Peace and Justice Post

The Conflict

July 18, 2010 (Axis of Logic) – A cartoon published in an American newspaper in 2002 showed former president George Bush sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office, utterly  confused by a news report he was reading about India and Pakistan going to war over Kashmir. “But why are the two countries fighting over a sweater,” he asked Dick Cheney who stood by with his usual sly smile on his face.

Besides reflecting the intellectual capacity of the American president of the time, the cartoon was a realistic portrayal of the understanding that American leaders have generally shown of this longstanding dispute between Pakistan and India.

The unresolved Kashmir conflict has rocked South Asia for six decades. It has created an environment of distrust and acrimony, forced the people to sink into poverty with bulk of the resources consumed by the war machines and claimed lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians as well as soldiers who died in the three wars fought between India and Pakistan. India, whose forcible occupation of Kashmir in 1947 created the conflict, refuses to settle it. The other stake holders, the Kashmiri people and Pakistan, insist on a fair solution. The international community including the US and the United Nations played little or no role in diffusing it either. Consequently, the conflict has developed into one of the most intractable problems of international politics that remains a continuing threat to peace of the region.
Indian Brutalities & The International Reaction

India has not hesitated to use brutal force to maintain its hold on Indian occupied Kashmir and suppress revolt. The US, UN and other international organizations failed to take note of grave human rights violations. They failed to provide any specific, actionable proposals for a permanent solution. All they extended were diplomatic courtesies, suggested vague formulas and generalities that are open to multiple interpretations.

Although the US considers South Asia to be a sensitive and strategically important region from its geopolitical, security and economic standpoint and has expressed the desire to see peace prevail, yet it has so far paid only lip service to finding a permanent solution. It would not chastise India for human rights violations, which would have attracted its immediate attention if these were taking place in a country that it had chosen to punish, for fear of displeasing or alienating India which it has aggressively been courting in recent years.

This situation was compounded by the Indian dreams of regional hegemony that led it to dismember Pakistan in 1971 and go on to become a nuclear power, which forced Pakistan to develop its own nuclear deterrent for safeguarding its security.

Consequently, India has consistently and blatantly refused to honor the will of the people, negotiate Kashmir’s future status and stop the use of brutal force.

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Today the leaders of the State of Israel practice genocide and are associating themselves with the most reactionary forces on the planet.

In a Reflection published on August 25, 2010 under the title of “The Opinion of an Expert”, I mentioned a really unusual activity of the United States and its allies which, in my opinion, underlines the risk of a nuclear conflict with Iran.  I was referring to a long article by the well-known journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, published in the US journal The Atlantic in September of that year, entitled “The Point of No Return”.

Goldberg was not anti-Israeli, quite the opposite; he is an admirer of Israel and holds double citizenship with the US and also did his military service in that country.

At the start of his article he wrote: “It is possible, as well, that “foiling operations” conducted by the intelligence agencies of Israel, the United States, Great Britain, and other Western powers—programs designed to subvert the Iranian nuclear effort through sabotage and, on occasion, the carefully engineered disappearances of nuclear scientists—will have hindered Iran’s progress in some significant way”

The parentheses in the paragraph are also his.

After mentioning the enigmatic phrase, I carried on with the analysis of that Gordian knot of international politics that could lead to the war which was so feared by Einstein.  What would he say if he had learned about the “frustration operations” destined to make the most capable nuclear scientists disappear?

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Sentenced to death for blasphemy, Aasia Bibi’s hopes rested on the liberal politician killed this week. Andrew Buncombe gives the first account of her despair at the murder

The Independent, January 8, 2011

Reuters: Followers mourn Governor Salmaan Taseer in a candlelit vigil yesterday 

Editorial

The Guardian, January 8, 2011

A month before the governor of the Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, was lowered into an early grave, an imam at a mosque in Peshawar asked the Taliban to kill a Christian woman convicted of blasphemy, if the Pakistani state did not carry out the death sentence. Nawa-e-Waqt, the second most read Urdu-language newspaper in the country, wholeheartedly approved of the 500,000 rupee bounty that the cleric Maulana Yousuf Qureshi put on Asia Bibi’s head. Its lead editorial went on to threaten anyone, like Taseer, who supported the woman’s cause and campaigned for a repeal of the infamous blasphemy law. “The punishment handed down to Asia Bibi will be carried out in one manner or the other, and who knows whose position and rank will be terminated as a result of the debate on the repeal of the blasphemy laws,” the newspaper wrote. That was on 5 December. A month later Taseer was killed by his bodyguard, a 26-year-old policeman, Mumtaz Qadri. Neither the cleric nor the editors of the newspaper are being charged with incitement.

The celebration of Taseer’s assassination has continued ever since. Making common cause with radical Islamists, lawyers showered petals on Qadri. They surrounded the anti-terrorism court at Rawalpindi and at one point the judge refused to hear the case and police considered dropping a reference to the anti-terror act and trying Qadri in a district court. When the hearing went ahead after five hours, no public prosecutor turned up because of fears for their safety, according the report in Dawn.com. Nationally, Taseer’s death was greeted with cold-hearted intolerance from rightwing religious leaders – several of whom said he got what he deserved – and with spineless capitulation from the ruling Pakistan People’s party, of which the Punjab governor was the fifth most important member. Shortly after he visited Asia Bibi in jail with his wife and daughter, a mob rioted outside the governor’s house. Prominent TV commentators joined in. The law minister, Babar Awan, then caved in, saying there was no question of reforming the law. Now Awan has rushed for cover behind a judicial inquiry, painting the killing as part of some unnamed conspiracy to destabilise the country.

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On Tuesday morning, the reports of Salman Taseer’s assassination topped headlines around the world. Taseer, the governor of Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province, had been killed by one of his own security guards in a market in Islamabad. The assassination comes amidst mounting political chaos in Pakistan, marked by the instability of the government’s ruling coalition and the increasing prominence of Islamist opposition to the country’s secular leaders.

In its initial coverage of these developments, the mainstream press has drawn attention to many issues, including the price of fuel, which was the immediate cause of the defection of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, or MQM, from Prime Minister Gilani’s ruling coalition, and Taseer’s opposition to a blasphemy law, which imposes a death sentence against those who insult Islam. But one thing the mainstream press has not addressed is the U.S. war in the Af-Pak region. Following the coverage of Taseer’s death, you would not even know that such a war existed.

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Canadian activist Michael Skinner looks at how the Western corporate interests are profiting off the occupation of Afghanistan.

Socialist Worker, January 7, 2011

Leaders of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India meeting to discuss the TAPI pipeline

MANY OF the Canadian military, police and civilian personnel who risk their lives in Afghanistan truly believe they are fighting a just war of good against evil. But America’s and Britain’s claims that the unsanctioned unilateral invasion of Afghanistan, which began the global war on terror, was justified by the terrorist attacks of 9/11 are as credible as claims the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian terrorist justified Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war against Serbia to begin the First World War.

It is time to look beyond faith in baseless beliefs to investigate facts. What interests are at stake in Afghanistan?

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What’s happening on the Korean peninsula? If you read the press or listen to the talking heads, your best guess would be that an insane North Korean regime is willing to risk war to manage its own internal political tensions. This conclusion would be hard to avoid because the media rarely provide any historical context or alternative explanations for North Korean actions. For example, much has been said about the March 2010 (alleged) North Korean torpedo attack on the Cheonan (a South Korean naval vessel) near Baengnyeong Island, and the November 2010 North Korean artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island (which houses a South Korean military base). The conventional wisdom is that both attacks were motivated by North Korean elite efforts to smooth the leadership transition underway in their country. The take away: North Korea is an out-of-control country, definitely not to be trusted or engaged in negotiations.

But is that an adequate explanation for these events? Before examining the facts surrounding them, let’s introduce a bit of history. Take a look at the map below, which includes both Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong Islands.

Contested seas. The NLL is represented by the blue A line. The MDL is represented by the red B line.

1: Yeonpyeong Island (artillery clas); 2: Baengnyeong Island (Cheonan sinking); 3: Daecheong Island. [source]

Demilitarized Zone

The armistice that ended the Korean War fighting established the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) which separates North Korea from South Korea. At that time, the U.S. government unilaterally established another dividing line, one intended to create a sea border between the two Koreas. That border is illustrated on the map by line A, the blue Northern Limit Line (NLL).

As you can see, instead of extending the DMZ westward into the sea, the U.S. line runs northward, limiting North Korea’s sea access. The line was drawn this way for two reasons: First, when the fighting stopped, South Korean forces were in control of the islands off the North Korean coast and the U.S. wanted to secure their position. Second, control over those islands enhanced the ability of U.S. forces to monitor and maintain military pressure on North Korea.

North Korea never accepted the NLL. It argued for an alternative border, illustrated by line B, the red West Sea Military Demarcation Line (MDL). Acknowledging the reality of Southern forces on the islands off its coast, North Korea sought recognition for a sea border that went around the islands but otherwise divided the sea by extending the DMZ line.

The critical point here is that the South Korean and U.S. promoted NLL is not recognized by international law; it has no legal standing. Don’t take my word for it. The following is from Bloomberg News:

“Then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in a 1975 classified cable that the unilaterally drawn Northern Limit Line was ‘clearly contrary to international law.’ Two years before, the American ambassador said in another cable that many nations would view South Korea and its U.S. ally as ‘in the wrong’ if clashes occurred in disputed areas along the boundary. …

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By our correspondent, wsws.org, 6 January 2011

Recently the World Socialist Web Site spoke to a number of Tamil prisoners released from various detention centres as well as the relatives of detainees still held in camps run by the Sri Lankan military. They not only described the oppressive conditions inside the camps, but insisted that their detention was a violation of basic legal and democratic rights.

Following the collapse of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009, the military herded around 280,000 Tamil civilians—men, women and children—into huge “welfare villages”, which were surrounded by barbed wire and armed soldiers and run as virtual prisons. Anyone accused of being an “LTTE suspect” was held separately in undisclosed locations. The numbers grew to about 12,000 as military intelligence officers interrogated young men and women in the detention camps and dragged more “LTTE suspects” off to its secret prisons. The purpose was to intimidate and silence any opposition or dissent.

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