SHOULD INDIA LET GO OF KASHMIR?

Date: 30 Dec 2008

Comment:

Kashmir problem is the creation of the atheist, anti national, pro Islamist Nehru. Nehru has made several blunders. The most serious blunder of atheist Nehru was Kashmir. Kashmir was the center of great culture, civilization, philosophy and center of higher learning prior to Islamic invasion. The bogus secular Congress government should have permitted displaced sikhs and Hindus from Pakistan to settle in Kashmir after 1947. This would have changed the demographic profile of Kashmir. Several nationalist leaders including Rajaji has suggested this strategy. Nehru and his Islamic cohorts refused. We are paying a heavy price for Nehru's blunders and pro-Islamic policy. Israel has allowed Jewish immigrants to settle in West Bank and the Israel army protect them. Slowly the entire West Bank will be populated by Jewish settlers and it will become an integral part of Israel. Clear, correct thinking and a national vision is missing from bogus and corrupt Indian politicians who are subservient to Muslims.


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It is amazing that the Western thinker will arrive at the conclusion that India should release Kashmir in order to become a world power. Never was Spain asked to release the Basque region nor Turkey asked to release Kurdistan, and so on. 
 
I do agree with the author that Indian leaders should re-examine its political and martial strategy with regards to Pakistan.
 
I wrote the Prime Minister of India some years ago advising that he should look at the Isreal example of creating a buffer zone between Isreal and Lebannon. India should seek out the bases of terrorists in Pakistan and simply destroy them when the evidence presents itself. Aggressive engagement is the only language that Pakistan will understand.
 
India must also repopulate Kashmir with the displaced Kashmiris that are presently squating in Delhi and environs. Martial Law should be imposed to arrest all seperatists movements.
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Despite the wealth of evidence which clearly show that the target of the 
jehadis is not just Kashmir or India, but the whole world, we still have 
people who pretend to be asleep.

Namaste
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India: Let Kashmir go
Resolving the disputed territory would benefit all.
By Bennett Ramberg
from the December 29, 2008 edition

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1229/p09s02-coop.html

Los Angeles - It now appears unlikely that India will respond to last 
month's attacks on Mumbai (Bombay) - its "9/11" - with a military strike 
on Pakistan, the terrorists' haven. With three major wars behind them, 
neither rival wants a repeat.

Unfortunately, the possibility of war may intensify in years to come if 
India ramps up its "Cold Start" military doctrine.

Cold Start transforms New Delhi's traditional focus on defense and 
lumbering mobilization of hundreds of thousands of troops to one that 
prizes nimble strikes against its neighbor within hours of crisis onset. 
The strategy assumes that occupation of limited Pakistani territory 
would be the bargaining chip to force Islamabad to heel. It also assumes 
that it could do this without crossing the nuclear threshold - not an 
easy feat where rivalries run deep.

India has war-gamed this strategy since 2004. Adoption still must 
overcome equipment and personnel deficiencies and interservice 
rivalries, but work continues.

Rather than intimidate Pakistan to constrain militants or suffer the 
consequences, Cold Start may do just the opposite by inadvertently 
putting militants in the driver's seat. Previously, terrorist 
provocations would be met with action only after deliberation and delay. 
Under Cold Start, response would be much more immediate, effectively 
empowering radicals to hold the subcontinent hostage to their 
crisis-initiating whims.

To avoid that outcome, the time has come for India to short circuit the 
most critical incendiary, the disputed area of Kashmir. Despite some 
recent Islamic militant clamor to dominate the entire subcontinent, 
Kashmir remains the eye of the Indo-Pakistani vortex.

Removing its centrality will help pull the rug from under terrorist 
groups that have used the dispute to target both the region and the 
heart of India. Failure will only heighten the probability that Cold 
Start might someday precipitate a nuclear conflict.

Recent history shows that it's not a far-fetched specter. On Dec. 13, 
2001, five Pakistani gunmen dressed in commando fatigues and driving a 
diplomatic car entered the VIP gate of India's Parliament's compound 
armed with AK-47 rifles, grenades, and other explosives. Their audacious 
objective: decapitate the Indian government.

An alert guard foiled their plans, and the ensuing shoot-out left 13 
people dead, including the assassins.

India demanded that Pakistan ban the responsible terrorist groups and 
arrest their leaders. To press Islamabad, it mobilized half a million 
men. But the intended impact stumbled as India's Army took three weeks 
to get to the border. This allowed Pakistan sufficient time to ratchet 
up defenses.

Tension then bounced down and up. They relaxed with President 
Musharraf's Jan. 12, 2002, televised address to the nation declaring his 
intention to crack down on the militants. But the May 2002 attack on an 
Indian base in Jammu that killed the wives and children of Indian 
servicemen renewed the drumbeat for war.

By July 2002, intense American diplomatic pressure, coupled with subtle 
Pakistan nuclear threats, caused the belligerents to stand their armies 
down, leaving a sour taste for many Indians: Pakistan remained 
unpunished.

For some defense planners, Cold Start offered the answer in future 
crisis. Now Mumbai gives the strategy renewed stimulus. But resolution 
of Kashmir is where momentum should be building.

In recent years, India has sought to relax tensions by promoting 
confidence-building measures - a bus line and commercial truck service 
between Srinagar and Muzzafarrabad, regular meetings between Indian and 
Pakistani local commanders, a crisis hot line, dialogue with moderate 
Kashmiri separatists, and improvement in the region's economic and human 
rights. These steps have tempered conflict but not Kashmiri objection to 
Indian rule.

New Delhi's reluctance to let Kashmiris define their future - options 
include independence, division along communal lines, comanagement by 
both India and Pakistan, a UN trusteeship - butts against recent history 
demonstrating that "letting go" more than holding on benefits 
politically divided states. Witness the pacific and beneficial demise of 
the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Serbia/Montenegro.

India's future rests not on maturing Cold Start but becoming a 21st 
century economic power house. Hanging on to Kashmir does nothing to 
promote that goal. Letting go not only will benefit New Delhi's 
modernization by reducing the heavy military burden bad relations with 
Pakistan engenders, it also will allow Islamabad to redirect its 
military resources to the tribal areas benefiting Washington's position 
in Afghanistan.

By rattling South Asian relations, Mumbai's tragedy can give momentum to 
resolving one of the 20th century's most confounding impasses. A fast 
diplomatic start, not Cold Start, would benefit all.

. Bennett Ramberg served in the State Department during the George H.W. 
Bush administration. He is the author of three books and editor of three 
others on international politics.


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