A child in Idlib injured in Syrian or Russian bombing of homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, farm fields: we don’t know if this child recovered physically. We only know that if he did, war will mark his life forever as war, concentration camps, occupation, & genocide always do.
Stand with the children of Idlib. Demand Syria & Russia stop the bombing. Demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Russian, Iranian, US-coalition, Israeli, Hezbollah forces & mercenaries from Syria.
(Sketch from eyewitness photo by artist Marc Nelson)
If you wonder why the antiwar movement is corrupted beyond redemption & has lost the capacity, with its present misleaders, to transform itself, it can only be explained by white supremacy & acceptance of the Islamophobic ideology of the so-called ‘war on terror’. How else do you explain that they are holding forums on how persecuted Putin & Russia are or on the legal problems of a handful of grandstanders who occupied an abandoned embassy in Washington DC rather than organizing rallies against the slaughter of children & civilians in Idlib? In fact, there isn’t a single recorded objection to the bombing of Idlib by those long associated with the antiwar movement.
This sketch by artist Marc Nelson is a tribute to five-year-old Riham al-Abdullah who died last month trying to save her baby sister after a Syrian or Russian airstrike on their residence in Idlib province. She died along with her mother & three-year-old sister. May they Rest In Peace.
The most imperative mission of our times is to rebuild an international antiwar movement on a principled basis. When we see the absolute silence on the carpet bombing of Idlib, the relative passivity on the genocide in Gaza, & note that there is no antiwar response in India to the massive buildup of troops in Kashmir, we can see the problem is not just with western political forces but is an international problem. There needs to be an assessment about how this corruption of principles came to be & that analysis will be part of rebuilding a movement rooted in long-established antiwar principles, including the principle that ‘an injury to one is an injury to all.’
(Sketch of Riham al-Abdullah by artist Marc Nelson)
A useful article on the buildup of Indian troops in Kashmir:
“One of the well-placed CRPF officers revealed to The Quint on the condition of anonymity that the actual number of paramilitary personnel being ferried to the Valley, over the last eight days, had touched its target of 180,000.”
“As the Indian state launches a fresh assault on Kashmiris, not a single protest is happening in mainland India, not even a candlelight protest. Tells you how the civil society in India, if any, is OK, and in fact complicit, with the brutalization, the dehumanization of Kashmiris.”
“Kashmir is safe for foreign tourists. Kashmir is safe for beggars from various states of India. Kashmir is safe for the armed forces. However, Kashmir is unsafe for the natives: Kashmiris. To cut the long story short.”
A woman who claimed to support the Kashmiri struggle blocked me after I posted about the Palestinian Nakba creating over 12 million refugees. The political parallels between Kashmir & Palestine are inescapable from their roots in the treacheries of British colonialism, the comparable ideological roles of Zionism & Hindutva nationalism, colonialism & brutal military occupations, Intifada & resistance, the military alliance between Israel & India. It’s hard to understand how she can grasp one reality & not the other but cognitive dissonance plays a big part in politics as we see also in the Assadist alliance between Stalinists & fascists with confusionists who denounce US military intervention in Syria but support dictatorship & Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians.
No slouches at colonial treachery, the UK, Germany, & Australia issued travel advisories to their citizens against traveling to Jammu & Kashmir after J&K officials issued a security alert claiming they had intelligence about planned terrorist attacks on Hindu pilgrims. In 2017, the Jammu & Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) issued a report on the Amarnath Yatra Hindu pilgrimage titled “Amarnath Yatra: A Militarized Pilgrimage” which is worth rereading to see how that pilgrimage is used as part of the occupation. The pilgrims are not & never were in any danger from Kashmiris despite its politicized character.
Mehbooba Mufti is not being allowed to leave her residence. It’ll take a lot more than house arrest to turn a collaborator who betrayed azaadi into freedom fighter Syed Ali Geelani who has been under house arrest for years (including under her tenure as chief minister) & who has remained steadfast into his 80s.
Asian News International reports that a J&K government official commenting on the security advisory urging tourists, pilgrims, & foreign students to leave Kashmir said, ‘It’s our responsibility to see to the safety of pilgrims & tourists. Lot of terrorists are sitting across the Line (in Pakistan) to cross here & most of them are suicide bombers.’ Is that an outrageous provocation & incitement, or not!?
71 years ago, 750,000 Palestinians were forcefully displaced from their homes in what is called the nakba (the disaster). Today, that involves 12 million Palestinian refugees.
