Kashmir and The Economist's gossip column

Welcome to Kashmir
Image courtesy - IBTimes

There is never a dull time to write about Kashmir. The place is always on the edge. Sometimes due to an infiltration bid from Pakistan or there are mass protests by the locals. While the Indian army does a good job at containing the infiltration attempts, nothing much has changed when it comes to locals protesting. Friday afternoons, after the prayer, are a preferred time for protests. Masked men would raise anti-India slogans and wave Pakistani flags. They would have an immediate audience of people returning from the prayers (Friday prayers are kind of mandatory in Islam and mosques witness a high attendance compared to other days). Till some time ago the protesters would wave Pakistani flags to show their support towards Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan, i.e. secession from India. Things have taken an alarming trend ever since the Islamic State came into being. The protesters now wave IS flags, probably showing support to the brutal terror outfit.

The story of Kashmir is complicated and there are no immediate answers to the problem, especially when Pakistan is illegally occupying almost a third of the territory. This blogpost is not an attempt to find solution to the Kashmir problem or to assign blame for the mess the place is in today. This is in response to a recent article that appeared in The Economist. Titled “Kashmir in stasis – Rough sleeping”, the article is an attempt to highlight the recent bout of violence that resulted in five people losing their lives.

The article, full of rhetoric and very little substance seems to be an attempt at “covering India” in each of its issues. The Economist wants to increase its subscription base in India and hence gives extra coverage to stories from the country. No harm in that. With dwindling subscriptions in mature markets in the West, India is the obvious market. China being a tough nut due to its extremely strict media censorship.

Back to the article. The article begins with, “MUSLIMS know the parable as the story of the People of the Cave: some men fall asleep and find, on waking, that centuries have passed and the world is transformed. The people of the Kashmir valley in the lush uplands of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir have their own version”.

Well, it’s not just the Muslims of the valley who know this parable, the Hindus of the valley, who were systematically murdered of forced to flee their homes in hundreds of thousands are equally aware of that.

“Ever since 1947, when they found themselves east of an active frontline between the two new states of India and Pakistan, valley folk have watched the world evolve”.

The Kashmiri people did not find themselves between two new states. The state of Kashmir acceded to India (just like the 550 princely states did after 1947), after Pakistan attacked the territory by infiltrating tribal people and army men without insignia.

“And still the valley’s 7m people, who speak their own unique language, are nearly all Muslim and generally disdain India and Pakistan alike, remain hapless pawns in a vicious game between those rivals”.

Kashmiris speak a unique language just like millions of other Indians speak theirs. There are 22 scheduled languages in India. The population of Kashmir is 96.4% (census 2011) Muslim, largely because the Hindus were kicked out of their homes or murdered by the Kashmiri people in 1990. As far as the “disdain” is concerned, The Economist should recall that 65% eligible Kashmiris turnedout to cast their votes in the 2014 state elections. Not sure where the statistics for “disdain” were dug out from.

“Some facts are clear. Anger at the Indian army’s heavy presence is explosive”.

Of course people will not like to live in a virtual army barrack all their lives. But then what exactly are these people doing to come out of this? Waving Pakistan flags or IS flags will definitely not help the army in reducing their presence. The recent events in Paris & Brussels are case in point where a handful of terrorists unleashed mayhem in an otherwise peaceful city.

“Security forces are quick to shoot, and keen to divert attention from their misconduct”.

This is what is known as a “motherhood statement”. Where are the facts? Where is the source? On the contrary here is a video evidence, which suggests that the security forces actually put their own lives in danger and get beatenup by the locals instead of randomly firing at protestors.

“Few in Kashmir doubt which version is closer to the truth. They have too often heard of sexual abuse by soldiers, and of police framing scapegoats”.

Again The Economist reports like a gossip column quoting hearsay instead of credible sources. People can read The Sun if they want gossip, why bother competing with it?

“Incidents like this often lead to escalating protests and shootings, and end in inquiries with no result”.

Another motherhood statement without any source.

“Some 40,000 people, by official count, have died in the valley since 1990, when a bloody insurgency covertly sponsored by Pakistan provoked a brutal Indian crackdown”.

After carefully establishing that the army in the valley is cruel and brutal and the peaceful, stuck-in-between Kashmiris are the victims, the article come up with a figure of 40,000 dead, subtly implying that these were people killed by the army. This is called “misleading” the readers. The 40,000 includes civilians killed by terrorists & terrorists killed by security forces. Also The Economist should give some editorial space to the fact that the “quick to shoot” security forces came to the valley only after the locals took to insurgency.

“In recent years Pakistan has throttled the flow of arms”.

This is the most ludicrous statement made by The Economist in the entire article. Well if Pakistan has “throttled” the flow of arms, then where exactly do the terrorists get the arms before they try to sneak in across the Line Of Control? There is no evidence of the terrorists having a 3D printer where they can print their assault rifles.

“Dependent on income from tourism, the wider public has scant appetite for jihadist heroics against India’s massive might”.

This is true but then the wider public has never really made these feelings public. There are more rallies and shutdowns in support of theterrorist separatists than against them.

“It’s been 26 years since militancy peaked, but there is more anger and alienation among the youth now than then,” says Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a separatist leader”.

What else does one expects to hear from a “separatist leader”?

“We want to keep resistance peaceful, but it’s very hard when India bans every outlet for protest or debate, and in fact doesn’t even acknowledge that there is a problem.” 

Of course India will not recognize the problem, i.e. the problem of Kashmir seceding from India (azadi as they call it), because there is no legal basis for that.

The separatists want to move away from India only because they think Muslims cannot live with a Hindu majority India. They sincerely believe in the two nation theory proposed by Jinnah, which led to partition of India. What Mirwaiz doesn’t acknowledge is that the theory has been proved wrong, many times over, in the country Jinnah created. Pakistan has been a hotbed of ethnic and religious unrest ever since it was created.

The Islamic state of Pakistan has a simmering insurgency in Balochistan, where the Pakistani army randomly picks up men, women and children and dumps their mutilated bodies along highways. Read here, here and here. The North Western region of Pakistan has long been a secure hideout for Al-Qaeda and Taliban. The Provinces of Punjab and Sindh witness regular terror attacks carried out by the Pakitani Taliban. Ahmadiand Shia Muslims are brutally massacred on the streets and their places of worship blown up. So much for the two nation theory.

To sum up, the story The Economist is trying to tell is one that of rhetoric and extremely poor research, even gossip masquerading as hearsay in some cases. We understand that you want to improve your subscription base in India (which has more English speaking people than the population of United Kingdom), but to merely fill the “India section” you should not resort to reducing yourself to a Tabloid.

Elections next door

On Saturday the 11^th of May 2013, Pakistan for the first time in its history will vote to transfer power from one civilian government to the other. In the past six decades the country has never had a civilian government, which completed its term. Much of the time was spent by the army to introduce martial law and rule by decree. The army ceased to be looked as defenders of the frontiers; it was now saviour of the Pakistani people. The last popular army dictator was General Parvez Musharraf (he later resigned from the army and assumed the role of a civilian president). Democracy never really got a chance to take roots in Pakistan.

For the first time since Pakistan’s independence, things are looking bright and understandably so. The Pakistani media celebrated the successful completion of the full term of the parliament and hoped that it will now be a regular feature. In fact if this indeed becomes a regular feature, it will be beneficial for both Pakistan and its neighbours. A civilian government has different priorities and is more accommodating to public sentiments. The long rule of Generals has created an environment where Pakistan is projected as a victim of international conspiracy and constantly under existential threat (largely from India). Riding high on such imagined threat, the army managed to take control of almost one fifth (18%) of the total budget expenditure.

A civilian government is accountable to the people who voted it in (unlike a general who usually rules without any accountability and retires in a posh London or Dubai neighbourhood). The civilian government will also try to bring economic prosperity and sense of security to its people. Both are severely lacking in present day Pakistan, having said that it will be a tall order for any party which manages to form the government. Over the past decade or so, since the war on terror arrived in Pakistan, the country has been consumed in violence. Daily terror attacks, sectarian violence and political rivalry (called target killings) are no longer seen as something extraordinary. Billions of dollars of aid money (given by America in return of cooperation in the war on terror) has been siphoned off to secrete bank accounts or put to use in arming the forces. Little has reached the common man.

Over the years during its rule the army has managed to build a massive business empire of its own (The unending battle). The National Logistics Cell (NLC), the army owned trucking company is today the largest of its kind in Pakistan and has crushed private competition. Being a monopoly and a state enterprise the generals controlling the company have made sure that Pakistani railways is turned into an inefficient liability, making NLC more reliable. The various army business interests now work in absolute monopoly. For any civilian government to reverse the trend might mean risking another coup. But there are lessons to learn from. Turkey had a similar problem when the Generals there were powerful and controlled huge businesses. Today they are cut to size. The economic interest of the army is still high but is lower since its peak in pre Erdogan era. Pakistan can borrow a page from Turkey to tackle its own army.

Another challenge facing Pakistan is its political infighting and party rivalries. Target killings have become a routine in Karachi. Political parties formed on ethnic and linguistic basis fight turf wars and have turned pocket of Karachi into “no go” areas. The situation in Baluchistan is no better. A long running separatist insurgency has turned the gas rich province into a backward quarter of Pakistan. People are regularly kidnapped never to be seen again. Headless bodies later appear and identification becomes impossible. The central government seems indifferent to the situation there, though the Awami National Party from Baluchistan is an ally of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party. Amid such challenging environment the various strains of Taliban only add to the grief. The home grown terror organisations carry out suicide attacks on a regular basis, targeting political rallies, army garrisons, minority processions and their places of worship.

Changing all this and providing its people a better Pakistan to live will be a long drawn battle for the civilian government. The mess created in the last six decades cannot be sorted out in the next five years. Things that might accelerate the process of bringing back the country on track may include the following

• Tackling the terrorists in tribal areas before final pull out of NATO forces from Afghanistan
• Making peace with Afghanistan and helping it fight the terrorists on both sides of the Durand line
• Tackling the terrorist modules working against India in the Kashmir region
• Making peace with the Baluch insurgents and share the gas revenue with them

Majority of Pakistan’s problems will get sorted out if it manages to eliminate the terrorists on its soil. The next step will be to claim its share in the regional economy. With two giant economies in its neighbourhood, it will be foolish not to ride on their success. This will not happen overnight. But the election is a right step in that direction.