Remora

It has been suggested that LI prove its Turkophilic credentials by commenting on the outrageous robbery of the Turkish soccer team in the World Cup. Apparently the Korean referee made a very dumb call against Turkey, which allowed Brazil a game winning kick. LI would gladly bitch and moan, but... we not only didn't see the game, we don't fully, uh, understand the game. Especially on the intricate level of what is and what is not a penalty. You kick a ball into a net, that's what we know.

So, turning to matters of less grave import --say the impending nuclear doom of millions -- we'd recommend a few articles on Kashmir today.

The Far Eastern Economic Review has a nice background article on the Kashmir "insurgency." It runs down the list of politicians who want an independent role for Kashmir -- or an adherence to Pakistan. The latter seems to LI like a truly insane desire, rather like trying to swim from the lifeboat to the Titanic. But there it is.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee visited Kashmir in May, and offered economic aid and real elections -- thus tacitly casting into doubt the status of past elections, as FEER notes. But the Indian tactic for pacifying Kashmir, and eventually including the state in the great Indian embrace, isn't working:

"To make matters worse for India, the murder of a popular Kashmiri leader has set back New Delhi's efforts to inject credibility into the elections by persuading some people who have long opposed Indian rule to participate. On May 21, unidentified gunmen shot dead Abdul Ghani Lone, a member of the All Party Hurriyat Conference, an alliance of 23 anti-India parties.

"Unlike most of his Hurriyat colleagues, Lone condemned not only Indian rule, but also foreign militants sent across the border from Pakistan. He was also one of the few anti-India political figures in Kashmir willing to negotiate with India without insisting on Pakistan's inclusion in the talks, which made him more acceptable to New Delhi.According to Mehbooba Mufti, leader of the Srinagar-based People's Democratic Party, Lone's killing has created a "fear psychosis" and will deter other separatists from entering the electoral fray.

"Elections without separatists will have little credibility, says Zafar Meraj, the editor of Kashmir Monitor, a newspaper published in Srinagar.With Lone dead, say Meraj, New Delhi will hope to persuade two young separatists--Shabir Shah and Umar Farooq--to enter the elections. But both are openly sceptical of Indian intentions."

Admittedly, LI knows squat about Kashmir. Ignorance has never been an obstacle to judgement around here, however. There are issues that seem to be impossible to shape into some non-partisan format for the interested bystander. To the endless conflict between Israel and Palestine, add the endless conflict over the right and wrong of Kashmir. Actually, these conflicts date from the same period -- the late forties -- and reflect the same event -- the fall of the British Empire. The UN has had observers in Kashmir since that time.

The conflict sparked up in the nineties due to two things. One was the surge in Hindu nationalism that brought about riots and mosque burnings in India. The other was the collapse of Pakistan legitimacy, and the replacement of national identity with religious. According to a story in Express India, a recent poll in Kashmir showed that 61 percent favor remaining in India -- although with what status, on what terms, is unclear. There's a helpful NGO, the Friends of Kashmir, who have a nice overview of the recent situation:

"Kashmir ..traditionally described as "Heaven-on-Earth" because of its scenic beauty, invigorating climate, clean environment, peace loving people and treasures of arts...has been reduced to a "living hell" by the on-going conflict.

In January 1990, long term dissent against Indian misrule erupted into an armed revolt in Kashmir. India's arch rival Pakistan by taking advantage of the anti-India emotion and religious sentiments of the Kashmiri youth engineered a full scale armed rebellion in Kashmir. India in response poured over 300,000 soldiers into the densely populated civilian areas of Kashmir. In their efforts to contain the militancy,Indian army and paramilitary forces have committed gross violations of human rights in Kashmir. Indian forces on many occasions have acted without regard for international human rights law and have often violated the laws of war protecting civilians in situations of armed conflict.

"Unfortunately, the first casualty of this vicious war has been uprooting of the minority Kashmiri Pandit community, who are now living in the most appalling conditions as refugees within their own homeland. Selective killings of the Kashmiri Pandits resulted into a mass exodus of this ethnic minority who have lived for centuries in peace and harmony with the majority Muslim community in Kashmir."

The causes of the Pandit exodus are as hotly disputed as the causes of the Serbian/Bosnian-Muslim conflict in the nineties. You can find sites that claim Islamic terrorists have made the Pandit valleys hell on earth, and you can find sites that claim the Indian government extended its invisible hand and encouraged violence for its own propogandistic purposes. Muzamil Jaleel, an Indian journalist with the Express, pens a nice piece in the Observer Sunday exposing the roots of the conflict with a bit more panache than the Friends of Kashmir site. As one would expect, it is about democracy thwarted, and the gradual congregation of murderous and definitely non-democratic interests around a basic injustice committed against the rule of self-government and the protection of human rights, gradually transforming that injustice into a justification for committing crimes aimed, precisely, at undermining self government and the protection of human rights -- is it ever not like this?


"The recent campaign of violence was triggered in 1989, two years after a rigged local election. The Kashmiri at the top of India's 'most wanted' list of terrorists is Syed Salahuddin, who heads United Jihad Council - an amalgam of 14 militant groups of which his Hizbul Mujahideen is the largest. His real name is Mohamed Yousuf Shah and during Kashmir's 1987 assembly elections he was a popular politician. When the votes were counted, he was winning by a massive majority. But the official results said he had been defeated.

"He lost faith in the democratic process. His campaign agents were harassed by police, locked up and tortured. Five later set up the first group of Kashmiri militants and began a violent struggle for independence. The anger and frustration of Kashmir's youth was happily exploited by Pakistan, which believed the annexation of Kashmir to be the unfinished business of partition. Pakistan gave them guns, explosives and money."

From 89, the logic of violence unrolled like this: revolt by the Kashmiris, repression by the Indian police, arming by the Pakistanis, more repression, the slow creep of Islamicist ideology, splintering between liberation groups, the submerging of the original democratic goal in favor of a goal of shari'a and annexation by Pakistan as increasingly violent factions armed by Pakistan attempted to wipe out those of their one time allies who favored a more 'moderate' position -- actually, the original position. Onto this sequence, of course, other nations and groups have imposed their own ideologies and interests. What we need, we lefties, is to return to the kind of reading Marx gave to the rise of Louis Bonaparte in France in 49 -- a broader sense of the play of interests and the transformations wrought upon objectives by the tactics that are supposed to lead to them. In Kashmir, right before our eyes, we can see history becoming a pestilence.