mohammad Nasim opted to shift his family from Chakoti village to a safer place. “God knows what will happen the next day so it’s not wise to make a bunker. Instead I am moving away from the border area,” he said.
Raja Farooq Haider, the prime minister of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, announced Friday the sanctioning of about $19 million for community bunkers for residents living along the border.
Kashmir has grabbed the spotlight in recent days, months after a deadly militant attack on an Indian paramilitary convoy sparked cross-border air attacks and brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war. The recent escalation has come amid offers by President Donald Trump to mediate to resolve the Kashmir issue. While Pakistan welcomed the offer, India rejected it, saying the dispute was between the two countries.
Amid the evacuation order, hundreds of Indian and foreign visitors, including some Hindu pilgrims, continued congregating outside the main terminal at the airport in Srinagar, the region’s main city, seeking seats on flights out.
The Indian air force flew 326 tourists out of Srinagar, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. Out of 11,301 tourists, only 1,652 remained on Saturday, PTI said.
Tourists and pilgrims also took buses out of the region, with authorities busing out hundreds of Indian students from Srinagar colleges.
The order on Friday cited the “prevailing security situation” and the “latest intelligence inputs of terror threats with specific targeting” of the annual Hindu pilgrimage as reasons for the advisory. Several governments issued similar travel advisories.
Kashmiri politicians and ordinary residents fear the government measures are a prelude to doing away with Kashmir’s special status and intensifying an ongoing crackdown against anti-India dissenters. Kashmir, a region known for lush green valleys, lakes, meadows and dense forested mountains, has become notorious for security lockdowns and crackdowns.
In its election manifesto earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party promised to do away with special rights for Kashmiris under India’s constitution.
Rumors continued swirling in the region on Sunday, ranging from the disarming of Kashmiri police forces, to the Indian military taking over local police installations, to a sweeping military crackdown being planned ahead of India’s independence day on Aug. 15.
“India is getting cornered at the geostrategic level as America seeks Pakistani help for withdrawing from Afghanistan,” said Fayaz Ahmed, a political science teacher in Srinagar. “In turn, India is mounting pressure on Pakistan by building up tensions in Kashmir though militaristic approaches inside Kashmir as well as along the frontier.”
Meanwhile, Pakistan late Saturday accused India of using banned cluster munitions to target the civilian population, killing two people. The Indian army rejected the claim, saying Indian soldiers killed at least five attackers while foiling an attempt by gunmen from Pakistan’s side of Kashmir to target an Indian post.
Rebels in Indian-controlled Kashmir have been fighting Indian control since 1989. Most Kashmiris support the rebels’ demand that the territory be united either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country, while also participating in civilian street protests against Indian control. About 70,000 people have been killed in the uprising and the ensuing Indian crackdown.
Thousands of tourists flee Kashmir after security alert
India claims it killed five militants trying to attack its forces in disputed region
Tens of thousands of tourists, pilgrims and workers have begun leaving the disputed region of Kashmir after local officials issued a security alert and India said it had killed at least five militants who were trying to attack its forces.
The Foreign Office on Saturday issued new advice to avoid all travel to Jammu and Kashmir, adding: “There is a risk of unpredictable violence, including bombings, grenade attacks, shootings and kidnapping.”
Germany and Australia gave similar warnings to their citizens.
Indian security officials ordered people to leave the Kashmir valley after they had found evidence of attacks planned by what they said were Pakistani military-backed militants on a major Hindu pilgrimage, the Amarnath Yatra – which ends in mid-August – in Muslim-majority Kashmir.
Officials called off the pilgrimage and asked the pilgrims and tourists to return home, causing panic as visitors scrambled to arrange transport. A separate government notice also advised hundreds of students from other Indian states to leave the Himalayan valley.
Anxious visitors, including some foreigners, flooded the airport at the main city Srinagar on Saturday, many without tickets for flights that day.
“Passengers who were scheduled to return in coming days have turned up in panic at the airport today,” said the manager of one airline operating the Delhi-Srinagar route. “It’s chaotic and not many will manage seats unless there are additional flights.”
Hundreds of Indian students from outside Kashmir were evacuated in buses. “All the non-local students have left the campus for their respective states,” an administrative official at the National Institute of Technology in Srinagar told AFP.
Erasing the troubled state’s autonomy will only inflame separatist sentiment and undermine the country’s standing as a liberal democracy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in India often claims that its actions are unprecedented -- that no government in India’s history has been bold enough to do what it does. Most of the time this is, to put it mildly, an exaggeration. But on Monday, they certainly went far beyond what any previous Indian government has done about the troubled state of Jammu & Kashmir. And that’s a big, big problem.
After a tense and terse build-up -- during which a major pilgrimage was canceled, the Kashmir Valley was flooded with soldiers and Kashmiri politicians were arrested -- Modi’s right-hand man, Home Minister Amit Shah, announced a set of Kashmir-related legal changes in Parliament on Monday. In essence they scrap the special status promised to Jammu & Kashmir when it became part of India seven decades ago; divide the state into two; and reduce the power of elected state politicians to pass laws and control the local police. Jammu & Kashmir will no longer have the rights and privileges of a state of the Indian Union, but instead be a Union Territory, with its laws requiring the assent and permission of the government in New Delhi.
Perhaps these changes will not be upheld by India’s Supreme Court. But, if they are, they would indeed be unprecedented. No Indian government has ever seriously wanted to disturb the delicate legal balance that underlies New Delhi’s claim to the Valley. Moreover, there is no doubt they will inflame separatist sentiment in Kashmir. Its residents are already simmering with anger at decades of repression and a constant military presence in their homes and villages. Now, in their eyes, their sole claim to autonomy and identity has been taken away.
What will these changes mean for Kashmir’s future, and India’s? If implemented fully, one big thing will change: Previously, only those from Kashmir could own land there; now the Valley could be flooded with settlers from outside. India has never played the demographic card -- used its overwhelming numbers elsewhere to render native Kashmiris’ demands moot, the way that Beijing has by urging Han Chinese to migrate to Tibet and Xinjiang.
Whether Kashmir will end up looking like those restive, semi-autonomous provinces, or more like the West Bank -- with armed settlers living in highly protected colonies amid a larger, disenfranchised population subject to arbitrary justice -- is not clear at the moment. Those are, however, the most likely options.
Neither would be in any way a positive for India. Whatever else, this country still aspires to be a liberal democracy respected worldwide, and it won’t be if it creates a Xinjiang or a West Bank in Kashmir, rendering people second-class citizens or putting them in camps. Nor do India’s people and economy have the resources to deal with a sustained, angry insurgency.
Worse, many other restive parts of India -- with shrinking populations, as opposed to the growing ones in Modi’s heartland of the north and west -- will be given fresh reason to fear this demographic bludgeon. Already various states are designing laws meant to deny employment to “outsiders.” The prospect of large-scale settlement would enrage sub-nationalists elsewhere in India, hardly a desirable outcome from New Delhi’s point of view.
The reasons that Modi’s government has done this have, therefore, nothing to do with India’s national interest. It’s all about pushing forward his Bharatiya Janata Party’s deeply rooted ideals of Hindu majoritarianism. Kashmir is India’s only Muslim-majority state and its autonomy is offensive to the BJP and its ideological fellow-travelers. Israel -- which they see not as a multi-ethnic democracy, but as a militant religio-nationalist state that knows how to treat Muslims -- has always been their ideal.
It’s also a simple electoral calculation: Whenever there is tension between Hindus and Muslims, the BJP does better in elections. The economy is visibly struggling and, like other populist-authoritarians, Modi may well see this as a good moment to double down on majoritarian identity politics.
The tragedy for Kashmir and India is that there is likely to be no real pushback against this decision. Modi’s parliamentary majority in this year’s general elections was large enough to have cowed the political opposition in New Delhi. The media has been muzzled or bought off, and independent institutions have had their wings clipped. The Kashmiris’ most popular leaders are far from sympathetic spokesmen: Those who are not corrupt, compromised or dynasts are largely al-Qaeda-loving Islamist fundamentalists.
Nor will there be any real pressure from abroad, at least to begin with. Donald Trump loves authoritarians more than liberal democrats anyway. And has anybody stepped up for Xinjiang? No, instead the world has cravenly kowtowed to Beijing. Then why should Modi worry that anyone will isolate India if it treats Kashmir similarly?
The only people who might object are those who recognize the road that this takes India down -- one which undermines its Constitution, strains its union and brutalizes its people. But those voices are few and stifled in India today.
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