Lighting The Nuclear Fire

Dear Romair . . . Kashmir is on the international news (not that that solves matters at all, remember Vietnam??) because Mom & Pop`s son and apple pie are going to be left with their baatooties unguarded outside Tora Bora and that would not be good for the election business in Utah. What was that about the Armed Forces of some countries now requireing police protection, and we are not talking about the Vatican either . . .

In case you had not noticed, both our countries are about to become international pariahs. The timing may vary. CNN headlines are more about people from some parts of the world getting fingerprinted and phoographed when travelling. Billy-Oh doodly anybody will care about people dying in Kashmir because for decades we haven`t, either. How many murderers were caught in Karachi after Daniel Pearl`s murder, for killing Pakistanis?

One more thing:-

India, like Pakistan, is a lot of human beings saying in streets from Karachi and Bombay and other places, that please for saffron and green sake, solve Kashmir any which way you (the Governments) want.

In all this, all said and done, at least we have a Government in India. (I am not talking about governance . . .) The problem in Pakistan is that to the best of my knolwedge, you may have some semblance of governance, but do you have a Government?

So even if there is any discussion and solution, will it hold good?

As for the BJP in India, please ask some Indian friends or visit India Today website, and see where the BJP is in power now?

There is one more silver lining in this escalation (the first being the fact that Indians will finally realize why Pakistanis wanted a separate country): the Kashmir issue has finally deserved the importance it requires to be solved.

It has finally been internationalized, and is now the no. 1 story in international news. If anyone still thinks that their is no international mediation going on in this issue now, then I am afraid they are living in their own world. Infact, the comments of international sources are all over the Indian media.

The BJP is taking India down the drain, in more ways than Indians realize. Indian foreign ministry has (had) done one hell of a job in spinning Kashmir. One has to give them credit for that. Kashmir is an open-shut case in terms of human rights, legalities, UN resolutions etc. India is obviously suppressing and killing the Kashmiris, not Pakistan. Kashmiris want to be with Pakistan, and not with India. Yet India has (had) been able to portray it as a joint Indo-Pak problem, to the point of painting it as a terrorist struggle.

However, the recent sequence of events, initiated by the BJP, are begining to have an after-effect which is only going to weaken India`s stance:

- The BJP piles up its forces on the border to win an election in UP (my guess). It loses the election.

- The BJP is humiliated in India and in the rest of the world for organizing a massacre of its own Muslim population in Ahmadabad. Even Indians who tolerated the Ayodhya riots, start criticizing the BJP.

- The BJP raises the ante on attacking Pakistan, and making it blink, thereby uniting the Indian population behind it, and making it forget the Gujrat massacre. This works like a charm, and all of a sudden, attacking Pakistan becomes much more important than Gujrat in Indian minds.

- But Pakistan does not blink, and piles up its own forces on the border, and even launches a few nuclear- capabable missile tests. Now the BJP is stuck again. It has all of India united in a war mode, and is issuing one threatening statement after another against Pakistan, yet it is not attacking (because it know that could result in a nuclear war). In addition to this, the freedom struggle in Kashmir keeps going strong, as do the cross border infiltrations.

- The BJP comes up with a second proposal and threatens Pakistan with dire consequences, if Pakistan does not return 20 (mostly Sikh and Indian Muslim separatists) individuals on a list to India. Pakistan does not recognize the list, asks for proof, and issues its own list with the name of Advani on it, and asks for him. The BJP threatens Pakistan some more, yet does not attack. At this point, the Indian public is also starting to question the BJP train of thought.

- The BJP starts heavy shelling of Pakistan`s Kashmir (and Sialkot) areas. Pakistan counterattacks with shelling of Indian areas. Yet the BJP still does not attack, while simultaneously continuing its abuse of Pakistan. This abuse, by now, is almost six months old.

- The BJP, by this time, is completely stuck. It is in a damned if you do, damned if you don`t scenario. It cannot attack due to a nuclear war threat, and it cannot retreat because it will lose face and popularity in India. So the BJP looks for an out. It tries to get the international community to put pressure on Pakistan to give it an out. Pakistan refuses to give the BJP a face-saving out, and says the BJP will have to pull its troops back on its own.

- The BJP now threatens all out war. The Kashmir issue, by this time, is compeletely internationalized, and everyone in the world is talking about it. By doing this, the BJP has undone the decades of spin work the Indian foreign ministry had very successfully done on Kashmir. This spin work was highly beneficial to India, and had kept Kashmir under the covers. No one knew about Kashmir, until the BJP initiated its troops build-up. Now the whole world knows.

- The rest of the world finally jumps in, and starts putting pressure on Musharraf to completely stop cross-border infiltrations. While Pakistan can stand up to India, it cannot stand up to the rest of the world, so it clamps down hard on cross-border infiltration.

- However, the world needs to be in the good books of Pakistan, at the moment also (and it wants to end this Kashmir issue once and for all, to avoid future nuclear war scenarios), so it puts a great deal of pressure on India to talk and resolve this issue, as well. Now the BJP is furthur stuck. It has to discuss Kashmir and maybe even solve it.

- Pakistan still refuses to give India a face-saving out, while simultaneously bowing to international pressure, while standing up to Indian pressure.

So, due to the BJP antics, India now is being forced to discuss Kashmir with Pakistan (which it didn`t have to do before). The whole world is aware of the Kashmir issue (which was unknown to anyone before). India has been forced to accept the fact that Pakistan (finally) has an effective deterence against India (which it did not have in the non-nuclear days). India will, at some stage have to withdraw its forces, without having been able to make Pakistan accept any of its threats or complains (this will be the first time that India has piled up offensive forces on Punjab and Sind and not attacked).

The cat is now out of the bag. India has accepted third-party mediation (what the hell else would one call Armitage, Powell, Straw, Putin, Karzai, Khatami etc.). The BJP, through its ridiculous war rhetoric, has done what no Pakistani leadership has been able to do for decades; it has completely internationalized the well kept Indian secret of Kashmir. India will now have to talk to Pakistan on Kashmir. And (hopefully) the whole world will continue to keep this problem on its screen. This should lead to human rights organzitions and the international media getting some access to Kashmir. Which should lead to the Kashmiri voices being heard. And we all know what the Kashmiri voices are saying.....

I have a piece of advice for Pakistanis: They need to sit back and just solve their own problems for the next ten years. During these ten years, the BJP will do (and has already done) what no Pakistani has ever been able to (and may never be able to) do to India. As follows:

1) The BJP has split the well-maintained (by third world standards) social fabric of India, to the point, where Hindus are chasing after Muslims with swords.

2) It has turned a secular country, with well-protected minorities (by third world standards) into a religiously fanatic country.

3) It has forced (is about to force) a much larger India, for the first time in its history, to back off unconditionally from Pakistan in a military conflict.

4) It has internationalized the Kashmiri issue by itself; something Pakistan had been unsuccesfully trying to do for ages.

I would encourage all Indians to continue to vote for the BJP. I would encourage all Pakistanis to say a few extra prayers for the BJP remaining in power in India. As long as the BJP is in power in India, or is the main opposition party (which will make it even more dangerous), India is doomed. India will self-destruct under the BJP`s misguided Hinduvta baggage. I am becoming more and more sure of it, as time passes. The BJP thinks even more illogically than us illogical and ignorant Pakistanis.

Now, if the BJP is voted out of power, and voted out completely (even as an opposition party), then I will have to state that Indians have progressed far beyond Pakistanis. And that Pakistanis are doomed.....



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Reply Drumz # 372

Q: How to you get twenty drunk Canadians out of a swimming pool?

A: You say, “excuse me, could you please get out of the swimming pool?”

May God bless Pakistan to drop Nukes on Bihar. Too many Bihari subhumans with tricky attitudes live there who have kept India backwards and where each Bihari eats thirtyfour chappatis three times a day and defeacates the soil all around him in the open. This will be global cleanliness.

Sorry folks, somehow the website link did not upload. Here is it again.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/justincol.html

veeresh #374

``sunrise ?``

Sounds like good news ... hope it stays that way ... and anything that got you out of the ``whatever`` mode has GOT to be good right ? Nice to see you sounding up too!

Dr. pervaiz,

Excerpt frome

For what do we fight? By Ardeshir Cowasjee

Nuclear physicist, Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy (hoodbhoy@Ins.mit.edu), has prepared a 35-minute video documentary film which takes a critical look at what the bomb has done for the two countries. He has suggested to our moribund PTV that it show this film so that the people know what is what when it comes to their precious nuclear arsenal, but typically PTV has refused. Obviously, its useless mandarins are too afraid. Should anyone, prior to their impending possible vaporization, wish to see this video they may obtain a copy from Pervez.

hey if ptv dosent show it and u still want every one in pakistan to see it ,, then its pertty easy distribute it among the private cable operators.

they show anything these days ,,

Hey all! How`s everyone out there?

Kudos to Dr. Hoodbhoy and Dr. Rahul Mahajan for their first radio appearance on WBAI yesterday morning. I was pleasantly surprised to hear two writers and scientists whom I respect on my local radio progressive radio discussing the Indo-Pak crisis from an alternative and visionary viewpoint. Heres to hoping that these two gentlemen will make appearances on The Asia Pacific Forum on WBAI, 99.5, FM, Wednesdays 9-10. Get it streamlined off the web if you cant tune in on the radio...

Re: Romair

``...If Pakistan and the Kashmiris are committing terrrorism, then let the world see everything in Kashmir...``

I refer you to an opinion poll by a UK-based market research firm that conducted a survey in J&K in April 2002. Key result:

``A very clear majority of the population – 65% - believes the presence of foreign militants in Jammu and Kashmir is damaging to the Kashmir cause, and most of the rest take the view that it is neither damaging nor helpful``

``Overall, two thirds of people in Jammu and Kashmir take the view that Pakistan’s involvement in the region for the last ten years has been bad. Only 15% believe it has been good for the region, while 18% say it has made no real difference. ``

http://www.mori.com/polls/2002/kashmir.shtml

The existence of this poll alone indicates that foreign agencies have access to Kashmir.

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DRUMZ #362 On the pickup lines ``U wanna get stoned like an israeli soldier who fell outta his tank``? ``Is that an uprising in your shirt are are u just happy to see me?``

Ha! Ha! No way can I improve on these.

I think the best way for India to justify its stance on, ``cross-border terrrorism`` is to open up Kashmir to international human rights organizations, and let them see who is carrying out terrorism in Kashmir. Once such organizations are able to talk to the Kashmiris, make videos, and gives impartial information on Kashmir, everyone will know first-hand exactly what is going on.

Unfortunately, India does not allow this. I don`t know why (actually, I do know why). How can India keep calling the struggle in Kashmir terrorism, when it is itself afraid to allow anyone access to document this terrorism? It is decisions like this which never allow the Kashmir situation to reach any kind of a logical end. Things don`t balance out, and we keep going around in circles.

If Pakistan and the Kashmiris are committing terrrorism, then let the world see everything in Kashmir. After that, no self-respecting Pakistani will be able to deny India`s stance that the Kashmiris are victims of Pakistani oppression and not Indian oppression.

If however, it is India which is carrying out the terrorism, then one can understand why India is scared to open up Kashmir to the world press. In such a case, India should stop trying to portray Kashmir as a cross-border terrorism problem.

After reading all the Indian statements, and newspapers, one would think the following:

the Indian Kashmiris are being protected by the hundreds of thousands of Indian troops from Pakistani terrorists.

If Indians think the above to be true, then they should immediately call for a plebescite in Kashmir, and get the Kashmiris to vote in India`s favor (which is what they would do if all of India`s cross-border terrorism stuff is accurate).

If the Indians consider the above to be false, and actually feel that the Kashmiris are being suppressed by the Indian military, and actually support the help they get from Pakistan, then the Indians should have enough courage to say this out in the open and criticize their own govt. for screwing up South Asia.

If the Indians are willing to do neither, then I am afraid they are too cowardly to find any solution to South Asian problems.

The more I think about the situation in Kashmir, the more I am begining to accept the fact that it will never be solved. And due to this, there may never be good relations between India and Pakistan.

For this conflict to be solved, a solution has to be presented which is acceptable to all three parties: Kashmiris, Pakistanis and Indians. Does such a solution exist? I cannot think of any:

1) Pakistan gets all of Kashmir: (acceptable to Pakistanis; acceptable to Kashmiris; not acceptable to Indians)

2) India gets all of Kashmir: (acceptable to Indians; not acceptable to Pakistanis; not acceptable to Kashmiris)

3) Accept LOC as border (acceptable to Indians; not acceptable to Pakistanis; not acceptable to Kashmiris)

4) All of Kashmir becomes independent (acceptable to Indian Kashmiris; not acceptable to Pakistan; not acceptable to India; probably not acceptable to Pakistani Kashmiris either)

5) Pakistan keeps Azad Kashmir/India keeps Jammu-Ladakh/Kashmir Valley becomes independent (acceptable to Pakistan; acceptable to Kashmiris; acceptable to Jammu/Ladakh guys; not acceptable to India)

6) The human rights/legal/moral/internationally recognized solution of allowing plebescite in Kashmir, and letting the Kashmiris decide what they want to do (acceptable to Pakistanis; acceptable to Kashmiris; not acceptable to Indians because it will result in 1 or 5).

So, when Vajpayee says he will, ``talk`` to Pakistan, after all cross-LOC infiltration (or cross-border terrorism as he refers to it) is stopped, I fail to understand exactly what he is going to, ``talk`` about.

The reason is that, being an intelligent fellow, Vajpayee realizes that Kashmiris hate India with a passion. They hate India even more than Pakistanis hate India, because a much much higher proportion of the Kashmiri population has been killed by Indians than the proportion of Pakistanis that have been killed by India (in different wars). Given even a flicker of hope of self-determination, the Kashmiris will separate from India in a flash, like a bird flying away immediately when a cage door is opened. There are probably more Pakistani Punjabis who want a cultural union with Indian Punjab, then Indian Kashmiris who want to remain united with India. The Kashmiris in the valley would even break Musharraf`s voting percentage record that he earned in the referendum, in a plebescite.

This would mean that India will never change its, ``atut-ang`` stance, knowing fully well that Kashmir will separate in a hearbeat, if a political solution is sought. If it doesn`t change this stance, then we are back to square one. ``Jithay di khoti, uthay aan khlotay,`` as they say in the Harvard School of Diplomacy. The whole reason the Kashmiris are fighting is because they do not consider themselves an, ``atut-ang`` of India, regardless of how much India claims them to be an, ``ang.``

So when India again tells them that they are an, ``ang,`` and that too, of the, ``atut`` variety, what is going to stop the Kashmiris from starting a militant military struggle, again. And once that starts, what is going to stop volunteer Pakistanis from assisting them (an overwhelming majority of these guys actually don`t go into Indian Kashmir to kill innocent civilians; they go into to kill the occupying military, with the help of the innocent civilians; if they just wanted to kill innocent Kashmiris, they could do it much more easily by killing Kashmiris on the Pakistan side). And if 700,000 Indian soldiers have been unable to suppress the freedom struggle and to stop these infiltrators, then how in the world is Pakistan going to stop them, even if it wanted to. And why would it want to, if it sees that India is not budging one inch from, ``a-a?`` And even the cross-border stuff was stopped, the indigenous struggle would continue.

Then India would pile up its offensive forces again, and Pakistan would do the same with its defensive forces, and we would again be where we are today. And this would happen again and again and again.

Is Vajpayee willing to give up on, ``atut-ang`` when he decides to, ``talk`` to Pakistan and to the Kashmiri reps?

If not, then I suggest Pakistan and India keep their forces on the border, rather than withdrawing them and then again having to go thru the trouble of deploying them again.......

Cover story

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C7-2002013426%2C00.html

The Times, UK

A state of war

BY TREVOR FISHLOCK

The dispute over Kashmir has brought India and Pakistan to the brink of nuclear war. But why has this beautiful state become the subcontinent`s powder keg?

Poets hymned it as a land of love and languor. In 1627 the dying emperor Jahangir, who shaped its blissful gardens, was asked to name his last desire. “Only Kashmir,” he murmured. “Only Kashmir.”

India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, promised melodramatically that its name was written upon his heart. Today, millions make the same emotive claim.

Passions for Kashmir run hot and bitter, the bayonets almost touch and the urge for war is strong. Two rivals, two ideas, two faiths stand nose to nose in one of the world’s most dangerous places. One mistake or misjudgment and the spark falls on the fuse.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir. The great bulk of their armies are based along the frontier that runs through Punjab and Kashmir. The border is always tense.

In Kashmir there has been an almost permanent grumbling small war of artillery bombardment. Apart from the all-out conflicts, India and Pakistan have two or three times pulled back from the brink, and now the assessments of their military power have to include their nuclear capability. There was a particularly dangerous stand-off in 1990.

It was inevitable that the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13 would bring India and Pakistan once more to the edge of the abyss. It was an echo of the October suicide bomb attack on the Kashmir assembly. The Parliament in Delhi is the heart and emblem of what India stands for. Now India is raging.

Poor Kashmir. It lies in the Himalayan ramparts where the borders of India, Pakistan and China rub together. Reality mocks its beauty. There is no escaping the permeating melancholy of a land that lies under the gun. It is as if malevolent gods, jealous of its loveliness, placed a curse upon it.

The poison entered the garden in 1947 when the war-weary British quit their Indian empire and partitioned it. They had no wish to cut it up: one of their imperial achievements, they said, was to have united India and made it secure. They divided it to meet the demands of Muslim leaders who said that Hindus and Muslims could not live together in one country, that the communities formed two separate nations. Pakistan was therefore created as a homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims.

Britain ruled India with the co-operation of more than 500 Indian princes, a galaxy of maharajahs, rajahs, ranas, raos, khans, mirs, jams, nizams and nawabs, loyal to the British crown, well-oiled with flattery, some fantastically rich and a few of them barmy. In the summer of 1947, these rulers had to choose whether to take their states into India or Pakistan. It was a personal decision, without referendum.

Public opinion hardly came into it. Most princes joined India. Most knew that they would be extinguishing themselves as a ruling class, but it was clear to all but a few that the game was up. On the eve of independence, all the princes had made up their minds except four.

The Maharajah of Kashmir, Sir Hari Singh, was one of the ditherers. He was vain, pompous and addicted to hunting bears and shooting ducks. As a young man he had an unfortunate scrape in London, being found in bed with a woman at the Savoy Hotel and milked for a lot of money by a blackmailer pretending to be the woman’s husband.

At Partition, Kashmir, more fully known as Jammu and Kashmir, was in a key position: a prize because it was a large state and famously beautiful, a honeymooners’ resort of lakes and cool alpine meadows.

Given its place on the map, it could have swung either to India or to Pakistan. Because of its overwhelming Muslim majority, Pakistan’s new leaders expected that it would join their Islamic entity. But the maharajah had to decide — and he was a Hindu. This was not unusual. In princely India, Muslims often ruled Hindus and vice versa. But Hari Singh dithered. He could not believe that the British would really go home. He did not want to join Pakistan because he could not bear the thought of his state being subsumed. He dreamt that Kashmir could somehow be an independent country and he could keep his power.

India and Pakistan became independent in August. Hari Singh was still dithering in October. As he fiddled, the storm broke. Thousands of Pathan warriors from the North-West Frontier, bordering Afghanistan, rushed into Kashmir, vowing to seize it for Pakistan. Although they were a rabble, they might have succeeded. They were close to Srinagar, the capital, when they were delayed by their lust for loot and women. While they pillaged towns and raped girls and nuns, the hapless Hari Singh gathered up his diamonds and Purdey shotguns and fled his palace in a motorcade.

India acted fast and decisively. In a flurry of action the maharajah agreed to join India, and Indian forces flew to save Srinagar. This was the first Kashmir war, not an all-out confrontation but a series of fights and communal conflicts. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of Pakistan, wanted to send the new Pakistan regular Army into action, but did not do so when the absurdity of the situation was pointed out to him: the forces of India and Pakistan shared a commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, while many officers on both sides were British.

Kashmir was left divided along the line where fighting stopped in 1948. A United Nations ceasefire came into force on January 1, 1949. In 1965 Pakistan tried and failed to annexe Kashmir and was defeated in brief and bitter fighting. At one stage Indian forces were almost at the gates of Lahore and could easily have taken it. Pakistan’s leaders believed that Kashmiris would welcome Pakistani troops as liberators. It was a shock that they did not. In 1971 India and Pakistan went to war again, India assisting the secession of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. Pakistan was left truncated and humiliated.

Yet the story of a vacillating maharajah and the ensuing bloody quarrel over territory is only the half of it.

Kashmir is a tragedy for its divided people and a continuing source of danger in a subcontinent inhabited by a fifth of the world’s population. The tragedy has deep roots. Kashmir is the offspring of bitterly divorced parents. Pakistan aches for it but will never possess it. India will never let it go: it is not negotiable. The trouble is that both sides define themselves by this feud.

Their mutual suspicions date from the 8th-century Muslim conquest of western India and the many hundreds of years of Mogul rule that were brought to an end by the British Raj. For India’s Hindu majority, independence in 1947 was a reclamation of their vast land, the end of centuries of foreign domination. Nehru and others believed passionately that this new India would be a daring concept, an embracing of all its religious, linguistic and regional diversity, a magnificent secular state.

The steely and intractable Jinnah did not believe it. His new country of Pakistan grew out of that scepticism, the belief that Muslims in India would be vulnerable, second-class citizens.

Pakistan was an invented state, a by-product of the great Indian struggle for independence. It evolved in the last few years of British rule among people who wanted to escape religious and political discrimination in the new order. Landowners especially thought they would lose out in India. Democracy barely made the journey to Pakistan.

In a sense Pakistan remains stranded in 1947. Its great debate has centred for half a century on what it is for and what it should be. Jinnah mused that it could be a secular country. But in that case, what was the point of Partition? Some of his successors said that Pakistan was nothing if not Islamic and determined to make it more so, a military theocracy.

Yet Islam proved an unreliable glue. It did not cement Pakistan and East Pakistan. Bangladesh erupted as the assertion of Bengali language and culture. Nor did it cement the disparate parts of Pakistan itself — Punjab, Baluchistan, Sindh and the North- West Frontier — or, indeed, the many shades of Islamic belief. Thus Kashmir is useful, the “unfinished business of Partition”. However much Pakistanis disagree about the nature of their society, they find common cause in Kashmir, the belief that they were robbed in 1947. This is the unifying insult. It is why Pakistan has supported Kashmiri insurgents. India’s treatment of Kashmiris during the long years of internal strife are held as proof that Jinnah was right, that Muslims needed their homeland.

It is true that India could have managed Kashmir more wisely, less roughly. But Pakistan has to live with the fact that there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. India has the second largest Muslim population in the world: evidently Hindus and Muslims do live together in a secular society, Nehru’s idea of India, even if it is not always easy. And Kashmir, the only Indian state with a Muslim majority, is in Indian minds the shining fact of secular India. Its existence throws the question to Pakistan again: what was Partition for? India has a powerful idea of its identity. It is the giant of South Asia, its Armed Forces are huge and it is proud of its democracy, even if this is somewhat battered. Pakistan, on the other hand, does not enjoy such a positive identity. It thinks of itself in terms of its neighbour and endures the negative of being Not India.

It means that even if the impossible were to happen, that Kashmir should somehow become part of Pakistan, the anxieties and insecurities of Pakistan would endure. There would have to be another issue by which Pakistan could seek to establish its identity and purpose.

In the meantime the two nations face each other again — and judging from what we see and hear, there are many on both sides desperate to fight. Centuries of prejudice are poured into the funnel of Kashmir.

People on both sides treasure the slights of history. There is an endless misunderstanding of each other’s beliefs and opinions. Estrangement is total. Trivial matters become huge. Hindu nationalists complain that Muslims cheer for Pakistan during Test matches. In both India and Pakistan, keen teams of monitors comb through guide books and encyclopaedias searching for maps that might contain instances of “cartographic aggression” — inaccuracies that seem to favour one side or the other.

Words are traps, and there is a sense that a comma could cause a crisis. But the opinions of outsiders are not welcome. For this is a feud between cousins, a quarrel in the family. It could hardly be more acrid and perilous.

TRUTH FROM HOMELAND,

The following is from dawn of today. Key sentace is in the second para, ...``..dare to differ from the public sentiment...``. There are a few bafoons on chowk who say that for the ordinary pakistanis, it is roti kapda...blah. No sir, kashmir is first because it is a religious call...way to heaven...to become a shaheen...

Pakistan first

My letter is in reference to Ardeshir Cowasjee`s article of May 26, titled ``Going Nowhere``.

I strongly agree with the writer and dare to differ with general public sentiment when he says that the Kashmir issue should be put on the backburner for a while. The reason is simple: Pakistan does not possess the military, economic or diplomatic clout to make any difference at this point in time.

The Western world has been deliberately blind towards this issue for decades now and our hackneyed propaganda or rhetoric has fallen on deaf ears.

I agree in principle with those who advocate jihad or moral support for Kashmiris but I believe that Pakistan and Pakistanis come first, and nothing is worth compromising the good of this nation. I would rather let go of Kashmir then have millions of Pakistanis nuked by an irrational and aggressive nation like India that does not care about its citizens either.

Let the issue of Kashmir rest for a while. The abject poverty and difficult existence of the people of Pakistan, and our national security issues, deserve higher priority.

SITARA AKRAM

Lahore

STRATEGIC DEPTH - INVERSION,

Pakistan militarily justified the creation of taliban on the doctrine of strategic depth. They believed that 90,000 paks became POWs simply because they had no where to go other than the shark infested bay of bengal. A similar situation in the west, the difference would have been only arabian sea, whcih incidentally after all is arabian, and hence may be even preferable. But in any case, the pak military believed that they can escape to afghanistan with taliban in power, may to fight another battle.

How quickly events have changed. Now there is an inversion of strategic depth, it is the afghans who are in pakistan, escaping from the daisy cutters, to the depths of pakistan, in the hope of fighting another day.

This is whrere the anti terror coalition have gone wrong, they should have taken the indian help and sent the strategic depth allies to the times of the book.