Analysis

The Stilwell Road: Straight Ahead?

Here’s a land route that would not only open up the
possibilities for India’s Northeast to trade and
interact with its eastern neighbours, but as an
overland link would also work to cement relationships
between Southasia, East Asia and Southeast Asia.

by Carin I Fischer


The six-lane section of the Yunnan section of the
Road.  
Hacked out of the jungle 60 years ago as part of the
Allied push to end Japanese military domination in
Asia, the Stilwell Road, if reborn, may soon instigate
a sea-change in the Asian economic balance. Further,
there’s little reason to believe that the
reverberations of such a shift would be confined to
the eastern hemisphere. While recent years have seen
increasingly fervent discussions of the rising – and
rival – individual mights of India and China, the
current momentum to reopen the link between the two
countries promises a whole new consideration: the
prospect of further aligning the two economies, which
jointly comprise 40 per cent of the global population.


While most of the men who built the Stilwell Road are
now dead, the Road itself remains: disused in many
places, crumbling in others, and in a few areas
impassable during heavy rains. Built by Asian labour
and American machines and travelled by trucks
constructed in Detroit factories, the Road was once a
testament to America’s emergence as an economic
superpower. At that time, India, Burma and China were
seen as little more than conduits and destinations for
goods made elsewhere. Today that dynamic has changed. 

Perhaps more so now than during that era, the Stilwell
Road is not one road, but many roads. Passing through
South, Southeast and East Asia through fractious,
politicised regions, it is a very real, physical route
through difficult terrain. In November 2004 and April
2005, a series of overland surveys found that,
contrary to public perception, the road is very much
motorable. Except for a stretch of about 80 km in
Burma that remains impassable without a bridge during
the rainy season, the work needed for a revival of the
road is not nearly as extensive as the public has been
led to believe. Some of that work is already underway
or complete; the Chinese portion is essentially done.
China is also currently providing funds and working
extensively with Burma – including the creation of a
new shortcut that dramatically cuts the Burmese
portion in half.

In the wartime atmosphere when the Stilwell Road was
first laid, the task was physically daunting but
remarkably free of political complexities. Reopening
the Road, on the other hand, will involve several
governments and their bureaucracies. It is even
possible that the most important forces pushing
through the opening will not necessarily be national
governments, but the agitations of trade, modernity
and human connection.

Wartime update
While the Stilwell Road itself was put down in the
early 1940s, the mountainous course that it follows
had long been an integral part of the so-called
ancient Southern Silk Route. Based on new evidence,
historians now say that trade along this track between
China, Burma and India could have been going on in
full swing as early as the second century BC. Traders
bartered jade, silk, silver, tea and lacquerware,
while Buddhist and Hindu missionaries treaded the
route as a threshold to East Asia.

The shortest land route between northeastern India and
southwestern China, the Stilwell Road connects the
rail spur at Ledo in Assam to the provincial capital
of Kunming in Yunnan, over a distance of 1,736 km. US
Army General Joseph Stilwell, who was the regional
commander of US troops as well as Chiang Kai-shek’s
chief of staff, was defeated by the Japanese in Burma
in the spring of 1942. After retreating, Stilwell
prepared for a counterattack and ordered into
existence the supply link that would bear his name.
Fifteen thousand soldiers and countless local workers
laboured for two years, carving a muddy track and
parallel fuel pipeline through the heavily forested
mountains. The feat was an engineering marvel, a
labour nightmare – and, elsewhere as the war took its
own route, an unnecessarily massive effort. Completed
in 1945, the Japanese surrender of eight months later
brought the wartime need for the Road to an end. 

Known as the Burma Road in China, the Ledo Road in
Burma, and the Stilwell Road in India, the course was
composed of around 57 km in India, 1,040 km in Burma,
and 639 km in China. The Indian part of the Road has
been closed since 1961, mainly for security reasons,
and some stretches have fallen into disrepair.
Similarly, about 80 km of the Road in Burma is barely
passable during the rainy season. China, on the other
hand, has built a six-lane highway from Kunming that
ends abruptly at the Burmese border. It is largely
stubborn determination on the part of the Chinese that
has given the reopening plan its current momentum.
While the old Stilwell Road is still used by local
border-crossing traders, significantly greater has
been the illegal trafficking between India, China,
Burma, and Southeast Asia. A reopening would convert
much of the contraband transport to legitimate trade. 

 
Three countries
The current movement towards reopening the Road was
formally initiated in August of 1999, when China,
India and Burma – as well as Bangladesh – met in
China’s southern province of Yunnan and officially
approved an agreement known as the Kunming Initiative.
On a broad level, the Initiative decided to improve
communications between India’s northeast and
south-western China. While general talk involved the
possibilities of developing rail, water, and air
links, specific emphasis was placed on revitalising
the old Southern Silk Route. Chinese and Indian
officials eagerly pushed for the infrastructure
project to get underway, however, a former Indian
ambassador to China urged the Kunming delegates to be
patient – to wait while New Delhi wrestled with its
own issues and doubts. That patience may now be paying
off.

Back in 1991, while facing imminent bankruptcy, India
ushered in a series of belated financial reforms and
the first place it turned to was the burgeoning market
that was Southeast Asia. That year, India not only
took steps towards ASEAN partnership, policymakers
also put in place a Look East policy that positioned
the Northeast at the forefront of its strategy.
Despite this, it has only been over the past year that
New Delhi is finally placing serious focus on the
region as an eastern gateway. The largest component of
such a strategy would be the reopening of the Stilwell
Road, while there is an effort underway to reestablish
international trade through Sikkim (see accompanying
article pp). Undoubtedly, some of this flurry has to
do with a push for closer economic interaction with
Southeast Asia. Much of it also has to do with the
giant, hurried steps currently being taken by both
China and India towards one another.

That pace is partly to make up for lost time. Security
concerns have long played the most critical role in
formulating India’s regional foreign policy –
particularly the perceived ‘vulnerability’ along its
Himalayan frontier, which is a legacy of the 1962 war
with China. Trade, for the time being, took a back
seat. In the meantime, traditional trade routes
crucial to the local economies dried up, while new
land routes were rarely discussed. The Northeast has
faced a debilitating paradox as local crossborder
trade has been outlawed due to security concerns,
while trade between the secluded region and the rest
of India has failed to develop. The inter-community
and secessionist violence that continues to rack the
poor, agrarian region has only made New Delhio:’s
policymakers more skittish about opening it up to
international traffic and attention. 

Even as New Delhi has waffled on the matter, the
northeastern states are overwhelmingly in favour of
reopening the Stilwell Road. Leading that charge has
been Pradyut Bordoloi, Assam’s Minister of Environment
and Forests, in whose constituency the Road begins. In
2002, Bordoloi participated in the Dhaka meet of the
Kunming Initiative – an unusually forthright action
for a minister; in so doing, Bordoloi essentially
bypassed New Delhi, taking his concerns directly to
the international delegates. Bordoloi is joined by key
politicians, as well as numerous local businessmen,
academics, tour operators, security experts, travel
writers, filmmakers, and – most importantly – the
tribal communities that live along the Road, whose
cultural and familial ties transcend political
frontiers. Northeastern academics, top-level state and
national politicians, as well as large corporate
interests have all expressed the view that
reconstruction of the Road is the ideal vehicle for
advancing vital economic ties between the Northeast,
ASEAN partner countries and China. 

Since the 1999 signing of the Kunming Initiative, the
Stilwell project has received intermittent jolts of
energy. In October of 2000, India declared its section
of the Road a national highway (No 153). After China,
Bangladesh and Burma had officially endorsed the
agreement in 1999, the head of the Indian delegation
followed suit at the 2002 Dhaka meet. The Northeast
Council, a committee that focuses on economic
development of the region, also gave its formal
support to the project in November of that year. This
year, however, has seen a unique flurry of action –
kicked off on January 20 when a high-level Indian team
visited the Nampong-Pangsaw Pass, the border point
between Burma and Arunachal Pradesh along the Stilwell
Road. There, national officials publicly stressed the
need for creating basic infrastructure to promote
crossborder trade and promising all possible help from
New Delhi. A month after that official site visit,
Congress President Sonia Gandhi stated in a speech in
Arunachal Pradesh that the reopening of traditional
trade routes with neighbouring Burma (as well as with
Tibet and Bhutan) would give a much-needed boost to
the economy of the state and the region. 

India’s movement on the Stilwell project follows a
thaw in its dealings with China. While tense
Sino-Indian relations long placed such talks off
limits, the successful settlement of the long-running
dispute over Sikkim and ongoing efforts regarding the
border at Arunachal Pradesh have soothed political
sensitivities. In February of 2005, during a visit to
the Assamese capital Guwahati, officials of the Yunnan
Provincial Chamber of Commerce (YPCC) strongly
recommended that the Road be opened to help traders in
the Northeast, Burma, and Yunnan. To that end, the
YPCC has taken the matter up with Chinese authorities
to help expedite the Road’s reconstruction. Two months
later, on the occasion of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s
historic visit to India, it was disclosed that China
had already started renovations to the Road in Burma,
in a unilateral effort to connect Yunnan to that
country and ultimately to India. The Chinese
authorities have now completed initial surveys and a
detailed renovation plan is near release. 

To demonstrate its support for the reopening of the
transnational link, China has transformed its portion
of the Road into a modern superhighway. The major
artery-in-waiting not only leads directly to Kunming,
but also to the neighbouring province of Guangdong.
That powerhouse province’s GDP not only grew a
staggering 14.5 per cent last year, it is also
expected to top USD 250 billion by 2006. In the other
direction, the new highway ends abruptly at the
Burmese border. Despite China’s mining and logging
interests in Burma, there is only one reason to build
a massive thoroughfare to the middle of nowhere: the
future possibilities towards India. In a sense,
China’s entire relationship with Burma has long been
built on such a long-term view. While India used to be
Burma’s largest supporter, during the 1970s and 1980s
that relationship was neglected; Burma inevitably
realigned with China, its other monumentally powerful
neighbour. Now China is everywhere in Burma and
Chinese earth-movers are currently hard at work
reshaping and upgrading the Ledo Road – the obvious
extension of the six-lane mammoth that ends at the
border. 

 
Burma, indeed, has remained the project’s physical
lynchpin, as well as its most temperamental obstacle.
The formidable problems plaguing Rangoon’s military
junta – including the ones that it has brought on
itself – have included ethnic resisting Rangoon’s
strongarm tactics, as well as concerns over human
rights violations; both of these are centred directly
in the area through which the Road passes. Such issues
have weighed heavily on the minds of Burma’s
leadership and, despite tentative past agreements, as
of 2004 Rangoon had again definitively rejected any
possibility of reopening the Road to international
traffic. 

On June 15 of this year a news item from Rangoon
suddenly reported that Burma would reopen its section
of the Stilwell Road by 2006. This followed
discussions between the Burmese Ministry of Commerce
and the India-Burma Federation of Chambers of Commerce
and Industry, held the previous month. Several joint
projects are currently underway between New Delhi and
Rangoon, including the planning of a major gas
pipeline from Burma to India via Bangladesh, as well
as linking ports between the two countries on the two
sides of the Bay of Bengal. While all of this
international bridge-building is undoubtedly a welcome
change from the resounding condemnation that the junta
typically receives, the country’s pariah status has
nevertheless taken a significant toll. Burma is
desperately in need of foreign currency and is now
actively propagating regional tourism as a key
resource. 

In recent years, China has become poised to emerge as
the single most crucial component to India’s export
growth. According to recent reports, in 2004-05 China
became India’s second-largest trade partner, as well
as the second-largest destination for India’s exports
– both trailing only the US. Only two years earlier,
Chinese products were merely the sixth largest among
Indian imports. Total trade between the two countries
has gone from a few hundred million dollars in the
late 1990s to USD 13.6 billion in 2004. With efficient
overland routes such as the Stilwell Road inactive,
Sino-Indian trade has continued to be shunted by sea
all the way around the Southeast Asian peninsula.

A continuation of such stasis would only impede
current economic forecasts. With China’s rapidly
growing GDP, the demand for imports of raw materials,
components and parts is expected to continue to rise
in the near future. With China’s GDP set to grow
between 7.7 and 8.7 per cent between 2004 and 2008,
this means USD 20 billion in bilateral trade between
China and India by 2008. From this perspective, India
– and its northeastern states – must move immediately
to foster closer and more broad-based economic ties
with China. Despite the recent increases, current
trade between the two countries still makes up only
eight per cent of India’s total exports and only one
percent of China’s. At an August 2005 economic
conference in India, Chinese officials characterised
those figures as miniscule compared to the size of the
two countries and pushed to start talks on a
Sino-Indian free trade agreement. Given the enormous
expense currently necessary to shuttle goods between
the two countries via the 6,000 km sea route, an
efficient land link would be the only option for such
an agreement to result in the desired economic
stimulus.

The Northeast-Yunnan link
Given the proximity between Yunnan province and
India’s Northeast, a reopened Stilwell Road would be
almost as important as a region-to-region relationship
as a transnational one. Despite the recent boom in
trade between the two, none of India’s current exports
to China are sourced from the resource-rich Northeast.
Up until now, shipping costs have simply been too
high. China has, however, expressed significant
interest in importing rice, tea, neem, and a variety
of other agricultural products sourced from the
northeastern region. This would be a crucial
development for the area, albeit a happily problematic
one: as the Northeast has never had a significant
market for its agro-products, producers have never
placed much emphasis on capacity-building. 

Currently, Indian imports from Yunnan include
chemicals, items used by the pharmaceutical industry,
mineral products and silk yarn. From India, Yunnan
imports oil seeds and mills, marine products,
pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals, iron and steel,
textiles, and raw silk. The Yunnan Provincial
Government is now anxious to import a variety of
additional agricultural products grown in the
Northeast. Yunnan’s interest in perishable items over
a relatively short distance would require a road (or
rail) link between the two countries. 

If more direct transit existed between the Northeast
and ASEAN countries, tourists on the heavily
trafficked Southeast Asia circuit would be
significantly more inclined come this way. A recent
report states that if the tourism potential of the
Northeast were fully developed, within 20 years the
region could receive as many tourists as Singapore and
Bangkok. Such high expectations are based on tapping
into the Chinese tourism market which is expected to
boom. Currently the entire northeast with its
beautiful mountain landscape, its rainforests and
diverse cultures, is being exploited only by a small
number of tour operators specialising in ‘adventure’
tourism.

Perhaps more than many others, the tribal and other
marginalised groups in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh in
particular would benefit greatly from both a
transnational thoroughfare, as well as any growth in
tourism and associated infrastructure. Many of these
groups have had close historic ties that have been cut
due to border and travel restrictions. The Kachins of
Burma, for instance, are ethnically and culturally
nearly identical to both the Singphos in Upper Assam
and the Jingpaws in southwestern China. Members of the
three groups have little if any sanctioned contact,
however, as a result of current travel restrictions
along the Road. In addition to a long-awaited removal
of those obstacles, tourism is seen as the one
activity that would trickle down to all segments of
society, in particular benefiting local communities. 

Increased tourism from a reopened Stilwell Road would
be of great benefit to the northeastern regions of
Burma. All throughout Kachin state, new tourism
infrastructure is now visible, including the
appearance of numerous roadside restaurants. A tiger
reserve has been established near Tanai. Despite its
location, current trade negotiations look to use Burma
less as a partner than as a conduit. While significant
finances already flow between the country and China,
the present value of formal Burmese imports from India
is about INR 22 billion per year. According to a study
by the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, however, the
potential for additional trade with Burma, and
especially with bordering states in the Northeast, is
considerable. Informal Indo-Burmese trade is estimated
to be 44 times the amount of formal trade and includes
electronics, Chinese textiles, pirated media and
narcotics. Burma is interested in increasing its
pharmaceutical imports from India, as well as
encouraging more active trade in vehicle parts, cotton
yarn, branded foods, petroleum products and
construction materials. Although some of these items
would be able to be imported more cheaply because of
reduced shipping costs, Burma’s main benefits from a
new international trade route would be through transit
fees and tourism-related activities.

For the Northeast
While linking the northeast with Kachin state and
Yunnan would of course be welcome, reopening the Road
would allow the Northeast to emerge as a major transit
centre for both the SAARC and ASEAN regions. Along
with a significant increase in transnational trade,
such a development could also provide a resounding
answer to one of India’s longest lingering dilemmas:
the largely ignored employment problem in the
country’s cloistered Northeast. It is a problem that
began with the British, when colonial mapmakers
created security barriers at the edge of the hills and
severed ancient routes of trade and cultural exchange.
With the loss of nearby trade partners to both its
north and east, the Northeast became completely
dependent on mainland India for trade options through
the 37 km-wide Siliguri corridor in West Bengal. While
both colonial and independent India have utilised the
Northeast as an important resource garden, the long,
circuitous routes that the indigenous products have to
take to exit the region have made them prohibitively
expensive for any market. 

Due in large part to its geopolitical placement, the
Northeast is widely acknowledged as India’s economic
laggard. With roughly 40 million people – 30 per cent
of them from tribal communities – the Northeast makes
up less than four per cent of India’s population. The
economic deprivation that has masked the northeast,
whose overwhelmingly rural populace (90 per cent)
earns nearly half that of the rest of India. 

That inertia has fed the lingering separatist violence
that the rest of the Subcontinent associates with this
region. With arms, illegal drugs, and ideology already
coming from across India’s borders, many have voiced
concern over the years that reopening sanctioned
international border crossings would only enhance
those negative effects. But others, more circumspect
observers maintain that the reopening of trade routes
such as the Stilwell Road would boost the economy as
well as help still at long last the many rebellions in
the Northeast. The former Director General of the
Indian Border Security Force, E.N. Rammohan posited in
a 2005 essay that, “Roads are the first enemies of
insurgents. Denied of a hinterland, he has no place to
retreat. Today this is the first step to be taken by
the Government of India.”

Current restrictions and the absence of legitimate
customs points have also been a reason for the
voluminous entry of smuggled goods from China and
Burma into India. According to customs and security
experts, the reopening of the Road and the regular
movement of endorsed traffic would significantly
reduce contraband movement through the area. Since the
demand for these goods is already high, many would
greatly benefit from legitimising that trade through
the collection of customs fees, excise taxes and tolls
along the Road. While there are valid concerns that
local produces may take a beating on the arrival of
cheaply produced foreign products, there is good
reason to believe that local manufacturers are already
being hurt by the current inflow of illegal goods.
Either way, the market already exists; at the moment,
however, that market is being exploited without
regulation, or payment of customs fees.

Regional networking
There are other countries in the Stilwell equation
besides Burma, India and China. Since participating as
an original signatory to the 1999 Kunming Initiative
and re-pledging itself to the process in 2002 when the
meet was held in its capital, Bangladesh has been
largely invisible in the Stilwell project. Many
observers urge Dhaka to jump on the “Sino-India
bandwagon”, warning that a westward extension of the
trade route to Calcutta would otherwise bypass the
country through Siliguri. Notwithstanding perennial
tensions between Dhaka and New Delhi, those critics
maintain that fostering stronger ties with China is
not only in Bangladesh’s best interest, but that the
opportunity has rarely been closer at hand as
presented by Stilwell. 

Thailand, on the other side of Burma, is particularly
keen to increase trade relations with the Northeast
and has expressed interest in seeing the Stilwell Road
reopen. The country recently announced its intention
to expand trade ties with the area, with a special
focus on tea, fruit and food processing sectors; it is
also actively looking into joint eco-tourism ventures
in Assam. 

The economic viability of increased trade between
India, China, Burma and other Southeast Asian
countries largely depends on the reopening of the most
direct land routes connecting the countries. According
to the Indian multinational Hindustan Lever, which
actively trades with most ASEAN countries, the costs
of container shipping of many products via sea routes
from any part of India, in particular the Northeast,
are prohibitively high. 

If, as a result of reopening the Road, the Northeast
were to become a major regional distribution centre,
transit times and transportation costs between the
partners could be reduced on average by an estimated
30 per cent. From the border point at Pansau in
Arunachal Pradesh, exports from India shipped via the
Road could reach Kunming in two days, Rangoon in less
than three days, Bangkok in four days, and Singapore
within six days. All this may sound fantastic and
unreachable at the moment, but they are within the
realm of possibility. The Stilwell route could lead to
a snowballing of market linkage between India, China
and Southeast Asia. Free trade agreements are already
in place between India, Thailand and Singapore.
Additional accords are due by 2016 with the rest of
ASEAN countries, while similar discussions are
starting with China. With all of this high-level trade
talk, there should be little wonder that momentum has
picked up towards creating an economically feasible
way with which to move those goods and products that
will need moving. 

Down the road
Whether on the six-lane superhighway from Kunming to
the Burmese border, the sometimes barely discernable
track within Burma, or the bustling two-lane stretch
in Assam, at the moment, travelling the Stilwell Road
is an admittedly lively adventure. While that
hair-raising excitement will have to be toned down to
allow for a regular commercial flow, but make no
mistake: emerging with the Road’s new tarmac is a key
to the continued transformation of Asia as a whole –
linking Southasia, East Asia and Southeast Asia all at
once. Although it was wartime Americans who brought
the Road’s original earthmoving machines, the effort
to build the Road, the fighting that secured it, and
the communities that have incorporated it have always
been multinational. While it would be foolish to
underestimate the geopolitical obstacles facing the
push to reopen Stilwell, the simple fact is that the
Road will inevitably come into greater use as India,
Burma and China continue to become more economically
powerful, independent, and intertwined. And with them,
the rest of Asia.

Remarks at the Kashmir Boot Camp Seminar, University of Lahore, Aug 10, 2020

Good morning and As-Salaam-Alaikum. Thank you for inviting me to participate in this very special seminar.  For once, I have actually prepared notes because it is still very hard for me to talk about many of the things I witnessed while living in Kashmir, and I would like to remain focused. The memories never fade enough for me to become more composed. Just last fall when I met Rep Sheila Jackson Lee after a Congressional hearing on human rights violations in Kashmir, I broke down while telling her about the Machil Fake Encounter. Kashmir is the place where I learned how to cry, and I still sometimes don’t know how to stop. In 2008 I wrote this in an opinion piece for a local daily:

“I saw many of the villagers near starvation because they could not break through the giant barricades erected around their entire district as part of a collective punishment for speaking out. All the way home from Baramulla to Srinagar, while seeing new and even higher barricades being erected and more and more people being rounded up on the side of the highway, I wondered not only how I could rescue them all, but what might happen to me if I wrote about what I saw and felt.”

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak about it here.

As a German, it is never easy to talk about the topic of Genocide. We grew up seeing images of piles of bodies found in camps that had been liberated. Of course that was many, many years later when the Holocaust was finally permitted to be taught in school. Then as students we tried to grasp the enormity of millions of people having been slaughtered for their racial and religious identity. Similarly, much later I always wondered how the genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda could possibly happen after the entire world had said “never again.” Of course, nobody can ever really imagine the tragedy of millions dying and often in relatively small time frames. Usually too much deliberation goes into the management of crises to actually do anything to effectively prevent mass killings anywhere and also clearly define the meaning of genocide.  That is why at first I had problems using the term “genocide” when it comes to the crimes against humanity committed in Kashmir. I had always though it needed to be much more massive in scale and more concentrated in execution to qualify. But then over the years and with killings never stopping, I realized that genocide is also a process that can happen in slow motion or spurts, and often spread over decades or even longer. It can also involve demographic changes not only through mass killings like during the Jammu massacre of 1947 but also through ethnic flooding as is happening now at an accelerated pace.  I am now using that term for Kashmir without a moment of hesitation. But, like with all genocides anywhere and much before our time, it is very difficult to fully grasp numbers of the dead and disappeared in their totality. In Kashmir also, while looking at the statistics in the many reports prepared by Kashmiri civil society groups and others may induce a sense of shock, it never quite hits you to the core. Why else could people and policy makers all over the world just ignore such never ending brutalities even today? I have resolved that tragedy is individual, and while statistics may be meaningful in history books, stories of individual victims have to be remembered and must be told again and again for anybody to really understand the cruelty of their murders. With that in mind, I would like to talk about some of the killings I personally witnessed while in Kashmir, and also the circumstances under which they died. Many of them were very highly publicized locally, but still NOTHING ever changed and NOBODY has ever been brought to book.

Starting in early 2006 and into 2007, my first years in Kashmir, there were a series of fake encounters which perhaps for the first time were actually investigated. There was Abdul Rehman Padder, a carpenter from Ganderbal; Showkat Ahmed, a daily laborer from Budgam, Ali Mohammad Padder, a carpenter from Kokernag, Nazir Ahmed Deka and Ghulam Nabi Wani, both bakers from Ganderbal. All of them were exhumed for identification and subsequently declared innocent. Police had picked them up, branded them Pakistani terrorists, and killed them in fake encounters together with the army and the CRPF. All the officers received cash rewards and promotions. None was ever put before a civilian court or put away for murder. But it was the beginning of Kashmiris becoming more vocal about crimes committed to them and demanding justice.

In 2008 the massive crackdown following the uprising caused by the Amarnath Land Row resulted in the death of at least 60 protesters and grave injuries to thousands who had been unarmed and protesting completely peacefully without a single stone in their hand. One of the more prominent protesters killed during the Muzaffarabad Chalo was Sheikh Aziz, a Hurriyat leader, who was shot by security forces no more than 200 feet from me. I still remember our panic over how to save his life. Of course the scene was too chaotic to get him any medical help. Most of the other protesters were young boys and villagers who were shot dead without ever having been a threat to anybody. Of course the Indian media claimed that they had been Pakistani militants having infiltrated into the crowd and shooting protesters themselves to create more chaos and anti-India sentiment. During that time I spent most days taking journalists around in my own car because I had a press curfew pass from a local daily and knew that security forces would not harm a foreigner openly nor beat up the journalists with me. Much of that time we drove severely injured protesters, including women and children, to emergency wards of local hospitals. Among them several Sumo drivers whose cars had been attacked with petrol bombs by Hindutva fanatics on the Jammu Srinagar highway and who had sustained life threatening burns all over their bodies. Many never made it out of the hospitals. The brutality of the crackdown was of course the beginning of the Kashmir Intifada which stretched all the way past 2016 and later following funerals of local rebels. It was also the political awakening of an entire new generation of Kashmiris which is much angrier and more uncompromising than their elders ever were.

In 2009, we woke up to news about the discovery of the bodies of Neelofar and Aasia from Shopian in South Kashmir. Neelofar was 22 and Aasia 17. Both had been raped, killed by security forces and deposited at the banks of a nearly dry riverbed not far from the local SOG camp. All hell broke loose when the news about their rape and murder was broadcast. After the initial forensic investigation confirmed rape and the subsequent murder of both the girls, several policemen attached to the SOG camp were arrested. Shockingly, a team of crisis managers was flown in from Delhi, and soon the entire sordid story was rewritten by security agencies. The girls were exhumed and a revised forensic examination by a doctor selected by IB claimed that neither of the girls was raped and that they had drowned on their way home from an orchard in the “rapids” of the river. When I took a journalist from Delhi to the exact spot where the bodies had been found, he admitted that the water level was so low that not even a small child could have drowned. But he insisted that it could not have been rape because the security forces attached to the SOG camp were Hindus and Hindus did not rape. He believed it might have been domestic violence instead. He of course was one who never believed what had happened at Kunan Poshpora and had written a piece about how it was nothing but a plot by Pakistani propagandists to turn locals against the army and India. The protests that followed the murders of the girls were mostly localized but severe enough in and around Srinagar that dozens of youth were gravely injured and several died. It was also for the first time that hospitals were forced to connect the bodies of dead protesters to life support machines so police could pretend they were still alive and did not have to be reported as having succumbed to their injuries. This practice was perfected in 2010 where the death count was so high that authorities wanted to release the news of killings incrementally.

2010 began with the cold blooded killings of 13 year old Whamid Farooq, a 13 year old boy who was playing cricket near his house when a teargas shell fired from close range broke his skull. Only two weeks later, a 16 year old boy, Zahid Farooq, was standing at the roadside talking to his friends when a BSF jeep stopped and one of the soldiers got out and shot him in the head for no reason except perhaps target practice. Because it happened right outside the CRPF headquarter at Nishat, it was captured on camera and the jeep was identified. While the soldier was transferred and for “using excessive force during crowd management,” he was never accused of murder nor prosecuted for the barbaric act he had committed.

Then in May of that year, the news of the Machil Fake Encounter broke. At first there was an announcement by the army that three Pakistani infiltrators had been killed near Machil in Kupwara district. But because the families of three boys who had disappeared began questioning their whereabouts, the horrible truth soon became evident: Shehzad Ahmad, Riyaz Ahmad, and Mohammed Shafi of Nadihal in Rafiabad, all still in their late teens, had been lured by a local Territorial Army recruit to the army camp at Machil near Kalaroos with the promise of a few days of labor for good pay. After the boys were delivered to the commanding officer of the camp, they were shot in their faces, dressed in militant attire and quickly buried after some photos had been taken. Because the families cried foul, the bodies were exhumed and identified as the local boys who had gone missing. Earlier, the major commanding the camp had received his orders to be rotated out of Kashmir, and wanted to earn one more monetary award and promotion for killing militants before being transferred. While the army did not deny what happened, the case was not tried before a civilian court because of the Armed Special Powers Act.  All of the culprits were released on bail shortly from a military jail after Modi assumed power. For me this was an earth shattering event. I had lived in Rafiabad for a year to work with timber smugglers and knew two of the three boys and their families very well. I still have nightmares about what happened to them. From the day it happened until I was made to leave Kashmir, I never stopped pursuing the prosecution of the killers wherever and whenever I could.

This gruesome fake encounter and the subsequent killing of a teenager, Tufail Mattoo, who was on his way home from tuition when a teargas shell almost decapitated him, were of course the triggers for the 2010 uprising where all in all more than 140 boys died while protesting for justice and against the Indian occupation. It was also when we lived through a 4-months-long continuous curfew that was so severe that anybody attempting to break through it was shot at sight. Every evening during that time we did nothing but count the dead. By then social media had begun to be used widely in the Valley, and we all talked to each other that way. Then the agencies had no idea about it and how much we all were coordinating and sharing information on it.

Following 2010, protests became routine and especially after prayers on Fridays. Scores of young boys were arrested on a regular basis and only set free after their families paid huge bribes to the police. Many of the young boys were tortured and humiliated while in custody. This is also the time when many local young boys began joining militant groups because of the treatment they had received. Much of this was inspired by Burhan Wani and his friends who reminded people that armed resistance against a brutal occupation was not only sanctioned by the UN Charter but also one way to fight back after all political initiatives had failed. Most of them are dead now. Many never fired a gun. When Manan Wani was killed, we cried for days.

I will stop here now because I am sure you are exhausted from the details. But I do think it is extremely important to go beyond statistics and remember individual victims who have been killed under the most brutal circumstances and continue to be eliminated every day even now. They died for the cause of liberation and have to be remembered by us all. As I said in the beginning, tragedy is individual, and just as reading the The Diary of Anne Frank finally made me understand the meaning of the collective guilt of Germans, I think the world must be made to remember all these boys and young men who died without any fault of their own, and because India does not consider Kashmiris human beings worth protecting. In Kashmir graves are full of not only unidentified bodies but of those many of us have known and cared about and will always miss.

If I may, I would like to conclude this with part of another piece I had written at that time:

“Yesterday, I was sitting near the river under the darkest of curfews, listening to the wailing voices of funeral singers and distant gun shots, mourning the deaths of boys I have never known and will never be able to befriend, and longing to sit at the lake again in the darkness of night where truth can be so easily hidden from someone’s view. The sky was laden with dark clouds, and rain was falling on the graveyards of the old city where the dead were being buried. Yesterday, it seemed the sky over Kashmir would never clear again, and light and sunshine had now permanently vanished from my portrait of the Valley. It was a picture of a place that people who have always lived here have accepted as reality painting, but that I have yet to become emotionally equipped to hang on my wall. 

I thought of the people I have met, the respect I have for those who have been struggling against darkness for so long, the families who have been reduced to tears, and the complete powerlessness one feels in the face of unstoppable human tragedy. I wanted to reach out and say to people to please still believe in the faint illusion of justice, fairness and the triumph of the human spirit. I wanted to assure them that people did not die in vain. I wanted someone to tell me that the sadness and anger I felt would fade, making it possible to see bright light again in a place that so often seems to plunge into permanent darkness. But most of all, I wanted to tell people that I had now become a Kashmiri, regardless of how unbearable it may be at times, and that their reality had very much become my own, even if I might never be able to fully comprehend the full range of its dark colors and hues. “

Thank you for asking me to participate on this panel. I feel extremely honored to be here. As I told Hamzah, I am neither a scholar nor an academic. I also have not worked for think tanks, although I often participate in their events. For the past 12 years or so I have been a social activist which makes my language somewhat different from those who are researchers or professors.  Almost everything I share anywhere is based on what I have personally lived through and which has made me what I am today. That gives me a very different vocabulary, one that is often more emotional and often quite angry. It would hardly pass as quantitative analysis, with advanced statistics having been the only course I ever flunked in graduate school. For me tragedy is much more individual,, and this is what I usually talk about. Salma has been on a couple of panels with me while I was talking about Kashmir and she probably remembers this very well.

You asked me to talk about Hindu Extremism and how it has promoted discord and conflicts in South Asia and affected countries such as Pakistan. I have been trying to wrap myself around this topic for the past two days because it is so very broad. But once again I decided the only way I can put it in some sort of context is by telling some of my own personal observations over the 16 plus years I lived and worked  in India and then in Kashmir.

I moved to India shortly after 9/11. Right after the first bombing of Afghanistan to be more precise. I had opposed the War on Terror, and felt it was as good a time as any to say Good Bye to the US for good. I decided to move to India because I had been working there off and on for years and it was a familiar place, or so I thought.

Over the years the same impressions India has been creating about itself in the West had led me to believe that I was going to be safe ideologically from what was unfolding in many other parts of the world. I had fully bought the story of it being a secular democracy, based on Gandhian philosophy, and meaning no harm to anybody ever, neither friend nor foe. I of course knew very little about internal or regional conflicts at the time. I had also blissfully ignored some early signs of Hindutva mobilization amongst the Indian diaspora in the US, raising much money for the BJP. I also ignored having been told by an Indian trade delegation that a brochure we had printed for a US India trade council should not have the color green as its background and be changed to saffron, else we would not find doors open to us in India. Our graphic designer in the US had looked at the Indian flag and selected the color green.  .

It was a huge shock for me upon arrival to find an India that had just dispatched all of its troops towards the border with Pakistan in the wake of the Parliament attack, and it looked as though the country was getting ready for war with its neighbor. Shrill, patriotic and war mongering frenzy was surrounding me everywhere and many were hoping India’s nuclear arsenal would finally teach Pakistan a lesson. It was impossible to overlook the communal undertones in the ranting and raving. Some journalists at the time were questioning the true intent behind the attack with a few suggesting privately that it may have been orchestrated by Indian agencies so India could formally join the War on Terror.

My next experience was travelling to Gujarat while finishing up a custom dispute I had worked on before I left the US. There I witnessed post genocidal conditions after communal riots had broken out and thousands were slaughtered by Hindutva zealots with Narendra Modi at the helm. It was very much the way I had always imagined the Kristallnacht in Germany which of course was the beginning of the Holocaust and the extermination of almost all of Europe’s Jews. Something Hindutva zealots and the RSS never tire to describe as “the Germans having had the right idea.”  I don’t think many people witnessing the scenes in Gujarat have ever found the right words to describe all or any of it. It was simply too gruesome. I will never forget any of it. And to this day I will never be able to digest that one of the architects of the pogrom is the Prime Minister of a country that is now a strategic partner of the US.

This was also the first time that I felt this all-pervasive anger in the streets of India. The anger that gets suppressed for short periods of time but only to explode at the slightest of trigger, and more often than not ending in communal riots of one sort or another. I witnessed this anger day after day in the neighborhood I lived in, whether it was directed towards Dalits, Muslims, people from the Northeast, or even animals. Often the anger turned into rape, often committed by gangs of young men, and this is something most foreign and all Indian women fears whenever out at night or moving about in more deserted places.

Later while working on tribal issues in Assam, I saw how the RSS had spread out everywhere, pretending to be social workers while convincing some tribals, who were mostly Animists or Buddhists, that they had actually been Hindus all along and had to return to their religious roots before being able to benefit from developmental schemes. That is also when I first saw demographic change systematically planned and implemented by the Indian State and its agencies. In predominantly tribal areas where Schedule 6 of the Constitution had guaranteed tribal autonomy, Nepalis who had served in the Indian Army and their families were resettled in huge numbers so the districts would no longer meet the demographic thresholds to be considered tribal majority. Of course throughout Assam and other parts of the Northeast religious hatred towards Muslims was constantly being stirred up, with all Muslims being portrayed as illegals from Bangladesh, and most recently leading to the segregation of Muslims and others considered foreigners in concentration camps built for those not able to prove their citizenship. Sadly when protests broke out in Assam over the new citizenship laws, making it possible for undocumented non-Muslims to remain in Assam and other parts of India while only Muslims cannot, the protesters were not demanding a role back of the discriminatory law, but wanted it to be even more stringent and cover all groups and not only Muslims. Meanwhile Hindutva zealots, the RSS, and religious hatred increasingly reign supreme in a state that used to be proud of its own language, unique culture and diversity. Obviously neighboring countries like Myanmar and Southwestern China have not been unaffected by the communal frenzy. In fact. India is one of very few countries never having criticized Myanmar for its treatment of the Rohingya and instead having begun persecuting as possible terrorists those who had escaped the violence and settled as refuges in places like Jammu.

Deeply disturbed by the true nature of the Hindu state in so many different parts of India, I had grown much disenchanted with the country before even moving to Kashmir. There of course I lived through ten years of absolute terror committed on the people by the Indian state, a communalized army, and the military occupation. Most of you know about the atrocities being committed there because they have now been relatively well documented, and because Pakistan has been speaking about the human rights violations at every possible forum for years. I could talk for several days about what I witnessed personally, and some of the people I knew who have been killed or tortured. All of it has been going on for decades, but for much of the past having raged as more of a political than a religious dispute.

The nature of the dispute changed completely when the BJP under Modi came to power both in Delhi and in IIOJK in 2014. All over sudden the rhetoric everywhere had changed and the lives of Kashmir Muslims were no longer worth preserving. And this is an important point to make. With Modi assuming power, it was not only a government having changed. It was an entire nation becoming fueled by lethal Hindu majoritarian aspirations, almost from one day to the next. It was the ordinary people, like it had been ordinary people in Gujarat, who were now baying for the blood of Kashmiris. It was everywhere, on television, in print editorials, and in the behavior of troops on the streets of Kashmir. Pakistan was no longer just a troubled neighbor but a place that needed to be defeated once and for all, so that the true Bharat spanning every nook and corner of the entire subcontinent could be restored. Kashmiris were attacked throughout India, Muslims were lynched at the mere suspicion of having slaughtered a cow, Hindutva terrorists were released from prison with some being elected to Parliament. It felt like a Saffron tidal wave. Jammu which had already become radicalized and heavily dominated by the RSS since the uprisings of 2008 was now able to openly organize Hindutva flag marches through neighborhoods with Muslim populations. The marchers were fully armed with swords and trishuls. And of course the history books were being rewritten, describing the Valley of Kashmir as the original abode of Hindus with Muslims being nothing but an aberration. When a small Muslim nomad girl was abducted and brutally gang raped before being killed, much of the country thought it was a lie and an attempt to smear Hindus of Jammu. Nothing has happened to the killers.

All of it finally culminated in the illegal annexation of Kashmir by India in August of 2019 and the abrogation of articles that had guaranteed a measure of autonomy for the Kashmiris, and more importantly some protections for their religious and ethnic identities. Now we are witnessing the implementation of new land laws aimed to accelerate ethnic flooding by Hindus and more than likely resulting in Muslims of the region becoming a minority. This of course had already been successfully done once by the Maharaja in Jammu in 1947 when his troops and Hindu fanatics slaughtered up to two hundred thousand of Jammu Muslims and driving out just as many, making it a Hindu majority region. Today it will be done through administrative action instead of slaughter.

 With all of this happening how can Pakistan, a legal stakeholder in the Kashmir dispute, be unaffected and remain uninvolved? Similarly, after unilaterally altering the entire region by turning a former state into Union Territories, China has already reacted militarily to protect its interests and territory from an expansionist India that feels no longer bound by any bilateral agreements. Moreover, night after night, Indian channels debate the need for India to take over Azad Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan, both of which India claims as its own territory. And the Hindu nation is cheering on a government that promises that it will conquer what belongs to India at the earliest, with defense analysts and generals saying the army is merely waiting for the orders.

And now comes the detailed dossier prepared by Pakistan and proving India’s sponsorship of terrorist activities inside its country. Anybody having lived in India and especially Kashmir and following the aims and activities of Indian agencies throughout the region would never ever doubt any of what has been presented in the report. After years of watching what Indian agencies are capable of in Kashmir and then blaming it all on its neighbor in its neverending propaganda war against Pakistan, there is no doubt in my mind that all of it and much more is the absolute truth. Just as an example I personally came to know about the Indian Territorial Army recruiting local boys in Kashmir for the purposes of exfiltrating them from Northern Kashmir into Azad Kashmir to later bring them back as “Pakistani infiltrators” for the purposes of convincing the world of continued state sponsored terror by Pakistan committed in Kashmir.

Lastly, closely watching RAW’s increasingly supporting RSS and anti-Pakistan linked think tanks and advocacy groups throughout the West, one is only beginning to understand the challenge India’s hybrid war represents on every level and the need to strike back where it counts.  I personally hope that the accusations will be presented to all international bodies that matter so that India can stand exposed for what it is and not what it persistently tries to project about itself.

I could go on, and of course most of this is known to everybody on the panel and everybody listening in. I have gone into such detail because I feel the writing has been on the wall for so many years, and what the Modi government has been implementing is just the culmination of everything that had been happening for so many years before and in so many different places. Hindutva was always there from the very beginning. What is new is the close marriage of Hindutva Extremism with intelligence agencies and both acting in tandem to create havoc throughout the region. And at the root of it is both a majoritarian and an expansionist philosophy envisioning a South Asia dominated by India and more specifically Hindus. It is a fictional historical claim not dissimilar to that of the Nazis who spoke of creating a Lebensraum for the German race, or the Zionists who use the bible as the moral justifications for expansion of territory. And nobody seems to care enough again.

With all this in mind, I feel the time for trying to strike a balance while speaking about regional tensions is gone. In fact it seems unconscionable to me when South Asia Departments in Washington are trying to do that. There is a right and a wrong, and one has to choose. Watching what is happening in India silently or without intervening is criminally enabling, regardless of what may be happening in the South China Sea.

I urge IPRI and others to keep compiling facts and figures for all of us to use wherever we can to present the correct narratives about India to the world. Too much of the history of the region wass written by the occupying power and those drunk on Hindutva supremacy fantasies. It needs to be exposed and stopped now.

Thank you.

Ladakh Standoff: Opportunity Knocking for Pakistan?

Carin I. Fischer

“US says Pak budget lacks transparency” screams a headline! Then it becomes clear that it is all about targeting CPEC! Clearly the Monroe Doctrine is now alive in a much wider context – from Latin America it now seeks to make the entire world its “sphere of influence!” It won’t work!

~ Shireen Mazari, June 23, 2020

While the above quote may sound to some as though US Pakistan relations may be heading for yet another nosedive, Pakistan’s Minister’s of Human Rights reaction must be interpreted as evidence of a newly emerging Pakistan, one that is more self-assured, less defensive, and aware of having options that ultimately could lead to a more honest and equitable partnership with the US.

US criticism of Pakistan today no longer focuses on terrorism or other issues used in the past as reasons for declining relations. This is despite India doing its best to keep that focus alive.  Today, China has become Enemy Number 1 in Washington, and any current negativity towards Pakistan has to be seen in the context of Pakistan’s close relations with Beijing. Although the US is very aware that Pakistan desires good relations with both countries, the US may increasingly try to pressurize Pakistan to choose between the two. Instead of worrying about this development, Pakistan could and should take advantage of the knowledge of having a reliable friend in China and use it as a bargaining chip with the US which still needs Pakistan’s cooperation in the region for many important national security reasons. In fact, Pakistan should test the US resolve to contain China’s influence at all costs by making clear that it in fact has a choice and, if pushed too far, may have to opt for China completely the way the US seems to have opted for India at the expense of other relationships while in pursuit of continued domination of the Indo Pacific.

Most recently, Washington has linked the current tensions between China and India along the LaC almost exclusively to its larger concern of a more aggressive China being out of control not just in South Asia but elsewhere. Statements have already been made by the administration that it supports India in that current conflict between the two countries. Linking Ladakh to other issues of concern to the US is a misperception also adopted by DC think tanks and voiced by mainstream media and professional journals. This kind of faulty interpretation must be corrected as soon as possible by Pakistan since the violence along the LaC is directly tied to Indian aggression, unilateral actions concerning Kashmir, and overall foreign policy issues of paramount importance to Pakistan in its own neighborhood.

It also presents a much needed opportunity to once again raise awareness about the growing expansionist approach by India in South Asia and how this approach, if further enabled by the US,  could lead to dangerous escalations both at the LaC and the LoC. In fact, Pakistan must highlight how at the moment India is at loggerheads with almost all its neighbors who have begun viewing it as a destabilizing country with hegemonic designs. Below are some talking points that could to be used to explain the roots of the current tensions and why it involves Pakistan.

The crisis in Ladakh is not directly linked to a more assertive China in Asia and other parts of the world as the US is claiming. It is a reaction to India’s unilateral actions in Kashmir beginning August 5 of last year, and has its roots in the illegal annexation of not only J & K but also Ladakh and declaring them Union Territories in contravention of UN Resolutions and all existing bilateral agreements.

India has become increasingly shrill about recapturing AJK and GB and how it plans to use covert operations and RAW sponsored dissidents to try to cause chaos in the two regions to advance its designs. This threatening posturing has become of great concern not only for Pakistan but also China because it has heavily invested in CPEC, major dam projects and road and other infrastructure in those areas.

Because of India’s unilateral and illegal actions in JKL, it can no longer be dismissed as simple posturing and there is growing concern by Pakistan and China that India may pursue its stated goals in the future.

In doing so, it has forced China to officially declare itself a fourth stakeholder in the Kashmir Dispute while also no longer feeling bound by past “gentleman agreements” about the exact delimitations of the LaC. Unlike the LoC, these delimitations were always based on perceptions by each country and never agreed upon formally.

Moreover, in an act of cartographic aggression, India is not only including AJK and GB as its own territory but now also showing Aksai Chin as such. Contrary to Indian propaganda accusing Pakistan of having “gifted” Aksai Chin to China, India lost Aksai Chin to China in the 1962 Indo-China war and Nehru consented to the territorial adjustment. Despite this region being nearly uninhabitable and having no resources, it remains strategically extremely important for China as it connects Tibet and Xinjiang. The area is also closely linked to the Karakorum Pass/ Highway which is central to CPEC. In addition it is very close to Siachen and access roads to it. This of course is also part of the dispute between Pakistan and India.

None of these important issues are being highlighted enough in Washington which mistakenly links China’s securing what it has always considered its territory to actions in Hong Kong, Vietnam, and other areas in the Indo Pacific.

Pakistan must play an important role in correcting the misperceptions and expose India for being the actual aggressor in Ladakh and much of South Asia.  It also can take advantage to once again highlight the illegal annexation of Kashmir and how the dispute has dangerous repercussions beyond Kashmir Valley.

Importantly since China has used the occasion to put India in its place in a region of much importance to both Pakistan and China, the possibility of false flag operations by India has grown exponentially since it may want to deflect from an embarrassing loss of what it claims to be Indian territory in Ladakh. Since any further potential escalation of a conflict now involving three nuclear powers instead of two, it also presents another opportunity to once again ask for international and mediation for a solution of the dispute.

As explained in the beginning, all of this must be done from a position of strength, since India clearly overreached in total violation of international law and existing conventions. Pakistan must explain the correct context but also stress that the disputed Kashmir and by extension the Ladakh regions lie at the heart of Pakistan’s own foreign policy, and that while China and Pakistan undoubtedly share the same interests there, that shared interest does not extend beyond the region unless pushed by the US to take sides in unrelated areas of conflict. 

Pakistan has been fully cooperating with the desire by the US to strike a successful peace deal in Afghanistan. It will be an important stakeholder in maintaining that peace after the US leaves. Pakistan therefore needs to fully appreciate its value for the US which goes much beyond minor concessions or occasional financial rewards. By allowing India’s aggression to continue in Pakistan’s closest neighborhood, Pakistan is most directly affected by a growing US India strategic partnership that is primarily based on containing China elsewhere. Since the US does not seem to desire a complete break with Pakistan, Pakistan should feel more confident in its dealings with the US and not only react but demand that the US strike a better balance in the region for the security of everybody concerned. This would start by recognizing India’s designs and helping curb its aggressive behavior.

My remarks

• Thank you very much for inviting me to this timely discussion. I will echo much of what previous speakers have already said, and add a few observations of my own.
• I experienced many horrible curfews and lockdowns during the ten years I lived and worked in Kashmir. But nothing could possibly compare to what people have to contend with now and since August 5 of last year.
• On top of all the inhumane measures that had already been implemented to incarcerate an entire population for months, the Covid 19 crisis presented yet another opportunity for Indian authorities to clamp down even further.
• Among increasing demands by international activists, policy makers abroad, human rights organizations, and even parts of Indian civil society, as well as mounting harsh treatment by international media, instead of restoring some semblance of democracy or civil rights, the virus enabled the security apparatus to implement a double lockdown instead.
• While claiming that it was done to curb the spread of the virus, in reality the continuous slowing of internet speed, the closing off of entire neighborhoods as Red Zones,” and once again the imposition of draconian restrictions on the movement of all people, the virus has actually been spreading at an accelerated pace for lack of communications and lack of proper care.
• Healthcare has always been a huge problem in the Valley. In remote areas it is practically non-existent. With no proper means of communication and the absence of road connectivity, people are completely stuck during most emergencies and always at a loss whom to reach out to. Now little information about the effect of the virus has been trickling out of these places.
• In these areas, it is impossible to get an ambulance, any emergency care, or an adequate supply of medicines during the best of times. How would testing for a fast spreading virus be done now or ever there?
• Often the complete lack of healthcare in these areas is the result of corruption and funds never reaching.
• Unfortunately, this has been exploited by the Indian Army on whom some of the poorest villagers have come to depend for emergency intervention.
• Since clinics or dispensaries are only available at the nearest army camp, often the sick have no choice but to ask for assistance despite their fear of the troops.
• To further perpetuate this helplessness of the people, the army has institutionalized this assistance by calling it part of its “hearts and minds program.”
• In 2002, the state went as far as to create a formal program between the civil administration and the army to collaborate on providing basic healthcare to the poor in remote areas. Accordingly, the state provides an ambulance while the army makes available some nurses or doctors from among their ranks or engages select government doctors to reach out to communities.
• Of course, none of this is done without an ulterior motive! It allows the army to expand its stable of informers in those areas by often making healthcare care conditional upon collaboration.
• In the cities and towns, mohallas are now not only separated by concertina wires and other fencing, but often also by hastily dug trenches “to keep infected people at bay.” No vehicles can travel in or out as a result and that of course includes ambulances.
• More often than not, people are now simply giving up on adequate relief and have stopped seeking care until it is too late.
• Even after it became clear that the death rate of the virus has been lower in Kashmir as elsewhere in South Asia and unlike in other parts of the world, the double lockdown was not relaxed as it has been in India, and the real reason for the draconian measures has become abundantly clear.
• Stopping the spread of the virus was at best secondary while jailing people again.
• First and foremost, the double lockdown was used to set the stage for and accelerate the final chapter of what began August 5 and that aimed at demographic change in Kashmir without protests by the people to stop them.
• Since the new lockdown, rules for the new Domicile Law have been implemented at accelerated speed and once again without the advice or consent by any of the locals.
• With communication networks often shut down or slowed to a trickle, and journalist not being able to report freely without facing arrest, the full extent of the new rules has only become clear in recent days. And the result will be nothing short of total devastation of the Kashmiri identity within 5 years.
• Outsiders will now be able to settle permanently, buy land, and occupy government jobs on a much faster timeline than originally feared. Up to a million domiciles will be inducted as part of the first batch. Many are already there.
• Ethnic flooding has thus begun and will soon be complemented by a delimitation exercise that aims to make Hindu majority Jammu the main stakeholder in legislative processes.
• At the same time and while the world is busy with Covid 19, the Indian Army is taking full advantage of that preoccupation by not only once again increasing the number of forces in the Valley, but also by moving heavy guns into some villages near the LoC in the hope that villagers will be hit by Pakistani firing in response to the ever increasing shelling of AJK by the Indians.
• Furthermore, CASOs have increased exponentially throughout every district with houses being searched night after night, resulting in extreme hardships and psychological torture.
• Dozens of local boys and rebels have been killed during the double lockdown. And a continuation of the earlier “Operation All Out” is in full swing again.
• As part of the scorched earth policy of the Indian forces, many houses have been blown up and burned to the ground, leaving many families homeless and nowhere to turn for fear of virus transmission.
• Several innocent bystanders have also been killed, including a 14-year-old boy and a mentally challenged young man.
• Perhaps most upsetting is the new practice of disallowing funerals of local boys and/ or rebels near their families and communities. While it is aimed at preventing large funerals where local rebels are being eulogized as heroes, it deprives families of an opportunity to say goodbye to their loved ones as they are often unable to travel to the locations of the government designated burial sites. So mourning has now also become outlawed in occupied Kashmir.
• This is just some of what has been happening in the guise of “virus prevention.” It is abundantly clear that Covid 19 has become a welcome ally for the cruel Indian military occupation.
• I could go on but will now stop here.
• In closing, I urge everybody to please note was has been happening throughout the Valley and raise the details wherever and whenever it counts.
• Most Kashmiris are completely worn out and too scared or traumatized to reach out on their own
• It is no longer about human rights violations alone.
• It is about the complete dehumanization of an entire people whose will is being systematically destroyed.
• It is up to all of us to fight for the survival of the Kashmiris as a people with a unique identity. It is unconscionable not to.
• Things have never been as bad and hopeless as they are now.
• Thank you very much for having me here.

January 7/ Pakistan Mission to the UN/ NYC

1. There would be so many things to talk about today when it comes to Kashmir, but I want to stick to the topic that brought us together here: the continued relevance of the UN Resolutions regarding Kashmir.
2. Without any doubt, it is still the only legal basis for the dispute, and it makes Pakistan an original and continuous stakeholder.
3. This is despite the Simla and other bilateral agreements, entered into from time to time, some under extreme duress, and all having been violated any number of times by one or the other.
4. None of these agreements ever resulted in any meaningful dialogue regarding Kashmir and today that possibility seems more distant than ever.
5. There are groups that are currently advocating abandoning the Resolutions and to declare them as expired or no longer valid.
6. This is to some degree because these groups are well aware that the choices for a Plebiscite in the Resolutions contain only India or Pakistan and not Independence.
7. This is extremely unfortunate and only helping those who want the UN to close the case.
8. Those who are advocating it should be urged by us all to put their efforts into finding another legal vehicle for their cause, but in the meantime to still uphold the Resolutions as the only possibility for multilateral intervention and mitigation.
9. There are others who say that Plebiscite has not happened and will never happen because Pakistan has not agreed to withdraw its troops from Azad Kashmir.
10. But UN records show that on at least two occasions different formulae for troop reductions were proposed in an attempt to allay fears that India may take over the Pakistan administered areas if troops were to be withdrawn completely. Pakistan agreed to the recommendations, India did not.
11. Then the Dixon and Chenab Formulas were devised at the request of the UN and in an effort to solve the dispute in accordance with the sentiments of the people of all regions. Both plans allowed for a Plebiscite in the Kashmir Valley. Pakistan agreed, India did not.
12. I strongly feel all of this must be revisited and brought to the attention of younger generations around the world. Conventional “wisdom” has been that Pakistan has been the obstacle in implementing the Resolutions and the conducting of a Plebiscite. This is far from the truth. From the beginning, India has not acted in good faith throughout the entire process.
13. Much that has been written by Indian historians has unfortunately successfully entered the annals of Kashmir history as “gospel truth,” and it is in desperate need of revising and dissemination everywhere where it matters. This must be a top priority for us because it allows India to claim that the Resolutions should be discarded because of non-performance by Pakistan which is not true!
14. Last year, I met Karen Parker at a Kashmir Solidarity Event at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington. Karen was the first human rights lawyer to have filed a report about Indian atrocities in IOK with the UN in the 90s.
15. She has always been advocating the Right to Self Determination for the Kashmiri People and is still pushing for a UN supervised Plebiscite in accordance with the resolutions while talking to member states
16. She was quite tough on the audience during the event in DC.
17. She pointed out that the UN Resolutions demanding a Plebiscite were undoubtedly still legally valid and enforceable, and the only legal vehicle to be insisted upon aggressively and by all.
18. She also said that over the years the demand had been diluted not only by India’s rejection of it but also by different camps lobbying for different solutions instead of the right to be able to choose one.
19. She said that this has left member states confused and often convinced that Kashmiris are not united in their quest for a final resolution.
20. She concluded that while different Kashmiri groups and regions may very well not be united in what they would consider their favorite final outcome, it is that very fact that was to be addressed by a Plebiscite to begin with!
21. I very much share her views and also want to urge everybody today to remain united in demanding the Right to Self Determination only. All else can wait until the results of a Plebiscite are tabulated.
22. Last but not least and with many of my own friends in mind, I would like to urge those who are committed to choosing a merger with Pakistan over other solutions, to realize now and in the future that theirs is a legal choice which they are entitled to make and that declaring it openly is not a criminal act.
23. Over the years and because of India having relentlessly portrayed a political dispute as a terrorism problem, many of that camp have been driven underground or are reluctant to voice their preference. That must stop!
24. They should receive all our encouragement and support and be always reassured that they are not breaking any laws whatsoever by expressing their wish to join one of the two legal stakeholders as contained in the Resolutions.

Thank you.

I know some friends are waiting for a personal update about the NYC protests/ activities yesterday, but I am still so overwhelmed by it all that it is tough to sound more somber and analytical than in the below. But here are some initial thoughts. This is especially for Seeme Gull Khan Hasan whose questions and comments kept me company on the bus home. I know she was there in spirit as was my friend and sister-in-arms Helen (@Bea) in Sweden who watched all of it on social media while we were on the streets. Here it goes:

Got up at 4 am to make my way towards Northern Virginia where one batch of buses organised by the local Kashmiri Diaspora was waiting to take us all to NY. There were many such collection points throughout the entire area. All of it amazingly well organised. Thank you all for doing this! And thank you for hooking me up with them, Anwar Iqbal.

A young friend from Srinagar with whom I had coordinated for days on twitter sat down next to me, signalling the beginning of a new friendship that I know will last for long beyond our first collective action for Kashmir. We know many of the same people back home, and our talks on the bus were a drive down memory lane. Another young man from Kupwara joined us and we stayed together the entire day/ evening. I thought about the term Six Degrees of Separation which in my limited understanding of it means that all people sharing a common DNA will eventually meet.

Throughout the entire drive I felt like a huge security blanked had been draped around me. Such familiarity, such solidarity, such unity of purpose! I would have been fine never to get off the bus! And of course every few minutes there was some announcement about food with some boxes/ tiffins making their way down the isle. Nobody in the West will ever understand the food symbolism of Southasia and how it gives the term “breaking bread together” a whole new meaning. I have not felt that at home as on that bus for years!

After a 5 hour drive, the bus dropped us very close to the designated venue of the protests and right outside the UN. Thousands had already gathered and the numbers kept swelling. It was not easy to find people in a crowd that was almost uniformly wearing red #StandwithKashmir T-shirts! We looked like an army fighting for the freedom of Kashmiris! But despite the huge numbers participating (an estimated 16,000) being there together made us all realize what a small but ever more determined universe we inhabit. Again and again I bumped into somebody I knew and had not seen for ages. Some where Kashmiris I had met during our protest outside the White House a few weeks ago. Some people from back home. Some were activists I had met during a previous visit to NY during the same occasion. Many came up to me and said I am so and so, and we have been friends on twitter/ facebook for long and it is so great to finally meet.

There was another and much smaller rally of NRIs with a couple of Balochs, Kashmiris Hindus, and members of the Hindu American Foundation across the street from us, but the NY police made sure we never came into clashing distance. The barriers that had been erected to keep us apart were symbolic of a partition the gap of which seems to be growing wider today than the one having been created so many decades ago. Fortunately, their activities fizzled out long before ours. One of their cheer leaders was Tareq Fatah, and I kept wondering why their organizers could not come up with somebody with a bit more credibility!

Many of us were listening to IK’s speech on our phones and people kept clapping throughout and especially during his strong comments against Modi and of course in support of Kashmiris. There was nobody in the crowd who did not draw hope and inspiration from his words, and everybody felt represented by him inside the hall not far from us and where he was reaching out to the community of nations. Thank you for managing to unite us around a common message and thank you even more for making Kashmiris and their Right to Self Determination the center piece of all your activities over the past week. This has made it possible for all of us to march into the same direction, and it has started a healing process between different camps that was long overdue. Your activities over the past week in NY were enabling all of us to speak up in unity for those who have been silenced, and whose entire identity is being completely diminished so many miles away in a place that so many of us love more than anything else in the world! Our message to everybody is loud and clear: you will never be abandoned by any of us for a minute, and the slogan #StandwithKashmir will forever be our collective leitmotif as it has been for so many weeks already and throughout the world!

Many of us decided to stay on to join the candle light vigil at Times Square which had been organized by StandwithKashmir.org and a few others. In between the protests and the vigil there were other side events organised by academics and writers to raise awareness about the history and plight of Kashmiris in different venues nearby. In the evening, it became a tidal wave of Kashmiris from both sides of the border and their friends and well-wishers from near and far that flooded most of Times Square. The people in red had gathered by the thousands again to send their determination and goodwill and complete solidarity back home to Kashmir. The site of the pro freedom slogans displayed on the most famous and expensive billboard anywhere is something none of us will ever forget!!! And just like the apple is lowered at the same place at midnight on December 31 every year, a sight which is shared on the same billboard with millions around the world, we felt our demand to lift the siege of Kashmiris and to set them free was beamed for once to the entire universe. Thank you to those who made this possible. I am so humbled by the efforts of so many to unite everybody and help tell the world from NY that humanity could not allow what has been happening to an entire people for so many decades.

My two new Kashmiri friends who had traveled on the same bus with me in the morning stayed with me throughout the day to make sure I felt cared for and to also meet up with others I knew at both events. For 24 hours I felt not only overwhelmingly inspired by the collective larger goal of all of us but safe and surrounded by family and friends. Nothing creates more closeness and affection than commitment to a common cause. It can be positively intoxicating.

We took a late bus back to DC and reached Union Station by 2 in the morning. Almost 24 hours after leaving my flat, I could not help but feel that I had been yet again part of a new chapter in the long and torturous history of Kashmiris. One that was the beginning of a new and even more determined story-line scripted by Kashmirir people around the world and one where everybody has finally been united by a strong Ambassador-at-Large and his sincere and well received message that neither he nor any of us would ever abandon Kashmir.

Thank you IK and everybody else who made all of this possible! Let us make it a Million Kashmiri March the next time around!!! United we stand and united we win!

shared by Nandita Narain

Women’s Voice: Fact Finding Report on Kashmir
September 17th – 21st 2019

[Kindly note. To protect the identity of the people we met, all names in the Report have been changed. We have not named the villages we visited for the very same reason]

These are lines by Comrade Abdul Sattar Ranjoor. We held these as a beacon during our four-day sojourn in a locked and shuttered land called Kashmir.

Spring buds will flower
Nightingales’ pain will abate
Lovers wounds will start healing
Sickness will leave the ailing
Heart’s longing of Ranjoor will be fulfilled
When the poorest will rule
Wearing the crown of glory

(Ranjoor was killed in 1990)

A team of 5 women visited Kashmir from September 17th-21st 2019. We wanted to see with our own eyes how this 43 day lockdown had affected the people, particularly women and children.

The team consisted of Annie Raja, Kawaljit Kaur, Pankhuri Zaheer from National Federation Indian Women, Poonam Kaushik from Pragatisheel Mahila Sangathan and Syeda Hameed from Muslim Women’s Forum.

Besides spending time in Srinagar, we visited several villages in the districts of Shopian, Pulwama and Bandipora. We went to hospitals, schools, homes, market places, spoke to people in the rural as well as urban areas, to men, women, youth and children. This Report is our chashmdeed gawahi (eye witness account) of ordinary people who have lived for 43 days under an iron siege.

Shops closed, hotels closed, schools, colleges, institutes and universities closed, streets deserted was the first visual impact as we drove out from the airport. To us it seemed a punitive mahaul that blocked breathing freely.

The picture of Kashmir that rises before our eyes is not the populist image; shikara, houseboat, lotus, Dal Lake. It is that of women, a Zubeida, a Shamima, a Khurshida standing at the door of their homes, waiting. Waiting and waiting for their 14, 15, 17, 19 year old sons. Their last glimpse is embedded in each heart, they dare not give up hope but they know it will be a long wait before they see their tortured bodies or their corpses… if they do. ‘We have been caged’ these words we heard everywhere. Doctors, teachers, students, workers asked us, “What would you do in Delhi if internet services were cut off for 5 minutes?” We had no answer.

Across all villages of the four districts, peoples’ experiences were the same. They all spoke of lights, which had to be turned off around 8PM after Maghreb prayers. In Bandipora, we saw a young girl who made the mistake of keeping a lamp lit to read for her exam on the chance that her school may open soon. Army men angered by this breach of ‘curfew’, jumped the wall to barge in. Father and son, the only males in the house were taken away for questioning. ‘What questions?’, no one dared ask. The two have been detained since then. ‘We insist that men should go indoors after 6 PM. Man or boy seen after dusk is a huge risk. If absolutely necessary, we women go outside’. These words were spoken by Zarina from a village near Bandipora district headquarters. ‘In a reflex action, my four year old places a finger on her lips when she hears a dog bark after dusk. Barking dogs mean an imminent visit by army. I can’t switch on the phone for light so I can take my little girl to the toilet. Light shows from far and if that happens our men pay with their lives’.

The living are inadvertently tortured by the dead. ‘People die without warning or mourning. How will I inform my sisters about their mother’s death?’ Ghulam Ahmed’s voice was choked. ‘They are in Traal, in Pattan. I had to perform her soyem without her children’. The story was the same wherever we went. People had no means of reaching out to loved ones. 43 days were like the silence of death.

Public transportation was zero. People who had private cars took them out only for essential chores. Women stood on roadsides, flagging cars and bikes for rides. People stopped and helped out; helplessness of both sides was their unspoken bond. ‘I was on my bike going towards Awantipora. A woman flagged me. My bike lurched on a speed breaker. She was thrown off. I took her to the nearby hospital. She went in a coma. I am a poor man how could I pay for her treatment? How and who could I inform?’ These daily events were recounted wherever we went. At a Lalla Ded Women’s Hospital in Srinagar several young women doctors expressed their absolute frustration at the hurdles that had been placed in their way since the abrogation of Article 370. ‘There are cases where women cannot come in time for deliveries. There are very few ambulances, the few that are running are stopped at pickets on the way. The result? There are several cases of overdue deliveries that produce babies with birth deformities. It is a life long affliction, living death for parents”. Conversely, we were told that several women are delivering babies prematurely due to the stress and khauf (fear) in the present condition. “It feels like the government is strangling us and then sadistically asking us to speak at the same time,’ a young woman doctor said as she clutched her throat to show how she felt.

A senior doctor from Bandipora Hospital told us that people come from Kulgam, Kupwara, and other districts. Mental disorders, heart attacks, today there are more cases than he could ever recall. For emergencies junior doctors desperately look for seniors; there is no way of reaching them on phone. If they are out of the premises, they run on the streets shouting, asking, searching in sheer desperation. One orthopaedic doctor from SKIMS was stopped at the army imposed blockade while he was going for duty. He was held for 7 days. Safia in Shopian had cancer surgery. ‘I desperately need a check up in case it has recurred. Baji, I can’t reach my doctor. The only way is to go to the city, but how do I get there? And if I do, will he be there?’ Ayushman Bharat, an internet based scheme, cannot be availed by doctors and patients.

Women in villages stood before us with vacant eyes. ‘How do we know where they are? Our boys who were taken away, snatched away from our homes. Our men go to the police station, they are asked to go to the headquarters. They beg rides from travellers and some manage to get there. On the board are names of ‘stone pelters’ who have been lodged in different jails, Agra, Jodhpur, Ambedkar, Jhajjar.’ A man standing by adds, ‘Baji we are crushed. Only a few of us who can beg and borrow, go hundreds of miles only to be pushed around by hostile jail guards in completely unfamiliar cities.’

At Gurdwaras we met women who said they have always felt secure in Kashmir. ‘Molestation of women in rest of India about which we read is unheard of in Kashmir’. Young women complained they were harassed by army, including removal of their niqab

‘Army pounces on young boys; it seems they hate their very sight. When fathers go to rescue their children they are made to deposit money, anywhere between 20000 to 60000’. So palpable is their hatred for Kashmiri youth that when there is the dreaded knock on the door of a home, an old man is sent to open it. ‘We hope and pray they will spare a buzurg. But their slaps land on all faces, regardless whether they are old or young, or even the very young. In any case, Baji, we keep our doors lightly latched so they open easily with one kick’. The irony of these simply spoken words!

Boys as young as 14 or 15 are taken away, tortured, some for as long as 45 days. Their papers are taken away, families not informed. Old FIR’s are not closed. Phones are snatched; collect it from the army camp they are told. No one in his senses ever went back, even for a slightly expensive phone. A woman recounted how they came for her 22 year old son. But since his hand was in plaster they took away her 14 year old instead. In another village we heard that two men were brutally beaten. No reason. One returned, after 20 days, broken in body and spirit. The other is still in custody. One estimate given to us was 13000 boys lifted during this lockdown. They don’t even spare our rations. During random checking of houses which occurs at all odd hours of the night, the army persons come in and throw out the family. A young man working as SPO told us. ‘We keep a sizeable amount of rice, pulses, edible oil in reserve. Kerosene is mixed in the ration bins, sometimes that, sometimes koyla’.

Tehmina from Anantnag recently urged her husband, ‘Let us have another child. If our Faiz gets killed at least we will have one more to call our own. Abdul Haleem was silent. He could see the dead body of his little boy lying on his hands even as she spoke these words. ‘Yeh sun kar, meri ruh kaanp gayi,” he tells us.

A thirty year old lawyer from Karna was found dead in his rented accommodation. He was intensely depressed. Condolence notice was issued by Secy Bar Association. Immediately after that he was taken into custody. Why? We spoke to a JK policeman. All of them have been divested of their guns and handed dandas. ‘How do you feel, losing your guns?’ ‘Both good and bad’ came the reply. ‘Why?’ Good because we were always afraid of them being snatched away. Bad because we have no means now to defend ourselves in a shootout. One woman security guard said ‘Indian govt wants to make this a Palestine. This will be fought by the us, Kashmiris’. One young professional told us, ‘We want freedom. We don’t want India, we don’t want Pakistan. We will pay any price for this. Ye Kashmiri khoon hai. Koi bhi qurbani denge’.

Everywhere we went there were two inexorable sentiments. First, desire for Azadi; they want nothing of either India or Pakistan. The humiliation and torture they have suffered for 70 years has reached a point of no return. Abrogation of 370 some say has snapped the last tie they had with India. Even those people who always stood with the Indian State have been rejected by the Govt. ‘So, what is the worth in their eyes, of us, ordinary Kashmiris?’ Since all their leaders have been placed under PSA or under house arrest, the common people have become their own leaders. Their suffering is untold, so is their patience. The second, was the mothers anguished cries (who had seen many children’s corpses with wounds from torture) asking for immediate stop to this brutalisation of innocents. Their children’s lives should not be snuffed out by gun and jackboots.

As we report our experiences and observations of our stay in Kashmir, we end with two conclusions. That the Kashmiri people have in the last 50 days shown an amazing amount of resilience in the face of brutality and blackout by the Indian government and the army. The incidents that were recounted to us sent shivers down our spines and this report only summarises some of them. We salute the courage and resoluteness of the Kashmiri people. Secondly, we reiterate that nothing about the situation is normal. All those claiming that the situation is slowly returning to normalcy are making false claims based on distorted facts.

Poets speak for humankind. We began our report with lines from the Kashmiri poet Ranjoor, we end with lines from Hindi poet Dushyant. Both indicate the way forward for Kashmir:

Ho gayi hai peerh parbat si pighalni chahiye
Iss Himalaya se koi Ganga nikalni chahiye

We Demand:

1. FOR NORMALCY Withdraw the Army and Paramilitary forces with immediate effect
2. FOR CONFIDENCE BUILDING Immediately Cancel all cases/ FIRs and Release all those, especially the youth who are under custody and in jail since the Abrogation of Article 370
3. FOR ENSURING JUSTICE Conduct inquiry on the widespread violence and tortures unleashed by the Army and other security personnel.
4. COMPENSATION to all those families whose loved ones lost lives because of non availability of transportation and absence of communication.

In Addition:

• Immediately restore all communication lines in Kashmir including internet and mobile networks.
• Restore Article 370 and 35 A.
• All future decisions about the political future of Jammu and Kashmir must be taken through a process of dialogue with the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
• All army personnel must be removed from the civilian areas of Jammu and Kashmir.
• An time bound inquiry committee must be constituted to look into the excesses committed by the army.

In response to the pack of lies by the Indian Ambassador to the US:

For starters:

(1) The J & K RTI Act is much stronger than the Indian law which has been watered down again and again since 2014; in fact, RTI has been used in Kashmir more than anywhere else and there was an influential civil society RTI Movement;
(2) Women could very much participate in Panchayat elections, and if needed I can provide a list of names of some who won in 2011, including one KP panch from Tangmarg;
(3) The inheritance provisions contained in Art 35 A and prohibiting women who married an outsider from claiming their inheritance etc were struck down by the J & K High Court years ago and were already no longer valid;
(4)Economically J & K is much better off than most states in India, including and especially Gujarat;
(5) All important socio economic indicators are much better in Kashmir, including nutrition, health and education and especially for women and children;
(6); J & K never experienced the kind of poverty levels India experiences throughout because of Sheikh Abdullah’s land reforms. They were revolutionary at the time and made it possible for every Kashmiri to own land (land to the tiller) and prohibited large landholdings to remain in the hands of the rich and privileged; no Kashmiri will ever be homeless unlike the poor in India.
(7) Funds appropriated by India for “the development of Kashmir” have always been utilized primarily for paying the salaries of government employees the number of which is ridiculously high. Among other things, Delhi always felt providing/ funding government employment would create loyalties to the state and never discouraged it!
(8) According to his statement, there will be an additional 50,000 state government jobs added to an already hopelessly bloated bureaucracy!!! This will drain “development funds” even further.”
(9) The communications blackout has NOT been lifted at all. Landlines have been restored in many areas, but the saturation of landlines has been poor for a long time. Many people disconnected their lines and switched to mobile telephony a long time ago; he is simply lying because of all the pressure brought on India from abroad!
(10) There were thousands of migrant workers from India in Kashmir. All of them said they were paid higher daily wages and treated better than in India. Add to that hordes of beggars from India having created a begging mafia in the Valley!
(11) There have been several “investment conferences” like the one planned but which has already been canceled/ postponed because of the communications blockade. Nothing ever came out of it before, despite companies being able to lease land for 99 years the terms of which were renewable (The Taj and other hotels built properties that way in Kashmir); the main problems for investors is no all weather road communication throughout the year and the dismal power situation which is not only a function of poor management, discriminatory policies, most of the power generated being added to the Northern Power Grid of India, but also the water levels getting lower and lower during winters because of climate change.
(12) The armed rebellion has nothing at all to do with economic/ job issues. In fact, most of the “New Age Militants” since 2016 have been from well-to-do families and some left their jobs as teachers/ lecturers etc to join. Armed rebels join primarily because they have been abused by security forces and/ or because they demand secession from India. Not because they have nothing to do!

And none of this even touches on the political, including that Kashmir NEVER merged with India; that the document of accession was signed under duress but even so mentions that “a referendum would follow;” and then of course the promise to hold a plebiscite which is demanded more and more every day. He also does not mention that aggression/ tension between India and Pak this time was started by India with Rajnath Singh reversing the no-first-use policy in a recent statement and ringing alarm bells everywhere; moreover the “plan” to take back AJK/ GB is no longer just a fleeting threat but is discussed on TV almost every night!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbazwH9oIpw&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3HPfqvrDytVmrH-8jB74BolSQflqI847g7eYrs-5aQf0xu8EbVBquHveg

Interview about Kashmir with C J Werleman

@cjwerleman 

Columnist for Middle East Eye and Byline Times. Host of @ChannelTheRage. Activist against Islamophobia. Support: http://www.paypal.me/cjwerleman 

http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/e/d/2/ed234f6894873738/Carin_Fischer.mp3?c_id=48812705&cs_id=48812705&expiration=1567210913&hwt=5d2b0d9219183973e16b94ab37a7c878