When prestigious politicians & journals say the ‘international community’ led by the US & UK have an essential role to play in ‘resolving the Kashmiri crisis’, do they mean like the US & UK do in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Somalia, Burma? What do they mean by the ‘international community’? Is that the countries who vote for Palestinian bantustates at the UN but do nothing to support Palestinians against occupation & genocide? The countries who form NATO & other US & UK-led military coalitions to bomb countries to smithereens under the guise of fighting terrorism? Fundamentally, such an appeal to the US & UK is a genuflection to white supremacy, a groveling before colonialism, some sort of deranged view that the very colonial powers that created the problems in the first place will resolve them. The only internationalization of Kashmir that matters is the hundreds of thousands around the world who are standing with Kashmir, including against the inaction & collusion of their own governments.
Daily Archives: December 10, 2019
Internet in Kashmir comes with six conditions including full data access to police & no social media.
India is reportedly attempting to restore the internet in Kashmir for business purposes only. No social networking or VPNs will be allowed. We can’t accept that. There is no alternative to organizing a boycott of India if we are to stop this kind of forced separation & fascistic social control. The question is how & who will make the formal call, how can we organize it, how can we make it as effective as BDS?
It’s contemptible sarcasm that India recently voted for a UN resolution titled “The right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.” The sarcasm is that India makes no diplomatic secret of its military & political associations with Israel at the expense of both Palestinians & Kashmiris. India’s support for Palestinians begins & ends at collaboration with Mahmoud Abbas & his coterie at the Palestinian Authority which exists solely to enforce the Oslo Accords which legitimize the Israeli occupation & expropriation of Palestine.
The resolution itself is contemptible since it completely mangles the very concept of self-determination, incorporates the continued existence of a Jewish-only state & promotes a bantustate solution for Palestinians. According to this piece of rubbish resolution, Palestinian ‘self-determination’ requires acceptance of the 1967 borders & the conditions of several other agreements brokered by the US & Israel which reduce Palestinians to vassals of Israel. It’s almost as if the Israeli genocide of Palestinians has completely passed by notice of the UN.
The bantustate solution was always a Zionist con job, a scam, a diversion. Israeli intentions to ethnically cleanse all Palestinians & expropriate all of Palestine are now beyond dispute. Self-determination for Palestinians requires a radical transformation that will not accept pipe dreams but will fight for a secular, democratic state based on the 1948 borders, not besieged bantustates or diaspora into refugee camps.
Indian media announced that special forces troops from the Indian Army, Navy, & Air Force have been deployed in Kashmir to carry out joint counter-terrorist operations. The joint operations will be launched in an unnamed area the Indian Army considers a ‘traditional terror hotbed near Srinagar’. Most of the one-million troops already deployed in Kashmir are considered counter-insurgency trained so it’s not clear how the special forces troops will differ except perhaps in more aggressive & brutal hunt to kill operations & in increasing the danger for Kashmiri civilians. One media report said they will be “practicing assault on strategic enemy positions & taking back captured areas.” You’d think they were talking about a war zone with an opposing army rather than an occupation zone with one million troops to eight million unarmed civilians locked down in their homes.
This terrorist-fighting military operation is grandstanding, intended mainly for propaganda purposes as well as more fascistic social control of Kashmir. In 2016, credible Kashmiri activists reported there were about 150 armed militants still operating in Kashmir & they were already extremely isolated. Since then, India has conducted several hunt to kill operations almost daily, boasting about the number of militants they killed. They didn’t cite that most of those killed were unarmed civilians, that livestock were destroyed, or that family homes were razed to the ground. But if the Indian government’s own statistics are to be believed, in the past three years they’ve killed all of the armed militants & most of the imaginary ones.
Terrorism is not a problem in Kashmir except the Indian Army terrorism of abducting, torturing, jailing small children, of arresting up to 30,000 civilians for having an opinion about Azadi, of forcibly disappearing up to 10,000 men & boys, of using mass rape as a weapon of war, of using pellet guns against unarmed protesters to blind, disable, disfigure, demoralize thousands. India will continue to link the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination with the ‘war on terror’ & all the rubbish about ‘Wahhabi/Salafi al-Qaeda affiliated jihadism’. We must oppose this rubbish with contempt & with every political weapon we have but especially by standing steadfast with the Kashmiri movement for self-determination.
Our chief demand must be for the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Indian troops. Get the hell out of Kashmir, lock, stock, & barrel.
(Photo of Indian special forces from ANI News, rightwing Indian media)
We should be quite concerned about the telecommunications blackout that India has imposed in Kashmir, that Bangladesh imposed on Rohingya refugees, & that Iran imposed last week. Israel’s electrical power blockade in Gaza assures Palestinians have little access to the internet. Social media is the primary target, not online shopping, since the oppressed are so effectively using social media to educate & build solidarity with their struggles.
The US has imposed some sanctions on Iran for snapping the internet but it should be noted that other than a little hand-wringing & a few expressions of exasperation, no country has made a major issue of the internet freezes against Kashmiris & Rohingya. Modi toured the US just after the Kashmiri blockade & got treated like a rock star. We better take this issue very seriously because with the tsunami of rightwing political forces taking state power in so many countries, they are absolutely certain to consider this an option elsewhere.
The Times of Gaza reports that Israeli war planes are firing flash bombs in the vicinity of Gaza City. Flash bombs are explosive ordnance that emit high-intensity light which deactivates light sensitivity in the human eye & disturbs fluid in the human ear. They can also cause burning but Israel is using them mainly to traumatize Palestinians in Gaza, especially the kids.
(Photo is screenshot from video of flash bomb explosion)
This iconic photo from Jan. 23, 2002 is an Indian Border Security Force soldier standing guard over Kashmiris forced to crouch during a hunt to kill operation in Srinagar. Media reports that the operation was to flush out ‘hidden separatist militants’ but this is clearly more about humiliating Kashmiris. How does forcing grown men to crouch like this in the road help to flush out militants? Thousands of Kashmiris have been traumatized, injured, & killed in these operations since 1989 but the spirit of Azadi remains undaunted. Unfortunately for Indian nationalist propagandists, this photo resonates powerfully with the Nazi holocausts.
Demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Indian forces from Kashmir.
StandWithKashmir
(Photo by Rafiq Maqbool/AP, January 23, 2002)
My torso is witness to your vengeance
like I was never a human who feels pain,
Showers of your pellets, the tiny bullets
piercing my skin burning it alive on the way.
My mother, in anguish, seeing the imprints
on her son’s body in wordless sufferance,
My friends trying to pick each shell out
attempting not to tremble in your disdain.
My eyes went from colorful to dark
never to see my beloved again,
You want my spirit to break forever,
not knowing it’s free from all chains.
My body like the map of a country
occupied, tortured, and trampled,
My soul enduring in resilience
that one day the corpse will be mine.
©Mudasir Firdosi, Kashmiri psychiatrist & poet