Did pro-India militias kill Western tourists in Kashmir?
A government human rights commission in Kashmir on Tuesday evening said it will review records from the 1995 abduction of Western tourists after a new book claimed that four of six foreign tourists were murdered by a pro-India militia to discredit India’s arch-rival Pakistan.
On July 4, 1995, Americans Donald Hutchings and John Childs, as well as Britons Paul Wells and Keith Mangan were kidnapped by the little known Al-Faran militant group while trekking in the Himalayas near Pahalgam, 97 km (60 miles) southeast of Srinagar.
Four days later, Childs escaped. On the same day, the captors abducted German Dirk Hasert and Norwegian Hans Christian Ostroe. Ostroe was found beheaded in August 1995. The others were never found.
Journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, whose book “The Meadow: Kashmir 1995 – Where the Terror Began” is about the abduction, claim that the four Westerners were murdered by a pro-government militia group who worked for Indian security forces.
After Ostroe was beheaded, Al-Faran was ready to strike a monetary deal to free the hostages and might have released them for £250,000, the authors claim. They say the deal was deliberately sabotaged.
“It appeared that there were some in the Indian establishment who did not want this never-ending bad news story of Pakistani cruelty and Kashmiri inhumanity to end, even when the perpetrators themselves were finished,” the book says.
India, Pakistan find common cause in shoddy national carriers
The two are nuclear-armed, arch rivals often threatening the stability of South Asia and with little common ground, but the sorry state of their national carriers puts India and Pakistan on the same pedestal.
India may be an emerging superpower and Pakistan seemingly always on the brink of a disaster, but the national carriers of the arch-rivals face similar woes.
Both carriers — Air India (AI) and Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) –- are struggling to stay afloat, battered by financial woes and mismanagement.
Amid a major cash crunch and reeling under heavy losses, Air India and Pakistan International Airlines are struggling to continue operations — a shame for the state-run carriers which often are the defining images of their countries.
“Financially unviable” is the term attached to both carriers by lenders and both airlines have so far just managed to survive on taxpayer money.
The Indian government, battered by allegations of graft, and with the opposition snapping at its heels, can’t even afford to shut the airline down primarily on fears of a political backlash.
While Air India struggles with striking pilots, the state of publicly-listed PIA is worse.
Comment by Pathozade is sheer nonsense. I cannot find anywhere the negative comments against Pakistan except to blame “mismanagment” for both airlines travails and a quote extracted from the news services. I have flown PIA Tues am Karachi/Islamabad, return Friday pm. This is the route all bureaucrats take, Islamabad nearly deserted on week-ends. We all conduct business from just one fortress like hotel up on the slope with beautiful (Shalimar-like) gardens owned by the Arabs. The only truly secure place save for the Presidential Palace. Once, in the company of former finance minister Shaukat, we were ejected from first class because an MP “co-opted” the seats. The owner of Dawn was on the flight. A fight ensued, degenerating into fisticuffs and shoving, and the flight was delayed an hour. Indeed the return Friday night flights are so full that, rules be damned, some passengers stand in the back and in the aisles.. This is reality.. Parveen
from Afghan Journal:
India-Afghan strategic pact:the beginnings of regional integration
A strategic partnership agreement between India and Afghanistan would ordinarily have evoked howls of protest from Pakistan which has long regarded its western neighbour as part of its sphere of influence. Islamabad has, in the past, made no secret of its displeasure at India's role in Afghanistan including a$2 billion aid effort that has won it goodwill among the Afghan people, but which Pakistan sees as New Delhi's way to expand influence.
Instead the reaction to the pact signed last month during President Hamid Karzai's visit to New Delhi, the first Kabul had done with any country, was decidedly muted. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said India and Afghanistan were "both sovereign countries and they have the right to do whatever they want to." The Pakistani foreign office echoed Gilani's comments, adding only that regional stability should be preserved. It cried off further comment, saying it was studying the pact.
It continued to hold discussions, meanwhile, on the grant of the Most Favoured Nation to India as part of moves to normalise ties. Late last month the cabinet cleared the MFN, 15 years after New Delhi accorded Pakistan the same status so that the two could conduct trade like nations do around the world, even those with differences.
And on Thursday, Gilani met Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh on the margins of a regional summit in the Maldives and the two promised a new chapter in ties, saying the next round of talks between officials as part of an engagement on a range of issues will produce results. Afghanistan or the pact, was scarcely mentioned in public, although it is quite conceivable that the two would have talked about it.
Is there a shift in the ground, in both India and Pakistan ? Pakistan is battling multiple crises, including ties with the United States that at the moment certainly look worse than those with India. It is also struggling to tackle a melange of militant groups that have metastasized into a mortal danger for the Pakistani state itself and a deep economic downturn that a nation of 180 million people can ill-afford at this time. While it continues to invest time and energy in Afghanistan, a large part of the war has come home too and it is struggling to enforce its writ on its side of the Pasthun-dominated lands that straddle the two countries. A lessening of tensions with India can only help at this point.
India, meanwhile, has shot out of the blocks building a trillion-dollar economy that dwarfs everyone else's in the region, not just in size but also growth rates even if it is slowing down now. It still has a long way to go to meet the aspirations of a billion plus people and realise its own potential, though. It needs peace within and on the borders and it needs closer economic ties with all its neighbours. Its economic stakes are rising across the region including Afghanistan where Indian firms, along with the Chinese who preceded them, are the only ones prepared to risk blood and treasure to exploit its mineral resources. Conversely if a pomegranate farmer in southern Afghanistan- the Taliban heartland - wants to sell his produce to the booming Indian market, New Delhi wants to do whatever it can to try and make that possible.
@josokutty
Well said! Just do it, if not at the govt. level, then at citizen levels. Here is a suggestion, each village of a country should initiate to engage with a village of the other country, in partnership and friendship; cooperative joint civic projects and trade. People must develope themeselves to regain confidence and trust which has gone lost in history.
Rex Minor
Can commerce be ultimate CBM for India and Pakistan?
The running theme of the 21st century is that of economic partnerships, from the European Union to ASEAN, with the aim of fostering and maintaining economic prosperity and social progress.
And arch rivals India and Pakistan might also discover the economic and political dividend of cooperation if they are sincere in liberalising bilateral trade.
As a Pakistani commerce minister visited India for the first time in 35 years, big words are flowing from both sides about agreements reached in easing trade restrictions and their sincerity in pushing up by several notches a fragile peace process that was shattered following the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Initiatives like the present trade agreements which include opening a new customs post and easing visa rules are termed confidence building measures (CBMs), whose larger purpose is to gradually normalise ties.
And officials say they are more sincere than ever in fostering cooperation.
“You would appreciate the difference in approach this time. Both sides are committed that they would make this dialogue process irreversible,” Pakistani Commerce Minister Makhdoom Amin Fahim said.
Indian commerce minister Anand Sharma added: “The visit will be a defining one … we have talked on all things in an environment of frankness and openness.”
Mistrust, Afghan insecurity loom over Indo-Pak talks
By Annie Banerji
As India and Pakistan begin diplomatic talks between the two countries’ foreign secretaries, Pew Research Centre published a survey this week that shows Pakistanis are strongly critical of India and the United States as well.
Even though there has been a slew of attacks by the Taliban on Pakistani targets since Osama bin Laden’s killing in May, the Pew Research publication illustrates that three in four Pakistanis find India a greater threat than extremist groups.
In similar fashion, 65 percent of Indians expressed an unfavourable view of Pakistan, seeing it as a bigger threat than the LeT, an active militant Islamic organisation operating mainly from Pakistan and Maoist militants operating in India.
Moreover, a majority of Pakistanis disapproved of the U.S. military operation that killed Osama bin Laden in his Abbottabad compound, located 35 miles from Islamabad. Only 12 percent expressed a positive view of the U.S. and most Pakistanis view the U.S. as an enemy, consider it a potential military threat and oppose American-led anti-terrorism efforts.
In the midst of these unflattering opinions that India and Pakistan share of each other, U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by next summer comes to the foreground as Washington’s expectation is to see India and Pakistan jointly fill its shoes. However, India feels it will be left to babysit a dangerous neighbourhood riddled with militancy.
Though both countries wish to have improved relations, Pakistan worries about India’s influence in Afghanistan as it would have to defend both its eastern and western borders from what it sees as its existential threat. In the same way, New Delhi fears the possibility of its nuclear-armed neighbour and the Taliban filling the vacuum left by the U.S. troops.
The show must go on; the majority of Indians and Pakistanis do not want peace, but a continued war with each other, until the other party has been annihilated. This is their destiny and many of the leaders who went into dialogues to talk about talks and negotiations about the disputes ended the talks by adding new issues to the main conflict of Kashmir. The leaders of both countries have been the masters of deceit, duplicity and betrayal outwitting even the spin master of Politics, the famous Machiavelli. They have never tried sincerely to protect people’s interests or those of the coming generations, inspite of their supposed commitment to fairness and justice for their people.In the meantime they have acquired enough lethal weapons to annihilate each other, the genuine desire of both parties.
Rex Minor
India no angel in dangerous neighbourhood
By Annie Banerji
Perhaps the finger-pointing at neighbouring Pakistan and the talk of Afghan militancy destabilising the region that New Delhi so often rolls out should be reconsidered. The neighbourhood may well be dangerous, but India is no model pupil.
According to the 2011 Global Peace Index, an initiative of the Institute of Economics and Peace, which evaluates 153 countries based on the level of ongoing conflict, safety and security and militarisation, India is the world’s 135th most peaceful country, falling seven positions from last year.
This year’s rankings, which indicated a decline in the levels of peace for the third consecutive year overall, placed Iceland in the top spot as the most peaceful country and Somalia as the world’s least.
India’s performance is high on some of the indicators, for instance, level of organised internal conflict, political instability, and relations with neighbouring countries, for which reason India is a part of the 20 least peaceful countries in the world along with Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan.
India’s unfortunate state of safety and security not only emerges largely from religious conflict with active groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Students’ Islamic Movement of India, but also Naxalism, an ideology of militant Communist groups. Terror activity is not concentrated in a particular region in India, but it has poisonously seeped into almost all areas of the country.
Starting from the north, with the perennial conflict of Jammu and Kashmir due to political and religious imbalances to the north-east, where there are tensions between state governments, the central government and the tribal people. Central India is infested with Naxalist insurgency, which in the past week caused the death of nine police officers.
I do not know how authentic these studies are. There is no clear information on how the information was obtained, the sources of the information and whether any verification was done at all. Most of these surveys are done by Western countries where they inject their perceived bias and apprehension into these surveys, thereby projecting a demoniacal image of countries that do not entirely agree with their vision of the world. I’d say, based on this survey, Antarctica is the most peaceful place on earth.
If one takes a country like the USA, gun culture is legally permitted. People can own automatic and semi-automatic weapons, grenade launchers and what not. Once in a while people get shot in shopping malls and work places by frustrated or mentally deranged individuals. Safety is a big concern there. People get shot when getting mugged by school kids. Drug gangs have proliferated across big metros. Cops can shoot and kill anyone. They just have to make up the evidence. In places like Australia, racial attacks have increased. Indians are targeted and attacked. If the world is gauged from an Indian standpoint or that of an African, the rest of the world does not appear that safe.
I do not deny India’s own problems. Things were much worse before compared to now. Every country has its criminals. Therefore I am not so worried about these surveys which are amateurish at best.
from Afghan Journal:
Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, a deterrent against India, but also United States ?
Pakistan's nuclear weapons have been conceived and developed as a deterrent against mighty neighbour India, more so now when its traditional rival has added economic heft to its military muscle. But Islamabad may also be holding onto its nuclear arsenal to deter an even more powerful challenge, which to its mind, comes from the United States, according to Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who led President Barack Obama's 2009 policy review on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Pakistan and the United States are allies in the war against militancy, but ties have been so troubled in recent years that some in Pakistan believe that the risk of a conflict cannot be dismissed altogether and that the bomb may well be the country's only hedge against an America that looks less a friend and more a hostile power.
Last year the Obama administration said there could be consequences if the next attack in the West were to be traced backed to Pakistan, probably the North Waziristan hub of al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militant groups.No nation can ignore a warning as chilling as that, and it is reasonable to expect the Pakistan military to do what it can to defend itself.
Riedel in a piece in The Wall Street Journal says Pakistan's army chief Ashfaq Kayani may well have concluded that the only way to hold off a possible American military action is the presence of nuclear weapons on its soil and hence the frenetic race to increase the size of the arsenal to the point that Pakistan is on track to become the fourth largest nuclear power after the United States, Russia and China.
Last month's military action in Libya, the third Muslim nation attacked by the United States in the ten years since 9/11, can only heighten anxieties in Pakistan. Indeed Libya holds an opposite lesson for Pakistan's security planners. This is a country that gave up a nuclear weapons programme - ironically assisted by Pakistan's disgraced nuclear scientist A.Q.Khan - under a deal with the West following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Suppose for a moment that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi had held on its nuclear weapons, would there have been air strikes then ?
Indeed none of the three countries attacked by the United States had nuclear weapons including, as it turned out, Iraq although the whole idea of invading it was to eliminate the weapons of mass destruction. You could further argue that this perhaps is the one reason why the United States hasn't taken on North Korea because of its advanced nuclear programme with a bomb or two in the basement.
An Islamic fundamentalist anti-India/anti-West nation with hundreds of nukes. A true nightmare. The US must do something before its too late.
Will Singh add Pakistan to his list of triumphs?
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has long wanted to secure what his dozen predecessors have failed to achieve: lasting peace with arch rival Pakistan. But, if the WikiLeaks cables are to be believed, Singh probably remains isolated in pursuing his dream.
In a week when officials from both countries meet to resume talks broken off after the 2008 Mumbai attacks and when the two prime ministers play “cricket diplomacy“, have the chances for peace improved?
There seems to be too much loaded against the initiative. The enmity between the two nations is rooted in their very existence and peaceniks are a handful. There is little political gain and much risk to be had from pursuing peace.
Both sides have hardened positions on Kashmir, the Himalayan territory that is claimed in full but ruled in part by both. The two countries have fought two of their three wars over the region. New Delhi accuses Islamabad of aiding separatists and wants this to end. Pakistan denies any help apart from moral and diplomatic support.
And while Singh appears to be the only Indian leader the Pakistanis respect and trust, he has little political clout. His Congress party and the government run on the dictates of powerful party chief Sonia Gandhi. A series of corruption scandals and high prices have eroded his image as a leader above India’s murky politics and put him in the opposition’s firing line.
Singh cannot anyway expect much enthusiasm from the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Hindu nationalist party which eyes Pakistan with deep suspicion. The BJP has in the past played up tensions with Islamabad and would jump on the government at the slightest hint of mischief from across the border.
Nor is the civilian government in Pakistan particularly in a position to push for peace. Indian policy is made in Rawalpindi, the headquarters of the Pakistani army, rather than in Islamabad, critics say, and they have little desire to mend relations with India. There have been past instances where the army has scuppered deals.
from Afghan Journal:
Standing on the warfront: when sport divides India and Pakistan
In the run-up to Wednesday's cricket match between India and Pakistan, passions are running high on both sides of the border and in the diaspora which is following their teams' progress in the game's biggest tournament.
How to demolish Pakistan was the title of a programme aired by an Indian television network where former players and experts discussed ways to win the high-voltage game that will be played in the northern Indian town of Mohali, within, in a manner of speaking, of earshot distance of the heavily militarised border with Pakistan. Pakistan television in similarly wall-to-wall coverage ran a programme where one of the guests advised the team to recite a particular passage from the Koran before stepping out to play that day. There is even a story doing the rounds in Pakistan that an enraged Indian crowd put a parrot fortune teller to death for predicting a Pakistani victory, according to this report.
All fair in sport, you would argue, and especially for two countries that take their cricket very seriously. But this contest has an edgy undertone of antagonism that flows from the tension in ties since the Mumbai attacks of 2008 carried out by Pakistan based militants and for which New Delhi seeks greater redress from Pakistani authorities.
The charged atmosphere - and this has very little to do with the players themselves - recalls the fervour and aggression of the 1990s when the people of the two countries treated cricket as essential conflict. Each game was seen as a test of national honour in much the way the border guards of the two countries strut their stuff in a bitter-sweet ceremony at the Wagah crossing each day at sunset. The winner of the cricket game was feted while the loser slinked away in disgrace.
The drums of war are being heard again as the subcontinent virtually prepares to come to a halt for the game this week. "To many cricket fans its a war, to the Pakistani fans it's match of revenge as they think that the BCCI and Indian underground agents have been the criminals in causing all the chaos in Pakistan and its cricket, while India thinks Pakistan as the culprit in creating a zone of terrorism surrounding them," wrote Faisal Caesar in SportPulse.
But what does Indian batting genius Sachin Tendulkar or Pakistan's resurgent captain Shahid Afridi have to do with all that, he asks.
Make no mistake… this is no match like any other match. It’s WAR and a MOTHER OF ALL
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
India-Pakistan – cricket, spooks and peace
"Cricket diplomacy" has always been one of the great staples of the relationship between India and Pakistan. The two countries have tried and failed before to use their shared enthusiasm for cricket to build bridges, right back to the days of Pakistan President Zia ul-Haq, if not earlier.
So when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced last week that he was inviting Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari to watch the semi-finals of the Cricket World Cup in Mohali, India, the temptation was to dismiss it as an old idea.
Yes, it would be the first visit by a leader of either country to the other since the November 2008 attack on Mumbai. Yes, the invitation came at a time when relations between the two countries were already thawing. And yes, the Middle East is changing so fast that you would expect -- in the way that warring siblings do -- that India and Pakistan would bury their differences at a time when the outside world has become so unpredictable.
But the instinct for cynicism is unerring. India and Pakistan have tried and failed to make peace for so long that it is easy, lazily easy, to predict that this latest initiative will also come to nothing. Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, himself a participant in cricket diplomacy in 2005, wrote it off in 2000:
`"We have been trying all kinds of bus diplomacy and cricket diplomacy and everything. Why has all of it failed? It has failed because the core issue was not being addressed ... because there is only one dispute, the Kashmir dispute ... others are just aberrations, minor differences of opinion which can be resolved," he told The Hindu in an interview in 2000.
Yet even after Mumbai, even after years of fighting over Kashmir, even after all the failed diplomatic initiatives of the past, I still found myself regularly checking on Google and Twitter to see whether Pakistan had accepted the invitation to the cricket match. When Zardari's spokeswoman Farahnaz Ispahani announced on her Twitter feed that Gilani would be going to Mohali, the news was retweeted with the speed once reserved by traditional media for attendance at U.S.-Soviet summits.
Over the years, each time something like this has happened, enthusiasm about a breakthrough in India-Pakistan relations has been swiftly disabused.
Pashtoons are by and large hospitable, when compared with Indian folks. Afridis are Pashtoons. This does not, however, follow that Afridis are hospiable people as such.
Americans are the most hospitable and generous people in the world! This is continuously changing ofcourse, due to the mix in their population.
Rex Minor
Whatever the truth of that state of affairs, what is at issue is that tourists are also prime targets for ethnic conflicts. Tourists represent the nation state in a quasi sense, and so pay the high price if caught in ethnic conflict.