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.
Afghan endgame and fears of rise in Kashmir violence
The Indian army says rebel violence will escalate in Kashmir in summer as hundreds of militants are waiting in the Pakistani part of Kashmir to infiltrate into the Indian side and step up attacks.
Even an internal assessment of the Home Ministry says the summer of 2010 will be as bloodier as or even worse than the mid-nineties.
In Kashmir, violence involving Muslim rebels and Indian troops was on the decline since India and Pakistan, who dispute the region, began a peace process in 2004.
Then why does New Delhi fear escalation of militant violence in Kashmir?
Analysts say after the failure of high-level talks between New Delhi and Islamabad, both are now locked in an escalating proxy war in Afghanistan, a war-torn region where both neighbours vie for influence.
“If no solution is found to reconcile Pakistani and Indian interests in Afghanistan, the coming months might see stepped up terrorist attacks against Indians in Kabul and the return of militants infiltrating Indian Kashmir from Pakistan,” says Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist.
Though the high Himalayan passes are still covered with a thick layer of snow, Pakistan-based militants have started pushing in their members into the Valley.
I my self come from kashmir part belonging to pakistan so called azad kashmir on a recent visit what i saw completly surprised me majority of the people in my region were from afganistan or they had come from the region bodering india, I asked a few people as to what they were doing in the valley leaving their homes and land in the mountains the reply i got was that they were scared of the constant shelling, I assume it will be both side shelling one another. There is no industry in azad kashmir the pakistani govt. has not invested in any sort of infrastructure if kashmir was ruled by one honest govt. it can be self suffient and look after if self the tourist industry in that place would be huge. India and pakistan should sit down work something out for them people and in return they would not have to spend huge amount of money on defence which could go towards their own people, everyone would be better off but India cannot let kashmir go because it would lead to its destruction because other regions will want self rule which India cannot afford and it is same with pakistan so the people of kashmir will have to suffer no matter what. They can thank the British, Lord Mountbatten and the U.N for their fate. Both India and Pakistan are there for self interest only, the good thing is our part is not as bad as the other side, this boder should come down like the berlin wall but unfortunatly their is no country out their to help the people of kashmir.
Kashmir marks 20 years of conflict, peace still distant
One of the world’s longest-running separatist insurgencies, one that has killed tens of thousands of people in Kashmir, completed two decades last month.
The strife-torn region witnessed a period of relative calm, but a recent spate of rebel attacks is a grim reminder of the tensions in Kashmir at the heart of enmity between nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan.
A series of skirmishes across Kashmir’s border between the South Asian rivals, which claim the disputed region in full but rule in parts, also underline decades of mistrust between two countries which have fought two wars over the region.
With diplomatic limbo between India and Pakistan and stalled peace talks between New Delhi and region’s separatists, peace seems a distant dream.
Yasin Malik, one of Kashmir’s most influential separatist leaders, recently told Reuters in an interview that the region risks a return to militancy and violent protests if India fails to push a stalled peace process.
After two decades of campaign, little headway is visible for resolution of Kashmir which New Delhi calls the crown of India, while for Islamabad it is Pakistan’s jugular vein.
“For God’s sake, don’t give our next generation a sense of defeat. If you are giving them a sense of defeat, you are pushing them for another revolution,” Malik told BBC.
The trouble is with the Indian Government being too soft and never strong enough to take on the terrorists. We need to go across the line of control and blast the hell out of the terrorist camps in Pakistan Occupied kashmir. Kashmir issue is not Muslim-Hindu issue. In a secular society we do not divide the land based on religion, caste or creed. US government has never been an honest broker. It is still carrying on the Cold War mind set and pouring economic and military help to Pakestan. These funds help Pak to keep sprouting newer and more deadly terrorist outfits. Just like Talibal and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, Pakistan is going to bite USA too. One of these days US will wake up when it will be too late. US should get together with India ans annihilate the menace of Pakistan once and for all. Withour exterminating Pak world terrorism will grow leaps and bounds.
Manmohan Singh’s shrinking room for manoeuvre on Pakistan
It is more than two weeks since Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed a declaration with his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani aimed at rebuilding ties, but the attacks on Singh haven’t abated at home.
By agreeing to delink terrorism from the broader peace process and including a reference to the threats inside Pakistan’s troubled Baluchistan province – which Pakistan says is stoked by India – Singh is seen to have gone too far to accommodate the neighbour without getting anything in return.
If the sustained nature of the attacks from the security establishment, the Hindu nationalist opposition and the sniper firing from within Singh’s ruling Congress is any indication, he has a rocky path ahead in any engagement with Pakistan.
As Pratap Bhanu Mehta who heads the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi notes, the continuing controversy over the Sharm el-Sheikh statement poses a huge challenge for the prime minister. “He has to recognise how much at odds his strategy on Pakistan appears to be with a lot of public opinion.”
You can be sure the next time Singh meets Gilani or anyone else from the Pakistani establishment in some third nation (a trip to Islamabad is hard to comprehend on current public opinion), there will be a billion people watching him. They will scrutinise every move, every comment, and every word that he signs off on.
There is even a piece by Ramachandra Guha, one of India’s foremost modern historians, pointing out that three men in charge of India’s foreign policy – Singh, foreign minister S. M. Krishna and National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan were all on the wrong side of 75, and at a time when India’s foreign policy faced a daunting challenge. “In the rocky ocean of global politics, the Indian ship of State can carry one old man, perhaps even two. But three?” he asks.
United States of India .. A view from MIT
“By 2040, after a transformative reformation of entire power structure in former Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan will formally merge into a United States of India”
http://tech.mit.edu/V129/N30/indiapakist an.html
Is Pakistan still aiding Kashmir militants?
Separatist violence in Kashmir has fallen to its lowest level since an anti-India insurgency began nearly two decades ago.
However, people are still killed in daily firefights and occasional attacks by suspected militants, mostly in rural and mountainous areas.
Is Pakistan still aiding militants fighting Indian troops in Kashmir, despite Islamabad’s assurances and a slow-moving peace process between New Delhi and Islamabad?
Senior Indian security officials say Pakistan is still arming, training and sending militants to the disputed Kashmir region, making it difficult to end violence in the war-weary region.
“In this situation we should not expect that terrorism can be finished,” said Kuldeep Khuda, police chief of Jammu and Kashmir state – arguably the most difficult policing job in the country.
But Pakistan has consistently denied its involvement in abetting Kashmir militancy that has killed tens of thousands of people across the scenic region since 1989, has left nothing untouched and has brought untold misery to a once carefree society.
Kashmiri residents and local leaders, both pro-India and separatists, attribute the fall of violence involving troops and Muslim militants to the India-Pakistan peace process which started in early 2004 following a ceasefire between two armies on the highly militarised Line of Control, which divides Kashmir between the two.
Well the violence has fallen to its lowest after New Delhi and Islamabad started talking over their disputes in 2004. I think, since then, Pakistan is too busy to help Kashmir insurgency..let us give devil its due
Do Kashmir separatists seek to revive dialogue with new Indian government?
After India’s ruling Congress party won a decisive victory, Kashmir’s main separatist alliance urged New Delhi to resolve the decades-old dispute over the Himalayan region.
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, said India has a strong government after a long gap and it is time for a solution to the Kashmir issue.
Are Kashmir separatists seeking to revive a stalled dialogue?
Talks between New Delhi and moderate separatists broke down in 2007 after three years, and the failure, which separatists say further alienated the people of the region from India, was partly attributed to the country’s “weak” government.
In the biggest anti-India rally this year, Hurriyat chairman Farooq said India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had made a promise to the people of Kashmir, and it was time the new Congress-led government fulfilled it.
But Farooq is battling opposition at home from more radical leaders like Syed Ali Shah Geelani and militant groups who oppose talks with India without the participation of Pakistan.
all this kashmiri sepratism is limited to four lanes in the old city of srinagar & is highlighted by fad journos…
Timing of Jaipur blasts will raise suspicion of Pakistani hand
Are militants, or even hawks within the Pakistani establishment, trying to undermine the peace process with India, now that President Pervez Musharraf has removed his uniform and civilians are squabbling for power?
The dust has scarcely settled on another horrific bomb attack in India, and the investigation has only just begun into the synchronised blasts in Jaipur that killed around 60 people .
It is still far too early to be drawing any firm conclusions, but the timing of the blasts is already making some people wonder whether Pakistan was involved.
The explosions came a week before India‘s foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee was due to visit Islamabad to review the peace process, his first visit since a new, civilian government took over in Pakistan.
It also came just a few days after some of the worst violence this year in Kashmir . India was unhappy that its soldiers came under heavy fire from Pakistani last Thursday along the Line of Control as armed militants tried to sneak into Kashmir .
It was also ten years since India conducted five nuclear tests, on May 11 and 13, 1998.
Now that the army is no longer running Pakistan, is the powerful military intelligence agency, the ISI, flexing its muscles again and warning its new civilian “bosses” to abandon the cause of Kashmir at their peril?
How long Indian keep blaming Pak for the problems they have in their society or country,like cast, injustice in ruling other ehnics, unfair class systems, poverty. It is time for Indian to face reality and fix these very difficult problems.
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