Terrorism in Kashmir
by Kaleem Omar --- Source: www.InformationTimes.com Stop Grinding The Terrorism Axe
People in India -- government officials, politicians and journalists alike -- are forever grinding the same old axe: "cross-border terrorism... cross-border terrorism... cross-border terrorism." They are like a stuck record that can never get out of the "cross-border terrorism" groove. If we've heard it once, we've heard it a thousand times.
So it came as no surprise when Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said on Tuesday that a conducive atmosphere would be created for talks with Pakistan, but reiterated the need for an end to "cross-border terrorism" before a dialogue could be meaningful.
It is another matter that there can be no "cross-border terrorism" where there is no recognized border. As the very term implies, the Line of Control in Kashmir is not an international border.
There has to be a border first before there can be any so-called "cross border terrorism." That's a sine qua no, though this is something the Indian government would like the world to forget, just as it would like the world to forget about its brutal suppression of the Muslim population of occupied Kashmir.
The people India calls "terrorists" are freedom fighters trying to free occupied Kashmir from the Indian yoke. "Some steps have already been taken and more will be taken. We are confident that an atmosphere will be created for the talks to begin," Vajpayee told reporters in New Delhi before leaving for a week-long tour of Germany, Russia and France.
Vajpayee was referring to New Delhi's announcement on Monday of the resumption of a bus service between the Indian capital and Lahore [Pakistan] as part of a peace initiative between the two countries. The Indian government also said it would release 70 Pakistani fishermen and 60 civilian prisoners from Indian custody.
However, such steps, while welcome in themselves, are not likely to do much to wash away the bad blood between the two countries created by India's 14-year-long reign of terror in occupied Kashmir, where more than 85,000 innocent Kashmiri-Muslim civilians, including women and children, have died at the hands of Indian troops since December 1989.
Thousands of Kashmiri-Muslims continue to languish in Indian jails without trial. Tales of torture and rape are rife, as also documented by Amnesty International and other human rights groups. The midnight knock on the door is common. Whole villages have been torched by Indian troops and the civilian population cannot move about freely. Occupied Kashmir, today, resembles a giant concentration camp -- with machine-gun emplacements, barbed wire barricades, concrete bunkers, traffic barriers and check posts everywhere. ( Read the article " Unbelievable Indian Cruelty " and see some " Snapshots of Genocide in India " )
If there is any terrorism in occupied Kashmir, it is the acts of state-terrorism committed by the Indian Army and border security force against the innocent Muslim population of the beleaguered state. It is to distract the international community's attention from this horrific situation that Indian government officials keep harping on "cross-border terrorism" from Pakistan.
True to form, Vajpayee echoed this "cross-border terrorism" refrain more than once while talking to reporters on Tuesday. When asked how soon talks between India and Pakistan could begin, he said: "We want it to be as soon as possible. But for a meaningful dialogue to begin, cross-border terrorism should end and the terrorism infrastructure dismantled."
Before talking about putting an end to "cross-border terrorism," however, India needs to put an end to its own state-terrorism against the Muslim population of occupied Kashmir. Until it does so, all Indian talk about "cross-border terrorism" will remain a case of putting the cart before the horse.
The villain of the piece in all this is India, not Pakistan. India has no case -- either moral or legal -- for having invaded Kashmir in 1947 and occupied it now for 56 long years.
Indian-occupied Kashmir was the only Muslim majority princely state in the [South Asian] subcontinent that was prevented by Indian military action from joining Pakistan at the time of partition. All Hindu majority provinces and princely states ended up in India and all Muslim majority provinces and princely states ended up in Pakistan, with the exception of Kashmir. Why should it have been the only exception to this formula? India has no credible answer to this question.
In 1947, India used military force to block Kashmir's accession to Pakistan, aided and abetted by Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last British viceroy of India, who persuaded Sir Cyril Radcliffe, head of the partition Boundary Commission, to alter the Zera line on the boundary award map, thus depriving Pakistan of the Muslim-majority Punjab districts of Gurdaspur and Ferozepur and giving India access to Kashmir.
Without Mountbatten's chicanery, the whole of the state of Jammu & Kashmir would have come to Pakistan at the time of partition and today we would not be embroiled in a whole bunch of disputes with India, including the issue of India's proposed 450 MW Baghliar hydropower dam on the Chenab River, which would deprive Pakistan of 7,000 cusecs (cubic feet per second) of Chenab water, in contravention of the Indus Waters Treaty.
If India were not in possession of occupied Kashmir, it would also have no access to the Neelam and Jhelum rivers, on which it now wants to build a hydropower dam without getting Pakistan's concurrence on its design, as required under the Indus Waters Treaty.
Even the Indus River itself runs for several hundred kilometres through Indian-occupied Kashmir. There has already been talk in Indian government circles of scrapping the Indus Waters Treaty. And though Vajpayee has put a stop to such talk for the time being, there is no guarantee that India, at some point down the road, won't propose building a high dam on the Indus to divert its waters into Indian Punjab and Haryana through a system of link canals.
For Pakistan, Kashmir is vital for the continued sustenance of agriculture in the Indus Basin. India knows this only too well. That's one of the reasons why it has adopted such a rigid position on the Kashmir dispute and keeps trying to throw the wool over the world's eyes by all its talk of "cross-border terrorism."
In addition to Kashmir, there is another key issue Islamabad needs to take up with New Delhi in any future talks. This is the issue of India's continuing massive arms buildup, which is not only a matter of grave concern to Pakistan but also has a direct bearing on the larger issue of peace in the South Asian region as a whole.
