Can India "Punish" Pakistan After Uri?

[Riaz Haq]

Can India’s changing claims on Uri attack withstand close scrutiny by independent observers, media and analysts?

Why is India unwilling to accept UN-led mission to investigate the causes of the Intifada and Indian military’s human rights abuses in Kashmir?

Does Modi have the capacity to follow through on his and his government’s bellicose war rhetoric against Pakistan?

Will India succeed in distracting the world’s attention from its brutal occupation of Kashmir? Is Pakistan isolated in the world as claimed by the Indian media?

Can all resistance to foreign military occupations in Afghanistan, Kashmir and elsewhere be dismissed as “terrorism”?

Viewpoint From Overseas host Faraz Darvesh discusses these questions with panelists Misbah Azam and Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)

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[Riaz Haq]

A Military Attack on #Pakistan Will Lead to #India's Worst Nightmare. #Kashmir #Modi http://thewire.in/68370/a-military-attack-on-pakistan-will-lead-to-... … via @thewire_in

The key to peace in the region is to tackle the roots of the tension, which is the dispute over Kashmir.

Delhi’s decision, in the aftermath of the Uri attack, to ‘go on the strategic offensive’ against terrorist attacks launched with the support, if not connivance, of the Pakistan government has been noted all over the world. Few commentators had expected any other reaction. But unless it is planned meticulously with a precise definition of its objective and a careful appraisal of the alternatives for achieving it, such a shift is fraught with danger.

Indian TV has been baying for blood, but the goal of the Modi government should not be to ‘punish’ Pakistan for its sins, but to force it to give up using terrorism as a tool of foreign policy altogether. Such an effort is long overdue, but cannot be made by India alone, for the circumstances of Pakistan’s birth ensure that the entire nation will willingly commit suicide rather than bend its knee to India.

India can achieve this goal only in concert with other nations and heads of government. As the almost empty UN General Assembly hall to which Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif gave his address so eloquently showed, the time for a concerted effort to get Pakistan off this track is ripe. So the relentless, ugly, jingoistic drum-beating that is being indulged in by TV channels vying for TRP ratings, and the threats of disproportionate retaliatory strikes being voiced by RSS/BJP functionaries, is not only unnecessary, but is also likely to prove self defeating because it is arousing dormant fears in the rest of the world not only of a nuclear war in South Asia, but of the prolonged nuclear winter that will follow in its wake.

Lest this sound fanciful, we need only remember that a mere 20,000 tonnes of sulphur dioxide spewed into the stratosphere by the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1990 brought down the global average temperature in 1991 by half a degree Celsius and caused a severe drought in sub-Saharan Africa. We have no precise idea what a full-scale nuclear war will release into the atmosphere, but it is also worth remembering that 650,000 years ago, during the coldest ice age of the past million years, the global average surface temperature was only five degrees below what it is today.

[Riaz Haq]

#India's #Modi's #Pakistan Policy Lies Completely In Tatters. #UNGA http://www.ndtv.com/opinion/why-sushma-swarajs-speech-at-un-wont-am... … via @ndtv

Sushma Swaraj took to the UN General Assembly podium and demanded that "if any nation refuses to join this global strategy" - she was referring to the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism that India introduced in the UN 20 years ago - "then we must isolate it." Very good - except that if she had Pakistan in mind, I am very sorry but their position is the same as that of several member-States: that, despite the passage of two decades, much work still needs to be done on producing a consensual draft of the Convention acceptable to all. Indeed, as veteran Indian diplomat at the UN Hardeep Puri, now with the BJP, pointed out in the Left, Right & Centre programme on NDTV, the main nay-sayer has been the United States of America (he also added Syria). Not Pakistan. It is all very well for our External Affairs Minister to say that "such countries should have no place in the comity of nations" - but who is going to bell the American cat? 

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To achieve our goals as spelt out by Sushma Swaraj, we would, at a minimum, require the support of the US, Russia, and China as Permanent Members of the UN Security Council, and the unstinted backing of the Nonaligned Movement and the member-states of South Asia in the UN General Assembly. 

Where do we stand with each of them in the aftermath of Modi raking up Balochistan on 15 August, Gilgit and Baltistan the same day, and the Uri attack on 18 September - against the background of the continuing agitation in the streets of Kashmir since July 8?

As far as the United States is concerned, notwithstanding Modi's heroic efforts to impress Obama with his ten-lakh rupee bandhgala and his repeated invocation of "Barak" so that TV conveys his closeness to the US president, and Obama having designated India, during Modi's State visit to Washington in June, as a "Major Defense Partner", the US reaction to Modi's remarks on Balochistan was conveyed to the world by the US State department spokesman, John Kirby, in response to a pointed question from an Indian journalist about a month later, on September 13: "The government policy," he said disarmingly, "is that we support the territorial integrity of Pakistan". He added, for good measure, "We do not support independence for Balochistan". 

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And as for the Non-Aligned Movement, whose summit Modi skipped in a calculated downgrading of NAM, not one member has had a word of condemnation for Pakistan. Indeed, Iran, till recently chair of NAM, arranged for their President, Hassan Rouhani, to meet Nawaz Sharif in New York on 21 September, three days after Uri and the morning after Sharif's thundering denunciation of India at the UN, and "lauded PM Nawaz's vision" in translating the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor - Modi's bugbear - "into reality", describing it as "vital to the progress of the region" and seeking admission to it. Then Rouhani delivered himself of a string of poetic aphorisms: "Pakistan's security and progress is the security and progress of Iran"; "development of any part of Pakistan is the development of a part of Iran"; "borders of the two countries are border of security and friendship". Iran's Chahbahar port, that India sees as its gift to Iran, and as an alternative to CPEC, lies in Iran's Sistan-Baluchestan province. Why would Iran support Modi on a demand that Chahbahar (or Gwadar) be handed over to the Bugtis and the Marris? 

[Riaz Haq]

Life normal in #Pakistan Azad #Kashmir, but tense on #India side. #SurgicalStrike #Modi http://dailym.ai/2dF6Aw3 via @MailOnline

BAGSAR, Pakistan (AP) — Life seems quite normal in the villages along the Pakistani side of Kashmir. But on the Indian side, villagers are spending sleepless nights in temporary shelters amid soaring tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals.
On the Pakistani side, markets and schools were open, shepherds escorted their goats and cows to graze, and children were seen visiting shops to buy candies during a visit Saturday by dozens of media members to the border village of Bagsar, some 166 kilometers (103 miles) northeast of Islamabad.
The two neighbors' contentious frontier includes a rugged 740-kilometer (460-mile) mountainous stretch called the Line of Control, which is heavily guarded by both sides.

Since 2003, a cease-fire has largely held despite regular small-scale skirmishes. Each side routinely blames the other for starting any violence and insists they are only retaliating.
That was the case Saturday as Pakistani military officials took pains to refute the Indian version of the latest Kashmir conflict. The Indian army claims they carried out a 'surgical strike' on Sept. 29 near the village and destroyed a "terrorist launching pad" used by Kashmir-based militants.
Pakistani military spokesman Maj. Gen. Asim Salim Bajwa told visiting journalists that the Indian claim was a lie. He said Indian troops opened fire unprovoked with small arms and mortars after 2 a.m. in five separate spots along the border. Two Pakistani soldiers were killed in the barrages that continued until 7 a.m. and stopped only when the Pakistani army began retaliating, he said.
"That was simply the cease-fire violation on the LoC which was effectively and strongly punished," Bajwa said.
The Indian attack came about 10 days after a deadly assault on an Indian base in Kashmir. On Sept. 18, suspected rebels using guns and grenades sneaked into a base in Indian-controlled Kashmir and killed at least 17 soldiers.
On the Indian side, civilian officials said the frontier was largely calm but they were still not taking chances. Thousands of civilians slept in temporary shelters for the second night.
"Every year we go through these hardships. There seems to be no end to it in sight," said Mohan Lal, a villager in a shelter in the village of Khour.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3817562/Life-normal-Pak... 
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[Riaz Haq]

#India's "evidence falls apart". #Uri ‘terror guides’ are #Pakistan kids who strayed across #LoC http://indianexpress.com/article/india/uri-terror-attack-guides-pak... … via @IndianExpress


by Praveen Swamy

TWO Pakistanis arrested by the Army on charges of facilitating the attack on the 12 Infantry Brigade’s headquarters in Uri are Class 10 students who strayed across the Line of Control (LoC), the family of one and the principal of his school have told The Indian Express. The Ministry of External Affairs said the two had confessed to facilitating the “infiltration of a group of four Jaish-e-Muhammad cadre who carried out the Uri army camp attack.” Faisal Husain Awan, a resident of Potha Jandgran near the village of Koomi Kote in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and his school-friend Ahsan Khursheed, from Khilayana Khurd in Muzaffarabad’s Hattian Bala tehsil, were arrested on September 21, three days after the attack which claimed the lives of 19 soldiers. Both these villages are an hour’s walk from the LoC near Uri.

Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum, Faisal Awan’s brother and a Lahore-based physician, says the two were at home on September 17, the date GPS data recovered from the terrorists by the National Investigation Agency and published by this newspaper last week, shows the Uri terrorists crossing the Line of Control.
“I don’t want any controversy or recrimination,” says Tabassum, “which is why I hadn’t contacted the media. I am his older brother, and I am supposed to protect him. I do not know what to do. I can only hope someone powerful in India reads our story and sends these boys home.”
Basharat Husain, the principal of the the Shaheen Model School in Muzaffarabad, said Awan was a science student who had just graduated from Class IX with a first division.
The official marks-sheet shows Awan secured 328 out of a possible 525. Husain described Awan as “a model student, respectful and friendly.”
“For the six hours he was in school each day,” Basharat Husain said, “his behaviour was exemplary.”
Both boys, according to school documents provided by Husain, were 16 years old which — if these documents are authentic — makes them juveniles under Indian law and entitled to special protections, irrespective of their nationality.
“I did not know the two were friends,” Husain said, “but it is not surprising, given that they were in the same school, and from similar backgrounds.”
The Army, which on September 24 said the two were “Pakistan-occupied Kashmir nationals who have been working for Jaish-e-Muhammad terror outfit” said, in an e-mail response to the The Indian Express, that this determination was based on what it described as “spot interrogation.” However, the e-mail did not answer whether the Army had obtained the ages of the two while arresting them. The Army referred this newspaper to the NIA.
An NIA spokesperson said the agency “is in the process of analysing the available evidence in the case before we submit the Final Report to the court.” He said “the age (of) the two arrested persons was recorded as per statements given by them after their arrest,” but did not specifically state if they were known to minors.
However, sources said that no evidence had been found to support the contention that the two were linked, in any way, to the Uri attack.