Pakistan’s Kashmir policy and options of Kashmiri nationalists, Dr Shabir Choudhry

Pakistan’s Kashmir policy and options of Kashmiri nationalists

Dr Shabir Choudhry    13 September 2015

For decades Pakistani governments have successfully fooled people of Jammu and Kashmir in believing that Pakistan is their big brother, well wisher and an advocate. Although a lot of people now understand the game plan of Pakistani establishment, but still there are many who are infatuated by ‘love of Pakistan’; and religious compassion.

Bitter facts

India is responsible for human rights abuses in Kashmir and rightly criticised. However, is it not fact that Pakistan violated the Standstill Agreement and attacked Jammu and Kashmir territory on 22 October 1947 with intention of occupying it? This Pakistani led unprovoked aggression resulted in deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Kashmiris, and rapes of Kashmiri women; and subsequent forced division of Jammu and Kashmir State?

Is it not fact that Pakistan changed Kashmiri people’s right of self determination into right of accession to India or Pakistan? Is it not true that Pakistan refused to withdraw her troops as demanded by the UN Resolution of 13 August 1948; and ensured that the status quo continues, hence perpetuation of our suffering. They were clever to propagate that India has refused to implement the UN Resolutions, and fooled many people for very long time.

Also is it not fact that Pakistan signed Simla Agreement with India and deprived people of Jammu and Kashmir any role in determining the future status of Kashmir; but cleverly continue to fool people by saying that Kashmir Resolutions should be implemented.

Is it not a fact that Pakistan is treating Pakistan Administered Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan as their colonies? They have puppets in both respective parts who protect rights of Islamabad, and in return they are rewarded and projected as leaders; just like the British rewarded their puppets during the British Raj.

Patriotism and sedition

A Pakistani writer Farrukh Khan Pitafi defined patriotism in the following words: ‘In my humble view, patriotism is nothing but love. Love for your homeland, love for your country. Just like I have a sense of ownership for my house, which leads me to ensure its safety and betterment. I feel the same loyalty towards my country’. 1

It is debatable how many Pakistanis are loyal Pakistanis and work for the betterment of Pakistan. However, if Pakistanis have a right to love their country and work for its betterment; the same right should be available to the people of Jammu and Kashmir. If we love our forcibly divided country call Jammu and Kashmir, is that a crime?

For loving and caring for our country, and working for its betterment, why people of so called Azad Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan have to face sedition charges and wrath of Pakistani agencies, especially when we are not part of Pakistan. In Gilgit Baltistan more than 100 people are facing sedition charges, and people are deprived of their fundamental rights.

Over the past months and years the Pakistani establishment decided to crush Kashmiri nationalists by using various tactics. Because of these tactics, some nationalists compromised their political positions too easily and they accepted the rewards. Some others gave - in to threats and became collaborators.

Arif Shahid was eliminated and his killers are not arrested yet. Many analysts believe it was a test case for Kashmiri nationalists. Killers wanted to see response and resilience of the Kashmiri nationalists. Those who thought Kashmiri nationalists will use this brutal killing to start a campaign, or at least, unite on one platform to fight back the forces of occupation was deeply disappointed.

Kashmir National Party and UKPNP individually and in cooperation with each other highlighted the plight of Kashmiri people and brutal killing of Arif Shahid in POK and at the international level including at the UN Human Rights Sessions in Geneva. Some other parties also expressed their anger and tried to motivate people, but without much success. The Party Arif Shahid belonged to could not even survive as a political unit never mind mustering any political support for the cause of the deceased leader.

The Pakistani establishment soon realised that claims and rhetoric apart, the Kashmiri nationalists are not in a position to challenge their designs on Kashmir. So in line with their considered policy they started intimidating Kashmiri nationalists who were only spearheading a peaceful struggle for their independence. The establishment started harassing true nationalists. Also they started banning books which exposed their designs. They didn’t want people to know true history of Jammu and Kashmir, and what Pakistani officials had done to Kashmir dispute, and how they deprived people of their fundamental rights. All this is clearly against Pakistani constitution and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 19 (2), which states:

Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.’

Apart from that, Pakistani officials are clearly violating rights given to people of so called Azad Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan under the UN Resolutions; but anyone who remind Pakistan of its obligations under the UNCIP Resolution a bitter campaign of McCarthyism is initiated against that person to make him defensive and to alienate him from others. This unreasonable and unjustified policy will harm Pakistan in the long run.

Pakistani army DOES NOT consist of angels that they are above criticism, especially when people of Jammu and Kashmir perceive them as forces of occupation. Apart from that, their deeds in East Pakistan, Balochistan, various parts of KPK, FATA, and Gilgit Baltistan etc are still fresh in minds of the people.

In view of this, what wrong did JKLF activist Chaudhry Abdul Razaq did when he criticised Pakistan army and questioned their role in POK? We people of Jammu and Kashmir have every right to question and criticise roles of Indian, Pakistani and Chinese armies stationed in various parts of Jammu Kashmir State. Why Chaudhry Abdul Razaq has been charged for ‘insulting’ Pakistan army? Since when Pakistan army has become a holy cow that one cannot criticise its role in an area occupied by Pakistan?

Under what law Talat Mahmood Ansari is arrested, and the poor guy is not even given a bail? Anti Terrorism laws - what terrorism he has committed? He was employed by Kashar Publishers and his crime is to compose a book that was disliked by the Pakistani establishment. And under what law Rafiq Khawaja’s shops were sealed, and books and various other items taken away?

Kashmiri nationalists under Pakistan need to analyse the situation; and formulate a strategy to deal with oppression of Pakistan. People of the Valley have challenged the Indian might the other side of the divide.

We have two options: either to give - in to the oppression of Pakistan; or to stand up and be counted. There is not third option available to them.

1.   Patriotism How much is too much? FARRUKH KHAN PITAFI,

http://www.dawn.com/news/1206339/patriotism-how-much-is-too-much

China acquires 809 Hectares of land in Gawadar

China acquires 809 Hectares of land in Gawadar

LONDON: China has acquired 809 hectares of land on lease for 43 years in Gwadar.

According to UK defence magazine, IHS, China has acquired 809 hectares (1999 acres) land from Pakistan on lease for 43 years for construction of first Free Economic Processing Zone (EPZ) in Gawadar port. 

As per the Port Authority, construction of basic infrastructure and EPZ will cost over Rs 3.65 billion. Citing a Chinese journal, the IHS wrote that Gwadar Port Authority (GPA) acquired 607 hectares of land in June and 202 hectares of land will soon be acquired. All the land has been acquired from Pakistan Navy and container depot Balochistan.

Referring to a statement given by the top economic managers of Pakistan to local media, the journal said more 500 acres of land will be leased out to China for construction of first free EPZ. This way, 2500 acres of land will be given to Chinese companies on lease. China attained the rights for carrying out work on Gwadar port for 40 years in April this year. This port will provide China access to Gulf States.

http://nation.com.pk/national/10-Sep-2015/china-acquires-809-hectares-of-land-in-gwadar

“China Pakistan friendship”: between whom? Lal Khan

“China Pakistan friendship”: between whom? Lal Khan

27 April 2015

There was a great pomp and show. There was a din of “eternal Pakistan-China friendship” broadcast from every media channel and newspaper incessantly for almost two days. A Chinese head of state was paying a desperately awaited visit to Pakistan for the first time in many years.

The government rolled out the proverbial red carpet when the Chinese President Xi Jinping landed at Chaklala Airbase, where President and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, along with federal ministers and all services chiefs, received him. Earlier, eight Pakistan Air Force (PAF) JF-17 Thunder fighters escorted President Xi’s plane when it entered Pakistani airspace. A twenty-one-gun salute was presented to the Chinese leader as he alighted from his plane. He was later presented a guard of honour by a contingent of armed forces and PAF jets did the fly past.

It was the first time that a Chinese top leader spoke to Pakistan’s parliament. His emotive warmth was resonating, when Mr Xi said, that in discussing the history of Pakistan-China relations, “it is often termed as higher than the Himalayas, deeper than the ocean and sweeter than the honey by the Pakistani brothers while Chinese people refer to Pakistani people as good friends, good partners and good brothers…both countries should maintain strategic communication on regional and international issues. China supports Pakistan's constructive role in Afghanistan…”

But it was the Pakistani prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif who spilled the beans and said it all. During his welcoming speech appreciating the Pakistan-China friendship he said, “It symbolizes our determination to create win-win partnerships, which threaten none, but benefit all.” The business entrepreneur came out of the garb of a politician. All the party leaders of Pakistan’s bourgeois politics stood in unison, foregoing their wrangling facades and deceptive conflicts. So did the honchos of the capitalist state. Some perhaps were naively hoping for a “Chinese miracle” to cure Pakistan’s cancerous capitalism, while most were all praise for this Xi Jinming, the oligarch representing the upstart Chinese bourgeois that have amassed billions in their coffers.

However, what Sharif meant by this friendship is that it’s not really between the peoples of the two lands but between the elites who are now looking for massive profits from the projects announced which will be “built” by the Chinese companies and private contractors along with subcontractors and commission agents. Sections of the state and the bourgeois representatives present in that hall of deceptive power will try to get a share of the massive generation of wealth through the exploitation of the resources and workers of these countries. But they will be awfully disappointed. Those who think that this landmark visit and MOU’s [memoranda of understanding] will turn around the fortunes of Pakistan’s crumbling economy are sadly mistaken, to say the least.

The Chinese upstart elite is not making this investment for a utopian and sentimental friendship, as the intelligentsia and the media would have us believe, but for naked, exorbitant profits and its strategic hegemonic designs in the region. China’s investment aims at opening up the neglected province of Baluchistan and developing Gwadar as a strategic and commercial port. This in turn is likely to increase China’s presence in the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. The economic corridor will open up new business, commercial and military opportunities for them. The development of an economic corridor linking to Gwadar will obviously increase the presence of the Chinese fleet in the region. Gains for China include opening up of the relatively less developed western region that will benefit from shorter access to the sea. China’s potential of forward deployment of its naval assets in the Gwadar and Karachi ports will materialise. At the same time these projects could lead to greater integration of Pakistan’s natural resources and markets with the Chinese economic expansion plans.

China is also the largest investor in Afghanistan, as well as the biggest arms supplier to the Pakistan armed forces. China’s interest in Afghanistan appears to be increasing as US forces withdraw from the region. Initially, its involvement in Afghanistan was securing strategic materials, such as copper, iron, etc. The US and other Western countries have been complaining that China was taking undue advantage of the security umbrella provided by NATO and ISAF. They wanted it not only to be a consumer but also a provider of security. Now that NATO and the US are pulling out of Afghanistan, China is showing greater willingness to be more proactive in helping maintain the region’s security.

Moreover, it realises that Afghanistan’s stability will have a positive impact on the restive Xinjiang province. China’s strategy is to negotiate and engage with the Taliban leadership and play a more proactive role in Afghanistan for these very economic and commercial interests. China’s main interest is to use or rent the Pakistan military machine for these hegemonic purposes. Perhaps it was for these material reasons that Xi Jinming was playing the Pakistan-China friendship card so vehemently. What we are also witnessing is that China is projecting its soft power in this region through economic prowess and sophisticated diplomacy. Another element of China’s soft power, which is less talked about, is its political stability, notwithstanding its one-party rule. But it is doubtful that the largest investment package of 45 billion dollars announced for Pakistan will actually materialise, due to the fledgling economic growth and its bleak prospects. It simply won’t have the economic muscle to carry out these strategic policies and economic investments.

In the last few years the Chinese ruling elite has desperately been trying to salvage a declining growth rate, unravelling economic decay, exacerbating poverty and the sharpening class struggle. The Chinese economy in 2014 experienced its lowest economic growth since 1990. The IMF downgraded its 2015 growth projection from 7.1% to 6.8%. According to the Financial Times, “Thirty out of China’s 31 provinces had missed their growth targets for 2014 – the only one that didn’t was Tibet, by far the country’s smallest regional economy. Such figures illustrate the beginning of the end for China’s 'miraculous' boom, as the reality of capitalist crisis is seeping through to the world’s largest exporting economy.”

After an immediate drop in the rate of GDP increase to 9.6% in 2008 from the previous year’s 14.2%, with a sharp fall in her exports the Chinese government embarked on a gigantic “economic stimulus package” equivalent to US$586 billion in infrastructure, especially in construction and heavy industry.

Inspite of the build-up of massive overcapacity and speculative bubbles the state kept the process going. The announced investments in Pakistan with crushing interest rates are part of this Keynesian policy to keep the bubble inflated. All this simply meant that the crisis had only been delayed in fear of a mass revolt. The Chinese economic policymakers have taken drastic measures to bolster growth such as quantitative easing by printing an extraordinary 500bn yuan ($81bn) in September last year. But the longer it is put off, the harder it will crash when it occurs. No “market economy” can avoid the laws of capitalism.

As slow and weak growth continues to haunt the US and Europe, even with the danger of a slump looming, Chinese industry will lack a market for its goods. The Chinese economy is moving inexorably towards a sharp slowdown. It is plagued with overproduction. This “downward pressure” is mainly due to lack of demand. Productive capacity has fallen below 70 percent. Combined with the immense mountain of debt due to the regime’s gigantic and unnecessary Keynesian projects, the further destabilisation of the economy is inevitable. As much as the government has attempted to overcome this organic economic problem with even bigger stimulus packages, the brutal contradictions are coming to the surface.

Chinese state policies have exacerbated the acute contradictions between wage labour and capital. Relative wages are now falling. The majority have not benefitted from the massive speculative investment. Real unemployment is actually closer to 20 per cent despite false official figures. Some 274m rural migrant workers are almost entirely ignored by the job statistics. In spite of the hue and cry of the bourgeois media about capitalist counter-revolution ‘lifting millions out of poverty’, the reality is far starker. According to World Bank statistics, 67.8% of the population (902 million) lives on less than $5 a day. China accounts for a record one-fifth (370) of all billionaires in the world, rising from 17.6 per cent in 2014, the China Rich List 2015, compiled by the US business magazine Forbes, said. “The legislature of the world’s last major communist country is almost certainly the wealthiest in the world, the top rich list names 83 dollar billionaires among Chinese communist party’s, National Peoples Congress. Meanwhile, in America there is not a single billionaire in the House of Representatives or the Senate,” reported the Financial Times. The Communist Party of China is neither communist nor a party but a dragon of the upstart elite that sucks the blood of the workers in China and across the world wherever they make their imperialist investments.

After South Africa, China has the largest gap between the rich and the poor in the world. The growing income inequality is illustrated most clearly by the differences in living standards between the urban, coastal areas and the rural, inland regions. There have also been increases in the inequality of health and education outcomes. The bosses and the state are discovering the real consequences of depriving increasingly emboldened industrial workers of their livelihoods. There were 1380 major strikes of workers in China in 2014, most of them victorious. Much more loom across the horizon. It is not a coincidence that China is perhaps the only state in the world with its internal security expenditure (464 billion dollars) higher than external defence (435 billion).

The recent fall in oil prices was also closely related to the world crisis and its reflection in the slowdown of the Chinese economy. The ailing capitalist system is being propped up artificially by a Central Bank life support machine, which has poured trillions of dollars into the financial system. However, the more these unprecedented measures are used to prop up the system, the less impact they have, like a drug addict who needs a bigger and bigger hit in order to get the same high. Five years ago, it took just over $1 of debt to generate $1 of growth in China. In 2013 it took nearly $4 of debt to generate $1 of growth – and one third of the new debt now goes to pay off old debt. China’s growth rate has fallen to the lowest in over 20 years. The Chinese capitalist miracle stands exposed and is being exhausted.

The chances of its robust recovery are ruled out. The despotic regime of the new president Xi Jinming can boomerang on the Chinese elite. To expect such a greedy ruling clique to alleviate poverty in Pakistan through investment is absurd to say the least. This “friendship” gimmickry is to mock and deceive the ordinary people. The Pakistani ruling class is no less mean and reactionary. Power is only traded and bought for more loot and plunder. Lenin wrote in his epic work, Imperialism the Highest stage of Capitalism, that “a capitalist country acquires an imperialist role when it begins to export capital.” China is the largest exporter of capital in the world. It is the biggest investor in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Its evil designs on Baluchistan and Pakistan are the same as those of the American and other, world and regional imperialist states. Napoleon once said that, “When China awakes the world shall tremble.” That China is the proletarian and the toiling masses of that land. That China is beginning to turn. Its only the working class of China with whom the ordinary people of Pakistan can form a bond of genuine friendship that can unite them in a revolutionary transformation of the whole region and beyond.

http://www.marxist.com/china-pakistan-friendship-between-whom.htm

A wrong war, ZAHID HUSSAIN

IN marked contrast to the pomp and show eulogising the fable of the 1965 war victory, the speech of the army chief at the GHQ ceremony was sombre. There was no jingoism or war rhetoric; just firm resolve. It was more about the internal and external security challenges that confront the country at present than a show of grandiloquence and bluster.

Indeed, the nation is indebted to the brave soldiers who laid down their lives to defend the motherland against a much bigger adversary. For this reason we mark Sept 6 as Defence Day every year to pay homage to those brave souls. But there have never been such celebrations of ‘victory’ as was witnessed on the 50th anniversary of the war. Day in and day out TV channels aired a grand military spectacle and display of modern weapons. It was in response to India’s own victory celebrations, we are told.

For sure, all that helps raise nationalist sentiments and boosts public confidence in our military preparedness. What it also does, however, is gloss over the blunders that brought us to the brink of a military debacle in a war which we had initiated. The real story of the 1965 war has largely been missing in the media discourse that only highlighted the false victory version.

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The real story of the 1965 war has largely been missing in the media discourse.

While remembering the sacrifices and gallantry of our security forces, it is also important to let go of the myth of a victory that never was. The limited success our forces achieved in certain sectors must not be used to cover up the miscalculations and flawed military strategy.

We have never recovered from the effects of that military misadventure. It may have been driven by India’s intransigence on Kashmir, but Pakistan has never been the same again after that futile war. What happened in 1971 is also to some extent linked to the events that followed the 1965 war.

In fact, the war was started when we launched Operation Gibraltar in early July 1965, infiltrating thousands of Pakistani soldiers into India-occupied Kashmir under the assumption that Kashmiris would rise in revolt against the Indian forces. That never happened and within weeks the entire operation had collapsed. Meanwhile, the Indian forces launched a counteroffensive occupying parts of Azad Kashmir.

Subsequently on Aug 30, we launched Operation Grand Slam that was meant to capture the strategic town of Akhnur and to cut off held Kashmir from India. But it was too late. Another disaster happened when halfway through Grand Slam, the command was changed giving more time to the Indians to recoup and gather reinforcements. As a result this operation too ended in a fiasco.

Altaf Gauhar, a former information secretary and arguably the most powerful bureaucrat in the Ayub regime, was a witness to the events. His book on Ayub Khan provides perhaps the most authentic detail of the war planning. The disarray in the military command was well-illustrated by his words: “Ayub Khan did not know, even on Aug 29, nine days before the war started, that Gibraltar had failed and that none of its objectives had been achieved, and that the enemy forces were in commanding positions with Muzaffarabad within their reach.”

Even Ayub Khan, who was also the supreme commander, was kept in the dark about the real situation on the ground. While Operation Gibraltar had completely collapsed, Gen Mohammad Musa, the then army chief, was telling him that everything was on course, some setbacks notwithstanding.

The entire operation was planned on the miscalculation that Indian forces would not launch an attack across the international border. Except for a small coterie of top generals, very few in the armed forces knew about Operation Gibraltar. The foreign ministry under Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto that was a critical part of the entire operational plan had assured Ayub Khan that India could not afford to expand the war.

According to Altaf Gauhar, Mian Arshad Hussain, the Pakistani high commissioner in Delhi, sent an urgent cipher message to the Foreign Office on Sept 4 that Indian forces would launch the attack on Sept 6. The cable was never communicated to the president or the army chief as the foreign ministry suppressed the message thinking that the high commissioner had “unnecessarily panicked”.

So the persons most surprised were the president and the army chief when the Indians launched the attack on Sept 6. Ayub was woken up at four in the morning and given the news of Indian advances towards Lahore by an officer of the air force on reconnaissance duty. Ayub telephoned Gen Musa who said he had also heard the news but was waiting for confirmation!

Gen Gul Hasan, who was the then director general military operations, confirmed that the first report of the Indian aggression on the Lahore front came from a PAF pilot. “They were not located in Indian territory but on our land”, the general wrote in his memoirs. Lahore was saved by the gallantry of our soldiers and the air force which stopped the Indian offensive.

Ironically the air force that played the most critical role in defending the country was kept out of the joint planning of operations Gibraltar and Grand Slam; they were not considered “sufficiently security minded”. There was hardly any coordination among the forces even when the Indian offensive had started.

No wonder within a few days into the war Ayub Khan was discussing the possibility of a ceasefire as the war he had initiated had lost its way. Supplies of ammunition had dried up and shortage of spare parts drastically reduced the capability of the air force.

Air Marshal Nur Khan, who led the air force, achieving complete superiority over the Indian air force, called it a wrong war that was planned “for self-glory rather than in the national interest”. History has to be put straight so that the mistakes are not repeated.

The writer is an author and journalist.

Published in Dawn, September 9th, 2015

http://www.dawn.com/news/1205740/a-wrong-war

Junaid Qureshi says CPEC disastrous for Gilgit Baltistan

Junaid Qureshi says CPEC disastrous for Gilgit Baltistan

Asks Kashmiris to oppose the plan

London, 6 Sept 2015: Speaking at a Conference in London, organized by JK International People’s Alliance on ‘The China Pakistan Economic Corridor and its effects on the region’, Junaid Qureshi  (writer and Head Diplomatic Affairs JKDLP) has termed the construction of the CPEC as illegal as it runs through Gilgit Baltistan which is part of Jammu & Kashmir state and future status of which still needs to be decided according to the wishes of the people living in Jammu, Ladakh, the Kashmir Valley, Pakistan Administered Kashmir and indeed, Gilgit Baltistan.

He emphasized he is not averse to economic development, solutions to Pakistan’s growing economic crisis or the eradication of poverty, but he believes that the origins of this corridor can be traced back to the Border Agreement of 1963 in which Pakistan ceded more than 5000sq miles of Jammu & Kashmir to China. Junaid Qureshi further said that throughout its history there have been many attempts to change the demographics of Gilgit Baltistan and that the China Pakistan Economic Corridor is a new and deliberate attempt to change the demographics of the actual Kashmir-Issue.

“China’s investment of 46 billion dollars and the purchase of eight attack submarines and six patrol vessels by Pakistan, which will elevate China as Pakistan’s primal arms provider, have all the ingredients to exacerbate the complexities of the Kashmir-Issue, threaten peace and cement China’s stake in Jammu & Kashmir,” Qureshi said, adding any kind of solution to the long standing Kashmir-Issue will only be jeopardized by these kind of intrusions.

“Chinese investment of billions of dollars guarantees their strategic interests in Jammu & Kashmir and will de facto make it one of the largest stakeholders in the Kashmir-dispute,” he added.                   

He further said that the people in Gilgit Baltistan are not in need of such corridors of exploitation. “They are longing for their political liberties for the past 70 odd years. The economic potential of Gilgit Baltistan is such, that had the people been masters of their own destiny and not treated as a colony by Pakistan, Gilgit Baltistan could finance the complete construction of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor,” he said.

Giving details about the potential of Gilgit Baltistan, Junaid Qureshi said that there is an abundance of water resources, minerals worth billions of dollars and an ocean of undiscovered tourism potential in this part of Jammu & Kashmir.

“The region harbors 5000 glaciers, including three of the largest in the world outside of the polar regions and has almost 2500 glacial lakes. The potential of power is 52.000 MW, while the requirement of the indigenous population is just 150 MW,” he said.

Talking about the impact of the CPEC on environment and ecology, Qureshi said that toxic gasses by heavy traffic flow and construction works related to the establishment of this corridor will only enhance the melting of the world’s largest reservoir of fresh water glaciers. All the departments of forest, power, tourism and minerals are currently under the direct control of the Gilgit Baltistan Council, which is headed by the Prime Minister of Pakistan. All the minerals of Gilgit Baltistan will be used as raw material for the construction of this corridor without yielding any royalties or benefits to the local people living there. The proposed shifting of the Sost Dry port from Gilgit Baltistan to Havelian will also result in devastating loss of business for the inhabitants of Gilgit Baltistan.

He said that, while we Kashmiris protest land transfers and other conspiracies to change the demographics of Jammu & Kashmir State in Srinagar, we must also protest against the China Pakistan Economic Corridor as it is an attempt to further destabilize the region in general and the Kashmir-Issue in particular.

He said that, the people of Gilgit Baltistan are equal stakeholders in the Kashmir-Issue and Gilgit Baltistan is part of Jammu & Kashmir State. He emphasized that the 2 million people living in Gilgit Baltistan are as much Kashmiri as the Kashmiris living in other parts of J&K State.

- See more at: http://www.dailykashmirimages.com/news-junaid-qureshi-says-cpec-disastrous-for-gilgit-baltistan-78606.aspx#sthash.yN6KEBTA.FvWXGVUu.dpuf

Fifty years on

Fifty years on

THE 50th anniversary of the Indo-Pak war waged in 1965 is an opportunity to acknowledge and pay thanks for the sacrifices of the men and women who serve in the Pakistani armed forces. Fifty years ago, Pakistan lost nearly 4,000 soldiers. Those staggering losses, however, do not tell the full story. The strategic mistakes of the military leadership aside, the heroism and bravery of the soldiers and pilots who fought to defend Pakistani soil should not be forgotten. To those ordinary armed forces personnel who displayed extraordinary courage, the country will forever owe a debt. Fifty years on, the militant enemy continues to inflict losses on the armed forces. In Operation Zarb-i-Azb alone, several hundred soldiers are believed to have laid down their lives. Rarely has a country called upon its soldiers to sacrifice so much and so often. The determined rank and file, the valiant ordinary soldier — they have been and continue to be Pakistan’s heroes.

How best does a country honour its fallen and injured? By honestly and truthfully reckoning with the past — even as it recalls the courage and sacrifices of its defence forces. Fifty years on, both India and Pakistan appear to be in denial. Unwise and disastrous as operations Gibraltar and Grand Slam proved to be — the extraordinarily reckless attempts by the military leadership to try and unfreeze the Kashmir dispute or even militarily wrest India-held Kashmir from India — they did not occur in a vacuum. Specifically, India had refused to negotiate with Pakistan on Kashmir; it attempted to amalgamate India-held Kashmir via the courts and legal instruments; it attempted to grab territory in the Rann of Kutch in the run-up to the 1965 war; and it embarked on a massive military reorganisation and upgradation after the Sino-Indian war of 1962. All those factors contributed to the anxiety and urgency in Pakistani policy circles. Therein lies a lesson for both countries: when conflicts are allowed to fester, unintended consequences can cause them to reignite. Refusal to learn that lesson had further disastrous consequences: the Indian territory grab in Siachen region in the early 1980s is widely considered to be the genesis of the Kargil conflict a decade and a half later. Unwise decisions tend to have terrible consequences, often years later.

That bi-national failure to learn from history is once again on full display. A jingoistic Indian government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to revel in India’s supposed military prowess. Meanwhile, a military stretched and under threat in Pakistan appears more interested in giving a befitting verbal and visual response to India than focusing on the domestic security challenge. It is a familiar, if distressing, cycle. Fifty years ago, Pakistan and India fought a second war, a thoroughly unnecessary one. Fifty years later, civilians continue to die along the Working Boundary and the Line of Control. If calm does prevail, the real challenge would be to end the cyclical nature of Indo-Pak relations.

Published in Dawn, September 6th, 2015

http://www.dawn.com/news/1205176/fifty-years-on

The September war that was, I A REHMAN

THE September 1965 war days were, to borrow from Dickens, the best of times (for the people of Pakistan) and the worst of times.

For 17 days in September 1965, the Pakistani nation achieved a unity of action and purpose it had not demonstrated before and has not displayed since.

The people of Lahore woke up on the morning of Sept 6, 1965, to realise that what they had been told could not happen had come to pass. Contrary to the authorities’ belief that India could not attack Pakistan across the international border, its troops had actually crossed Wagah and then driven up to Jallo and withdrawn a little, frightened by the lack of resistance.

Several questions were asked in the aftermath of the conflict.

Within no time the undefended city found defenders who wrote with their blood tales of matchless valour and commitment to protect the motherland. Names of Sarwar Shaheed, Aziz Bhatti Shaheed and Shafqat Baloch rose to the top in the people’s pantheon of heroes.

The list soon grew with the addition of more heroes — Sarfaraz Rafiqui Shaheed, Cecil Chaudhry, M.M. Alam — who shot down many planes in the air and on the ground.

The Lahore front was soon stabilised and quick victory was won in the Khem Karan sector. The Lahorites could not decide what they liked better — the spectacle of aerial dogfight in daytime or the roar of Rani (a heavy gun) at night.

Soon afterwards the tank battle at Chawinda in the Sialkot sector caught the people’s imagination. The battle was grim but the spirits were high. Poets offered soul-lifting lyrics and Noor Jahan led a galaxy of singers to inspire soldiers and citizens alike.

It was wonderful to be buoyed up by belief in the justness of the national cause and confidence in the state’s capacity to meet the challenge.

But the heady feeling of victory faded quickly and many in Pakistan realised they had gone through a poor patch in their history. The story of those days has been told so often. How the victory in the Rann of Kutch was exaggerated, how the situation in Kashmir after Sheikh Abdullah’s arrest was misread, how the plan of sending guerrillas there did not work out, how the thrust towards Akhnoor was thwarted, and how Ayub Khan lost his nerve when his tanks sank in the marshes. Eventually, the international intervention and ceasefire came as a relief.

The question as to who won the war has been answered many times over. But soon afterwards questions began being asked; why was intelligence about India’s troop movement ignored? Why was the theory of inviolability of international borders accepted? Why were soldiers provided with old maps? Why was faith pinned on ‘guerrillas’? And why was US support expected when it had consistently declared that its arms could not be used against India?

The aftermath of the September war was far from pleasant. The objectives of Operations Gibraltar and Grand Slam were not realised and Pakistan’s case on Kashmir suffered a setback. The number of Kashmiris who backed Pakistan declined and so did Islamabad’s ability to invoke the UN resolutions.

For reasons still largely obscure, Pakistan did not derive full advantage of the Tashkent Declaration, whose denunciation started a new phase of Moscow’s disenchantment with Pakistan and ultimately persuaded it to sign the Friendship Agreement with India, without which the East Pakistan war of 1971 might not have ended the way it did.

In 1965, Pakistan received wholesome support from China and a number of Muslim countries — Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and even Afghanistan. Malaysia fell out of line and Islamabad had to break off relations with it. Factors as yet unknown caused these countries’ support to Pakistan to wane considerably by the time Islamabad landed itself in the fatal crisis of 1970-71

The 1965 war did the Indian Muslim some good in the sense that many of them stopped looking at Pakistan for succour and accepted, as Mohammad Ali Jinnah had advised them in 1947, their responsibilities as citizens of India.

The battle of Chawinda, which filled most Pakistani hearts with pride while tanks wrestled with one another, failed to impress the experts later on. They said the ritual of daily clash of metal, with neither side showing skill and capacity to clinch the issue, did not merit mention along with the tank battles in Africa during the Second World War.

On Sept 6, President Ayub appealed to the people to fight in the name of religion. His campaign for keeping faith out of politics came to an end. It was left to the editor of a Dhaka daily, Zahoor Husain Chaudhry, to remind him,” the more you swear by religion the smaller will your state become”.

One consequence of the war was a belated inquiry as to who had pushed Pakistan over the precipice. The story that Ayub was led up the garden path by his advisers is belied by his statements on the days preceding Sept 6. However, he dropped Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto from the cabinet, and Kalabagh forced a battle on him. The result: Pakistan was never the same again.

Meanwhile, throughout the 17 days of the conflict the East Bengal people were isolated from Pakistan and they were feeling defenceless and abandoned. The theory that East Bengal’s defence lay in West Pakistan was finally buried in 1971. The war directly led to the emergence of the Six Points.

Published in Dawn, September 6th, 2015

http://www.dawn.com/news/1205190/the-september-war-that-was