#war between india and pakistan

[mapsontheweb]

A map that shows how even a small, limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan would release enough particles into the atmosphere to trigger a small nuclear winter that would be felt worldwide.

[somerabbitholes]

Hey, Do you have any foreign policy reading recommendations?

Here are a few. Since I don't know what exactly you're looking for and foreign policy is huge, I've tried to go with a diverse bunch

The Revenge of Geography by Robert D. Kaplan: about what geography can tell us about conflicts and possible directions that international politics would take; really good analysis, really good starting point to learn how to think about geopolitics. You can check out his other books too, he's quite good

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall: more on what the map and geography tells us about global diplomacy and international politics

Belt and Road by Bruno Macaes: about the Belt and Road project and the kind of international order it and China through the project envisions; the politics of the project

The Chip War by Chris Miller: it's a history of semiconductors and through them, about global supply chains and industrial manufacturing circuits and how geopolitics and foreign policy impacts industry/business

The Blood Telegram by Gary J Bass: about US involvement in South Asia during the Cold War and particularly how it shaped politics between India, Pakistan and China

War by Margaret MacMillan: not strictly foreign policy, but it is about the place of war in history and politics

I'd also just recommend reading magazines and news and reporting about international politics; it's always more timely and easier to get the hang of. You can check out Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Politico, Carnegie Endowment, Lowy Institute to start with; most of them also have podcasts

[paradoxcase]

Since this doesn't appear to have been specified in Nona the Ninth, I'm making a poll:

The main requirement for this is that it has to be a country with nuclear weapons, and since that's a very short list, I've just included all of them as poll options. (Data from here.) The book also says that it was a "major country" which probably makes some of these unlikely, but I decided to include them anyway for those of you who wanted a vanilla extract option (or who knows, maybe North Korea is somehow considered a "major country" by this time this story happens). Keep in mind that the number of nukes has decreased a lot since the Cold War and may continue to decrease in the future rather than increase depending on the political situation, etc.

[the-bengali-diva]

Do you guys know what was the biggest surrender of our history after world war two?

It was the surrender of Pakistani military against Bangladeshi

On 16 December 1971.

But today I didn't grab your attention only to give you some random history facts.

We Bangladeshi students need your help! So please read this article till the end

After the partition of the Indian region in 1947, two independent nations were born.One India and one Pakistan.

The country of Pakistan was divided into two parts, East Pakistan, currently Bangladesh and West Pakistan, currently Pakistan.

But the distance between the two regions was thousands of kilometers. So uniting them into one singular nation was definitely foolish.

To think that the partition actually happened because of religion is laughable on itself but this is a topic of debate for another blog.

Even though we got our freedom from the British empire the people of East Pakistan kept on getting exploited by the west pakistan government.

Note, from now on I will refer to East Pakistan only as Bangladesh because the way we were exploited by our own so called government which only resided on the west pakistan and left us on poverty clearly indicates they never saw us as their own people.

Pakistan didn't only exploit us politically and financially, but they also tried to take away our unique Bengali identity from us.

They banned our traditional Bengali festivals like Noboborso (which is Bengali new year) They tried to ban Rabindra sangeet in fact, they even tried to replace our Bengali alphabet with the Urdu alphabet.

People were already protesting against it and were participating in every traditional festival

But the elastic snapped when they tried to take away our mother tongue, Bangla

When a pakistani politician made the announcement that "Urdu and only Urdu will be the only national language of Pakistan" in Dhaka university's convocation, it was the students who roared in disapproval.

In 1952, breaking the curfew, students and common people went on a protest for our mother language Bangla.

The police started to shoot them and the soil of Bangladesh became stained with blood and Bangla became the only language for people had given up their lives.

That's why we celebrate "Sahid dibos" and "international mother language day" on 21st February.

Throughout the fight for our existence, freedom and culture, students of our nation had always played a crucial role.

They also made a student's political party "Chatro league"

After the election of 1970, when the Pakistani government didn't agree to give power to the Bangladeshi political party "Awami league" our students again started to organize protests and other activities

Finally "Awami league" ordered for a mass protest. 2nd march Dhaka and 3rd march the whole Bangladesh was shut down.

On 2nd march 11 am "Chatro league" students hoisted the flag of Bangladesh in Dhaka university.

All this information dump was for you all to understand how the students of Bangladesh had always played a crucial part in our liberation.

Our students have always been fierce and had stood up for injustice even if they had to sacrifice their life for it.

And right now history is repeating itself!!!

Again students are getting attacked because of their protests but this time, it was our so-called "chatro league" and the government who are doing this inhumane act.

They are beating the students with rods, throwing bricks at them and even police are shooting them.

Only because we wanted the quota policy to demolish. Only because we wanted equal opportunity for civil jobs.

On 25th march 1971, the Pakistani military committed genocide in Dhaka. They attacked sleeping students in Dhaka university and protesters on roads who were still protesting at night.

And now the same thing is happening, history is repeating itself.

Students of public universities are getting attacked in their own dorm rooms, they are getting beaten to death by the so-called "chatro league" members. There are screenshots of the chatro league leaders group chats flothing around the internet where they command the other members to stab the protester students.

There was a time when Chatro league claimed they always stood up when our mother and sisters needed protection

And now those same people are beating up those same sisters they vowed to protect

The police are shooting the protesters like they did in 1952 language movement

The only difference is in the past we were oppressed by another nation's government

But this time it's our own people who are causing our student's blood to stain our roads.

Please do not ignore us. Reblog this post or use the hastag #savebangladeshistudents to create awareness

[doamarierose-honoka]

Ten years ago, musician Usman Riaz grabbed a pencil and started to sketch.

He might have hoped, but didn't know at the time, that it would start him on a path to making history.

That initial drawing became The Glassworker - Pakistan's first ever hand-drawn animated feature film.

It follows the story of young Vincent and his father Tomas, who run a glass workshop, and a war that threatens to upend their lives.

Vincent's relationship with violinist Alliz, the daughter of a military colonel, begins to test the bond between father and son.

Usman tells BBC Asian Network the characters ultimately come to learn "that life is beautiful but fragile, like glass”.

He describes The Glassworker as an "anti-war film" set in an ambiguous and fantastical world that takes inspiration from his home country.

“I wanted to tackle issues and themes that would have been difficult to tackle if it was based in Pakistan," he says.

The country doesn't have the thriving film industry of neighbouring India and there is no government support or incentive for budding creatives like Usman.

So The Glassworker was a passion project, he says.

“These 10 years for me have just been purely driven with passion and obsession.

“Since I was a child, I have loved hand-drawn animation and there's something so magical about it.

"The beauty of the lines drawn and painted by the human hand always resonated with me.”

Usman says he travelled the world looking for mentors and his search took him to Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli.

The influence of the Oscar-winning artists behind classics such as Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke can be seen in The Glassworker's own style.

Usman says the industry veterans at Ghibli were also the ones who encouraged him to start the production himself.

After raising $116,000 through a 2016 crowdfunding campaign he founded his own studio, Mano Animations.

From there it's been a painstaking process, especially since full production started in 2019.

“What you are watching is essentially a moving painting,” says Usman.

“Every single frame you see, whether it's a background or the character moving, it's all drawn by hand.”

Usman says that, so far, he hasn't made any money from the project and has been unable to pay his wife Maryam and cousin Khizer, who he recruited to help him.

But there's hope that the labour of love could be the start of something bigger.

Usman Riaz says he's always been a fan of animation

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy is another experienced industry figure Usman turned to for advice about getting The Glassworker off the ground.

She directed 3 Bahadur, a computer-generated tale that was Pakistan's first-ever animated feature film.

On its 2015 release it broke box office records, even surpassing US imports and dethroning previous record-holder Rio 2.

Her studio was also the country's first female-led animation studio, and she understands the challenges of getting started better than most.

“Everything in Pakistan is driven by passion” she says. “I had to run pillar to post.

“We're a country that has limited access to electricity and our industry is heavily taxed.

"We're unable to import computers and hardware needed for animation.”

But Sharmeen – who is going to direct upcoming Star Wars film New Jedi Order – says The Glassworker could be a “monumental step” for Pakistan’s animation scene.

If it finds commercial success, she believes it will “ignite” something in the country, but there are barriers to home-grown animation becoming a red-hot trend.

The Glassworker is partly about the romance between characters Vincent and Alliz

Arafat Mazhar from Lahore-based Puffball animation agrees that “the technical skills are already there” in Pakistan despite there being “no formal training or schools available”.

But “how do you not censor yourself?” he asks.

It's a question facing any Pakistani filmmaker who has to deal with its strict board of film censors.

“Every time there's a good film that comes out that's sincere, the state ends up censoring it,” says Arafat.

He doesn't believe the rules are likely to relax soon.

Akira Toriyama: Fans reflect on Dragon Ball creator's legacy

Stranger Things season five teaser excites fans

Is Hollywood finally doing anime right?

Sharmeen agrees the government will only encourage the domestic film industry to grow if they work to "provide opportunity to create a level playing field for us to compete with the rest of the world".

“There is a lot of scope in Pakistan for animation," she says. "We've just never been given the opportunity to create it."

She shares Arafat's pessimism about the pace of change.

"Unfortunately, it will just be a few filmmakers who have that passion, who will continue to create films," she says.

But Sharmeen says she is eager to see how the world embraces The Glassworker.

"I know that there is so much in there that will touch people's hearts," she says.

Usman says The Glassworker has an anti-war message

Usman will finally get to find out how audiences react to the work he's spent 10 years pouring his energy into as The Glassworker goes on general release.

He says he hopes to “put Pakistan on the map” and show it can stand up to the giants across the border in Bollywood.

But he admits the process has been “gruelling”.

“It is extremely difficult, but we've done something nobody has ever done in the country before," he says.

"I think we've created something special that can stand toe-to-toe with the rest of the animation produced in the world.”

Listen to Ankur Desai's show on BBC Asian Network live from 15:00-18:00 Monday to Thursday - or listen back here.

[hindulivesmatter]

Hi, I want to ask a question. I've been seeing many posts about how the situation in I/P is like the situation is Kashmir, where India/Israel are colonizing Kashmir/Palestine. Can I get your thoughts on this? I love your blog, thank you for what you do!

Dear God, the terminally online community is back at it again, huh? India....colonizing Kashmir?... What?

Okay, so no, India is not colonizing Kashmir. If anything it is Pakistan. They took over land, claimed it as theirs and spread terrorists all over the area. They handed over OUR land to China. The Kargil War was a result of us trying to stop them from taking over MORE LAND. Kashmir was, is and always will be a part of India.

Meanwhile, Israel, the only land of the Jews has been struggling to maintain an identity between attacks by Islamic extremists. They were gravely hurt on October 7th, and like any country would, retaliated. Now, the thing about the difference between civilian deaths on both sides is that Israeli buildings have bunkers built into them. It is building CODE. Hamas keeps launching rockets, so they had to do it to protect their civilians. Meanwhile, Hamas steals aid trucks sent by countries to pad their booby-trapped tunnels and hide behind their civilians. And then they scream that Israel is killing its people on purpose. Really shows you how propaganda works, doesn't it? Leftist antisemites now just have to reason to harass Jews, even if they're critical of the Israeli government.

It's like, Oh you're a Jew? Well are you one of the "good Jews"?

Now y'all know why I stand with my Jewish friends.

Thank you for your kind words, they mean so much to me! <3

[thomasthetankieengine]

Awww, what a good first step. You're right to recognize that the United States was formed in blood. Now that you've learned that, you've got a lot more reading to do about the history of ethnic cleansing and settler colonialism. You can pick any of the following topics

Resettlement policy of the Neo-Assyrian Empire

Asiatic Vespers

Roman destruction of Carthage

Roman expulsion of the Jews from Judaea

Mitma

Edict of Expulsion

Baltic Germans

Conquest of the Canary Islands

Alhambra Decree

Russian conquest of Siberia

Plantations of Ireland

Dzungar genocide

Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and Act of Settlement

Expulsion of the Acadians

Chinese conquests of Xinjiang and Tibet

Circassian genocide

Expulsion of the Albanians, 1830–1876 and 1877–1878

Pale of Settlement

Prussian deportations

Herero and Namaqua genocide

Ethnic cleansings during the Balkan Wars

1914 Greek deportations

Armenian genocide

Greek genocide

Bolshevik deportations of the Don Cossacks

Pacification of Libya

1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey

Simele massacre of 1933

Deportation of Soviet Koreans

Population transfer in the Soviet Union

Independent State of Croatia's massacres of Serbs, Jews, and Roma

The Holocaust

Porajmos

Expulsion of Cham Albanians

Partition of India

Istrian–Dalmatian exodus

Jammu Massacre

Exodus of Turks from Bulgaria

Istanbul pogrom

1962 Rajshahi massacres

1964 East Pakistan riots

Arab Belt program

Cambodian genocide

Revival Process

Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

Halabja massacre

1991 Altun Kupri massacre

Palestinian exodus from Kuwait

South Ossetia War

Ossetian–Ingush conflict

Khojaly massacre

Ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian wars

May 1998 riots of Indonesia

Assyrian exodus from Iraq

2008 attacks on Uttar Pradeshi and Bihari migrants in Maharashtra

2010 South Kyrgyzstan ethnic clashes

2013 Myanmar anti-Muslim riots

Yazidi genocide

Rohinyga genocide

War in Tigray

Russian invasion of Ukraine

Blockade of Nagorno-Karbakh

The sooner you divest yourself of the delusion that ANY nation-state arose naturally and was formed easily or bloodlessly, the smarter you'll be. They ain't nothing natural or peaceful about the way that any part of Europe, Africa, or Asia is today.

[good-books-to-read]

Travel Destination: Pakistan

Written in the Stars by Aisha Saeed

Naila's conservative immigrant parents have always said the same thing: She may choose what to study, how to wear her hair, and what to be when she grows up-but they will choose her husband but when Naila falls in love with a boy Saif, her parents are livid and plan a vacation back to their homeland so Naila can reconnect with her roots.

However plans change and this vacation quickly turns to a nightmare when her parents find her a husband, Naila is running out of time, has Naila's fate been written in the stars? Or can she still make her own destiny?

Nura and the Immortal Palace by M.T. Khan

Nura must spend her time Mica mining for extra cash to support her family, however there’s rumours of treasure that could not only change her life but her family’s.

Her plan backfires when the mines collapse and four kids, including her best friend, Faisal, are claimed dead. Nura refuses to believe it and shovels her way through the dirt hoping to find him. Instead, she finds herself at the entrance to a strange world of purple skies and pink seas—a portal to the opulent realm of jinn, inhabited by the trickster creatures from her mother’s cautionary tales.

Under the Tamarind Tree by Nigar Alam

1964. Karachi, Pakistan. Rozeena is running out of time. She'll lose her home—her parents' safe haven since fleeing India and the terrors of Partition—if her medical career doesn't take off soon. But success may come with an unexpected price. Meanwhile the interwoven lives of her childhood best friends—Haaris, Aalya, and Zohair—seem to be unraveling with each passing day. The once small and inconsequential differences between their families' social standing now threaten to divide them. Then one fateful night someone ends up dead and the life they once took for granted shatters.

The Women’s Courtyard by Khadija Mastur

Set in the 1940s with Partition looming, Aliya dreams of educating herself and venturing beyond the courtyard walls, however she surrounded by the petty squabbles of her household.

Aliya must endure many trials before she achieves her goals, though at what personal cost?

An Abundance of Wild Roses by Feryal Ali-Gauhar

In a land woven with myth, chained with tradition and afflicted by war and the march of progress, the spirits of the mountains keep a baleful eye on the struggles of the villagers who scrape a living from the bodies of their wildlife. As the elements turn on the village, can humanity find a way to co-exist with nature that doesn't destroy either of them?

[timelesslords]

I’ve been meaning to make a post like this for a while, so here are some fiction anti-colonial/anti-apartheid/anti-genocide books that I read for the cultural studies concentration of my literature degree, that I think are super readable/accessible and don’t see recommended often:

1. The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan

A novel about a boy who was a victim of a terrorist attack as a child and how he becomes radicalized by the same terrorist group that killed his friends as a young adult.

Additional/background reading:

2. The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam

a 24 hour snapshot of the last few weeks of the Sri Lankan civil war where the Sri Lankan goverment bombed a no fire zone, killing as many as 70,000 civilians, the vast majority of whom belonged to the Tamil ethnic minority. (this book is extremely graphic but very worth reading imo)

Background/additional reading:

3. White Teeth by Zadie Smith

A post-colonial novel spanning several decades centering on two WWII veterans living in Britain; one a white Englishman, one a Bangladeshi immigrant.

additional/background reading:

4. An Imperfect Blessing by Nadia Davis

A novel about the Indian community in South Africa, told primarily through the lens of a teenage girl and taking place during the dissolution of the apartheid state.

background/additional reading:

5. Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

A modern retelling of Antigone set in post-9/11 Britain and Pakistan.

additional/background reading:

[george-the-good]

King George VI’s speech, with alterations in his own hand, given at a dinner party for the Commonwealth Prime Ministers on 13 October 1948. // © Royal Archives

The events of the Second World War led to a subtle change in relations between the nations of the Empire: there was a much greater feeling of the countries being ‘equal but independent Nations’ than previously. During the war, meetings had been held in London of the Prime Ministers of the Dominions (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa - and Southern Rhodesia, which had traditionally held a sort of hybrid status between colony and Dominion) and the British Prime Minister to discuss the best way to co-ordinate the war effort. Then in 1948 a conference was held, again in London, this time attended by the Prime Ministers, or their representatives, not only of the old Dominions but also of the new ones of India, Pakistan and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). This conference was arranged to allow the ‘Brotherhood of Nations’ to meet to discuss common problems and issues in the post-war world, and also to introduce the Prime Ministers of the new nations.

The Prime Ministers arrived in London in October and were received by King George VI individually. On 13 October a large dinner was held for them at Buckingham Palace, at which the King made this speech. In it he talked about the ‘high value’ he set on ‘personal contacts between those responsible for guiding our affairs in the different parts of the Commonwealth’. He also said that he would like these meetings to be held from time to time in different Commonwealth capitals. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting is now held every two years, hosted by a different country of the Commonwealth. Addressing the Prime Ministers, the King pointed out that between them they were charged with the good government of more than five hundred million people, but that indirectly their responsibilities extended to many millions more. The world was looking for peace and it expected the Commonwealth of Nations to play a leading part in that process:

Our Commonwealth has always stood for certain principles, fundamental to the good of Humanity; it has never countenanced injustice, tyranny, or oppression. The self-governing members of the Commonwealth have always embraced peoples of different upbringing, social background and religious belief; they have all had this in common that they were peace-loving democracies in which the ideals of political liberty and personal freedom were jealously and constantly preserved.

King George VI, like many other public speakers, often had his speeches typed out on cards such as these, which he would then read and alter if necessary. There are many such examples in the Royal Archives, and they show that by this date the King, who, as is well known, had suffered from a speech impediment earlier in his life, was able to deliver long speeches with confidence.

TREASURES FROM THE ROYAL ARCHIVES (2014)

[deadoveater]

Seeking to curtail the Bengali self-determination movement, erstwhile Pakistani president Yahya Khan approved a large-scale military deployment, and in the nine-month-long conflict that ensued, Pakistani soldiers and local pro-Pakistan militias killed between 300,000 and 3,000,000 Bengalis and raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women in a systematic campaign of mass murder and genocidal sexual violence.

...

Pakistan's imams declared Bengali Hindu women to be "war booty"; and Pakistani fatwa were issued legitimizing Bengali Hindu women as spoils of war. Women who were targeted often died in Pakistani captivity or committed suicide, while others fled to India.

[racefortheironthrone]

As a Social Democrat, what would you say has been its historical tendencies towards colonialism and upliftment of developing nations? Why is that Communism, despite some acknowledged failures (Afghanistan, Tibet, Xinjiang), is seen as more anti-colonialist by comparison?

That's a really interesting question. Honestly, when it comes to social democracy's record on de-colonization, it's something of a mixed bag. One of Eduard Bernstein's major flaws, his feet of clay, is that he was pro-imperialism - although to be fair, the SPD as a whole was pretty consistently anti-colonialist between the 1890s and 1914. On the other hand, the British Labour Party did very little about empire and was arguably pro-empire up until 1945. Clement Attlee, however, had a personal interest in decolonization and was a committed supporter of Indian self-governance since the 1930s, and negotiated the independence of India, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka. On the other hand, Attlee wasn't entirely consistent on this point - he rather mis-handled the British Mandate in Palestine, African colonies were bypassed for de-colonization, and the Attlee government began the counter-insurgency in Malaysia. So something of a mixed bag, as I said.

Attlee's policies did have a long-term effect on the Labour Party - it opposed British involvement in the Suez Crisis on a united basis despite its divisions on other issues, for example. Likewise, the Harold Wilson government was characterized by broad sympathies to the cause of decolonization but a relatively weak commitment to accepting much risk. For example, Wilson refused to send British ground troops to Vietnam but did provide intelligence and jungle warfare training and wouldn't publicly denounce the war.

He did remove British troops from Singapore, Malaysia, and the Persian Gulf and supported de-colonization in Africa, but he rather screwed up in Rhodesia where after insisting on black suffrage in return for Rhodesian independence, he refused to send the British military to "fight our kith and kin" when Ian Smith unilaterally declared independence for his apartheid state, delaying liberation for many years.

By contrast, the Soviet Union and China could more straightforwardly support anti-colonial insurgencies (that often blended nationalist and communist ideologies) in no small part because the Bolsheviks had been anti-WWI and anti-imperialism pretty consistently thanks to Lenin's influence.

And if you were an anti-colonial insurgency, would you prefer the folks who might give you a thumbs up or the folks who would give you weapons?

[b0ringasfuck]

Yet it was not a sentiment restricted only to the upper echelons of Indian government. As Azad Essa, a journalist and author of Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel, said: “This messaging gave a clear signal to the whole rightwing internet cell in India.” In the aftermath, the Indian internet factcheckers AltNews and Boom began to observe a flood of disinformation targeting Palestine pushed out by Indian social media accounts, which included fake stories about atrocities committed by Palestinians and Hamas that were shared sometimes millions of times, and often using the conflict to push the same Islamophobic narrative that has been used regularly to demonise India’s Muslim population since the BJP came to power.

A turning point came in 1999 when India went to war with Pakistan and Israel proved willing to provide arms and ammunition. It was the beginning of a defence relationship that has grown exponentially. India buys about $2bn-worth of arms from Israel every year – its largest arms supplier after Russia – and accounts for 46% of Israel’s overall weapons exports.

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 5 April 1971, a left-wing uprising began in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) against the "anti-imperialist" government when militants attacked police stations across the country. The insurgents were mostly young people organised by the People's Liberation Front (JVP). They had previously supported the United Front (UF) government which included the Stalinist Communist Party of Sri Lanka (CPSL) and the Trotskyist Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP). The election of the UF had been greeted with with much joy across the international left, which considered it a victory for "anti-imperialism." JVP forces initially took control of several towns and rural areas. But then an unlikely-sounding coalition emerged to suppress it. Ceylon government forces were given support, troops and weaponry by the UK, the former colonial power, the US, Australia, Egypt, India and Pakistan as well as China, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. By June the rebellion had been suppressed, leaving an estimated 1,000 to 5,000 dead. While calling themselves communist, the JVP, the CPSL, and the LSSP were all majority Sinhala organisations which espoused forms of nationalism, all engaged in racism and ethnic cleansing against the minority Tamil population. Especially in more recent years the JVP became much more openly and virulently racist against Tamils, and in the early 2000s became the primary force opposing the peace process between the government and Tamil rebels, which prolonged the deadly civil war. More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10487/jvp-uprising Pictured: captured JVP suspects https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=603580628481823&set=a.602588028581083&type=3

[mariacallous]

Five years since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its autonomous status, the central government’s iron-fisted approach to the region has left it more vulnerable to regional and geopolitical threats.

While Kashmir Valley, which has withstood the brunt of armed insurgency since 1989, continues to simmer with militancy-related violence, the theater of terrorism has now extended into the otherwise peaceful province of Jammu. Since 2019, at least 262 soldiers and 171 civilians have died in more than 690 incidents, including the February 2019 Pulwama terrorist attack. The unsustainable and disproportionate loss of lives underscores the risks to both regional stability and India’s national security.

In 2019, the Modi government revoked Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which granted the state of Jammu and Kashmir its special status, annihilating the contested region’s symbolic autonomy. Concurrently, the central government also imposed an indefinite curfew in the region and used internet shutdowns and arrests to control and suppress the local population. The result was a transformed landscape. Already scarred by militarization, Kashmir became enmeshed in barbed wire.

This undemocratic exercise, though later stamped and endorsed by India’s Supreme Court, has since spurred further legal changes. For example, the local population no longer has access to exclusive protections that previously allowed only permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir to apply for government jobs and buy property in the state.

In March 2020, the government repealed 12 and amended 14 land-related laws, introducing a clause that paved the way for a development authority to confiscate land and another that allowed high-ranking army officials to declare a local area as strategically important.

Local residents are appalled at the ease with which government agencies can now seize both residential and agricultural lands in the name of development and security—enabling mass evictions and the bulldozing of houses that are disproportionately affecting Muslim communities and small landowners.

Meanwhile, the ecological fallout from introducing massive road and railway networks, coupled with the addition of mega hydroelectricity projects, is polluting riverbeds and causing villages to sink. Since 2019, there has been a lack of local representation which could act as a buffer against massive development projects, most of which now fall under New Delhi’s governance. Meanwhile, the region’s unemployment rate, as of 2023, remains high at above 18 percent, as compared to the national average of 8 percent.

Over the last few years, the Modi government has also squashed dissent in the region by redirecting the military to maintain surveillance and control of the civilian population. According to the Forum for Human Rights in Jammu and Kashmir, over 2,700 people were arrested in the region between 2020 and 2023 under India’s contentious Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Public Safety Act. Those arrested include journalists like Fahad Shah and Sajad Gul, human rights defenders like Khurram Pervez, and prominent lawyers like Mian Qayoom and Nazir Ronga.

Modi’s repressive policies have deepened the trust deficit between Kashmiris and the Indian government. The top-down administration has further sidelined local bureaucrats and police officers, further widening the gap between the central government and local ground realities.

All of this has not only pushed the local population into distress, but also jeopardized India’s already fragile relations with its two nuclear neighbors, Pakistan and China.

The Kashmir conflict, rooted in the 1947 partition of India, has led to three major wars and several military skirmishes between India, Pakistan, and China. And though the region has always been contentious—India controls more than half of the total land, while Pakistan controls 30 percent, and China holds the remaining 15 percent in the northeast region near Ladakh—Modi’s aggressive handling has further provoked its neighbors.

Following the revocation of Article 370, the region was split into two separate union territories—Jammu and Kashmir forming one and Ladakh forming another, with both falling under the central government’s control.

This redrawing of the region’s internal borders, which signaled New Delhi’s assertions of reclaiming the Chinese-occupied territory near Ladakh—as well as India’s increasing tilt towards the United States—resulted in a deadly clash between India and China in 2020 and another one in 2022. Despite diplomatic efforts to resolve tensions over the disputed Himalayan border, New Delhi has accused Beijing of carrying out “inch by inch” land grabs in Ladakh since 2020.

Meanwhile, Pakistan-administered Kashmir has been rocked by mass protests of its own this year, owing to the country’s political and economic crisis, exacerbated in part by the abrogation of Article 370. Those living in Pakistan-administered Kashmir fear that Pakistan may similarly try to dilute the autonomy of the region.

With refugees flooding in from Afghanistan on its west amidst Imran Khan’s standoff with the Pakistani Army, Islamabad has been on edge and looking for diversionary tactics. The deepening of Pakistani-Chinese relations, including military ties, has contributed to a volatile mix.

But Kashmir’s vulnerability has worsened partly because of India’s own tactical blunders, too. The last decade witnessed a spurt in home-grown militancy, but since 2019 the landscape has been dominated by well-trained militants from across the Pakistani border who have access to sophisticated weapons and technology.

Indian security forces, including paramilitaries and the local police, have turned a blind eye to these emerging threats, especially in the twin districts of Rajouri and Poonch along the border with Pakistan. It is in this area that the impact of terror attacks has been most felt.

The region is home to the nomadic Gujjar-Bakerwal communities and the ethnolinguistic Paharis. These groups are parts of divided families straddling the India-Pakistan border, and this shared cultural linkage between the Indian and Pakistani sides has been weaponized in the past by intelligence networks of both countries.

The Indian armed forces have historically relied on the Gujjar-Bakerwal communities for intelligence gathering in part because of their nomadic lives and deep knowledge of the region’s topography. However, since 2019, the evictions of nomads from forest lands, following the amendment of several land-related laws, as well as affirmative actions for Paharis, a rival ethnic group, have led to the disenchantment of the Gujjar-Bakerwals—and an eventual loss of traditional intelligence assets for India.

Another blunder has been the redeployment of troops from Jammu to the border with China in the northeast, following China’s incursions in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley in 2020. This has left Jammu dangerously exposed to militants who have been infiltrating the region from across the line of control on the western side and carrying out their operations with a fair degree of success.

In 2024 alone, Jammu has witnessed numerous attacks which have resulted in the deaths of 16 soldiers and 12 civilians. In June, for example, the region experienced one of its deadliest attacks when militants opened fire on a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims, killing nine and injuring over 30.

Kashmir’s internal politics has the potential to spill over and push the region into disaster. While India has made some significant strides in international diplomacy under Modi, it tends to neglect the neighborhood where the risks to India’s national security remain the highest. Its diplomatic engagement with China comes in fits and starts but diplomacy with Pakistan remains nonexistent, despite the resumption of a ceasefire in 2021. And while India considers the removal of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status an internal matter, Pakistan sees it as a provocation. All in all, there is a dangerous lack of engagement between the two nuclear rivals in South Asia.

In theory, the ongoing regional elections in Jammu and Kashmir provide a glimmer of opportunity for the people to choose their own local government for the first time in a decade. However, irrespective of who wins the elections, the local leaders will lack the power to enact meaningful change, given that the region remains under the control of New Delhi following its demotion from a state to two union territories.

For instance, Ladakh does not have a legislative assembly, and while Jammu and Kashmir have an elected assembly, the real powers are vested in the hands of a governor, who was appointed to lead the region by the Modi-led central government. As recently as July, the Indian government ruled to further expand the governor’s oversight powers, delivering a blow to local politicians and voters.

Much more needs to be done to change the status quo. Though it remains unlikely, New Delhi must consider meaningful solutions that could assuage some of the political wounds inflicted by the complete erosion of Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy, including, for example, the restoration of statehood to the region. In order to win back the trust of Kashmiris, the Indian government must reinstate civil liberties and deliver on its promise to provide economic development and jobs.

To improve the region’s safety, Indian agencies must acknowledge their security lapses and repair their broken intelligence networks. And while the Indian security forces must not lower their guard against terrorist activities, terrorism should not be proffered as an excuse when it comes to the normalization of relations in the neighborhood.

Neither Pakistan, nor India can afford the war which is looming over their heads. Diplomatic negotiations, including over Kashmir, must begin with a sense of urgency.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Water is essential for all life on Earth. But one-third of the world’s population do not have access to a supply of safe drinking water (a situation that is worsening). A third of all deaths in the world are the results of water-borne diseases. Water is a limited but endlessly renewed resource; its pollution, mismanagement and overuse by corporations, governments and people (turned into ‘consumers’ in a world that is not of their making) threaten to turn a global crisis into a long-term planetary disaster. The Vice-President of the World Bank, Ismail Seregeldin, stated in 1995 that “the wars of the next century will be over water… by the year 2025, the amount of water available to each person in the Middle East and North Africa will have dropped by 80% in a single lifetime”.

Disputes and Wars

40% of the world’s population depend on water from a neighbouring country. Over 200 large rivers are shared by two or more countries. In modern times the existence of vast cities, irrigated agriculture and the demand for hydro-electric power have led countries to claim or steal water resources once used by others. The cutting up of river systems by state boundaries has aggravated the problems of responding to floods. The political and engineering structures that bring economic power and political control to national and international elites also threaten lives and livelihoods. One reason for Turkey’s refusal to grant autonomy to the Kurds is the importance of water resources in eastern Turkey. Attempts to divert the sources of the River Jordan in South Lebanon and the Golan Heights provoked the Israeli-Arab War of 1967. Following this, Israel began to appropriate water supplies to support new settlements and supply towns and industry in Israel proper: Israel annually pumps 600 million cubic metres of water (over 30% of its supply) from aquifers that lie wholly or partly under the West Bank. 115 million cubic metres are allocated to the 1.4m West Bank Palestinians and 30m to 130,000 Jewish settlers; the rest (455 million cubic metres) goes to Israel. West Bank Palestinians have been barred from digging new wells or renovating old ones since 1967. Egypt offered Israel 400m cubic metres of fresh water a year to settle its conflict and assist the Palestinians; but there is still no agreement over water for the West Bank. There is a continuous threat of water wars in South Asia between India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. Large-scale deforestation upstream results in increasingly widespread flood disasters below. Punjab water was an important contributory factor to the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war. Hindu nationalism has been fuelled by the unfair distribution of India’s water to the Sikh Punjab and led to the storming of the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984.

Modern wars depend on the destruction of the civilian population’s means of life and livelihood. In 1991 in Iraq, for example, the deliberate destruction of power supplies by bombing and war created a huge health problem. Over 90% of sewage treatment plants were disabled with huge amounts of untreated domestic and industrial sewage being pumped into rivers, creating an increase in water-borne diseases. Agricultural production was slashed by the breakdown of the electrically powered irrigation network. Before the Gulf War Iraq produced 30% of its food. Prior to the US-UK assault on Iraq in 2003, the figure was 10–15%.