A Time for Renewal
Ali A Minai October 11, 2001
#643 Posted by Eklavya on October 22, 2001 1:03:38 pm
Banjara,
Dada, is there any part of India you don`t know?!
Since you are familiar with Faizabad Road, I take it you have heard of I.T. College, Mahanagar, Nishat Gunj, Kukrail, Gaziabad....
Dada, is there any part of India you don`t know?!
Since you are familiar with Faizabad Road, I take it you have heard of I.T. College, Mahanagar, Nishat Gunj, Kukrail, Gaziabad....
reply to this interact
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#642 Posted by sadna on October 22, 2001 12:26:02 pm
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/22/international/asia/22KASH.html
A Quiet Day on Kashmir`s Tense Line
By RICK BRAGG
CHAKOTHI, Kashmir, Oct. 20 - Across a rocky gorge 600 feet wide and 300 feet deep, the benevolent battalion of Brig. Gen. Muhammad Yaqub stared across at its Indian adversaries on the other side of what is called the Line of Control.
``Watch,`` said the general, whose Pakistani soldiers are here to prevent an invasion by the Indian Army but, according to him, never, ever shoot first. ``In a moment they will wave.``
About that time, a tiny figure across the gorge waved his hand energetically from side to side. ``They are friendly because they see we have a delegation,`` he said, as a bus load of reporters gazed across at the bunkers on the far side. ``Other times they are not so friendly.``
There was no shelling today from the Indian side, which has pounded the Pakistani side of the so-called cease-fire line every few days as tensions between the two countries have heated up at the worst possible time for United States interests in its war on terrorism. The Pakistanis fired only words here today - lots of words.
``All hell has been let loose against the poor civilian population of Kashmir,`` General Yaqub said, referring to the artillery fire that has killed people on the Pakistani-controlled side of the line since the cease-fire dissolved in shelling from the Indians in the last week.
``We have never initiated fire,`` he said, and have not shelled the Indians since November.
``We feed, clothe and build bunkers for the people,`` he said.
His officers back him up with stories of atrocities committed by the Indians, including torture of civilians. What they do not say is that it was a suicide attack on Oct. 1 by terrorists on the state legislature in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir that prompted those bombardments.
Jaish-i-Muhammad, a Muslim group in Pakistan that has been implicated in terrorist attacks, has been generally held responsible by the Indians for the attack on the legislature, which left 38 people dead, most of them civilians. The Indian government has accused the Pakistani government of harboring and training such groups.
The suicide bombing and the shelling that followed came as the United States tried to assemble its world coalition against terrorism, whose most vital member may be Pakistan.
That left the United States in the difficult position of alligning itself with a government with links to terrorist groups and turned a 54-year- old struggle for the ownership of Kashmir into a fresh nightmare for Western diplomats.
Kashmir has been mostly closed to journalists, but the Pakistani government trucked in several reporters over twisting mountain roads to hear its side of this conflict, and to deny charges that it is coddling terrorists here even as it supports the United States military action against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
``We do not work with these groups, and we have got nothing to do with them,`` said General Yaqub, a tall man in a crisp, tailored uniform of khaki.
The Indians have said the Pakistanis do nothing to stop terrorists - the Pakistanis call them ``indigenous freedom fighters`` - from crossing into Indian-controlled Kashmir.
The general looked around him on terrain that is some of the steepest, wildest, most rugged on earth, with peaks ranging from 3,000 feet to more than 20,000 feet. The Jhelum River, the color of dust topaz, pours through a dizzying gorge. Waterfalls, here and there, pour out of the mountains themselves. There are natural rock caves, and footpaths thousands of years old.
It is difficult, he said, to prevent anyone from slipping across the line. He said his duty to was keep an eye on the Indians, not on freedom fighters who are just trying to go back home to India to be with their families.
``It is not humanly possible to guard every place,`` he said. When his soldiers catch people trying to sneak over, they send them back, he said, but acknowledged that he could not remember the last time that had happened.
In the command center, a warren of trenches and bunkers that the Indians do not shell - there is a gentlemen`s agreement on both sides to spare each other`s command centers - he has arranged a table of mortar and cannon shells
recovered from recent attacks, to prove the aggressiveness of the Indians.
Later in the evening, soldiers drove the journalists to a refugee camp where Muslims have lived since an insurrection on the Indian side, supported by Pakistan, was violently quelled by Indians soldiers.
A one-legged man named Muhammad Yasim Mir said the 19th Grenadiers of India had tortured him by sticking blades in one of his legs, then breaking the leg so badly that it would not heal. He waved the stump around to prove that he was not making it up. ``They said I was harboring freedom fighters,`` he said.
Another man, Abdul Rasheed, said he had been hung by his hand and feet, and that the soldiers later broke them. They said he had provided food for the freedom fighters, he said.
A group of men, and one old woman who has come to beg, say they oppose terrorism, but in the next breath they say Osama bin Laden is, according to a translator, ``a Muslim, and O.K.``
In the last 12 years, more than 35,000 people have died in the violence here, most of them civilians. Kashmir, the generic term for what was known as the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir before India`s independence from Britain, has been tugged at by the two countries since largely Muslim Pakistan separated from mostly Hindu India in 1947.
Muslims have fled to the Pakistani side of the Line of Control and Hindus have fled to the Indian side, while many in Kashmir, perhaps a majority of its 13.7 million people, talk about forming their own nation.
Prime Minister Sardar Sikander Hayat Khan, who governs the Pakistani-controlled side, known as Azad Kashmir, said that Kashmir was ``passing through the darkest period of our history,`` and that ``the arrogance of India has prevented a solution.``
Like the Pakistani soldiers, he denies any links between Pakistan and terrorists, and says he does not even believe that they exist.
The only state-sponsored terror is the terror of the shellings, he said.
``India,`` he said, ``should rediscover its Gandhi soul.``
A Quiet Day on Kashmir`s Tense Line
By RICK BRAGG
CHAKOTHI, Kashmir, Oct. 20 - Across a rocky gorge 600 feet wide and 300 feet deep, the benevolent battalion of Brig. Gen. Muhammad Yaqub stared across at its Indian adversaries on the other side of what is called the Line of Control.
``Watch,`` said the general, whose Pakistani soldiers are here to prevent an invasion by the Indian Army but, according to him, never, ever shoot first. ``In a moment they will wave.``
About that time, a tiny figure across the gorge waved his hand energetically from side to side. ``They are friendly because they see we have a delegation,`` he said, as a bus load of reporters gazed across at the bunkers on the far side. ``Other times they are not so friendly.``
There was no shelling today from the Indian side, which has pounded the Pakistani side of the so-called cease-fire line every few days as tensions between the two countries have heated up at the worst possible time for United States interests in its war on terrorism. The Pakistanis fired only words here today - lots of words.
``All hell has been let loose against the poor civilian population of Kashmir,`` General Yaqub said, referring to the artillery fire that has killed people on the Pakistani-controlled side of the line since the cease-fire dissolved in shelling from the Indians in the last week.
``We have never initiated fire,`` he said, and have not shelled the Indians since November.
``We feed, clothe and build bunkers for the people,`` he said.
His officers back him up with stories of atrocities committed by the Indians, including torture of civilians. What they do not say is that it was a suicide attack on Oct. 1 by terrorists on the state legislature in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir that prompted those bombardments.
Jaish-i-Muhammad, a Muslim group in Pakistan that has been implicated in terrorist attacks, has been generally held responsible by the Indians for the attack on the legislature, which left 38 people dead, most of them civilians. The Indian government has accused the Pakistani government of harboring and training such groups.
The suicide bombing and the shelling that followed came as the United States tried to assemble its world coalition against terrorism, whose most vital member may be Pakistan.
That left the United States in the difficult position of alligning itself with a government with links to terrorist groups and turned a 54-year- old struggle for the ownership of Kashmir into a fresh nightmare for Western diplomats.
Kashmir has been mostly closed to journalists, but the Pakistani government trucked in several reporters over twisting mountain roads to hear its side of this conflict, and to deny charges that it is coddling terrorists here even as it supports the United States military action against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
``We do not work with these groups, and we have got nothing to do with them,`` said General Yaqub, a tall man in a crisp, tailored uniform of khaki.
The Indians have said the Pakistanis do nothing to stop terrorists - the Pakistanis call them ``indigenous freedom fighters`` - from crossing into Indian-controlled Kashmir.
The general looked around him on terrain that is some of the steepest, wildest, most rugged on earth, with peaks ranging from 3,000 feet to more than 20,000 feet. The Jhelum River, the color of dust topaz, pours through a dizzying gorge. Waterfalls, here and there, pour out of the mountains themselves. There are natural rock caves, and footpaths thousands of years old.
It is difficult, he said, to prevent anyone from slipping across the line. He said his duty to was keep an eye on the Indians, not on freedom fighters who are just trying to go back home to India to be with their families.
``It is not humanly possible to guard every place,`` he said. When his soldiers catch people trying to sneak over, they send them back, he said, but acknowledged that he could not remember the last time that had happened.
In the command center, a warren of trenches and bunkers that the Indians do not shell - there is a gentlemen`s agreement on both sides to spare each other`s command centers - he has arranged a table of mortar and cannon shells
recovered from recent attacks, to prove the aggressiveness of the Indians.
Later in the evening, soldiers drove the journalists to a refugee camp where Muslims have lived since an insurrection on the Indian side, supported by Pakistan, was violently quelled by Indians soldiers.
A one-legged man named Muhammad Yasim Mir said the 19th Grenadiers of India had tortured him by sticking blades in one of his legs, then breaking the leg so badly that it would not heal. He waved the stump around to prove that he was not making it up. ``They said I was harboring freedom fighters,`` he said.
Another man, Abdul Rasheed, said he had been hung by his hand and feet, and that the soldiers later broke them. They said he had provided food for the freedom fighters, he said.
A group of men, and one old woman who has come to beg, say they oppose terrorism, but in the next breath they say Osama bin Laden is, according to a translator, ``a Muslim, and O.K.``
In the last 12 years, more than 35,000 people have died in the violence here, most of them civilians. Kashmir, the generic term for what was known as the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir before India`s independence from Britain, has been tugged at by the two countries since largely Muslim Pakistan separated from mostly Hindu India in 1947.
Muslims have fled to the Pakistani side of the Line of Control and Hindus have fled to the Indian side, while many in Kashmir, perhaps a majority of its 13.7 million people, talk about forming their own nation.
Prime Minister Sardar Sikander Hayat Khan, who governs the Pakistani-controlled side, known as Azad Kashmir, said that Kashmir was ``passing through the darkest period of our history,`` and that ``the arrogance of India has prevented a solution.``
Like the Pakistani soldiers, he denies any links between Pakistan and terrorists, and says he does not even believe that they exist.
The only state-sponsored terror is the terror of the shellings, he said.
``India,`` he said, ``should rediscover its Gandhi soul.``
#641 Posted by tahmed321 on October 22, 2001 1:02:57 am
Rsaxena #650 I wasnt thinking along those lines, but I guess one could interpret it the homosexual way as you obviously did.
You may now proceed to continue polluting whatever is left of this board ...
You may now proceed to continue polluting whatever is left of this board ...
#640 Posted by stuka on October 22, 2001 1:02:57 am
semipreciousme:
``mmmm, fall….one of the things i miss most about america…..the metamorphosis of the green of leaves to golden, burnt-orange and auburn…raking a big pile and jumping on it like crazy….the piquancy and tanginess of the air….and not to mention all that apple cider…..``
What part of the US did you live in? New England by any chance?
``mmmm, fall….one of the things i miss most about america…..the metamorphosis of the green of leaves to golden, burnt-orange and auburn…raking a big pile and jumping on it like crazy….the piquancy and tanginess of the air….and not to mention all that apple cider…..``
What part of the US did you live in? New England by any chance?
#639 Posted by Binifer on October 22, 2001 1:02:57 am
saxena:
(Aren`t you a married man?)
Arent you a sick ol perverted chae?
Excuse my language tahmed321. This b@stard deserves all the ghatiaapa one can dish out.
(Aren`t you a married man?)
Arent you a sick ol perverted chae?
Excuse my language tahmed321. This b@stard deserves all the ghatiaapa one can dish out.
#638 Posted by rsridhar on October 22, 2001 1:02:57 am
Re:Reply #: 640
semipreciousme,
Edhi is truely a legend. Any country would be proud of his achievements. Wonder why his services are not available in India. Politics, i guess.
Sridhar
semipreciousme,
Edhi is truely a legend. Any country would be proud of his achievements. Wonder why his services are not available in India. Politics, i guess.
Sridhar
#637 Posted by AAmir on October 22, 2001 1:02:57 am
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#636 Posted by ZafarA on October 22, 2001 1:02:57 am
Reply RSaxena # 544
“You make valid points but shouldn`t our priority be to ensure a civilized country for the citizens of India...we`ll worry about foreigners later.”
A society is as civilised as its treatment of its most vulnerable members. In Germany’s case these are foreigners. In India’s case…mathlab my point wasn’t about foreigners, per se, but about the nature of society and its values.
“You make valid points but shouldn`t our priority be to ensure a civilized country for the citizens of India...we`ll worry about foreigners later.”
A society is as civilised as its treatment of its most vulnerable members. In Germany’s case these are foreigners. In India’s case…mathlab my point wasn’t about foreigners, per se, but about the nature of society and its values.
#635 Posted by ZafarA on October 22, 2001 1:02:57 am
Reply Stuka # 558
“I would be the first to deplore what happened in Agra. BUT, from a national perspective the BJP is still any day better than a retarded Eye-talian, and the Yadav brigade. They are capable of and will do more to destroy India, than any external enemy.”
I would agree that the BJP is more competent than the others, but the incident in Agra is indicative of how many BJP (not all) supporters view those aspects of India which do not fit into their paradigm of Indian-ness. THAT is what is truly worrying.
Zafar
PS I am not glorifying any other party in comparison.
“I would be the first to deplore what happened in Agra. BUT, from a national perspective the BJP is still any day better than a retarded Eye-talian, and the Yadav brigade. They are capable of and will do more to destroy India, than any external enemy.”
I would agree that the BJP is more competent than the others, but the incident in Agra is indicative of how many BJP (not all) supporters view those aspects of India which do not fit into their paradigm of Indian-ness. THAT is what is truly worrying.
Zafar
PS I am not glorifying any other party in comparison.
#634 Posted by ZafarA on October 22, 2001 1:02:57 am
“What does the word ``YUV`` mean in the term ``BHATIYA YUV MORCHA``.
Bhai these Bhatiyas are really organised, haan. What is unclear is whether this was the Bharathiya Bhatiya Yuv Morcha or whether it was the Anthar-Rashtriya Bhatiya Yuv Morcha…
Bhai these Bhatiyas are really organised, haan. What is unclear is whether this was the Bharathiya Bhatiya Yuv Morcha or whether it was the Anthar-Rashtriya Bhatiya Yuv Morcha…
#633 Posted by ZafarA on October 22, 2001 1:02:57 am
Reply Faiza # 575
Bukhari is a fraud. The only thing that he believably represents is his own un-warranted ambition to be a big fish in a small pond.
Bukhari is a fraud. The only thing that he believably represents is his own un-warranted ambition to be a big fish in a small pond.
#632 Posted by ZafarA on October 22, 2001 1:02:57 am
Reply Sherdil # 579
“Zafar Al-Talib, please give me a day to reply to your questions : I will hopefully be able to put together a better sense of what is going on here by then.”
Sherdil Saheb
Looking forward to your response. Till then, stay safe.
Zafar
“Zafar Al-Talib, please give me a day to reply to your questions : I will hopefully be able to put together a better sense of what is going on here by then.”
Sherdil Saheb
Looking forward to your response. Till then, stay safe.
Zafar
#631 Posted by DRUMZ on October 22, 2001 1:02:57 am
Stuka: Amerikkka made a FAKE video reel containing BAD actors and told the world that iraqis were killing children. THAT is called propoganda, not nothing I wrote...
See, an American is someone who finds a large dent on his bumper, yet is too delusional to know he`s killed someone.
Read up on COINTEL PRO, FBI documents now available through the freedom of info act that shows how the FBI infiltrated cuban, Indian and black organizations, assassinated their leaders and caused dissent among them.
Im about the LAST person anyone should wave a flag next to. Especially that blood stained american one (You americans wouldnt be so patriotic if you knew that kind of sh1t you country is involved in)...
And yes I am from the T-Dot (Toronto)...
PS: The communist labelling is off by a good decade and a half. The scapegoats these days are Afghanis...
See, an American is someone who finds a large dent on his bumper, yet is too delusional to know he`s killed someone.
Read up on COINTEL PRO, FBI documents now available through the freedom of info act that shows how the FBI infiltrated cuban, Indian and black organizations, assassinated their leaders and caused dissent among them.
Im about the LAST person anyone should wave a flag next to. Especially that blood stained american one (You americans wouldnt be so patriotic if you knew that kind of sh1t you country is involved in)...
And yes I am from the T-Dot (Toronto)...
PS: The communist labelling is off by a good decade and a half. The scapegoats these days are Afghanis...
#630 Posted by bong_dongs on October 22, 2001 1:02:57 am
``saying ``venezuelan/brazilian`` melds them together inaccurately...there is a visible difference between the two..the former take the cake by far, at least as far as the women go``
But Saxena-saab by that standard what does the label ``Brazilian`` mean, for what is probably the most etnically diverse country on the planet?
But Saxena-saab by that standard what does the label ``Brazilian`` mean, for what is probably the most etnically diverse country on the planet?
#629 Posted by saminashah on October 22, 2001 1:02:57 am
Rsaxi
Muno, it is the spiritual aspect in defacing a work of art/worship that saddens me, whether they are Buddhas, temples or sculptures. I am sure India has it under control. I guess my sadness has more to do with what the Taj Mahal has symbolized for my mother and father, quite honestly.
re: South Asian proggies
Hold on to that little corner of insistence, Saxi; it will be all the more enjoyable to watch when you eventually meet a fetching tree hugger... Saxi, we all don`t fit the unwashed, flannelized, granola bakers you see on t.v...some of us wear strappy heels, tell great jokes, use vegetable soap and don`t take money from any daddy...sigh... But go ahead, dig in those Jimmy Choos...
Muno, it is the spiritual aspect in defacing a work of art/worship that saddens me, whether they are Buddhas, temples or sculptures. I am sure India has it under control. I guess my sadness has more to do with what the Taj Mahal has symbolized for my mother and father, quite honestly.
re: South Asian proggies
Hold on to that little corner of insistence, Saxi; it will be all the more enjoyable to watch when you eventually meet a fetching tree hugger... Saxi, we all don`t fit the unwashed, flannelized, granola bakers you see on t.v...some of us wear strappy heels, tell great jokes, use vegetable soap and don`t take money from any daddy...sigh... But go ahead, dig in those Jimmy Choos...
#628 Posted by Banjaara on October 22, 2001 1:02:57 am
Faiza 614
``By Maternal connection (Mamoo & Nana) Javed Akhtar is Lucknovi (barabanki is suburb of Lucknow so to say)``
Since when one is identified from the maternal
roots,I was under the impression that it was the paternal side that took care of the origin of a
person.Perhaps you are aware that BaraBanki is 30
kilometres east of Lucknow on the Faizabad Road.
Bara Banki comes under Faizabad Division and is
definitely not in Lucknow.
Regards.
``By Maternal connection (Mamoo & Nana) Javed Akhtar is Lucknovi (barabanki is suburb of Lucknow so to say)``
Since when one is identified from the maternal
roots,I was under the impression that it was the paternal side that took care of the origin of a
person.Perhaps you are aware that BaraBanki is 30
kilometres east of Lucknow on the Faizabad Road.
Bara Banki comes under Faizabad Division and is
definitely not in Lucknow.
Regards.
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