Posts Tagged ‘insurgency’

We can’t win Afghanistan war – British Commander

October 5, 2008

The Independent, Oct 5, 2008

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The public should not expect “a decisive military victory” in Afghanistan, Britain’s most senior military commander in the country warned today.

Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith said the aim was to reduce the uprising to a level at which it could be managed by the Afghan army and made clear that this could involve talking to the Taliban.

It was necessary to “lower our expectations” and accept that it would be unrealistic to expect that multinational forces can entirely rid Afghanistan of armed bands, he suggested.

Brig Carleton-Smith, the commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, which has just completed its second tour of Afghanistan, told the Sunday Times that his forces had “taken the sting out of the Taliban for 2008”.

But he added: “We’re not going to win this war. It’s about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that’s not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army.

“We may well leave with there still being a low but steady ebb of rural insurgency.”

Brig Carleton-Smith said the aim should be to change the nature of the debate in Afghanistan so that disputes were settled by negotiation and not violence.

“If the Taliban were prepared to sit on the other side of the table and talk about a political settlement, then that’s precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this,” he said.

“That shouldn’t make people uncomfortable.”

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Mourners killed as Indian soldiers fire into Kashmiri funeral crowd

August 12, 2008

Indian security forces today fired into a crowd that had gathered for the funeral of a prominent Kashmiri separatist leader who was shot dead yesterday, killing three people.

The shootings, on the second day forces had fired into the crowd, came amid rising violence in Indian Kashmir, India’s only Muslim majority state.

The violence has seen many parts of the region, including the winter capital, Srinagar, put under curfew.

The roots of the crisis lie in a tug of war between the state’s Hindus and Muslims over 100 acres of land.

Tensions escalated after a blockade of the highway by Hindu groups cut off the mountainous Kashmir region, where Muslims predominate, from the plains of Jammu, where Hindus are the majority.

As a result, traders in Kashmir have been trying to sell their goods in neighbouring Pakistan.

Kashmiri separatists called on protesters to continue their march to Muzaffarabad, in Pakistani Kashmir, today.

Yesterday, Sheik Abdul Aziz, a senior figure in the separtist Hurriyat Conference, was killed along with four other people as they attempted to cross the disputed border with Pakistan. More than 150 were injured.

“Sheikh Aziz’s death is big loss to the Kashmir nation … we will take his mission to its logical end,” Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the chairman of Hurriyat, told Indian television.

Violence began when the state government handed over 100 acres of land for pilgrimage facilities to be built at a popular Hindu shrine at Amarnath, in the Himalayas, in May.

The land dispute has deeply divided Indian Kashmir, and this week has seen some of the region’s worst religious rioting.

Spiralling violence has shattered the relative peace of the past four years in Indian Kashmir, which is also known as Jammu and Kashmir.

The state could still face a violent insurgency, but tensions had eased after India and Pakistan agreed to a peace process in 2004.

See BBC latest: : at least 11 protesters shot dead

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