Stand with Kashmir
Those who consider an Indian-Pakistani war to be the solution to the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination against Indian colonialism ought to consider the many US-European wars of the past 100 years. The death toll is in the multi-millions & because colonial & military powers are unspeakably racist & supremacist (like Hindutva India), they have never kept records nor cared about the number of civilians slaughtered. They won’t even give an honest accounting of how many of their own soldiers have been killed because most soldiers are Black, brown, or working class. No agency has given a rat’s ass about how many Afghans, Syrians, Yemenis, Somalis, Libyans, Iraqis have been bombed to death. But the way war is fought necessarily involves the bombing of civilians. That’s why we oppose it.
Some might say, ‘well there you sit in the US of A without a hair on your heads touched by US slaughter of other peoples. What the hell do you know about war’? We won’t mention the social costs of war in terms of their impact on education, social services, & all that. We won’t talk about the physical & psychological devastation & harm it does to veterans & how that affects their families. We won’t even talk about how militarism & its glorification has corrupted US culture, made it violent, & enforced patriarchy. Because, as bad as all that stuff is, none of it adds up to the unspeakable suffering of living in a war, occupation, or genocide zone. But that doesn’t mean we don’t know anything about war. It doesn’t mean we can’t imagine the realities, haven’t seen the photos, heard the war crimes described, don’t understand what war means for unarmed civilians. We understand everything we need to oppose them, not as knee-jerk reaction as some have accused, but for principles of humanity & solidarity.
It’s a tragedy that the international antiwar movement has become an Assadist & Stalinist cult because at one time most of its activists, whether a survivor of war or not, could speak eloquently to the arguments against war. It’s likely that if Kashmiri voices were not silenced, none would speak more forcefully against war between India & Pakistan than them.
Showing the tenacity of the Syrian Arab Spring against massive slaughter by Syrian & Russian war planes & ground forces in Idlib, over 150 people came out to protest the fall of Khan Sheikhoun to Syrian & Russian forces after ruthless bombing for months with internationally prohibited weapons. Most of Khan Sheikhoun, which sustained a sarin gas attack by Syrian forces in 2017, has been reduced to rubble in what corrupt political forces are lauding as a ‘liberation’.
Protesters demanded the fall of the Assad dictatorship & the immediate withdrawal of Syrian, Russian, Iranian, & paramilitary forces from Idlib.
(Photo by Enab Baladi; info from Syrian National Coalition Media Department)
A political map of Jammu & Kashmir showing the character of India’s colonial occupation:
(Artist is anonymous)
A fair number of people think war between Pakistan & India is the only way Kashmiris can win self-determination against India’s colonial occupation. Perhaps none have spoken so cogently on what a disaster this would be for Kashmiris & Pakistani civilians than Indian activist Satyadeep Satya. He has made a compelling case that India is provoking Pakistan to war because the introduction of massive bombing can give cover to the ‘final solution’ in Kashmir & facilitate India’s territorial expropriation of Azad Kashmir, the Pakistan-controlled region of J&K. The prospects are an Idlib scenario, an Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria kind of genocide.
Those who promote war between Pakistan & India pander to the idea that Kashmir is primarily a territorial dispute between those two countries rather than a struggle for Kashmiri self-determination against Indian colonial occupation. But above all they express a lack of confidence in the Kashmiri struggle, in the ability to inspire & build a committed solidarity movement, in the power of international political pressure on the Indian government & economic pressure in the form of an economic boycott.
We can leave aside our different assessments about the character of the Pakistani government in its unquestionable support for Kashmir–including calling national protests for Kashmir. But its associations with US-NATO & Saudi Arabia in Afghanistan, with China & Burma despite the Uyghur & Rohingya genocides are a matter of grave concern & raise the question of its motivations in Kashmir. We can leave that aside & focus entirely on what it would mean for Pakistan to respond militarily to India’s provocations. Thus far, Pakistan has rebuffed those provocations because when it comes to military might, it is not a match for the Indian government which is armed by Israel, Russia, & the US with the most sophisticated weaponry whilst the US has been cutting back substantially on military aid to Pakistan.
The last thing Kashmiris or Azad Kashmiris need is the introduction of bombing. Only corrupt Assadists & Stalinists have ever championed bombing civilians as a way to ‘liberation’ & nobody wants to end up where they are politically. Those who war monger as a solution to the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination against Indian colonialism have not thought sufficiently about what that would mean to millions of unarmed civilians in J&K.
NO WAR! Demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Indian troops from Kashmir.
There are a lot of great Kashmiri pages but this one is among my favorites. Check it out for important news.
A UN Human Rights Council fact-finding investigation concluded that “it is still an open-ended question” to what extent Suu Kyi is implicated & culpable for the Rohingya genocide. Now I’m no legal expert, but I could write up an entire legal brief with mountains of her statements & detailing her involvement from denying it, to whitewashing & defending it. She is a genocidaire right along with the military junta which she fronts for.
To be frank, I’m at a loss how to proceed with organizing #BoycottIndia. Kashmiri & Indian activists & organizations are in a tough spot for putting out a formal call since they & their families would face repercussions. It can hardly be said that Amnesty India has led the charge against the siege of Kashmir & the Indian government is coming down on them like a hammer for what they have done. We need to put our heads together here to figure out this boycott, how to formally call it & organize it & that is an international effort. So I’m appealing here for ideas.
A tribute to 77-year-old Palestinian Milany Boutros, a survivor of the Sabra & Shatila massacre in a Palestinian refugee camp & nearby neighborhood in Beirut, Lebanon in September 1982. The massacre was carried out by Israeli forces allied with Christian Phalangist paramilitary groups who are fascist & have associations with Israel going back to 1948. Over the course of two days, 3,500 Palestinians & Lebanese, mostly women, children, & elderly, were massacred. Mrs. Boutros lost her husband & three children. Our sincere condolences to all survivors.
A report on the massacre: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190916-remembering-the-sabra-and-shatila-massacre/?
Kashmir girl, by Michigan artist & Kashmiri solidarity activist Lori Dee Desgranges: