Pakistan: Now or Never?

from India Insight:

Kashmir seeks extradition of accused army soldier

A former Indian soldier, accused of killing a Kashmiri human rights lawyer, has been arrested in the United States on charges of domestic violence.

Major Avtar Singh fled the country in the 1990s after he was accused of kidnapping and brutally killing Jaleel Andrabi, a Kashmiri lawyer and human rights activist.

Andrabi's decomposed body was found 15 years ago in a river. The killing sparked off massive protests and led to a probe by authorities.

The government of Jammu and Kashmir is now seeking the extradition of Singh from the United States.

A Times of India report said a special investigating team found Singh could have been involved in six more extrajudicial killings in Kashmir.

"The accused is in California police's preventive custody. He would (be) shifted to Srinagar in 15 days," said senior police official Raja Ajaz Ali, who is also Interpol liaison officer for Kashmir.

Government forces in the Himalayan state have been accused in the past of murdering civilians in staged gunbattles and passing them off as separatist militants to earn rewards and promotions.

In Pakistan, a death foretold

In one of the more anguished posts about the murder of provincial governor Salman Taseer, Pakistani blogger Huma Imtiaz wrote that his assassination ”is not the beginning of the end. This is the end. There is no going back from here, there is no miracle cure, there is no magic wand that will one day make everything better. Saying ‘enough is enough’ does not cut it anymore …”

It was a sense that permeated much of the English-language commentary about Taseer’s killing in Islamabad by one of his own security guards. Interior Minister Rehman Malik said Taseer, governor of Punjab province and a leading politician in the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), was killed because of his opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.  A sense that the forces of religious intolerance are becoming all but unstoppable; and that those who oppose them by promoting a more liberal vision of Pakistan occupy an ever diminishing space.

“Salmaan Taseer was many things, but most recently, he was a champion of a particular strand of liberal, secular discourse in a country where such voices are dwindling down to nothing. He was a minority because he chose to stand next to the Christian and Hindu minorities who are denied basic protection in their own nation.  This is a great loss,” wrote historian Manan Ahmed at Chapati Mystery.

Taseer had championed the case of Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman who had been sentenced to death under the blasphemy laws, which have been criticised in particular for their misuse against minorities, often to settle local scores.

In his own words, from one of his last interviews, Taseer said of Aasia Bibi:  “She is a woman who has been incarcerated for a year-and-a half on a charge trumped up against her five days after an incident where people who gave evidence against her were not even present. So this is a blatant violation against a member of a minority community. I, like a lot of right-minded people, was outraged, and all I did was to show my solidarity. It is the first time in the history of the Punjab that a governor has gone inside a district jail, held a press conference and stated clearly that this is a blatant miscarriage of justice and that the sentence that has been passed is cruel and inhumane. I wanted to take a mercy petition to the president, and he agreed, saying he would pardon Aasiya Bibi if there had indeed been a miscarriage of justice.”

For that he had suffered death threats from the religious right who present any challenge to the blasphemy laws, introduced under former military ruler President  Zia-ul-Haq, as an insult to Islam.  In response he had promised on his Twitter feed to resist the pressure from the religious right “even if I am the last man standing”.

But the despair over Taseer’s killing was not only over the death of one man. It was because the warning signs had been there for so long and been ignored. And because so many others had died already, and nothing had been done.  The killing of more than 80 members of the minority Ahmadi sect in two mosques in Lahore last year might have served as a wake-up call.  It didn’t.  Nor for that matter did the killing of eight Christians in the town of Gojra in Punjab in 2009 following unsubstantiated allegations that a Christian had desecrated the Koran.

from India Insight:

Kashmir calms down, but peace still distant

Winter has come to Kashmir, a scenic valley deep in the Himalayas, cooling tensions in the disputed region after months of violent anti-India demonstrations.

At least 110 people have been killed since June. Dozens were wounded, mostly by police bullets, during the protests -- the biggest since a revolt against Indian rule broke out in 1989.

A separatist strike, curfew and security lock-down, that dragged on for over four months and closed much of the region, have ebbed away and the streets across Kashmir are abuzz with activity again.

Authorities say the arrest of some "hard-core" protest organisers and the onset of winter helped to calm the protests.

But there is no optimism across Kashmir valley that peace has returned.

Nayeem Akhtar, chief spokesman of the state's main opposition People's Democratic Party says the weakening of anti-India protests should not be mistaken for an end to the problem.

"You cannot expect Kashmiris to be in permanent agitation mode. People are exhausted, they have suffered deaths, injuries, financial losses," Akhtar told The Hindu newspaper.

from India Insight:

Is Kashmir’s protest leader gaining popularity?

Separatist militancy has waned over the years in Kashmir, but now a radicalised young generation which has grown up in over two decades of violence and strife is driving the massive anti-India demonstrations across the disputed region.

Who is leading months of freedom demonstrations in Kashmir, a fresh unarmed uprising that is proving a huge political challenge for the Indian government?

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the 80-year-old hardline Kashmiri politician who is hated by India and backed by Pakistan, has emerged as the leading face of the present separatist campaign in the region.

Since the crisis started on June 11 when a 17-year-old student died after being hit by a tear gas shell during a protest, Geelani weekly issues a protest calendar that calls for protest marches, strikes and sit-ins.

More than 100 people have now been killed in more than 100 days of protests, the biggest since an armed revolt against New Delhi’s rule broke out in 1989.

The death toll so far includes children, women and teenagers, nearly all killed by police bullets.

Many Kashmiris are not happy with Geelani's protest plans because the continuing cycle of strikes and government curfews has shut down schools, colleges and offices, made food and medicine scarce and has brought untold misery to the people.

from India Insight:

India offers fresh peace talks to Kashmir

New Delhi has expressed its willingness to hold talks with "any group" from Kashmir where protests against Indian rule have mounted in recent weeks and government forces have killed at least 65 people, mostly stone-throwing protesters.

The civilian deaths have fuelled anger in the disputed Himalayan region where anti-India sentiments run deep though militant violence has gone down.

"We hope to restart the dialogue process. We will talk to any group, any political party which is willing to talk to us," Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said.

According to Hindustan Times, the government will soon come out with specific meaures to address some issues which may bring relief to the people of Kashmir.

A nearly three-month-long separatist strike, curfew and security lockdown has kept the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley on the boil, shutting down much of the scenic region.

"Few days means few days...government hopes that it will be able to re-start the process of dialogue in the near future," Chidambaram said.

After several failed rounds of peace talks between moderate separatists and New Delhi in the past decade, locals say India is only buying time and is not serious about resolution of the dispute.

from India Insight:

Killing of civilians fuels Kashmir anger

Just days ago, scenic Kashmir, torn by two decades of war, was near normal.

Thousands of tourists were flocking to the region and honeymooners were once again gliding in shikaras, small Kashmiri boats, across the mirror-calm Dal Lake.

The disputed Himalayan region has seen a significant drop in violence between Muslim rebels and security forces.

But now the Valley is again under siege in the backdrop of rising public anger.

A curfew has been imposed in the summer capital, Srinagar, to prevent violent anti-India demonstrations following the death of a teenager blamed on government forces.

Police and soldiers armed with assault rifles have blocked off lanes with razor wire and iron barricades to prevent protests after scores were hurt in pitched street battles.

Earlier, the killing of three villagers in an alleged fake gun battle by soldiers sparked off fresh anger in Kashmir prompting a pledge by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to improve human rights in Kashmir.

from India Insight:

Of Kashmir’s “staged” killings and south Asian peace process

When the prime ministers of India and Pakistan held talks on April 29 and signalled an unexpected thaw in their frigid relations, troops in Indian Kashmir reportedly lured three civilians to work as porters.

The next day, security forces allegedly gunned down three on the Line of Control (LoC) and passed them off as infiltrating militants from the Pakistan side.

Last week, police exhumed the bodies after three families in north Kashmir's Baramulla area said the slain men were innocent relatives who had gone missing days before the "border clash".

After identification the three bodies were found to be those of the missing men, triggering massive anti-India demonstrations across the Valley.

Government forces in the disputed region have been accused in the past of murdering innocent civilians in staged gun battles and passing them off as separatist militants to earn rewards and promotions.

But the fresh "staged' killings have come at a sensitive time in  Kashmir where rebel violence is waning and the region was expecting a push to stalled peace talks between New Delhi and the region's separatists.

Though the Indian army and the state government have launched a probe into the 'fake gun battle" and Defence Minister A.K. Antony has assured there would be no cover-up to shield the guilty, the damage has been done.

from India Insight:

In Kashmir, nearly half favour independence

Nearly half of the people living in the Indian and Pakistani parts of Kashmir want their disputed and divided state to become an independent country, according to a poll published by think tank Chatham House.

London-based Chatham House says the poll is the first to be conducted on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC), a military control line that has separated Indian and Pakistani controlled Kashmir since the U.N.-brokered ceasefire between two rivals in 1949.

The poll has produced startling results. On average 44 percent of people in Pakistani-administered Kashmir favoured independence, compared with 43 percent in Indian Kashmir.

But in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, which is at the centre of the two-decades-old anti-India insurgency, between 75 percent and 95 percent support freedom both from India and Pakistan.

The scenic Himalayan region, which is divided between three nuclear-armed neighbours India, Pakistan and China, comprises of three regions -- Buddhist-dominated Ladakh, Hindu-dominated Jammu and Muslim-majority Kashmir valley.

Twenty one percent of the population said they would vote for the whole of Kashmir to join India, and only 15 percent said they would vote for it to join Pakistan.

At least 80 percent of Kashmiris on both sides of LoC say that the decades-old dispute is very important to them personally.

from India Insight:

India-Pakistan “secret pact” – was Kashmir accord just a signature away?

India and Pakistan held secret talks for more than three years, reached an accord on the thorny Kashmir issue and had almost unveiled it in 2007 before domestic turmoil in Pakistan derailed it, former Pakistani foreign minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri has revealed.

Kasuri says the two nuclear-armed rivals, who rule the Himalayan region in parts, had agreed to full demilitarisation of both the Indian and Pakistani parts of Kashmir with a package of loose autonomy on both sides of the Line of Control, a military control line that divides the region between two nations.

"We agreed on a point between complete independence and autonomy," Kasuri told Times of India.

Almost all Kashmir leaders except hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani came on board and agreed on the accord that was to be signed during a visit by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Islamabad scheduled for February-March 2007.

It never happened. The then Pakistan president, Pervez Musharraf, lost power and the country plunged into turmoil.

The "secret deal" had come despite six decades of distrust and other festering disputes between the two countries who have fought wars over Kashmir.

Has Kashmir, the region that has bled for twenty years, lost an opportunity for peace and permanent settlement?

Pakistan’s ethnic jigsaw shaken by NWFP name change

Changing the name of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) to “Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa” has triggered a new debate over whether other ethnic communities have the right to claim and win separate regions.

Parliament last week approved the new name, reflecting the Pashtuns’ demographic dominance of the province.

Pashtun nationalists, represented by the Awami National Party (ANP), who lead the coalition government in the province, argue the old NWFP name indicates only a geographical location rather than the ethnicity of its inhabitants, unlike the other three Pakistan provinces — Punjab for Punjabis, Sindh for Sindhis and Baluchistan for Baluchis.

But before its passage in the Senate, angry protesters in the Hindko-speaking dominated region of Hazara in NWFP took to the streets. They burned tyres, blocked roads, damaged buildings and vehicles and observed a strike. Seven people died in clashes with police.

Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, whose Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q) is the third largest group in parliament, justified the violence, saying “if their rights (Hazaras’) will be denied then they have no option but to take to the streets.”

His party’s senator, Mohammad Ali Durrani Hussain, said he would soon introduce a bill in parliament seeking provinces for Hazaras, who speak Hindko, and Seraiki speakers, another large ethnic group in the northwest.

Writing in his column for the Daily Times, senior journalist Syed Talat Hussain said Hazara erupted because its inhabitants were assumed to be politically irrelevant and the ANP “drank too deep at the well of political chauvinism.”