The Significant Unit of War A setback for Pakistan`s position on Kashmir. It will extremely difficult for Pakistan to sponsor more terrorism in Indian Kashmir.

--

Hard-line Islamic political party in Kashmir breaks links with Pakistan, militants in political shock

Sun Jun 30, 1:41 PM ET

By MUJTABA ALI AHMAD, Associated Press Writer

SRINAGAR, India - The most influential and hardline Islamic political party in Indian-controlled Kashmir ( news - web sites) announced on Sunday it had severed ties with Muslim militants and Pakistan, into which it has long proposed a merger of the Himalayan region.



Analysts described the announcement as one of the most significant political developments in years in Kashmir — the cause of five decades of tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan and two wars. It was also a major win for New Delhi.

The reason behind the dramatic turnaround by the Jama`at-e-Islami party was not immediately apparent.

``I want to make it clear that we have no connection with the militants or militancy, particularly with the Hezb-ul-Mujahedeen,`` Jama`at`s president, Ghulam Mohammad Bhat, told The Associated Press.

The Hezb-ul Mujahedeen is the biggest of the dozen militant groups which have been fighting India`s military since 1989 to separate Kashmir, or merge it with Pakistan, which also controls part of Kashmir.

An Indian intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Sunday that Jama`at has had close links in the past with the Hezb-ul Mujahedeen, and was suspected of being the militant group`s political face. Many Jama`at members have been arrested or detained over the decade on the suspicion that they were working secretly for the Hezb, the official said.

Jama`at also expressed differences with the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a group of 24 Muslim religious and political groups in Kashmir to which it belongs. The Conference, which opposes Indian control of the region, has boycotted the last elections in the Indian state of Jammu-Kashmir and called for voters to resist going to the polls.

Indian officials have for months asked Kashmiri separatist parties to take part in the elections planned for September or October if they want to prove that they are the true representatives of Kashmiris.

Hurriyat has said it will boycott the upcoming elections, and its leader was not available to comment on Bhat`s announcement.

Bhat said that ``right now`` Jama`at has ``no plans of participating in the polls, but anything can happen in the future.``

He added that his party would not call for a boycott of the elections, which he said would be ``unlawful.``

For five decades, Jama`at has struggled politically for a merger of Jammu-Kashmir, India`s only Muslim-majority state, into Islamic Pakistan.

The Jama`at is the only one of the hard-line Islamic parties in Jammu-Kashmir that has an organized, disciplined, region-wide network and thousands of members spread across the Kashmir Valley.

Its announcement Sunday appeared to reverse all that the party has stood for, for five decades.

One of the group`s longtime senior leaders, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, has publicly described himself as a ``proud Pakistani.``

However, on Sunday in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu-Kashmir state, Bhat seemed to dismiss the party`s links with Pakistan.

``There is no mention of Kashmir`s accession to Pakistan in our party constitution. We didn`t ever even pass a resolution demanding accession since we have been working here,`` he told reporters.

The ramifications of Bhat`s announcement were unclear. Geelani is in a prison in the eastern Indian city of Ranchi, charged under a tough anti-terrorism law.

In the past, groups or leaders in Kashmir have made announcements, only to reverse them later, sometime the next day. At other times, new factions have formed, or other leaders have said the announcement did not reflect the view of the whole organization.

If Jama`at holds to Bhat`s announcement, it would be a blow to militant groups in the Kashmir Valley, and raise the possibility of the participation by some separatists in the state elections — a huge public relations victory for India.

India accuses Pakistan of sponsoring the 12-year insurgency, which has left more than 60,000 people dead. Islamabad denies the allegation.

Referring to Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf`s regime, Bhat said: ``There is no dictatorship (allowed) in Islam. The people of Pakistan are trying to install a democratic government in the country.``

Musharraf recently proposed changing Pakistan`s constitution to grant himself sweeping additional powers.

Indian political scientist Haseeb Ahmad described the news as ``the biggest gain for the government of India since the onset of the militancy.``

``This is a clear indication that the Jama`at wants to reaccept ... the basic framework of the Indian democratic setup in Kashmir,`` he told The Associated Press. ``This has shaken the edifice on which the secessionist movement rests and is bound to cause more than ripples in the political scenario of Kashmir.``

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020630/ap_wo_en_po/kashmir_political_surprise_2

Shadowlines (Part I) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/06/28/notes062802.DTL

America has become the most multireligious country. India has always been multireligious. Sikhs, Hindus, Jains, Christians, Jews, Bahais, Parsis, Ahmedis, Syrian Catholics, Bohras you name it. The USP of India is it`s secular democracy. India should preserve it`s secular nature.

Nation, Under Vishnu

In the most religiously diverse country in the world, why should God get the only plug?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Friday, June 28, 2002



To hell with the separation of church and state. Forget the Pledge of Allegiance and ``under God`` and all this bipartisan puling about prayer in schools. Maybe we`ve had it wrong all along.

Let`s try this instead: Maybe there should be no such separation at the school level. Maybe God and Vishnu and Kali and Astarte and Dionysus and Allah and Zarathushtra and Lao-Tzu have not only a vital place in the educational system, but also a fervent need to be heard and felt and imbibed, just like cafeteria Coke and meatloaf and badly written textbooks and nonexistent sex-ed and the capitals of all 50 states.

Maybe barring religious practice from our national places of learning is just about as ignorant and small-minded and spiritually degenerative as, say, bombing another country over oil or land or power or ego. Let`s just say.

Ah, but maybe you agree with Dubya that America is Christian country and its ``rights were derived from God.`` Maybe you think the current, adorably hypocritical separation of church and state, with its sanctimonious mentions of a patriarchal Christian God everywhere, is the righteous path, the common wisdom, the properly loving sentiment expressed by many a fervent patriot as we drop our bombs and thump our Bibles and let God sort `em out.

You would be wrong.

Because America is also the most religiously diverse country in the world. America is teeming with saris and yarmulkes and monk`s robes and funky prayer beads and glorious ornate temples of every shape and size. There are more Muslims in the U.S. now, for example, than there are Jews or Episcopalians. America, spiritually speaking, is not what most people think it is.

A quick look inside any apartment building in any major city outside of, say, Vermont or maybe Montana reveals a veritable kaleidoscope of faith and divinity: Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Jew, Atheist, Wiccan, Pagan, Sikh, Atheist and Buddhist, living side by side and borrowing cups of sugar or sticks of Nag Champa from each other, stealing each other`s newspaper and bootlegging each other`s cable TV. It`s a beautiful thing, really.

But nowhere is religious funk and spiritual diversity more prevalent and visible than in the classroom, which since the mid-`60s has seen an explosion of immigrant cultures and beliefs, a dazzling and unprecedented intermixing of faiths and backgrounds and languages and deities and kids with names that give your tongue a workout.

And hence it would seem to require negligible rationale or subtlety of mind to see that ``under God`` is really rather inane and exclusionary and insulting to a vast and increasing chunk of the soon-to-be-voting populace.

Alas, Conservatives still believe little Johnny should be kneeling in school and praising Jesus (and no one else) for the glory that is his math quiz every day, whereas Liberals believe he should keep that sort of thing in the church or risk warping his little mind.

Meanwhile little Daniel and Sunjat and Tenzin and Amir and Uma Das Gupta and Moonstarr and Ling Tso sit idly by, rolling their eyes and sighing sadly and wondering why there`s so much intolerance and misunderstanding in the Land of the Free.

So maybe there should be prayer in schools. A lot of prayer. Say a half hour a day, every religion allowed its rituals and practices, quirks and screams and chants and head-bobbings and blood sacrifices to the great Lord Zorkon.

Immediately followed by a class on religious appreciation and diversity, with each kid talking about his/her beliefs and traditions and occasionally uptight dogmas and beautiful similarities and why the hell they have to wear that funny thing on their head and can`t eat bananas on Tuesdays.

Maybe every major religion gets one week during the school year where the kid and the kid`s family and their rabbi or priest or guru or teacher come in and share stories and teach everyone their traditions, and everyone eats that culture`s food and recites that faith`s prayers and everyone learns to tie a turban and decorate a robe and dances and laughs and learns.

It`s what famed author and Harvard professor Diana Eck, in her book ``New Religious America: How a `Christian Country` Has Become the World`s Most Religiously Diverse Nation,`` termed ``religious pluralism`` -- more than mere tolerance and acceptance of other`s religious beliefs, an active and dynamic engagement in the public sphere, classrooms and workplaces and fetish dungeons, an ongoing dialogue, a spiritual exchange.

It`s messy and complicated and imperfect; we are trained to be suspicious, we resist change, we fear the unknown and erect walls and barriers of all kinds to keep foreigners and strange people out. Anxiety is our cultural modus operandi, and many spiritually uptight believers -- Christians in particular -- are loath to allow their kids to be ``tainted`` by exposure to other beliefs.

But this is the only way it will ever work. People of all religions must intermix and communicate and share ideas and find common ground, and there is no one better to take us there than children, as yet untainted by their parent`s prejudices, their government`s ideologies.

Lack of such integration and communication means cultural stasis, social breakdown, prejudice, ignorance, hatred, violence, zealotry, terrorism, war, increased and inexplicable proliferation of the Bush clan. Not necessarily in that order.

It means situations like the Middle East, full of checkpoints and barriers and razor wire and children being trained in hate, without ever learning the viewpoint of the other side.

It means we continue like we are right now, segregating ourselves and living in relative ignorance of who lives down the hall, looking over our shoulder suspiciously at the guy in the silk gown or the woman in the head wrap, wondering what crazy thing they`re always chanting about.

So yes. Dump the inane ``under God`` provision of the Pledge. And maybe replace it with ``One nation, under whatever noble and/or beautiful belief system you want, or maybe nothing at all, or maybe a little of this and that, just don`t be a freak about it, because this is America and we`re nothing if not about religious freedom, even though that may be difficult to believe right now, but just bear with us, indivisible....``

Sure it`s a little verbose. But it sure beats the religious status quo.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/06/28/notes062802.DTL

Shadowlines (Part I) A setback for Pakistan`s position on Kashmir. It will extremely difficult for Pakistan to sponsor more terrorism in Indian Kashmir.

--

Hard-line Islamic political party in Kashmir breaks links with Pakistan, militants in political shock

Sun Jun 30, 1:41 PM ET

By MUJTABA ALI AHMAD, Associated Press Writer

SRINAGAR, India - The most influential and hardline Islamic political party in Indian-controlled Kashmir ( news - web sites) announced on Sunday it had severed ties with Muslim militants and Pakistan, into which it has long proposed a merger of the Himalayan region.



Analysts described the announcement as one of the most significant political developments in years in Kashmir — the cause of five decades of tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan and two wars. It was also a major win for New Delhi.

The reason behind the dramatic turnaround by the Jama`at-e-Islami party was not immediately apparent.

``I want to make it clear that we have no connection with the militants or militancy, particularly with the Hezb-ul-Mujahedeen,`` Jama`at`s president, Ghulam Mohammad Bhat, told The Associated Press.

The Hezb-ul Mujahedeen is the biggest of the dozen militant groups which have been fighting India`s military since 1989 to separate Kashmir, or merge it with Pakistan, which also controls part of Kashmir.

An Indian intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Sunday that Jama`at has had close links in the past with the Hezb-ul Mujahedeen, and was suspected of being the militant group`s political face. Many Jama`at members have been arrested or detained over the decade on the suspicion that they were working secretly for the Hezb, the official said.

Jama`at also expressed differences with the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a group of 24 Muslim religious and political groups in Kashmir to which it belongs. The Conference, which opposes Indian control of the region, has boycotted the last elections in the Indian state of Jammu-Kashmir and called for voters to resist going to the polls.

Indian officials have for months asked Kashmiri separatist parties to take part in the elections planned for September or October if they want to prove that they are the true representatives of Kashmiris.

Hurriyat has said it will boycott the upcoming elections, and its leader was not available to comment on Bhat`s announcement.

Bhat said that ``right now`` Jama`at has ``no plans of participating in the polls, but anything can happen in the future.``

He added that his party would not call for a boycott of the elections, which he said would be ``unlawful.``

For five decades, Jama`at has struggled politically for a merger of Jammu-Kashmir, India`s only Muslim-majority state, into Islamic Pakistan.

The Jama`at is the only one of the hard-line Islamic parties in Jammu-Kashmir that has an organized, disciplined, region-wide network and thousands of members spread across the Kashmir Valley.

Its announcement Sunday appeared to reverse all that the party has stood for, for five decades.

One of the group`s longtime senior leaders, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, has publicly described himself as a ``proud Pakistani.``

However, on Sunday in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu-Kashmir state, Bhat seemed to dismiss the party`s links with Pakistan.

``There is no mention of Kashmir`s accession to Pakistan in our party constitution. We didn`t ever even pass a resolution demanding accession since we have been working here,`` he told reporters.

The ramifications of Bhat`s announcement were unclear. Geelani is in a prison in the eastern Indian city of Ranchi, charged under a tough anti-terrorism law.

In the past, groups or leaders in Kashmir have made announcements, only to reverse them later, sometime the next day. At other times, new factions have formed, or other leaders have said the announcement did not reflect the view of the whole organization.

If Jama`at holds to Bhat`s announcement, it would be a blow to militant groups in the Kashmir Valley, and raise the possibility of the participation by some separatists in the state elections — a huge public relations victory for India.

India accuses Pakistan of sponsoring the 12-year insurgency, which has left more than 60,000 people dead. Islamabad denies the allegation.

Referring to Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf`s regime, Bhat said: ``There is no dictatorship (allowed) in Islam. The people of Pakistan are trying to install a democratic government in the country.``

Musharraf recently proposed changing Pakistan`s constitution to grant himself sweeping additional powers.

Indian political scientist Haseeb Ahmad described the news as ``the biggest gain for the government of India since the onset of the militancy.``

``This is a clear indication that the Jama`at wants to reaccept ... the basic framework of the Indian democratic setup in Kashmir,`` he told The Associated Press. ``This has shaken the edifice on which the secessionist movement rests and is bound to cause more than ripples in the political scenario of Kashmir.``

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020630/ap_wo_en_po/kashmir_political_surprise_2

Shadowlines (Part I) http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4451027,00.html

Gujarat`s Muslim heritage smashed in riots

Luke Harding in New Delhi

Guardian

Saturday June 29, 2002

Two hundred and thirty unique Islamic monuments, including an exquisite 400-year-old mosque, were destroyed or vandalised during the recent anti-Muslim riots in the Indian state of Gujarat, according to a local survey.

Experts say the damage is so extensive that it rivals the better publicised destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan or the wrecking of Tibet`s monasteries by the Red Guards.

Several monuments have been reduced to rubble in the course of the riot, in which 2,000 people, mainly Muslims, have died. In other disturbances, Hindu gangs have smashed delicate mosque screens, thrown bricks at Persian inscriptions, and set fire to old Korans.

``This has been a systematic attempt to wipe out an entire culture,`` said Teesta Setalvad of Sapara, a body opposed to communal strife, who compiled the list. One of the monuments razed was the tomb of Vali Gujarati, the grandfather of Urdu poetry and inspiration of many later poets and singers, who died in Ahmedabad, the state`s main city, in 1707.

In recent years the tomb lay in the middle of a busy main road. On the night of March 1 Hindu gangs with pickaxes smashed it and replaced it with a small brick temple dedicated to the Hindu monkey-god Hanuman.

Two days later the state authorities flattened the spot completely. ``I drove over him recently when I went to the airport,`` Ms Setalvad said yesterday. ``The government people used machinery to tar over him in a few hours.``

Last weekend the Hindu nationalist state government, which is accused of complicity in the pogroms, stopped a group of intellectuals rebuilding the poet`s grave. They lacked permission, police officers said.

Several of Vali`s fans have pointed out his own verse almost anticipates his ending:

The city of whose songs I

have always sung

Why can I not bear to live in

that city now?

The destruction of his tomb has prompted much soul-searching by secular intellectuals, who have been pondering whether Hindu-Muslim relations can ever recover from the worst religious riots in India for 10 years.

They point out that the attacks follow a pattern established in 1992 when Hindu zealots demolished the 16th-century mosque in Ayodhya.

Right-wing Hindu scholars have argued that India`s Mughal kings knocked down several Hindu temples to build their own imperial mosques and that Hindu gangs who tear down Muslim shrines are merely ``redeeming the past``.

``By destroying the symbols of a community you destroy the community itself,`` said Professor Imtiaz Ahmed, of the Jarwaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. The tragedy, secular historians say, is that Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat have a long tradition of tolerance.

Arab traders first arrived on the west coast of India in the late 7th century and by the early 10th century there were 10,000 Muslims in Gujarati ports.

And like many of India`s Muslim rulers, Ahmedabad`s 15th-century sultan and founder, Ahmad Shah I, married a rajput (Hindu) princess. His mosques and civic buildings incorporated Islamic and rajput elements and he employed Hindus in the highest offices of state.

Gujarati Muslims are, therefore, among India`s longest-established sects, and most of them are descended from converts, not ``foreign invaders``.

Several 16th-century buildings have been pulverised. They include two 400-year-old mosques, one of them apparently bulldozed in the presence of two ministers in the state government.

Kashmir Fatigue A setback for Pakistan`s position on Kashmir. It will extremely difficult for Pakistan to sponsor more terrorism in Indian Kashmir.

--

Hard-line Islamic political party in Kashmir breaks links with Pakistan, militants in political shock

Sun Jun 30, 1:41 PM ET

By MUJTABA ALI AHMAD, Associated Press Writer

SRINAGAR, India - The most influential and hardline Islamic political party in Indian-controlled Kashmir ( news - web sites) announced on Sunday it had severed ties with Muslim militants and Pakistan, into which it has long proposed a merger of the Himalayan region.



Analysts described the announcement as one of the most significant political developments in years in Kashmir — the cause of five decades of tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan and two wars. It was also a major win for New Delhi.

The reason behind the dramatic turnaround by the Jama`at-e-Islami party was not immediately apparent.

``I want to make it clear that we have no connection with the militants or militancy, particularly with the Hezb-ul-Mujahedeen,`` Jama`at`s president, Ghulam Mohammad Bhat, told The Associated Press.

The Hezb-ul Mujahedeen is the biggest of the dozen militant groups which have been fighting India`s military since 1989 to separate Kashmir, or merge it with Pakistan, which also controls part of Kashmir.

An Indian intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Sunday that Jama`at has had close links in the past with the Hezb-ul Mujahedeen, and was suspected of being the militant group`s political face. Many Jama`at members have been arrested or detained over the decade on the suspicion that they were working secretly for the Hezb, the official said.

Jama`at also expressed differences with the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a group of 24 Muslim religious and political groups in Kashmir to which it belongs. The Conference, which opposes Indian control of the region, has boycotted the last elections in the Indian state of Jammu-Kashmir and called for voters to resist going to the polls.

Indian officials have for months asked Kashmiri separatist parties to take part in the elections planned for September or October if they want to prove that they are the true representatives of Kashmiris.

Hurriyat has said it will boycott the upcoming elections, and its leader was not available to comment on Bhat`s announcement.

Bhat said that ``right now`` Jama`at has ``no plans of participating in the polls, but anything can happen in the future.``

He added that his party would not call for a boycott of the elections, which he said would be ``unlawful.``

For five decades, Jama`at has struggled politically for a merger of Jammu-Kashmir, India`s only Muslim-majority state, into Islamic Pakistan.

The Jama`at is the only one of the hard-line Islamic parties in Jammu-Kashmir that has an organized, disciplined, region-wide network and thousands of members spread across the Kashmir Valley.

Its announcement Sunday appeared to reverse all that the party has stood for, for five decades.

One of the group`s longtime senior leaders, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, has publicly described himself as a ``proud Pakistani.``

However, on Sunday in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu-Kashmir state, Bhat seemed to dismiss the party`s links with Pakistan.

``There is no mention of Kashmir`s accession to Pakistan in our party constitution. We didn`t ever even pass a resolution demanding accession since we have been working here,`` he told reporters.

The ramifications of Bhat`s announcement were unclear. Geelani is in a prison in the eastern Indian city of Ranchi, charged under a tough anti-terrorism law.

In the past, groups or leaders in Kashmir have made announcements, only to reverse them later, sometime the next day. At other times, new factions have formed, or other leaders have said the announcement did not reflect the view of the whole organization.

If Jama`at holds to Bhat`s announcement, it would be a blow to militant groups in the Kashmir Valley, and raise the possibility of the participation by some separatists in the state elections — a huge public relations victory for India.

India accuses Pakistan of sponsoring the 12-year insurgency, which has left more than 60,000 people dead. Islamabad denies the allegation.

Referring to Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf`s regime, Bhat said: ``There is no dictatorship (allowed) in Islam. The people of Pakistan are trying to install a democratic government in the country.``

Musharraf recently proposed changing Pakistan`s constitution to grant himself sweeping additional powers.

Indian political scientist Haseeb Ahmad described the news as ``the biggest gain for the government of India since the onset of the militancy.``

``This is a clear indication that the Jama`at wants to reaccept ... the basic framework of the Indian democratic setup in Kashmir,`` he told The Associated Press. ``This has shaken the edifice on which the secessionist movement rests and is bound to cause more than ripples in the political scenario of Kashmir.``

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020630/ap_wo_en_po/kashmir_political_surprise_2

The Perfect Murder A setback for Pakistan`s position on Kashmir. It will extremely difficult for Pakistan to sponsor more terrorism in Indian Kashmir.

--

Hard-line Islamic political party in Kashmir breaks links with Pakistan, militants in political shock

Sun Jun 30, 1:41 PM ET

By MUJTABA ALI AHMAD, Associated Press Writer

SRINAGAR, India - The most influential and hardline Islamic political party in Indian-controlled Kashmir ( news - web sites) announced on Sunday it had severed ties with Muslim militants and Pakistan, into which it has long proposed a merger of the Himalayan region.



Analysts described the announcement as one of the most significant political developments in years in Kashmir — the cause of five decades of tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan and two wars. It was also a major win for New Delhi.

The reason behind the dramatic turnaround by the Jama`at-e-Islami party was not immediately apparent.

``I want to make it clear that we have no connection with the militants or militancy, particularly with the Hezb-ul-Mujahedeen,`` Jama`at`s president, Ghulam Mohammad Bhat, told The Associated Press.

The Hezb-ul Mujahedeen is the biggest of the dozen militant groups which have been fighting India`s military since 1989 to separate Kashmir, or merge it with Pakistan, which also controls part of Kashmir.

An Indian intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Sunday that Jama`at has had close links in the past with the Hezb-ul Mujahedeen, and was suspected of being the militant group`s political face. Many Jama`at members have been arrested or detained over the decade on the suspicion that they were working secretly for the Hezb, the official said.

Jama`at also expressed differences with the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a group of 24 Muslim religious and political groups in Kashmir to which it belongs. The Conference, which opposes Indian control of the region, has boycotted the last elections in the Indian state of Jammu-Kashmir and called for voters to resist going to the polls.

Indian officials have for months asked Kashmiri separatist parties to take part in the elections planned for September or October if they want to prove that they are the true representatives of Kashmiris.

Hurriyat has said it will boycott the upcoming elections, and its leader was not available to comment on Bhat`s announcement.

Bhat said that ``right now`` Jama`at has ``no plans of participating in the polls, but anything can happen in the future.``

He added that his party would not call for a boycott of the elections, which he said would be ``unlawful.``

For five decades, Jama`at has struggled politically for a merger of Jammu-Kashmir, India`s only Muslim-majority state, into Islamic Pakistan.

The Jama`at is the only one of the hard-line Islamic parties in Jammu-Kashmir that has an organized, disciplined, region-wide network and thousands of members spread across the Kashmir Valley.

Its announcement Sunday appeared to reverse all that the party has stood for, for five decades.

One of the group`s longtime senior leaders, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, has publicly described himself as a ``proud Pakistani.``

However, on Sunday in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu-Kashmir state, Bhat seemed to dismiss the party`s links with Pakistan.

``There is no mention of Kashmir`s accession to Pakistan in our party constitution. We didn`t ever even pass a resolution demanding accession since we have been working here,`` he told reporters.

The ramifications of Bhat`s announcement were unclear. Geelani is in a prison in the eastern Indian city of Ranchi, charged under a tough anti-terrorism law.

In the past, groups or leaders in Kashmir have made announcements, only to reverse them later, sometime the next day. At other times, new factions have formed, or other leaders have said the announcement did not reflect the view of the whole organization.

If Jama`at holds to Bhat`s announcement, it would be a blow to militant groups in the Kashmir Valley, and raise the possibility of the participation by some separatists in the state elections — a huge public relations victory for India.

India accuses Pakistan of sponsoring the 12-year insurgency, which has left more than 60,000 people dead. Islamabad denies the allegation.

Referring to Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf`s regime, Bhat said: ``There is no dictatorship (allowed) in Islam. The people of Pakistan are trying to install a democratic government in the country.``

Musharraf recently proposed changing Pakistan`s constitution to grant himself sweeping additional powers.

Indian political scientist Haseeb Ahmad described the news as ``the biggest gain for the government of India since the onset of the militancy.``

``This is a clear indication that the Jama`at wants to reaccept ... the basic framework of the Indian democratic setup in Kashmir,`` he told The Associated Press. ``This has shaken the edifice on which the secessionist movement rests and is bound to cause more than ripples in the political scenario of Kashmir.``

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020630/ap_wo_en_po/kashmir_political_surprise_2

TieCon 2002: Innovating for Success Famine in India

There is famine in Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Bihar, Gujarat. This is a serious matter. The tragedy is that while people starve, the godowns are overflowing. 300 to 400 million Rupees are being spent daily to stock food of which 35% is rotting. What was the reason that the government under pressure of rich countries, decided to let the people starve merely in order to reduce the budget?

Eight hundred tribal children have died of starvation in Maharashtra. Four starving women from Orissa tried to sell her child for 300 Rupees in Calcutta. In the famine stricken regions of Orissa, children are being sold for a few thousand rupees because of starvation. Wives are being sold into bondage

Kashmir Fatigue MORI opinion poll in Kashmir a ploy!

By J. N. Raina

Source: Free Press Journal

June 25, 2002

Why are the Americans and the Britishers coming to the sub-continental region in droves these days? What is their real intention? Have they become trustworthy and are they guileless?Why this UK-based MORI (Market and Opinion Research International ) opinion poll in Jammu and Kashmir? One feels really suspicious because the poll has been conducted by Lord Eric Avebury, a British Human Rights Activist, who is known to have a history of taking a strong stand against India over Kashmir.

These are some of the questions on Indians` lips; for the role played by the United States and Britain vis-a-vis India in the past had been generally intriguing.

The imperialists are still dreaming of an ``age of empire``. British prime minister Tony Blair has given a call for what has come to be known as `` defensive imperialism``. The call was given at Bonn talks, which resulted in the establishment of the interim Hamid Karzai administration in Afghanistan.

The foreign dignitaries have been playing the role of an ``arbiter``, at a time when armies of the two nuclear (neighbouring ) countries, India and Pakistan are ranged against each other on the Line of Control(LoC).

The westerners raised a lot of hullabaloo and pressed the panic button, warning their citizens to escape from ``imminent nuclear war``. What are they aiming at?Is it not a pretext to meddle in the affairs of this region?

Just on the heels of the warning, a misleading report appeared in the daily Telegraph, later reproduced by the Asian Age on June 6 that `` India is getting ready to declare war on Pakistan in the next ten days, in a planned conflict that will not last beyond seven days``.

The U S Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage ( India`s Amrit-Raj, for his pro-India stance at times) while on a peace mission, brought some good tidings from Pakistan. It was not just ice lolly for India, but something more. He brought `` firm assurances`` from Pakistan`s military dictator Gen Pervez Musharraf that he will take `` permanent action`` to check infiltration from across the de facto international border.

Armitage`s high-profile visit to the region apparently saved India and Pakistan from the brink of war. The U S diplomat seemed to have extracted a commitment from Pakistan for peace, before meeting prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. It was on the assurance of Armitage that vajpaye immediately announced removal of restrictions on overflights of Pakistani aircraft, paving way for resumption of air links between the two warring nations. Vajpayee went ahead and took the first step towards military de-escalation by recalling the warships, but Pakistan did not bother to reciprocate. Rather its firm assurances have proved a hoax.

Either Gen Musharraf has no control over jehadis or he is not willing to cooperate. On the contrary, terrorist activities have increased in Jammu and Kashmir, even in Pakistan. The terrorists made a vain bid on the life of Farooq Abdullah. They have now warned to intensify their activities from June 26. The border skirmishes are on and thousands of people on the LoC`s periphery are fleeing.

Facing militancy at home, the U S for the first time has now adopted a realistic approach that India is the victim of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. U S Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has indicated that Al Qaida is operating near LoC . But while in Pakistan, he had to dilute his statement ( not to annoy Pakistan ), saying he did not have any hard evidence `` of who, how many or where``. But British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has categorically said that his country `` accepts there is a clear link between ISI Directorate and terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.

At Almaty and later in Delhi, enough of pressure seems to have been brought upon Vajpayee to agree to the U S suggestion of a joint U S-British military monitoring force for Kashmir, to check infiltration on LoC. The proposal was agreed by Pakistan, but Vajpayee rejected it and stood for joint patrolling of the LoC by India and Pakistan.

The point is why the U S and its allies are repeatedly insisting for patrolling of the LoC by their troops to verify infiltration. Gen Musharraf has welcomed the suggestion , as it will tantamount to third party mediation on Kashmir.

The U S strategy is working on a two-pronged plank. While on the excuse of fighting war against Al Qaida, it is keen that its proposal should be considered to `` expand the ambit of India-U S military co-operation `` to allow its special forces to operate in Jammu and Kashmir. The proposal is understood to have come up for discussion during the visit of Rumsfeld. However, complete secrecy shrouds the entire `deal`. Outwardly, India seems to be rejecting it, but reports claim the two countries have agreed what is known as `` monitoring mechanism`` of the LoC, which will include advance ground sensors that U S has offered.

India has clearly told Rumsfeld that it is willing to take further steps `` down the path of military de-escalation`` but only if Pakistan stucks to its pledge of `` permanently sealing `` the LoC in a `` visible and decisive way``. India is totally averse to involvement of any third country in the verification mechanism. Pakistan has allowed its bases to the U S to fight global war on Al Qaida. But the hardliners in Pakistan are against this decision and they want the international community to believe that there is no infiltration from Pakistan , saying the struggle in Kashmir is indigenous.

Had war broken out, the U S was ready with its `` contingency plan`` and had decided to move its troops during war. Fighting Al Qaida is just an excuse, political observers believe. The Americans want to gain a foothold in strategically located Gilgit in PoK, to counter China.

The bizarre findings of the MORI opinion poll have added a new dimension to the Kashmir issue. Surprisingly, it has revealed that 61 per cent of the respondents have opted to remain as Indian citizens while just six per cent stand for Pakistan. The survey does not show any special enthusiasm for Pakistan, which must have chilled the bone marrow of ISI`s agent provocateurs.

Ipso facto, it need not surprise anyone if the majority of Kashmiris have shown their preference for India. They want better economy. Logically, a question can be asked if 61 per cent of the 850 respondents opt for India, why should India hesitate to hold a plebiscite ? But simultaneously another question arises; who commissioned MORI to conduct the poll? What is the motive behind the entire exercise? But plebiscite is a dead issue. Even the UN says so. Because Jammu and Kashmir had legally and constitutionally merged with India.

Believably, the poll seems to have been conducted to tempt India to jump up with joy and agree for a plebiscite. Perhaps the hidden sponsors of the poll are fooling India. The survey has in fact revealed the real truth. Kashmiris by and large want to remain with India for democratic freedom, unheard of in Pakistan . As a matter of argument, if plebiscite is held, it will be the religious card on which Pakistan will bank upon. It will be the holy Quran which will decide the matter.

A woman journalist perhaps indulges in wishful thinking that Kashmir will become independent. Kashmiris abhor independence. Where are the resources? If independence is granted, Pakistan will grab Kashmir overnight, and Kashmiris will have to rue.

During Armitage`s parleys with the Indian officials, an impression had gathered that the U S wants the LoC to be converted into a permanent border. When the Shimla agreement was hammered out, the assassinated Pakistan premier Z A Bhutto had verbally agreed on these lines, but before he could consolidate his position, he was murdered by the then army rulers. During Armitage`s meeting, a road map for ensuring peace in South Asia is reported to have been drawn up in a way that first Pakistan will stop infiltration and terrorism on a permanent basis and forsake the use of violence. After India gets satisfied, de-escalation measures would begin, and Pakistan and India can be asked to have joint patrolling on the LoC. It could be on permanent basis, possibly leading to the delineation of a permanent border. But jehadis do not agree to it as they are not under Musharraf`s control.

`` They want a political settlement in Kashmir``, says former ISI chief Gen Hamid Gul. One feels tempted to agree with Gul that `` global imperialism has arrived in the sub-continent as it had earlier in the garb of the East India Co...The Taliban and Al Qaida are only an excuse for the Americans to bring NATO into this region``.

If India and Pakistan fail to behave wisely; if they fail to tackle their mutual problems, which are a legacy of the British imperialism, the very independence of the two countries will be in jeopardy.

http://www.samachar.com/features/250602_1-fpj.html

Kashmir Fatigue MORI opinion poll in Kashmir a ploy!

By J. N. Raina

Source: Free Press Journal

June 25, 2002

Why are the Americans and the Britishers coming to the sub-continental region in droves these days? What is their real intention? Have they become trustworthy and are they guileless?Why this UK-based MORI (Market and Opinion Research International ) opinion poll in Jammu and Kashmir? One feels really suspicious because the poll has been conducted by Lord Eric Avebury, a British Human Rights Activist, who is known to have a history of taking a strong stand against India over Kashmir.

These are some of the questions on Indians` lips; for the role played by the United States and Britain vis-a-vis India in the past had been generally intriguing.

The imperialists are still dreaming of an ``age of empire``. British prime minister Tony Blair has given a call for what has come to be known as `` defensive imperialism``. The call was given at Bonn talks, which resulted in the establishment of the interim Hamid Karzai administration in Afghanistan.

The foreign dignitaries have been playing the role of an ``arbiter``, at a time when armies of the two nuclear (neighbouring ) countries, India and Pakistan are ranged against each other on the Line of Control(LoC).

The westerners raised a lot of hullabaloo and pressed the panic button, warning their citizens to escape from ``imminent nuclear war``. What are they aiming at?Is it not a pretext to meddle in the affairs of this region?

Just on the heels of the warning, a misleading report appeared in the daily Telegraph, later reproduced by the Asian Age on June 6 that `` India is getting ready to declare war on Pakistan in the next ten days, in a planned conflict that will not last beyond seven days``.

The U S Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage ( India`s Amrit-Raj, for his pro-India stance at times) while on a peace mission, brought some good tidings from Pakistan. It was not just ice lolly for India, but something more. He brought `` firm assurances`` from Pakistan`s military dictator Gen Pervez Musharraf that he will take `` permanent action`` to check infiltration from across the de facto international border.

Armitage`s high-profile visit to the region apparently saved India and Pakistan from the brink of war. The U S diplomat seemed to have extracted a commitment from Pakistan for peace, before meeting prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. It was on the assurance of Armitage that vajpaye immediately announced removal of restrictions on overflights of Pakistani aircraft, paving way for resumption of air links between the two warring nations. Vajpayee went ahead and took the first step towards military de-escalation by recalling the warships, but Pakistan did not bother to reciprocate. Rather its firm assurances have proved a hoax.

Either Gen Musharraf has no control over jehadis or he is not willing to cooperate. On the contrary, terrorist activities have increased in Jammu and Kashmir, even in Pakistan. The terrorists made a vain bid on the life of Farooq Abdullah. They have now warned to intensify their activities from June 26. The border skirmishes are on and thousands of people on the LoC`s periphery are fleeing.

Facing militancy at home, the U S for the first time has now adopted a realistic approach that India is the victim of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. U S Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has indicated that Al Qaida is operating near LoC . But while in Pakistan, he had to dilute his statement ( not to annoy Pakistan ), saying he did not have any hard evidence `` of who, how many or where``. But British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has categorically said that his country `` accepts there is a clear link between ISI Directorate and terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.

At Almaty and later in Delhi, enough of pressure seems to have been brought upon Vajpayee to agree to the U S suggestion of a joint U S-British military monitoring force for Kashmir, to check infiltration on LoC. The proposal was agreed by Pakistan, but Vajpayee rejected it and stood for joint patrolling of the LoC by India and Pakistan.

The point is why the U S and its allies are repeatedly insisting for patrolling of the LoC by their troops to verify infiltration. Gen Musharraf has welcomed the suggestion , as it will tantamount to third party mediation on Kashmir.

The U S strategy is working on a two-pronged plank. While on the excuse of fighting war against Al Qaida, it is keen that its proposal should be considered to `` expand the ambit of India-U S military co-operation `` to allow its special forces to operate in Jammu and Kashmir. The proposal is understood to have come up for discussion during the visit of Rumsfeld. However, complete secrecy shrouds the entire `deal`. Outwardly, India seems to be rejecting it, but reports claim the two countries have agreed what is known as `` monitoring mechanism`` of the LoC, which will include advance ground sensors that U S has offered.

India has clearly told Rumsfeld that it is willing to take further steps `` down the path of military de-escalation`` but only if Pakistan stucks to its pledge of `` permanently sealing `` the LoC in a `` visible and decisive way``. India is totally averse to involvement of any third country in the verification mechanism. Pakistan has allowed its bases to the U S to fight global war on Al Qaida. But the hardliners in Pakistan are against this decision and they want the international community to believe that there is no infiltration from Pakistan , saying the struggle in Kashmir is indigenous.

Had war broken out, the U S was ready with its `` contingency plan`` and had decided to move its troops during war. Fighting Al Qaida is just an excuse, political observers believe. The Americans want to gain a foothold in strategically located Gilgit in PoK, to counter China.

The bizarre findings of the MORI opinion poll have added a new dimension to the Kashmir issue. Surprisingly, it has revealed that 61 per cent of the respondents have opted to remain as Indian citizens while just six per cent stand for Pakistan. The survey does not show any special enthusiasm for Pakistan, which must have chilled the bone marrow of ISI`s agent provocateurs.

Ipso facto, it need not surprise anyone if the majority of Kashmiris have shown their preference for India. They want better economy. Logically, a question can be asked if 61 per cent of the 850 respondents opt for India, why should India hesitate to hold a plebiscite ? But simultaneously another question arises; who commissioned MORI to conduct the poll? What is the motive behind the entire exercise? But plebiscite is a dead issue. Even the UN says so. Because Jammu and Kashmir had legally and constitutionally merged with India.

Believably, the poll seems to have been conducted to tempt India to jump up with joy and agree for a plebiscite. Perhaps the hidden sponsors of the poll are fooling India. The survey has in fact revealed the real truth. Kashmiris by and large want to remain with India for democratic freedom, unheard of in Pakistan . As a matter of argument, if plebiscite is held, it will be the religious card on which Pakistan will bank upon. It will be the holy Quran which will decide the matter.

A woman journalist perhaps indulges in wishful thinking that Kashmir will become independent. Kashmiris abhor independence. Where are the resources? If independence is granted, Pakistan will grab Kashmir overnight, and Kashmiris will have to rue.

During Armitage`s parleys with the Indian officials, an impression had gathered that the U S wants the LoC to be converted into a permanent border. When the Shimla agreement was hammered out, the assassinated Pakistan premier Z A Bhutto had verbally agreed on these lines, but before he could consolidate his position, he was murdered by the then army rulers. During Armitage`s meeting, a road map for ensuring peace in South Asia is reported to have been drawn up in a way that first Pakistan will stop infiltration and terrorism on a permanent basis and forsake the use of violence. After India gets satisfied, de-escalation measures would begin, and Pakistan and India can be asked to have joint patrolling on the LoC. It could be on permanent basis, possibly leading to the delineation of a permanent border. But jehadis do not agree to it as they are not under Musharraf`s control.

`` They want a political settlement in Kashmir``, says former ISI chief Gen Hamid Gul. One feels tempted to agree with Gul that `` global imperialism has arrived in the sub-continent as it had earlier in the garb of the East India Co...The Taliban and Al Qaida are only an excuse for the Americans to bring NATO into this region``.

If India and Pakistan fail to behave wisely; if they fail to tackle their mutual problems, which are a legacy of the British imperialism, the very independence of the two countries will be in jeopardy.

http://www.samachar.com/features/250602_1-fpj.html

I am Ashamed and I Apologize Foreign Affairs

July/August 2002

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20020701fareviewessay8530/radha-kumar/india-s-house-divided-understanding-communal-violence.html

SUMMARY

Why are some parts of India -- such as the recently riot-stricken state of Gujarat -- plagued by communal violence while other parts are not? Ashutosh Varshney`s new book finds an answer in civil society.

India`s House Divided: Understanding Communal Violence

by Radha Kumar

From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2002

Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India. By Ashutosh Varshney. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002, 384 pp. $45.00.

Radha Kumar is Senior Fellow in Peace and Conflict Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

India once stood tall in the annals of postcolonial nations. Beset by deep poverty, great inequality, and a vast population, the country still managed to avoid the dictatorships that befell so many of its neighbors. India`s democracy, now encompassing a billion people, may have been maddeningly slow to reform, but at least it was resilient. Governments rose and fell, new participants swelled the ranks of the political elite, and the middle class kept expanding. Although the country`s many religious, linguistic, and caste groups frequently squabbled -- and sometimes exploded into violence -- they also coexisted.

Whereas other multiethnic countries underwent violent breakups leading to ethnically homogeneous states, India appeared to have pulled off that unlikely feat: maintaining a pluralist administration under a secular government. The country`s rulers proved surprisingly responsive to diverse ethnic and minority claims when compared to other developing nations, and even some developed ones. In its first 15 years of independence alone, India created 11 new states based on linguistic and cultural identity and also implemented a broad system of affirmative action to redress traditional discrimination. This record, combined with booming economic growth in the 1990s, led many in the international community -- and indeed, many Indians themselves -- to view the country as a force for stability in a volatile region.

Then came the Hindu-Muslim riots of this spring in the prosperous western Indian state of Gujarat, six weeks of violence that left more than a thousand people dead and a hundred thousand in makeshift shelters. The riots began when a Muslim mob torched a trainload of sloganeering Hindu nationalists, killing 59 of them. A wave of retaliatory rioting rolled over Gujarat; the overwhelming majority of the riots` victims were Muslim. Unlike earlier riots that ended as abruptly as they began, the bloodletting in Gujarat has not ceased. Although reduced in intensity, violence continues to flare up, primarily in the underpoliced Muslim areas of Gujarat`s major cities, where there are daily instances of murder, looting, and arson.

The central and state governments, both run by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have been disturbingly slow to curb Hindu retaliation. While India`s parliament debated whether the Gujarat government should be dismissed for failing to restore the rule of law, even more disturbing reports emerged that some of the Hindu mob leaders were activist members of the ruling party or its allies in the wider ``family`` of Hindu nationalist organizations. Is India beginning to suffer the same kind of communal convulsion that has ravaged so many multiethnic countries in recent years?

KEEPING SOCIETY CIVIL

That would be the wrong conclusion to draw, says University of Michigan political scientist Ashutosh Varshney in Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India. In his view, there are two reasons why India is unlikely to succumb to the maelstrom that broke up countries such as Yugoslavia. First, Hindu-Muslim conflict is highly localized, and so any one wave of violence has limited potential to spread across the country. And second, India`s complex polity is made up of a range of constituencies with cross-cutting interests in which linguistic or caste affinities, for example, often supersede religious loyalty. Hindu nationalism is therefore unlikely to become the kind of cohesive murderous force that Serb nationalism turned into. Moreover, argues Varshney, the need to cater to these cross-cutting interests forces all political parties to the secular center once in government -- even when that government is, as at present, formed by Hindu nationalists.

Varshney`s first argument is more convincing than his second. Using data for a 45-year period from 1950 to 1995 -- that is, covering most of independent India`s history -- he shows that the

vast majority of communal riots have been concentrated in 4 of India`s 28 states, located in the northern, western, and eastern parts of the country. All four have large Muslim minorities. But so do several of the southern Indian states, yet southern India has remained largely calm over the past 50 years -- even while the country`s northern and western areas have been periodically ravaged by Hindu-Muslim violence.

By itself, this is not a surprising finding. It is fairly well known that Hindu-Muslim relations in northern and southern India are poles apart. The real surprise of Varshney`s data lies in their revelations of the subregional nature of Hindu-Muslim violence. Even within the four states in which ethnic conflict has been concentrated, most of the riots have been restricted to a handful of cities. In fact, 70 percent of Hindu-Muslim violence takes place in only 30 out of India`s more than 400 cities. More startling still, just 8 cities are responsible for almost half of all deaths in Hindu-Muslim riots.

In other words, ancient hatreds have little to do with ethnic conflict in India. Although India is a predominantly agricultural society, violence between Hindus and Muslims is an overwhelmingly urban phenomenon. During the 45-year period that Varshney`s data cover, rural violence accounted for just over three percent of all deaths in Hindu-Muslim riots. India`s traditional heartland, its villages, has been largely unscathed by the communal killings that have swept its cities.

If ethnic conflict is limited chiefly to a handful of Indian cities, then why do we fear its destructive potential for the country at large? One reason is that these cities are the power centers of the country. They include India`s metropolitan and trading hubs and several of its state capitals. India`s three largest and most cosmopolitan cities are among the eight that top Varshney`s list of ``riot-prone`` areas -- the nation`s capital, New Delhi, and the influential state capitals Mumbai (Bombay) and Kolkata (Calcutta). Each has a population of over 12 million, and together they are linchpins of India`s economy.

Each of the eight cities that top Varshney`s list has a large middle class, a high literacy rate, and an old and established Muslim minority. Two of them are in Gujarat, and it is a testimony to the predictive value of Varshney`s data that he ranks Ahmedabad, Gujarat`s financial capital, as the second most riot-prone city in India. (Mumbai leads the death count.) Ahmedabad saw the worst of the recent killings in Gujarat and continues to burn as of this writing. The city where the riots began, Godhra, also appears in Varshney`s data, on the longer list of 30.

CRASHING THE PARTY

Why should these cities, with better standards of living than most of the rest of India, greater economic opportunity, and more power to shape government policy, suffer from a pattern of recurrent Hindu-Muslim violence?

Varshney`s answer to this question is deceptively simple. Each of these cities, he says, has suffered a gradual and progressive decline in civic life. Ahmedabad, for example, was largely untouched by the violence between Hindus and Muslims that hit other cities in the early twentieth century and during the partition of colonial India in 1947. Gujarat was Mohandas Gandhi`s homeland and a testing ground for his methods of nonviolent resistance, and it also had some of the strongest civil associations in India, built by the Congress Party as well as by Gandhi`s disciples in both industry and labor. These associations served to integrate Hindus and Muslims and stepped in to prevent Hindu-Muslim violence during the partition riots of 1947-48. After independence, however, the Congress Party neglected its various programs promoting cooperative credit, women`s health and employment, and educational and media outreach. Following the death of India`s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1964, the party leadership started to fragment. Its different factions began to focus on wooing specific voting blocs by cultivating the more chauvinist elements within India`s different castes and religious communities.

Ahmedabad`s first serious Hindu-Muslim riots occurred in 1969 as a result of a local dispute over a religious procession; they were followed by more violence in several subsequent years. Gujarat was then relatively peaceful from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. But this calm was deceptive, according to Varshney; during that period the Congress Party`s civic decline was followed by its political decline. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi did away with Congress` internal elections and limited the powers of the party`s local branches. The party`s vast apparatus in Gujarat, its one remaining integrative network for Hindus and Muslims, dwindled to a shadow of its former self.

At the same time, there was a parallel decline in Gujarat`s largest nonparty organization, the Textile Labor Association. Based in Ahmedabad, the Gandhian trade union was the last significant source of Hindu-Muslim cooperation in the city. When its numbers dwindled as mill production gave way to the rise of the power-loom sector, the vacuum was filled by Hindu nationalist organizations that founded new schools and newspapers and performed a range of social services.

The BJP benefited from the Congress Party`s decline in Gujarat. Varshney shows how the state turned to the Hindu right well before the rest of India did. In the 1980s, when the BJP won between 5 and 7 percent of the vote nationally, it polled over 15 percent in Gujarat. In the mid-1990s, when the BJP`s share of the national vote rose to 20 percent, it was 42 percent in Gujarat. In 1990-92, Hindu nationalists were able to mobilize hundreds of thousands of the state`s citizens for a nationwide agitation to build a temple to the Hindu god Ram -- who is as central to Hinduism as Jesus is to Christianity -- in his purported birthplace, the far-off northern Indian city of Ayodhya. The temple site was also home to a seventeenth-century mosque, which was destroyed in 1992 by a 10,000-strong mob of Hindu nationalists who had gathered from all over the country. Gujarat was one of the largest contributors of volunteers to this mission of destruction; when Hindu-Muslim riots followed, it was Gujarat that saw the largest number of deaths.

The BJP came to power in Gujarat in 1995 and in the central government in 1998 -- but at the national level it is part of a wider coalition including secular regional parties. The BJP leadership in New Delhi said that, out of respect for the coalition, they would put the more contentious issues on their agenda, such as building the Ram temple, on the back burner. The BJP`s leaders had already begun to restrain the party`s hard-liners after the riots that followed the destruction of the Ayodhya mosque, and India remained relatively calm between 1993 and 2002. Like Varshney, many analysts concluded that India`s polity forces all political parties to the secular center once they have to govern.

THE UNCERTAIN CENTER

The Gujarat riots of this spring, however, have made this conclusion look doubtful. They came quickly on the heels of the BJP`s reelection in Gujarat under a new hard-line leadership. The state`s chief minister makes no secret of his belief that Muslims must be second-class citizens in the Hindu nation he is bent on creating, and he is one of the most ardent supporters of the Ram temple campaign. Despite New Delhi`s pleas for restraint, he was one of the leaders who supported the revival of the campaign in early March. The Hindus who were torched by a Muslim mob in Gujarat two weeks later -- the incident that sparked the recent riots -- were returning from Ayodhya. They had made a preemptive bid to begin building the temple on the ruins of the mosque but were thwarted by the central government, which had dispatched 2,500 troops to keep the peace.

New Delhi`s prompt action to prevent violence in Ayodhya stands in stark contrast to its reluctance to intervene in Gujarat. The Gujarat government has made little effort to stop the riots; worse still, it has transferred out many of the police officers who did turn back the mobs. Reports indicate a total breakdown of law and order in Ahmedabad`s mostly Muslim old quarter, as well as in several of the city`s outlying areas. New Delhi has repeatedly expressed concern at

the continuing violence -- yet neither the central government nor the BJP leadership is prepared to take any action

that might run counter to the Gujarat government`s wishes.

Trounced in state-level legislative elections last year, today the BJP governs Gujarat alone out of India`s 28 states. So New Delhi has dug in its heels, and the BJP has ignored its coalition allies who have asked that the Gujarat government step down. Far from being constrained to adhere to the secular center, it seems that the BJP is now being pushed by Gujarat to move toward the far right. Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has made no secret of the fact that he wanted Gujarat`s government to step down, but BJP hard-liners persuaded him to yield. For their part, the BJP`s allies are unwilling to see the government fall over this issue, so they have limited their response to mere remonstrations.

Nevertheless, the BJP`s recent electoral losses suggest that Indian support for Hindu nationalism resembles support for the far-right anti-immigrant parties in Austria, France, and the Netherlands more closely than it does something like Serb nationalism. Each of the former has shown a disturbing rise in the past decade, but none has been able to capture the mainstream. Slobodan Milosevic`s Communist Party, by comparison, did extremely well at the Serbian polls until his government lost the war over Kosovo.

Unlike the western European countries, however, India has not been able to cauterize the destructive potential of its ethnic and religious nationalists. Over the past decade, 4,000 Indians have died in battles over the Ram temple campaign, but the Hindu nationalists are unwilling to seek a compromise solution. The regional parties that are the BJP`s allies have not been able to persuade the BJP to act in Gujarat; nor has the opposition. The corrective mechanisms of Indian politics appear to have only a weak hold over its legislators and government.

DEMOCRACY IN INDIA

As Varshney argues, this decay in India`s party politics puts the spotlight squarely on civil society. Here the picture is more reassuring. The most stable Indian states are those in which Hindus and Muslims have joint economic, educational, and political associations -- even if the latter rely more on power-sharing than on integration. But it is not necessary to have the entire gamut or a combination of such associations: as Varshney shows, at the ground level any one Hindu-Muslim group can successfully prevent the spread of conflict. In one textile-producing city in Gujarat, for instance, the local manufacturers` and traders` association kept the peace in the old city area; indeed, press accounts of the latest riots tell the story of a Hindu-Muslim workers` colony that successfully turned the mobs away.

Top-down initiatives can also work, says Varshney, citing an industrial city whose poor record of violence was turned around by a police officer who set up Hindu-Muslim peace committees in all the city`s localities. But they are inherently weaker because they are not subject to the same tests of accountability that locally based associations face.

Sadly, Varshney does not examine religious organizations in his analysis; he addresses only Hindu-Muslim associations. Yet the greatest conundrum of all might well be the role that religious organizations play in sparking or dampening Hindu-Muslim tension. Unlike the Christian and Muslim religious leaders who added to communal conflict in Bosnia, or the priests and nuns who were implicated in genocide in Rwanda, most Hindu religious leaders shun the Ram temple campaign. At one of Hinduism`s largest and most important religious festivals, the Kumbh Mela, Hindu priests expelled advocates of the Ram temple campaign. After the Gujarat riots began, several of India`s leading Hindu priests offered to help find an alternative site for the temple. Ironically, their offer has yet to be accepted by the BJP government.

It is a pity, too, that Varshney does not examine government institutions such as the judiciary, the National Human Rights Commission, or the National Commission for Minorities. All three have displayed a new activism in the wake of the Gujarat riots. The Indian Supreme Court is currently holding a landmark hearing on the human rights commission`s findings about the violence. India`s attorney general has also criticized the Gujarat government for its failure to protect minorities. And the minorities commission has just organized the first meeting between Gujarat`s chief minister and representatives of the Muslim community.

These are heartening indications of Indian democracy`s willingness to reclaim the secular center. Varshney`s findings are more heartening still for India. If the task of building unifying networks is a daunting one, it is encouraging to know that improving civic life in just eight cities could make all the difference. Tellingly, too, the recent Human Rights Watch report on Gujarat makes many of the same policy recommendations that flow from Varshney`s book: in particular, that support for integrative civic associations is now the need of the hour in cities such as Ahmedabad.

Apart from the immediate policy relevance of Varshney`s book, his material also makes a lasting contribution to our understanding of how to tackle the roots of communal violence in India. This is an issue that Indian policymakers have ignored for too long. Perhaps Varshney`s book can help close that gap.

Cry, the Beloved Country Foreign Affairs

July/August 2002

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20020701fareviewessay8530/radha-kumar/india-s-house-divided-understanding-communal-violence.html

SUMMARY

Why are some parts of India -- such as the recently riot-stricken state of Gujarat -- plagued by communal violence while other parts are not? Ashutosh Varshney`s new book finds an answer in civil society.

India`s House Divided: Understanding Communal Violence

by Radha Kumar

From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2002

Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India. By Ashutosh Varshney. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002, 384 pp. $45.00.

Radha Kumar is Senior Fellow in Peace and Conflict Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

India once stood tall in the annals of postcolonial nations. Beset by deep poverty, great inequality, and a vast population, the country still managed to avoid the dictatorships that befell so many of its neighbors. India`s democracy, now encompassing a billion people, may have been maddeningly slow to reform, but at least it was resilient. Governments rose and fell, new participants swelled the ranks of the political elite, and the middle class kept expanding. Although the country`s many religious, linguistic, and caste groups frequently squabbled -- and sometimes exploded into violence -- they also coexisted.

Whereas other multiethnic countries underwent violent breakups leading to ethnically homogeneous states, India appeared to have pulled off that unlikely feat: maintaining a pluralist administration under a secular government. The country`s rulers proved surprisingly responsive to diverse ethnic and minority claims when compared to other developing nations, and even some developed ones. In its first 15 years of independence alone, India created 11 new states based on linguistic and cultural identity and also implemented a broad system of affirmative action to redress traditional discrimination. This record, combined with booming economic growth in the 1990s, led many in the international community -- and indeed, many Indians themselves -- to view the country as a force for stability in a volatile region.

Then came the Hindu-Muslim riots of this spring in the prosperous western Indian state of Gujarat, six weeks of violence that left more than a thousand people dead and a hundred thousand in makeshift shelters. The riots began when a Muslim mob torched a trainload of sloganeering Hindu nationalists, killing 59 of them. A wave of retaliatory rioting rolled over Gujarat; the overwhelming majority of the riots` victims were Muslim. Unlike earlier riots that ended as abruptly as they began, the bloodletting in Gujarat has not ceased. Although reduced in intensity, violence continues to flare up, primarily in the underpoliced Muslim areas of Gujarat`s major cities, where there are daily instances of murder, looting, and arson.

The central and state governments, both run by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have been disturbingly slow to curb Hindu retaliation. While India`s parliament debated whether the Gujarat government should be dismissed for failing to restore the rule of law, even more disturbing reports emerged that some of the Hindu mob leaders were activist members of the ruling party or its allies in the wider ``family`` of Hindu nationalist organizations. Is India beginning to suffer the same kind of communal convulsion that has ravaged so many multiethnic countries in recent years?

KEEPING SOCIETY CIVIL

That would be the wrong conclusion to draw, says University of Michigan political scientist Ashutosh Varshney in Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India. In his view, there are two reasons why India is unlikely to succumb to the maelstrom that broke up countries such as Yugoslavia. First, Hindu-Muslim conflict is highly localized, and so any one wave of violence has limited potential to spread across the country. And second, India`s complex polity is made up of a range of constituencies with cross-cutting interests in which linguistic or caste affinities, for example, often supersede religious loyalty. Hindu nationalism is therefore unlikely to become the kind of cohesive murderous force that Serb nationalism turned into. Moreover, argues Varshney, the need to cater to these cross-cutting interests forces all political parties to the secular center once in government -- even when that government is, as at present, formed by Hindu nationalists.

Varshney`s first argument is more convincing than his second. Using data for a 45-year period from 1950 to 1995 -- that is, covering most of independent India`s history -- he shows that the

vast majority of communal riots have been concentrated in 4 of India`s 28 states, located in the northern, western, and eastern parts of the country. All four have large Muslim minorities. But so do several of the southern Indian states, yet southern India has remained largely calm over the past 50 years -- even while the country`s northern and western areas have been periodically ravaged by Hindu-Muslim violence.

By itself, this is not a surprising finding. It is fairly well known that Hindu-Muslim relations in northern and southern India are poles apart. The real surprise of Varshney`s data lies in their revelations of the subregional nature of Hindu-Muslim violence. Even within the four states in which ethnic conflict has been concentrated, most of the riots have been restricted to a handful of cities. In fact, 70 percent of Hindu-Muslim violence takes place in only 30 out of India`s more than 400 cities. More startling still, just 8 cities are responsible for almost half of all deaths in Hindu-Muslim riots.

In other words, ancient hatreds have little to do with ethnic conflict in India. Although India is a predominantly agricultural society, violence between Hindus and Muslims is an overwhelmingly urban phenomenon. During the 45-year period that Varshney`s data cover, rural violence accounted for just over three percent of all deaths in Hindu-Muslim riots. India`s traditional heartland, its villages, has been largely unscathed by the communal killings that have swept its cities.

If ethnic conflict is limited chiefly to a handful of Indian cities, then why do we fear its destructive potential for the country at large? One reason is that these cities are the power centers of the country. They include India`s metropolitan and trading hubs and several of its state capitals. India`s three largest and most cosmopolitan cities are among the eight that top Varshney`s list of ``riot-prone`` areas -- the nation`s capital, New Delhi, and the influential state capitals Mumbai (Bombay) and Kolkata (Calcutta). Each has a population of over 12 million, and together they are linchpins of India`s economy.

Each of the eight cities that top Varshney`s list has a large middle class, a high literacy rate, and an old and established Muslim minority. Two of them are in Gujarat, and it is a testimony to the predictive value of Varshney`s data that he ranks Ahmedabad, Gujarat`s financial capital, as the second most riot-prone city in India. (Mumbai leads the death count.) Ahmedabad saw the worst of the recent killings in Gujarat and continues to burn as of this writing. The city where the riots began, Godhra, also appears in Varshney`s data, on the longer list of 30.

CRASHING THE PARTY

Why should these cities, with better standards of living than most of the rest of India, greater economic opportunity, and more power to shape government policy, suffer from a pattern of recurrent Hindu-Muslim violence?

Varshney`s answer to this question is deceptively simple. Each of these cities, he says, has suffered a gradual and progressive decline in civic life. Ahmedabad, for example, was largely untouched by the violence between Hindus and Muslims that hit other cities in the early twentieth century and during the partition of colonial India in 1947. Gujarat was Mohandas Gandhi`s homeland and a testing ground for his methods of nonviolent resistance, and it also had some of the strongest civil associations in India, built by the Congress Party as well as by Gandhi`s disciples in both industry and labor. These associations served to integrate Hindus and Muslims and stepped in to prevent Hindu-Muslim violence during the partition riots of 1947-48. After independence, however, the Congress Party neglected its various programs promoting cooperative credit, women`s health and employment, and educational and media outreach. Following the death of India`s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1964, the party leadership started to fragment. Its different factions began to focus on wooing specific voting blocs by cultivating the more chauvinist elements within India`s different castes and religious communities.

Ahmedabad`s first serious Hindu-Muslim riots occurred in 1969 as a result of a local dispute over a religious procession; they were followed by more violence in several subsequent years. Gujarat was then relatively peaceful from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. But this calm was deceptive, according to Varshney; during that period the Congress Party`s civic decline was followed by its political decline. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi did away with Congress` internal elections and limited the powers of the party`s local branches. The party`s vast apparatus in Gujarat, its one remaining integrative network for Hindus and Muslims, dwindled to a shadow of its former self.

At the same time, there was a parallel decline in Gujarat`s largest nonparty organization, the Textile Labor Association. Based in Ahmedabad, the Gandhian trade union was the last significant source of Hindu-Muslim cooperation in the city. When its numbers dwindled as mill production gave way to the rise of the power-loom sector, the vacuum was filled by Hindu nationalist organizations that founded new schools and newspapers and performed a range of social services.

The BJP benefited from the Congress Party`s decline in Gujarat. Varshney shows how the state turned to the Hindu right well before the rest of India did. In the 1980s, when the BJP won between 5 and 7 percent of the vote nationally, it polled over 15 percent in Gujarat. In the mid-1990s, when the BJP`s share of the national vote rose to 20 percent, it was 42 percent in Gujarat. In 1990-92, Hindu nationalists were able to mobilize hundreds of thousands of the state`s citizens for a nationwide agitation to build a temple to the Hindu god Ram -- who is as central to Hinduism as Jesus is to Christianity -- in his purported birthplace, the far-off northern Indian city of Ayodhya. The temple site was also home to a seventeenth-century mosque, which was destroyed in 1992 by a 10,000-strong mob of Hindu nationalists who had gathered from all over the country. Gujarat was one of the largest contributors of volunteers to this mission of destruction; when Hindu-Muslim riots followed, it was Gujarat that saw the largest number of deaths.

The BJP came to power in Gujarat in 1995 and in the central government in 1998 -- but at the national level it is part of a wider coalition including secular regional parties. The BJP leadership in New Delhi said that, out of respect for the coalition, they would put the more contentious issues on their agenda, such as building the Ram temple, on the back burner. The BJP`s leaders had already begun to restrain the party`s hard-liners after the riots that followed the destruction of the Ayodhya mosque, and India remained relatively calm between 1993 and 2002. Like Varshney, many analysts concluded that India`s polity forces all political parties to the secular center once they have to govern.

THE UNCERTAIN CENTER

The Gujarat riots of this spring, however, have made this conclusion look doubtful. They came quickly on the heels of the BJP`s reelection in Gujarat under a new hard-line leadership. The state`s chief minister makes no secret of his belief that Muslims must be second-class citizens in the Hindu nation he is bent on creating, and he is one of the most ardent supporters of the Ram temple campaign. Despite New Delhi`s pleas for restraint, he was one of the leaders who supported the revival of the campaign in early March. The Hindus who were torched by a Muslim mob in Gujarat two weeks later -- the incident that sparked the recent riots -- were returning from Ayodhya. They had made a preemptive bid to begin building the temple on the ruins of the mosque but were thwarted by the central government, which had dispatched 2,500 troops to keep the peace.

New Delhi`s prompt action to prevent violence in Ayodhya stands in stark contrast to its reluctance to intervene in Gujarat. The Gujarat government has made little effort to stop the riots; worse still, it has transferred out many of the police officers who did turn back the mobs. Reports indicate a total breakdown of law and order in Ahmedabad`s mostly Muslim old quarter, as well as in several of the city`s outlying areas. New Delhi has repeatedly expressed concern at

the continuing violence -- yet neither the central government nor the BJP leadership is prepared to take any action

that might run counter to the Gujarat government`s wishes.

Trounced in state-level legislative elections last year, today the BJP governs Gujarat alone out of India`s 28 states. So New Delhi has dug in its heels, and the BJP has ignored its coalition allies who have asked that the Gujarat government step down. Far from being constrained to adhere to the secular center, it seems that the BJP is now being pushed by Gujarat to move toward the far right. Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has made no secret of the fact that he wanted Gujarat`s government to step down, but BJP hard-liners persuaded him to yield. For their part, the BJP`s allies are unwilling to see the government fall over this issue, so they have limited their response to mere remonstrations.

Nevertheless, the BJP`s recent electoral losses suggest that Indian support for Hindu nationalism resembles support for the far-right anti-immigrant parties in Austria, France, and the Netherlands more closely than it does something like Serb nationalism. Each of the former has shown a disturbing rise in the past decade, but none has been able to capture the mainstream. Slobodan Milosevic`s Communist Party, by comparison, did extremely well at the Serbian polls until his government lost the war over Kosovo.

Unlike the western European countries, however, India has not been able to cauterize the destructive potential of its ethnic and religious nationalists. Over the past decade, 4,000 Indians have died in battles over the Ram temple campaign, but the Hindu nationalists are unwilling to seek a compromise solution. The regional parties that are the BJP`s allies have not been able to persuade the BJP to act in Gujarat; nor has the opposition. The corrective mechanisms of Indian politics appear to have only a weak hold over its legislators and government.

DEMOCRACY IN INDIA

As Varshney argues, this decay in India`s party politics puts the spotlight squarely on civil society. Here the picture is more reassuring. The most stable Indian states are those in which Hindus and Muslims have joint economic, educational, and political associations -- even if the latter rely more on power-sharing than on integration. But it is not necessary to have the entire gamut or a combination of such associations: as Varshney shows, at the ground level any one Hindu-Muslim group can successfully prevent the spread of conflict. In one textile-producing city in Gujarat, for instance, the local manufacturers` and traders` association kept the peace in the old city area; indeed, press accounts of the latest riots tell the story of a Hindu-Muslim workers` colony that successfully turned the mobs away.

Top-down initiatives can also work, says Varshney, citing an industrial city whose poor record of violence was turned around by a police officer who set up Hindu-Muslim peace committees in all the city`s localities. But they are inherently weaker because they are not subject to the same tests of accountability that locally based associations face.

Sadly, Varshney does not examine religious organizations in his analysis; he addresses only Hindu-Muslim associations. Yet the greatest conundrum of all might well be the role that religious organizations play in sparking or dampening Hindu-Muslim tension. Unlike the Christian and Muslim religious leaders who added to communal conflict in Bosnia, or the priests and nuns who were implicated in genocide in Rwanda, most Hindu religious leaders shun the Ram temple campaign. At one of Hinduism`s largest and most important religious festivals, the Kumbh Mela, Hindu priests expelled advocates of the Ram temple campaign. After the Gujarat riots began, several of India`s leading Hindu priests offered to help find an alternative site for the temple. Ironically, their offer has yet to be accepted by the BJP government.

It is a pity, too, that Varshney does not examine government institutions such as the judiciary, the National Human Rights Commission, or the National Commission for Minorities. All three have displayed a new activism in the wake of the Gujarat riots. The Indian Supreme Court is currently holding a landmark hearing on the human rights commission`s findings about the violence. India`s attorney general has also criticized the Gujarat government for its failure to protect minorities. And the minorities commission has just organized the first meeting between Gujarat`s chief minister and representatives of the Muslim community.

These are heartening indications of Indian democracy`s willingness to reclaim the secular center. Varshney`s findings are more heartening still for India. If the task of building unifying networks is a daunting one, it is encouraging to know that improving civic life in just eight cities could make all the difference. Tellingly, too, the recent Human Rights Watch report on Gujarat makes many of the same policy recommendations that flow from Varshney`s book: in particular, that support for integrative civic associations is now the need of the hour in cities such as Ahmedabad.

Apart from the immediate policy relevance of Varshney`s book, his material also makes a lasting contribution to our understanding of how to tackle the roots of communal violence in India. This is an issue that Indian policymakers have ignored for too long. Perhaps Varshney`s book can help close that gap.

Of Errant Politicians And The Kashmir Cause Pakistan`s President Could Confront Axis of Extremists

Asia: Under a worst-case scenario, three militant groups could link up to try to topple Musharraf.



By TYLER MARSHALL, TIMES STAFF WRITER

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- President Pervez Musharraf faces an ominous new challenge to his rule from three Islamic militant groupings that now stand against him, each clearly capable of using violence to bring him down, diplomats and others following developments in Pakistan believe.

The presence of an undetermined number of fighters from Osama bin Laden`s Al Qaeda terrorist network who fled to Pakistan last winter after the Taliban regime`s collapse in neighboring Afghanistan merely adds to the volatile brew.

Those who track Pakistan`s turbulent domestic political environment worry openly about a nightmare scenario--one in which elements from the three diverse strains of militancy set aside their individual causes, link up with Al Qaeda members and unite around a set of shared objectives: removing Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in the war on terror; destabilizing the country; and driving the United States from the region. Two of these groups--one consisting of Pakistanis who fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan, the other made up of Muslim holy warriors dedicated to capturing all of the disputed Kashmir region for Pakistan and the Islamic cause--were once de facto allies of Musharraf`s government.

The third--extremists from Pakistan`s majority Sunni sect who have waged a bloody, mafia-style war against the minority Shiites--was already at odds with him.

The dangers posed by these extremist groups have increased sharply in recent weeks because of steps taken to ease the crisis with India over Kashmir, diplomats and others following developments in Pakistan believe.

To reduce those tensions, Musharraf intensified a crackdown on militants whom the Pakistani government had for years trained for attacks on Indian-controlled areas of Kashmir.

With this crackdown coming just nine months after Musharraf withdrew his government`s support for the Taliban, angry and disillusioned sympathizers of both the Afghan and Kashmiri causes view the president, a general who took power in a coup, as a traitor to militant Islam.

There are about 1,000 uniformed Americans and a large FBI contingent based here as part of the war on terrorism, so the United States has a large stake in Pakistan`s internal stability.

At a different level, Americans also have a stake in a political struggle being watched across the Muslim world--that of a leader who cast his fate with the West in the wake of Sept. 11 and is now locked in a battle to survive the backlash.

Some observers believe that informal linkups between militant groups may already have begun.

Communications Minister Javed Ahraf Qazi, the former head of Pakistan`s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, said that this month`s bombing at the U.S. Consulate in Karachi had the earmarks of cooperation between local religious extremists and Al Qaeda refugees believed to be in the rough port city.

``My suspicion is that sectarian elements did this at the behest of Al Qaeda,`` he said. ``They are [both] ruthless murderers.``

Presidential spokesman Rashid Qureshi acknowledged, ``Some [Pakistani] groups may have developed Al Qaeda links.``

So far, there is no hard evidence that followers of the three militant causes have entered into any formal agreement or established anything as structured as a common underground network to pursue their shared goals.

With Al Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban fighters in disarray, the heads of several large Sunni groups in jail and many Kashmiri militants only now beginning to contemplate an alternative future, organizational leadership is in short supply, according to those who monitor militant activities.

They believe that, instead, little more than a camaraderie among individuals attracts the militants together as small groups explore possible cooperation.

``Al Qaeda elements and others are now in the process of coming together to find a specific-oriented agenda,`` said Aamer Ahmed Khan, editor of the Herald, a Karachi-based monthly that closely follows the activities of Islamic militant groups. ``Some leaders haven`t even met yet, but groups are starting to work together.``

A previously unknown group calling itself Al Qanoon--``The Law``--claimed responsibility for the consulate attack. In a note faxed to local newspapers, it described the bombing as the beginning of a campaign against ``America, its allies and its lackey Pakistani rulers.``

Although no one has claimed responsibility for a bombing last month outside the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi that killed 11 French defense contract workers, authorities talk privately of a possible similar nexus in that attack.

Musharraf`s government pressed its search for Al Qaeda remnants in the wake of the U.S. Consulate attack.

Last week, precinct-level police officers in all four provinces were called to urgent meetings where superiors ordered them to search for possible links between known Sunni militants in their areas and Al Qaeda members who might have found refuge there.

A senior Interior Ministry source said that as part of the search, landlords have been told to report to police any tenants willing to pay conspicuously more than the market rate for accommodations.

The government also has invoked longer-term measures to choke off support for Islamic extremists.

A tough new law announced last week tightens controls on the thousands of religious schools, known as madrasas, and cuts off foreign sources of funding to them. With financial help from foreign-based Islamic fundamentalist organizations, many of Pakistan`s madrasas instilled their students with extremist ideas heavily laced with anti-Americanism.

Authorities have also launched investigations into the activities of several Pakistan-based nongovernmental organizations funded by Arab world money suspected in recent months of providing aid and shelter to fleeing Arab Al Qaeda fighters and their families.

So far, no one has linked Kashmiri militant groups to the string of recent attacks against foreigners in Pakistan, primarily because their break with Musharraf has only just occurred. But many fear that the potential is now there.

``There`s a very serious danger of the government losing control over the Kashmiris,`` said Aamer. ``It`s a major failure that the government didn`t prevent the Kashmiri freedom movement from being infiltrated by these [other] militants.``

Veteran Pakistan-based diplomats claim that Musharraf had already decided before Sept. 11 to end the government`s support of Muslim extremist elements in the country because the price in terms of domestic violence and a growing international isolation had become too high. His strategy, however, had been to take on the militants quietly.

``He wanted to finish them off one by one,`` noted a respected Islamabad-based Arab envoy. ``Now he has been forced to fight on three fronts simultaneously. Politically, this could be dangerous.``

So far, the extremist groups have made no public statements or issued any credible claims regarding their intentions. But previous shared ties could help bring them together despite their different political agendas, diplomats and analysts fear.

Evidence of these ties abounds.

For example, Kashmiri militants and Sunni sectarian extremists from Pakistan were routinely trained at Al Qaeda-run camps in eastern Afghanistan. In fact, there is now evidence that at least one of the terrorist camps in eastern Afghanistan hit by U.S. cruise missiles in 1998 was training recruits for Kashmiri militant groups, not Al Qaeda. The U.S. attack came as a reprisal for the American Embassy bombings in East Africa.

In addition, Pakistani journalists who trekked across the mountains into eastern Afghanistan for a May 1997 news conference with Bin Laden recall that their guides and hosts for the trip were members of the Kashmiri militant organization Harkat Moujahedeen.

``The collective experience of having trained and fought together has led to a camaraderie,`` said a senior member of Musharraf`s government who declined to be identified. ``This camaraderie is now playing itself out.``

U.S. and Pakistani authorities have had some notable successes in the search for Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan in recent months. A raid in the Punjab city of Faisalabad in March netted a senior Bin Laden aide, Abu Zubeida. U.S. officials say that information provided by Zubeida led to last month`s arrest of Jose Padilla, the so-called ``dirty bomber.``

Despite this, senior Pakistanis worry whether their security forces are up to a major confrontation with militants on the home front. The police, they say, are ill-equipped, overextended and so corrupt that the government has come to rely increasingly on paramilitary units such as the Pakistani Rangers to carry out sensitive tasks.

Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider admitted that his forces aren`t in good shape.

``I have my problems about police capabilities,`` he said. ``I used to get help from the [paramilitary forces], but they are now on the border. So I`m left with a police force which has been tired ever since September, when hundreds of thousands of [protesters] came onto the streets.``

Haider said he had requested additional resources to beef up both the manpower of the police and their investigative capabilities.

``We don`t want the land of Pakistan to be used by any militants, extremists or terrorists,`` he said. ``This is the policy of our president, and we`ll do our best to implement it.``

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-000044433jun25.story

Of Errant Politicians And The Kashmir Cause America must come off the fence and take India`s side in the nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan.

Time`s Up for Pakistan: America Must Side with India

By Robert W. Tracinski (June 5, 2002)

[CAPITALISMMAGAZINE.COM] The Bush administration seems to be twisting itself into a knot of confusion over the nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan, dispatching an array of diplomats to try to ``ease the tensions`` between the two countries -- without doing anything to eliminate the cause of those ``tensions.``

The actual solution is quite simple. Bush has the means to prevent this war, and he is probably the only person in the world who can do so. All he needs to do is what he should have done nine months ago.

He needs to take over Pakistan.

After September 11, as part of the so-called ``Bush Doctrine,`` the president declared to the nations of the world: ``You`re either with us or you`re with the terrorists.`` But Pakistan has been with the terrorists for more than a decade -- and it has not given up that allegiance.

Remember that Pakistan`s intelligence agency helped create the Taliban and put it in power in Afghanistan. Under American threats, Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf made a halfhearted about-face and cooperated with the United States in the war in Afghanistan. But Musharraf has been playing a double game. While he nominally cooperates against al-Qaeda, Musharraf`s government has supported the same kind of terrorists -- including some members of al-Qaeda -- as they wage a terrorist war against India.

That war started in earnest less than a month after September 11, when Pakistan-backed rebels set off a bomb outside the Kashmir-Jammu state assembly building. In December -- finding that the world did not care about terrorist attacks on India -- the rebels got more ambitious, staging a shooting attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi. Imagine if Osama bin Laden`s operatives stormed the capitol building in Washington, D.C., and you will get some idea of the seriousness of this attack.

Under U.S. pressure, Musharraf announced a ``crackdown`` on the terrorist groups he sponsored, and he rounded up 200 Islamic militants. This proved every bit as effective as the occasional crackdown Yasser Arafat announces against his terrorist friends. Musharraf kept the militants in jail until the world`s attention wandered -- which doesn`t take long -- then let them out again. Since then, they have bombed a bus full of women and children and attacked an Indian army outpost.

If you wonder what makes Musharraf think he can get away with this, consider President Bush`s most recent statement on the issue: ``He must stop the incursions across the Line of Control. He must do so. He said he would do so. We and others are making it clear to him that he must live up to his word.`` This is exactly how the administration has talked about Yasser Arafat -- who, despite his continued support of terrorism, still gets U.S. funding and political support.

Like the war in Israel, the coming war between India and Pakistan is deeply connected to America`s interests. For example, how did the sponsor of Kashmir`s terrorism, Pakistan`s Inter-Services Intelligence, react when an Afghan warlord declared holy war against the United States on Thursday? Hamid Gul, former head of the ISI, told reporters: ``There is certainly a lot of sympathy for him in ISI, but that doesn`t necessarily translate into material assistance.`` How reassuring.

A dictatorship whose powerful intelligence service is sympathetic to a holy war against the United States is not an ally in the War on Terrorism. To think that they are an illusion, and like all foreign policy illusions, this one has deadly consequences. Millions of people may die in a nuclear war that America can prevent.

America must come off the fence and take India`s side in this conflict. Pakistan`s leaders may delude themselves that they can survive India`s superior conventional and nuclear capabilities. But they will not dare to oppose the United States, especially now that American troops are stationed in Pakistan and American planes fly freely through its airspace. As former ISI chief Gul puts it, ``The Americans are everywhere here right now.``

Pakistan`s time is up. It can no longer be trusted to fight against terrorism. The country should be thoroughly garrisoned with American troops; our military and intelligence apparatus should direct all efforts toward gaining control of Pakistan`s nuclear weapons; we must subject the country to a de facto occupation. We must stop being ``allies`` and start giving orders.

The Bush administration launched its War on Terrorism by abandoning Israel to a massive wave of suicide bombings. America should not continue this policy by abandoning another victim of terrorism, India, to a brutal nuclear war.

Kashmir Fatigue Kashmir crisis reflects religious hate in India

Hindus, Muslims ready to riot

Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer Thursday, June 20, 2002

Ahmedabad, India -- On the dirty sidewalk that separates his poor Hindu neighborhood from a Muslim community, Palgi Bhai Parmer stopped, afraid to walk across the street.

On the other side of Jaganath Temple Road, he said, Muslims were waiting for someone like him with stones and homemade bombs.

``If I cross, I will lose my life,`` said Parmer, an unemployed food vendor.

But across the street, fear also brewed in the sweltering heat. Humble Muslim dwellings stood charred, a testament to the religious-based violence that swept through the western state of Gujarat in February, killing nearly 1, 000 people, most of them Muslims, and leaving more than 90,000 people homeless.

``It comes back to haunt you again and again,`` said Shah Jahan, an 18-year- old Muslim whose entire body is a colorless scar after she was doused with gasoline and set on fire by a Hindu mob nearly four months ago.

The Gujarat riots were just a thread in the larger fabric of conflict in India`s multiethnic society of more than 1 billion people, analysts say. Centuries-old religious hatred between the Hindu majority and the nation`s nearly 130 million Muslims seems always ready to surface in deadly violence.

Experts say the deep-rooted hostility lies at the core of India`s territorial dispute with its Islamic neighbor, Pakistan, over predominantly Muslim Kashmir. The two nuclear-armed nations were on the brink of war recently over the Himalayan region.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/06/20/MN243433.DTL

Of Errant Politicians And The Kashmir Cause Watch What You Say

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

NEW YORK TIMES

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — Before recounting how President Clinton burned alive dozens of Christians (this feint is known in the column trade as baiting the right), let me offer a quick historical quiz: What religion were Muhammad`s parents?

You might think that they, like most people in Arabia in the sixth century, probably worshiped tribal gods and idols. It might seem difficult for anyone to have been a Muslim before Muhammad.

If that`s what you think, bite your tongue — if you visit Pakistan.

Dr. Younus Shaikh, a teacher at a medical college, sits in a brick prison here, after being sentenced to death for blasphemy last year. I couldn`t interview him because the warden caught me trying to slip into the prison as a visitor (I didn`t look like a family member). But the issues are clear.

.....more at

http://www.sulekha.com/redirectnh.asp?cid=213153

I am Ashamed and I Apologize Watch What You Say

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

NEW YORK TIMES

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — Before recounting how President Clinton burned alive dozens of Christians (this feint is known in the column trade as baiting the right), let me offer a quick historical quiz: What religion were Muhammad`s parents?

You might think that they, like most people in Arabia in the sixth century, probably worshiped tribal gods and idols. It might seem difficult for anyone to have been a Muslim before Muhammad.

If that`s what you think, bite your tongue — if you visit Pakistan.

Dr. Younus Shaikh, a teacher at a medical college, sits in a brick prison here, after being sentenced to death for blasphemy last year. I couldn`t interview him because the warden caught me trying to slip into the prison as a visitor (I didn`t look like a family member). But the issues are clear.

...more at

http://www.sulekha.com/redirectnh.asp?cid=213153