Can A Gang Rape Change India's Hate Culture?

Sexual violence makes India a global frontline in the battle to save women and girls. But the problem extends to hatreds spawned by history and religion.

[This article is based on a column published in The News International, Pakistan's largest English daily].

The sad gang rape of a college student on a public bus in the Indian capital might end up having an impact beyond the country’s borders. Although an internal matter, this particular incident concerns Pakistanis in important ways. It should also concern India's other neighbors like Sri Lanka, China, Bangladesh and Nepal.

India is a country beset by virulent hatreds of all types: political, historical, religious and social. These hatreds are so potent they led to 21st century's first genocide. More than 2,000 Indians were butchered and burned across Gujarat, a major trading state in western India near the Pakistani border.

The murder of 2,000 Indians spread over just three days was no small matter, happening as it did in 21st century, and not in 20th or 19th centuries. The fact that almost all of the killed were Indian Muslims; men, women, elderly and children, eliminated on the streets by mobs representing the majority religious group, meant that this was a ghastly incident of ethnic cleansing and religious extermination.

One way to gauge the amount of hate that motivated the Indian mobs is to look at one type of criminal act that was repeatedly committed during the 2002 Gujarat ethnic cleansing. In case after case, Indian mobs cut open the stomachs of pregnant Indian Muslim women and killed the unborn babies. In other cases, genitals of Indian Muslim women were mutilated before killing them.

Independent Sikh groups report similar gang-rapes of Sikh women in public places across northern India in 1984.

The New Delhi bus gang rape and similar atrocities against women and minorities are not isolated incidents. Some foreign policies pursued by Indian governments were also driven by religious or social hatreds preexisting in Indian society.

In less than seventy years since the creation of India by Britain in 1947, New Delhi managed to provoke a war and several border clashes with China, four wars with Pakistan, invade Bangladesh, fight a proxy war in Sri Lanka and indirectly interfere in Nepal.

The Indian military invasion in 1971 of what is now Bangladesh is the perfect example of how the combustible mix of Indian hatreds poisoned its foreign policy. [See India Invaded Pakistan In 1971: Know The Facts at http://j.mp/qw8dXC ]

In 1971, there was no armed freedom movement in Kashmir. There were no pro-Kashmir groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT). In that year, Pakistanis were busy in messy and chaotic elections. Less than 40,000 Pakistani soldiers were stationed in East Pakistan, and all of them in their barracks.

Despite this peaceful Pakistani posture, Indian army crossed international borders in December of that year in an unprovoked war. Assisting the Indian army was a terror militia that went on a killing spree of Pakistani civilians, selecting targets based on their language. India's ally, the Soviet Union, provided indirect help.

Several indisputable evidences that emerged in the following years show how India meticulously planned the invasion at least two years in advance, if not more, recruiting agents and saboteurs and deploying a psy-ops strategy.

Until 1971, Kashmir was the only dispute between Pakistan and India and was contested in a largely peaceful manner inside the UN Security Council. But India created a permanent blood feud with Pakistan by planning and executing the one-sided, unprovoked invasion and war of 1971.

HINDI-SPEAKING INDIANS:
WHO TO BLAME?

It would be unfair to associate all Indians with this sordid record. In fact, evidence points to one group of Indians: the Hindi-speakers of northern India.

The multifaceted social and political hatreds in India are linked to the Hindi-speaking minority, about a third of the Indian population.

The Hindi-speakers are a powerful, rich and arrogant minority, for a reason. Most upper caste Hindus belong to this language group.

Other Indians often hold Hindi-speakers responsible for India’s social and governance problems and for wars with neighbors, for prolonging the Kashmir conflict, and for feeding hate against India's Christian, Sikh, Muslim, Dalit and Assamese minorities. [See http://j.mp/ZgBWKJ and http://j.mp/Tz9JLt as examples.]

The Delhi bus gang rape occurred in the heart of the Hindi-speaking belt. The February 2007 bombing of a ‘friendship train’ carrying Pakistani families on a goodwill visit to India occurred near Panipat, an old Hindi-speaking center.

The Hindi-speaking upper caste culture looks down at other Indians. Women in this culture do not enjoy much respect. There have been numerous cases of public rape and sexual assault in northern Indian where men chose to cheer and make cell phone videos as mobs assaulted and stripped young women. [See http://bit.ly/UIQEWZ and http://bitly.com/VueGTS and http://bitly.com/1349smA and http://j.mp/Vljxai and http://j.mp/10UJVh6 and http://j.mp/YZ3krZ and http://j.mp/136yamj ].

THE GANG RAPE

This background gives context to the gang rape of a 23-year-old college student on a public bus in New Delhi.

The incident sparked riots in the Indian capital because of the increasing cases of gang rapes that have given New Delhi its unflattering designation as the Rape Capital of India.

But the gang rape hides an uglier fact, that India has the worst world record in treating women.

Newly born or unborn female babies are often killed in India for religious and social reasons, according to surveys by the UN and other independent agencies. The country has the world's largest cases of underage forced girl marriages. And a probe by American television network ABC News earlier this year [See India’s Deadly Secret at http://j.mp/tHVRHI ] concluded that over 40 million Indian women of all ages disappeared or were killed in India since 1980.

A spate of articles in the aftermath of the Delhi bus gang rape confirms that social and religious traditions contribute to animosity toward women in India, making the country the world’s frontline battle state in countering anti-woman traditions and customs. [See http://bitly.com/12Z1kEK ]

INDIAN SOLDIERS RAPED
53 WOMEN IN ONE NIGHT

In 1991, in a Kashmiri village called Kunan Poshpora, 53 women were gang-raped by Indian Army soldiers during one night. The use of rape by the Indian Army as a weapon of war against Kashmiris who are demanding accession to Pakistan was documented in detail in the report Rapes In Kashmir released by Human Rights Watch. [See http://bit.ly/X3NDjK ]

There is something deeply wrong in India. Leaders of opinion need to raise it and end the state of denial. There have been many recent warnings and they have nothing to do with rape. The 2002 Gujarat ethnic cleansing is one. The riots against poor Assamese migrant workers are another. The Indian interior ministry blamed those riots on alleged Facebook posts originating in Pakistan. The ridiculous accusation caused embarrassment to India as television footage showed ordinary Indians beat and humiliate the Assamese workers on the streets prompting a mass exodus by the Assamese from Indian cities. No wonder then that the entire northeastern belt of India is up in arms demanding independence.

We in Pakistan continue to be at the receiving end of Indian hate. In 2007, a group of Pakistani families heeded Indian government's call for peace and boarded a 'Friendship Train' from Lahore to the Indian capital, which is located in the heart of the minority Hindi-speaking belt of India. The train was blown up and more than 50 Pakistanis were killed. The perpetrators turned out to be Indian military officers working with Hindu extremist groups.

Recently, the captain of a Pakistani sports team of blind players was served a form of acid at breakfast at an Indian hotel. Pakistani artists who visit India are routinely threatened by extremist Indians. [See posts under #AcidForBreakfastInIndia on Twitter].

On Twitter, Pakistanis increasingly complain about Indian trolls who dedicate time and human resource to spam Pakistani timelines. [See Twitter Is Infested With Indians Spreading Hate Against Pakistan at http://j.mp/IndHate ]

The new Indian Spring against policies of hate practiced by the minority Hindi-speaking elite of New Delhi is a good omen. But it's only a start and there is a long way ahead. This effort should expand to force the Indian elite to listen to the voice of a majority of Indians who are a peaceful people and who deserve to see the billions of dollars generated from the Indian economy spent on their welfare instead of rapid militarization in pursuance of hostile designs against neighbors.

Ending New Delhi's culture of hate is essential to seeing an India at peace with its own people and with neighbors.

The riots by Indian civil society show there is hope that India will be able to defeat the multifaceted hatreds that pollute Indian society and politics.

This article is an extended version of a column by the author that appeared in The News International, Pakistan’s largest English-language daily.

A Great Kashmir Day In 2012

The birthday of our Prophet, PBUH, coincided with Kashmir Solidarity Day this year. This is a blessing for one important reason: Kashmiris are on the rise again.

Yes, you might not read this in NYT, but for the first time since 1947, Kashmir is totally out of #Indian occupation army's control.

This is even better than 1989's intifada in Kashmir. Now, almost every segment of Kashmiris has risen against Indian occupation.

Similar good news are coming from Pakistan too.

After six years of the failed Composite Dialogue and the 4-point formula of Mr. Musharraf, Pakistan is back to where it was before 2004.

This means that Islamabad has quietly ditched the soft policy of the past several years. Now, Pakistan is back to the blunt support to Kashmiris. One small sign of this is that orders were issued in recent months to all federal and provincial government departments to show Kashmir as part of Pakistan on all maps. Pakistani media has been advised to do the same.

That's a small sign. As for bigger signs, well, let's just say that one reason India is trying to act friendly to Pakistan in recent months is that they are sure any Pakistani direct support to Kashmiri resistance now would create a real nightmare for occupation soldiers. Of course, Pakistan doesn't need to do that. Kashmiris are doing just that by themselves.

So, let's salute the brave people of Kashmir, the teenagers, the mothers, the sisters, the heroes who are fighting one of the most brutal occupations in the world today.

NOTE:

For a full coverage of Indian genocide in Kashmir, click here.
For the latest images from Kashmir Spring, click here. 

Kashmir Won't Go Away

In July, CIA attempted to harm Pakistan's most important national security priority: Kashmir, a territory that is under Indian occupation since 1948. Out of nowhere, the US spy agency arrested Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, a soft-spoken American who migrated from the Indian-occupied territory and set up a Kashmir center in Washington to raise the voice of his people.

The US government claimed the American-Kashmiri activist was a Pakistani spy out to influence US politicians on Kashmir.

Now, two months later, legal experts say he was arrested on little or no evidence. Evidence is mounting that US authorities arrested him for the media effect. In their desperation to harm Kashmiri and Pakistani interests, US authorities went as far as casting doubt on Kashmiri activists and groups active in Europe.

The arrest itself is not the issue here. It's the well-crafted media campaign that accompanied Mr. Fai's arrest.

The CIA circulated several stories in major US news outlets. These stories had one objective: to permanently damage Pakistan's international case on Kashmir. The campaign had little effect on Pakistanis except to further worsen US-Pakistan ties. The CIA made it clear where it stood on that count. [Pakistani officials, dismissing CIA's July move, say Pakistan's Kashmir case remains strong, based on UN resolutions that India had accepted. More importantly, the case is bolstered by courage of Kashmiris in confronting and embarrassing India's military machine.]

Americans are keen to brush Kashmir under the carpet. That is the only way they can tell Pakistanis, 'See, you don't have a problem with India, so start cooperating on granting India military and strategic access to Afghanistan.'

This access is not possible with using Pakistani land routes and airspace, and Pakistan will not go along unless the international dispute of Kashmir is resolved.

Washington's plans to induct India in Afghanistan as a cheaper replacement for the expensive American and NATO deployment there have been hampered by Pakistani objections. Those plans lie in tatters now.

Dr. Fai's arrest was CIA's response to Pakistani decision to restrict the agency's illegal activities inside Pakistan.

It was also a cheap attempt at appeasing the Indians as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited India, where she made sure to ignore the massive human rights violations and the rapes of Kashmiri women by Indian soldiers, as documented by various international human rights organizations.

But despite the best efforts of the Indians and the Americans, Kashmir won't go away.

The Qatar-based Al Jazeera has recently published an excellent dossier on happenings inside Kashmir, where a half a million plus Indian soldiers cram a tiny region.

And its latest report by a Kashmiri eyewitness is a strong indictment of India on the discovery of mass graves in the territory, mostly men and boys summarily executed by Indian soldiers, and some local women kidnapped and buried.

India Bans The Economist

This is a must read. The world's largest democracy has just banned the latest edition of The Economist magazine. I have always said that western media, and especially the American-British media, or what I like to call the Am-Brit media, treats India with kid gloves.

I mean, imagine the world's largest democracy becoming home to 21st century's first genocide: over 2,000 Indians burned alive in a matter of three days for being followers of the wrong religion?

It happened, in 2002, in western Indian state of Gujrat. Did you hear about it? No. Did the world, the United Nations, or the EU take note? Not at all. Why? One reason is that those murdered were Muslims. But also because the culrpit in this case was India, a country that the United States is grooming to replace American and British soldiers in fighting their wars in regions close to India. Indian soldiers are cheap compared to the yanks and Brits. And there are plenty of them so India can absorb massive human losses. And thus India gets away with stuff that no other country would. For example, in 2000, two young boys, less than 10 years old, and their father, an Australian missionary, were burned alive by a mob of Hindu extremists and fundamentalists. Nothing could save the kids and their father, not even the fact that they spent months distributing food for free among poor Indians.  Imagine this happening in China, or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, or Zimbabwe or Venezuela, or in any other country that Washington and London are not good friends with.  But since this happened in India, no one knows about it. There wasn't even a whimper from Australia when three of its citizens were murdered in the most brutal way possible.

So it is significant when The Economist writes that Pakistan and China are not as bad when it comes to censorship as India is. And it is more significant when the BBC seconds The Economist and accuses India of harassing the BBC and other media outlets operating inside India.

I have been saying for some time now that Pakistan is more liberal and tolerant than India is. For five years or so of Composite Dialogue, we receved groups of private Indian citizens in Pakistan as part of the people-to-people exchange between the two countries. Pakistani delegations that would visit India would freely interact with India media, criticize Pakistani policies where necessary and call for peace.  Surprisingly, we saw no such thing with the Indian delegations in Pakistan. They were all independent Indian activisits and citizens with no affiliation to Indian government, but they would dare not deviate from the official Indian position on any issue, be it Kashmir or concessions for peace. You could see they were all following the same talking points.

This and other points are explained in this excellent report titled, World's Largest Democracy Censors A British Magazine.

Video: In Four Minutes, The Story Of Kashmir Genocide

Forget the decades-old history of the Indian invasion and occupation of Kashmir, and the UN resolutions asking New Delhi to vacate the region. Here, in less than four minutes, you can cover this decades-old tragedy.

Indians Welcome In Pakistan, Pakistanis Beaten And Killed In India

Not a single Indian visitor to Pakistan, whether a private citizen, government officer or an Indian artist, was ever harassed by Pakistanis in any way in the entire history of Pak-Indian relations. The legendary Pakistani hospitality always embraced and touched visiting Indians as is the case with other foreigners visiting Pakistan.

In comparison, Pakistanis are regularly harassed and intimidated and in some cases even physically attacked while visiting India.

The biggest example is how 60 Pakistanis were burned alive aboard the so-called Samjhota (Friendship) Express train when they believed calls for peace and headed to India in February 2007. Today, the Indian government has admitted Hindu terrorists, including two serving Indian military officers, were behind the gruesome murder. The Indian government, backed by American and British media, insisted immediately after the attacks that they were the work of Pakistan's ISI and Kashmiri freedom groups.

There are more recent examples. Here are two of them to prove this point:

- Bigg Boss planning to send back Pakistani Artists : Pakistani participants in an Indian TV show face life threats by Hindu terrorists. The Indian government and people are unable to protect them.

- Pakistani artist beaten up in Mumbai: A well known Pakistani comedian Shakeel Siddiqui has been tortured by some extremists in Mumbai and ordered to urgently depart from India.

There is a mindset in India, in powerful circles in government, the military and the Hindu terror groups, that can't live with a smaller western neighbor that poses no existential threat to India.

This record of anti-Pakistanism in India contradicts the ridiculous statements of US officials and think-tank types who lecture Pakistan that India is not a threat.

Kashmir's Road To Freedom

There is a lesson for New Delhi in the lines from George Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple, set in colonial America during the Revolutionary era:

"And now, General, times passes; and America is in a hurry. Have you realized that though you may occupy towns and win battles, you cannot conquer a nation?"

This encapsulates the spirit of the Kashmirir people and their demand for Azaadi [freedom].

[An excerpt from a paper writte by S. Iftikhar Murshed, an Ambassador of Pakistan and Islamabad's former pointman for Afghanistan in the 1990s. Read his insightful paper here.].

APML: Chances And Intrigues

The pro-US government of President Asif Ali Zardari suspects its enemies are pushing the disparate factions of Pakistan Muslim League, or PML, to unite in order to create a force that could challenge Mr. Zardari's PPPP, or Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians.

Two recent moves have caught the media attention: The effort to create All Pakistan Muslim League [APML] by veteran politician Pir Pagara. And the effort to create APML by former president Pervez Musharraf in London.

The unification effort led by Pir Pagara is a 50-50 gamble at this stage. The personality clashes and conflicts of interest between the heads of various factions of PML are so deep and suspicions run so high that it can't work except in one condition: if the military approaches each one of them to unite them the way PMLQ was created under Mr. Musharraf eight years ago. Although there are signs the military is interested in seeing this government go, as most Pakistanis do, there is no chance that Gen. Kayani will participate in any effort to destabilize the government. So the PML uniters are pretty much on their own for the time being.

As for Mr. Musharraf's bid, he is benefiting from a sense of desperation and confusion that engulfs Pakistan because of the failures of politicians. His policy prescriptions are also outdated, and even have damaged vital Pakistani interests. He wants to take 'the war on terror to the end' when even the Zardari government and the Pakistani military are trying to tell the Americans to end military operations and come instead to the reconciliation table with the Afghan Taliban.

Mr. Musharraf's lines that he will crush any anti-Pakistan voices and keep Pakistan first are great, but there is ample evidence from his foreign policy that he kept his personal interests before the Pakistani interest on crucial occasions. The biggest exampe is the deal he entered with the United States to maneuver PPPP into power to serve US interests in exchange for helping him remain at the helm until 2013.

His backchannel diplomacy on Kashmir with India between 2004 and 2007 appeared to be driven more by his desire to emerge as an international man of peace and to appease Washington and New Delhi. During this period, he made unnecessary concessions to India without getting anything in return.

Getting some fans in Pakistan is not a big deal. Even Zardari has diehard fans. Mr. Msuharraf's latest political act has a nuisance value but is not expected to create any ripples in Pakistani politics.

One way Mr. Musharraf can have an impact is if the military supports his new bid for power. Interestingly, his policies on Kashmir, Afghanistan and US are highly unpopular within the military rank and file, despite the fact that his first three years 1999-2002 are remembered as ideal in terms of governance.

Mr. Musharraf does retain a nuisance value for the short term. But for the long term, there is no evidence he is the harbinger of major change.

Weekend Story That Scuttled Pak-Indian Photo-Op

This drama quietly unfolded over the weekend.

Early Sunday, a Pakistani newspaper editor receives a text message from a source in New York warning that Zardari govt. is pushing Pak foreign minister to stand for a photo-op with his Indian counterpart in NYC on the sidelines of a UN meeting. Indians were desperate for the photo to demoralize Kashmiris & show them that Pakistan is on board.

The editor called a Pakistani TV news channel and offered to break the story. By midday the story was on the air. By Monday, the Indians , the Americans and their Pakistani stooges waited with baited breath for a meeting that never happened. By evening, Pak foreign minister gave a shocking statement: He won't meet Indians for a photo-op unless they discuss their occupation of Kashmir.

A warm thank you to the timely alert from the New York source.

Click here to read the full story.

Who pulled Krishna's leg?

This is not the first time that Indian extremists have sabotaged crucial peace talks with Pakistan. A nexus of Indian government, military, intelligence and Hindu extremist and terror groups is violently opposed to peace in Pakistan and Kashmir. Time to shed the light on them.

Click here to read more.

Indians Threaten A Pakistani Editor

Jamim Shah: Latest media victim of RAW	The new media target of RAW: Makhdoom Babar

 

In the year 2000, suspected Indian intelligence agents shot dead newspaper editor Jamim Shah in Kathmandu. Mr. Shah was known for his damning exposes on covert Indian meddling in Nepal.

A decade later, a Pakistani newspaper editor fears a similar fate.

Indian interior minister P. Chidambaram warned in September that the Islamabad-based The Daily Mail was creating problems for his ministry. That month the paper published a scoop on Indian plans to deploy a unit of female sex providers in some parts of Indian-occupied Kashmir targeting Indian soldiers who serve in the war zone for long periods of time away from their families.

After the Pakistani report, Mr. Chidambaram's ministry was inundated with calls from angry parents of female security trainees recruited from poor Indian villages. Indian media later confirmed the Daily Mail's report. Indian Interior Ministry officials tried to control the damage by spinning the story of the deployment of uniformed sex workers.

Last year, the Daily Mail published a report that revealed a list of Indian nuclear installations and the peculiar security threats that each one of them continues to face, especially those installations that are close to northwestern India where some two dozen separatist insurgencies are in full flare.

In January, the Pakistani newspaper broke the story of a tussle between Indian army chief Kapoor and one of his senior generals over land grab for personal gain.  The Indian media picked up the story and pursued it, leading to the indictment of the Indian army chief in an internal probe.

Read the full details of threat received by the Daily Mail at this link.

 

Two Pakistani Officials Fired For Promoting Indian Propaganda

You will not believe this. But this happened in Pakistan. And two junior government officials might lose their jobs over this. But with a pro-US government in power in Islamabad, and former employees of Voice of America allowed to steer the nation’s media policy, it shouldn’t be surprising to see a Pakistani mouthpiece promoting Indian spin.

India's Central Reserve Police Force, used by India's government to suppress the Kashmiri struggle for freedom, killed a 16-year-old Kashmiri boy the other day.

Nothing new in that. Indians have done worse, like mass graves and genocide. What was unusual here is that Makhdoom Babar Sultan woke up one morning this week in his home in Islamabad to read a clarification in a major Pakistani newspaper issued by the chief of the Indian CRPF assuring readers that Indian occupation police in Kashmir had nothing to do with murdering the 16-year-old, who was last seen throwing stones at Indian soldiers.

Mr. Babar scrathced his head.  He was shocked to see who hen he tried to see who wrote the story. It was APP, or the Associated Press of Pakistan, the official news agency.

'Wait a second', he said to himself, 'What is APP doing promoting the viewpoint of Indian occupation forces in Kashmir?'

Pakistanis already know that their government in Islamabad was basically tailored by the Americans and the Brits. No secret in that. The Am-Brits expect this government to push their agenda, which these days includes urgently patching up with India so that the Pakistani people and their military can be convinced to allow Indian soldiers into Afghanistan to help the Americans with their failed occupation there.

But peddling Indian propaganda? That’s going too far.

Unlike the rest of us, Makhdoom Babar is lucky to own a newspaper. So he rushed to his office in the morning to write a story on this, titled ‘APP Starts Promoting Indian Govt’s Kashmir Propaganda’.

Two APP journalists have been suspended and a probe is underway that might lead to some more job losses.

Earlier, two journalists from the state-run PTV were suspended for visiting the US embassy without permission.

When I contacted Makhdoom Babar to get his perspective, he replied with this E-mail note:

“Well, the Associated Press of Pakistan, the APP is the official news agency of the government of Pakistan. the aims and objectives behind running this State news agency is to project the Pakistan government's view point across the globe and throughout the country as well. The Tax Payers' money is spent on the functioning of this agency because it is supposed to promote and project national interests. Especially when it comes to the very sensitive issues like Occupation of Jammu and Kashmir by Indian Forces, the role of APP becomes very important and sensitive as well. it is supposed to confront the media propaganda of the Indian government that New Delhi continues to carry on with to cover up the gross Human Rights violations in the Occupied Kashmir by its brutal Forces. Now if APP releases a news item that actually contributes to the promotion of Indian view point over the Kashmir related matters, particularly the HR violations related matters, it is really alarming for every Pakistani and for me, as an Editor, it becomes even more worrying. That is why we published this as a major news so that such things should be taken care of in future and are not repeated. We have not been officially made known about any action taken by the APP over this issue however unofficial channels say that APP has suspended 2 of its workers over the matter and the Managing Director of APP is reported to have ordered a probe to dig out as to how it did happen. We appreciate the action taken by the the head of APP as a responsible head of an institution but at the same time we expect that no one should be made a scapegoat and only those should be warned or punished who were actually responsible for this blooper, deliberately or un-deliberately. It was very important for the head of the APP to have taken an action over the matter so that everyone stands warned and alarmed regarding such matters.”

At least two senior members of the incumbent Pakistani government are former VOA employees who served in Washington, D.C.  Both are directly involved in how Pakistan's official media outlets operate. Informally, Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington is also considered to have a say in the government’s media strategy, according government officials.

India's Mumbai Evidence 'Theatrical'

[In Urdu] Hafiz Mohammad Saeed's international attorney describes his meetings with UN officials where he proved to them how India is using Mumbai to get back at India's Kashmiri opponents fighting its illegal occupation of Kashmir. Attorney Haider Rasul Mirza also confirmed there is no evidence against Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, a Kashmiri freedom group. India's noise in this regard is theatrical. Interview by Ahmed Quraishi.

India Fuming At Pakistani Newspaper For Leaking Story On Sex Providers

India is fuming because a Pakistani newspaper broke the news that the Indian military has finalized plans to deploy a unit of women sex providers in occupied Kashmir, where figures of suicides and mental problems among Indian soldiers deployed in a hostile territory have shot through the rooftop.

This time, Pakistani diplomats in the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi may receive an unusual Indian protest.  So far the Indians have been ISI-phobic, seeing the hands of Pakistan's feared premier counterespionage service in everything that went wrong in India.  Now the diplomats will be receiving a letter of protest against an independent Pakistani newspaper.

For the first time in the 60-year tumultuous relationship between Pakistan and India, New Delhi wants to lodge a complaint with Islamabad against a Pakistani newspaper, the Daily Mail.  The Mail is a small newspaper that publishes from Islamabad and Beijing.  But it's investigative stories make up for its small size.

On Sept. 11, The Daily Times ran a story filed by the paper's New Delhi correspondent Christina Palmer, titled 'Indian Army To Deploy Prostitutes As A Women Battalion In Held Kashmir'.

The PakNationalists, PakAlert, PKKH, PakistanFirst and tens of other Pakistani and international online news portals, picked it up.

Ms. Palmer's story was based on a statement issued by the Inspector General of Border Security Force Himmat Singh. The story basically said that the Indian military was concerned about the rising incidents of suicides among Indian soldiers deployed in Indian-occupied Kashmir, a territory where Kashmiris are fighting India for the right to determine whether they want to be independent or join Pakistan.

A high level Indian military delegation went to Moscow to study the Russian experience in dealing with such problems.  Like India, the former Soviet Union military was spread thin across a large territory, including distant and difficult regions.

Mr. Singh confirmed that a batch of 178 female soldiers was being sent to Northern Command where they would be deployed along with Indo-Pak border to check the border violations by women, working in the field.  Mr. Singh further stated that these women were not fully trained for operational military duties however in the next phase, after further training, they would be given the duties of operational Border security.  Mr. Singh refused to admit that these female soldiers were actually prostitutes and were being dispatched to the valley as undercover sex workers.  When contacted, Rohit Sharma, a senior defense analyst here in New Delhi, said that the move was a creative step by Indian army leadership as it would boost the medical and mental health of the soldiers.

Some departments of the Indian government were permitted to contact licensed brothels in several Indian cities to explore the possibility of recruiting candidates.

But the Indian reaction to this story was unexpected.

According to one Indian newspaper, an official of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs retorted by saying what he or she thought is a hit below the belt for Pakistan: "We do not have a Talibanised society like Pakistan's.  In India, women have very successful military careers."

Never mind that Pakistan has a large women's police force deployed in all the major cities of the country, in addition to active duty women officers in the Army and the Pakistan Air Force.

The Indian news portal Mid-Day.com confirmed that "India has decided to lodge an official complaint against the 'wrongful news reports" and that "the order to lodge a complaint has come directly from the office of Union Home Minister P Chidambaram."

The Indian portal quoted an unnamed Indian diplomat as saying, "Such news can tarnish the image of our forces. So far, it was a conscious decision by the government not to deploy women troops on the border. But we want total success of this experiment and we need to tell the Pakistanis to behave."

Several foreign reporters based in the Indian capital reported receiving calls from Indian government and intelligence officers asking where to find Christina Palmer.

Ms. Palmer, who will be appearing on Geo Network's weekly show TSS with Ahmed Quraishi tomorrow, is a British journalist who lives with her Indian husband. According to Indian laws, you have to be a Pakistani citizen legally residing in India or an Indian journalist to work as a correspondent for a Pakistani newspaper.  Non-Indian journalists cannot represent Pakistani media in India.  For this reason, Ms. Palmer writes under an assumed name.

But to prove that she is real, Ms. Palmer is appearing through telephone from New Delhi on a Pakistani television talk show.

In her report, Ms. Palmer wrote on Oct. 6: "In a unique and unprecedented move, India’s Minister for Home Affairs Mr. P. Chidambaram has threatened the Islamabad-based Pakistani newspaper The Daily Mail over one the investigative reports by the Daily regarding first female troops of Indian Army that have been deployed in the Held Kashmir. According to the reports appearing here in local Indian media as well as international media, the Home Affairs Minister has ordered his officials to lodge an official complaint with Pakistan’s High Commission in New Delhi to sort out The Daily Mail."

The paper's editor-in-chief Makhdoom Babar Sultan defended his newspaper's credibility in a special editorial: "Mr. Chidambaram’s action has shocked the entire global media community as it is the first move of its kind in which a top minister of a country has threatened an independent newspaper of another country of lodging a complaint against it and seeking strong action, there this move of India’s MHA has exposed the true face of so-called secular India and the belief of Indian leadership in freedom of press and freedom of expression. In the 62 years of the history of Pak-India relations, The Daily Mail is the first ever victim of this kind of aggression from the Indian government."

Latest Indian Drama: Rocket Attack At Wagah

India tries to milk its interior minister's US visit by faking a Pakistani rocket attack across the border. In 2000, when President Clinton was about to land in New Delhi, the Indians sent fake Kashmiri freedom fighters to kill innocent minority Sikhs in Kashmir in cold blood and blamed Pakistan. Like synchronized film dances, the Indians have perfected the art of political drama.

By Dan Qayyum
PakistanKaKhudaHafiz.com

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—In an attempt to make the most of Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram’s visit to the US, India has floated a sensational news leak that India was attacked by Pakistani rangers using ’several rockets’ at the only border crossing between the two countries, called the Wagah sector.

Staging false flag attacks is nothing new for Indians when trying to paint Pakistanis as terrorists. These accusations are always timed with high-profile talks with American leaders.

Let's rewind to year 2000: Chattisinghpora, Occuped Kashmir – On the eve of the then US President Bill Clinton’s visit to India, 35 Kashmiri Sikhs were massacred in cold blood by Indian security forces posing as Kashmiri freedom fighters. The usual ‘Lashkar-e-Tayba militants’ were rounded up and executed in fake-encounters, the ‘Pakistani National’ was produced, ensuring Clinton’s entire visit focused on what India calls ‘Pakistan-backed terrorism’. It was only much later when the damage was done that the truth of the massacre came out, implicating Indian soldiers and intelligence agencies in this heinous crime.

The Indian security forces went a step ahead in their brutality back then. Indian police opened fire on unarmed Kashmiris protesting the murders of five innocent Muslims right after the staged Sikh massacre, killing another eight innocent people and bringing the total toll of this massacre closer to fifty.

Pakistan calling India’s bluff?

Pakistan has officially offered to hold an open debate with the Indian home minister over the probing of Mumbai attacks, calling the Indian bluff.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said, “I am ready for the debate anywhere in India, Pakistan or wherever his Indian counterpart likes.”

Talking to journalists in Islamabad, Malik started off by pointing out that the first formal response to Pakistan’s February 9 request for information came on June 20th and that too was in Marathi language. Besides citing other Indian lapses, he pointed out that India refused to share the Samjotha Express dossier [Hindu terrorists with connivance of Indian military intelligence personnel torched a friendship train carrying Pakistani visitors to India in 2006].

Malik said he had received the latest Indian dossier in which the Indians have provided us with a statement from Ajmal Kasab, who claims now that he spoke to Hafiz Saeed, the leader of Pakistani Kashmiri group, when he was in Mumbai.

‘Initially the Indians said Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi was the mastermind and we arrested him … now they have started saying that Hafiz Saeed is the mastermind,’ Malik said.

Pakistan to take up Kashmir and Afghanistan before the UN

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has decided to take up the issue of Kashmir and Afghanistan effectively at a session of the United Nations General Assembly this year.

Pakistan will inform the international community about its reservations on the Indian tactics and policies meant to delay and avoid the resolution of Kashmir issue. Pakistan will also take up the faltering war against terrorism in Afghanistan.

The decision to this effect was taken during two separate meetings held at the foreign office, a private TV channel reported. Relevant authorities briefed the Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi about Kashmir and Afghanistan.

During the meeting, Pakistani policymakers decided that Pakistan would ask the United Nations to ensure a resolution of the long-lingering issue of Kashmir on a priority basis for durable peace in the region.

The international community would also be informed about the human rights violations committed by Indian forces in occupied Kashmir, sources said.

Besides officers of relevant authorities, officers of intelligence agencies including Director General Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha attended the meeting.

Pakistan will also take up the issue of Afghanistan during the session and would inform the largest world body about problems being faced by Pakistan because of the wrong policies of the allies occupation forces in Afghanistan, a Pakistan television channel reported.

Indian Army To Deploy Prostitutes As A Women Battalion In Held Kashmir

A group of experts assigned to probe rising suicides among Indian soldiers in Kashmir have recommended sending the soldiers back to India at least once a month to be with their wives. Since this is not possible, India's military leadership has taken a leaf from the book of the old Soviet army: A woman battalion at the war front. A committee headed by a Lieutenant General of the Indian army is putting the last touches on the new battalion.

Click here to read the full report.

Lone Survivor From India's Failed Moon Mission

Indian astronaut lands back safely. [SEE PICTURE]

Just kidding.

That's the last survivor from last week's failed Indian moon mission Chandrayaan I.

Ok. Kidding again.

Before anyone calls me a jealous Pakistani, let me say that it is an impressive feat for a developing nation and one that has the world's largest concentration of poverty to launch space expeditions. It proves that the Anglo-Saxons don't have a monopoly over talent and hard work. It is instructive that India's last colonizers, the Brits, are yet to send any craft to space. Britain's last meaningful contact with space was when many Brits thronged to movie houses to watch the space thriller Armageddon a decade ago.

So it takes courage, determination and vision to plan space missions. And the Indians did it last October when they placed their space craft in moon's orbit.

As talented, hardworking people, their neighbors to the west, the Pakistanis, too are working on a space program. In fact, it is one of the best-kept secrets in a country that is not very good at keeping them.

But unlike India, Pakistan has no delusions of grandeur and it is not preparing for future interstellar domination warfare. Pakistan's concerns are modest: communications, business and research.

That's in fact where the Indians started too before vanity took over along with the desire of a small group of hawks in New Delhi to become the next superpower. To be fair, most Indians are smart people and have better things to do than play superpower games. The idea of India playing this game was actually pumped into Indian mind by some hawkish Americans, Brits, Aussies and Israelis during the warrior reign of Bush-Cheney. That's when some knuckleheads in Washington convinced some Indians that an India-Israel-America axis could actually change the world for good [with the Brits, Canadians and Aussies thrown in to give this whole thing an 'international' look].

The 'recruitment' of India was a joint Am-Brit idea, a combination of a desire to sell weapons, irritate China, and secure India as a future source of cheap soldiers to fight the Am-Brit dirty wars from the Red Sea to China to the shores of Sydney.

The failed moon mission, Chandrayaan I, is a good example of where India went wrong. The $82 million mission was assigned the task of mapping moon's surface so that Indian scientists could prepare for sending a manned mission to the moon by 2013.

The craft lasted in space less than a year before Indian scientists lost all contact. Mission aborted and expensive equipment lost.  To understand that vanity was a large undeclared part of this space mission, just see the reactions of Indian officials after the embarrassing news.

Most Indian officials initially said it's not a big deal, the craft was supposed to map moon's surface and that's already been done. Another official said some 80,000 images have already been sent by the craft to earth. A third official said the ship would have been of no use beyond this point even if it continued to fly for the whole two years.

And then the entire Indian media went silent on the story. No discussion, no write-ups, and no questions. To me it seemed eerily similar to the free Indian media's attitude on the Kashmir dispute: Uniformity across the Indian media and a strict adherence to the official Indian policy line, as if by government order, compared to the noisy and vibrant discussions in the Pakistani media often to the extent of ridiculing official Pakistani position on Kashmir.

It was obvious someone ordered the Indian media not to discuss the failed Indian moon mission 'in national interest.'

The question that no one in India asked is this: Why map the moon surface? How would sending an Indian to the moon five years from now solve anything? And how about solving India's mammoth developmental problems here, on earth, where most of the billion or so Indians continue to live?

The Indians, in their quest for projecting the superpower image that the Bush-Cheney people fed them before leaving for the dustbin of history refuse even to acknowledge they have a huge poverty problem that pales in comparison to the problems of any other nation on the planet.

Here is an example of Indian denial:

Last year, Kumar Malhotra of BBC wrote that in 2006 UNICEF has registered the death of 2.5 million children under five in two countries: India and China.

India's share of these deaths was a staggering 2.1 million.  And China has more population than India.

This is the highest figure of child deaths anywhere in the world, and they happen because of lack of services and healthcare because India is busy becoming a superpower, beating China in military hardware and sending bungled space missions.

This year, the UNDP India poverty report for 2009 began with this sobering assessment: "India has a high incidence of poverty despite being hailed as an engine of growth and instrument of globalization."

Mr. Malhotra complains that 'When you talk to officials and experts in India, they say poverty in is in decline.'

India is ready to spend $82 million on vanity space missions and billions more on weapons [it recently purchased old refurbished Russian aircraft carriers], but won't spend that money on the single largest concentration of poor people on earth, in Indian villages and cities.

The Indians hide these facts from the international audience.  And the reality comes out in the open only when an adventurist British film director decides to portray Indian poverty in Slumdog Millionnaire.  The film initially upset many Indians who thought someone created a hole in the Incredible India story.

Here is what India's government needs to understand:  You can't buy your way to superpower status.  What nation in history achieved this status by buying refurbished aircraft carriers when a majority of your people is stinkin' poor?

Indian Predicament In Kashmir

Just like the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Indian army is cornered in Kashmir. If a war breaks out in the region, Indian soldiers have no doubt they will be facing enemy soldiers from the front and Kashmiris gunning for their necks from back.

Here is a groundbreaking report that shows, in the language of ground realities, India's lost battle in occupied Kashmir.

The report is titled, Indian Elections In Kashmir: The Impact On Freedom.

Here is the conclusion:

"State assembly elections have been held in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir in the past and are likely to continue to be held in the future. If history is any guide, it can safely be inferred that they will neither be accepted by the people of Jammu and Kashmir as a substitute to the right to self-determination or plebiscite, nor they diminish freedom sentiments in the valley."

CLICK TO READ THE FULL REPORT HERE

India Defeated In Sri Lanka

The Indian-backed terrorism and insurgency in Sri Lanka has finally been defeated.


Like the Pakistani military, the Sri Lankans have come to realize that this is not a civil war. This is a foreign-backed trouble. The funniest part of Indian-backed terrorism in Sri Lanka is that it was quite clear where the money, arms and support was coming from. The terrorists were cornered in a tip of the island closest to the southern part of India. No matter how hard the Sri Lankan military pounded these terrorists, they would come back the next day with more weapons. A couple of times the terrorists returned with small planes!


So the Sri Lankan military did what the Pakistani military is doing now. First, both recognized that terrorism is not indigenous. It is supported from the outside. In Pakistan's case, it was backed from the Afghan soil, where there is a growing Indian military and intelligence presence under the guise of humanitarian work fully backed by Pakistan's true allies, the Americans and the Brits.


So the Sri Lankans defeat and kill India's terrorists. This should give hope to the long suffering people of Kashmir, where the Indian army and Indian soldiers have become 'freewheeling rapists', attacking Kashmiri women as a last resort to break the will of the Kashmiri men who want freedom from India at all costs.



The freedom movement in Kashmir is one of the world's most impressive examples of a people's desire for freedom. The mainstream media in Ameirca and Britian, which is full of government poodles and peddlers of lies and deceit, does not cover the atrocities in Kashmir because that hurts the image of their new slave-soldier in Asia, India, whom they want to use against China and as a source for cheap soldiers in Afghanistan to stabilize the faltering American occupation there.


If the Sri Lankans can do it, so can the Kashmiris.

Well Done Jamaat Al-Daawa

There are reports that medical and rehabilitation teams from Jamaat Al-Daawa, the Kashmiri organization that used to be active in support of their kin in Indian-occupied Kashmir, have surfaced to help the hundreds of thousands of Pakistani refugees fleeing the terror of insurgents pouring in from Afghanistan, backed by anti-Pakistan forces there.

The pro-U.S. Zardari government conspired with the Americans after the Mumbai attacks to have Jamaat al-Daawa banned by the UN without any evidence that could stand in a court of law. The Zardari government was also ready to include the names of respected Pakistani personalities in the UN list had it not been for some members within the government who feared widespread popular backlash. [See To Zardari-Gilani-Qureshi-Durrani: Why Humiliate Pakistan? ]

Daawa's military wing was disbanded in 2004 under the orders of the military government of Pervez Musharraf. To sustain its cadre and the families of the martyrs who died fighting Indian occupation soldiers in Kashmir, Daawa transformed its entire operations into social work. And they excelled at it, first in the massive Kashmir earthquake in 2005, then in 2008, and now in the refugee camps of Pakistanis in Mardan and Swabi in NWFP.

Daawa's largesse has included Pakistani Hindus whose villages in Pakistan's Sindh province faced drought. When the UN banned Daawa, Pakistani Hindus came out to protest the decision because it resulted in the closure of schools that were being run by Daawa for the community [see picture at top, also check Pakistani Hindus Rally To Support Jamaat al-Daawa ].

If not for the capitulation of the Zardari government, Daawa could not have been banned by the UN based on the half-cooked evidence that the Indians came up with.

Someone might ask: Why do I want Pakistan to have groups like Jamaat Daawa?

For one, most of them are either Pakistanis, or Kashmiris, or both. And that makes them our own.

Second, they did very well in Kashmir in support of the people suffering the largest concentration of brutal occupation forces anywhere, where Indian soldiers are virtual rapists on the loose to punish the Kashmiris for wanting to be free of Indian occupation.

Third, we need people like Jamaat Daawa to end their social work and revert back into their original role of resistance groups and go back into Indian occupied Kashmir, with Pakistan's support, to make life miserable once again for Indian soldiers. This would be the right thing to do now since India is blocking Pakistan's water from Kashmir and is sending terrorists and saboteurs from Afghan soil to spread mayhem inside Pakistan, disguised as 'Pakistani Taliban' and God knows what else.

In this regard, Mr. Zardari's government will do well to heed the advice of Mr. Majeed Nizami, the president of the Nawai Waqt Media Group. He advised the government to start sending Kashmiri and Pakistani resistance fighters back into Indian occupied Kashmir. His reasoning is valid. The Indians have grown arrogant because of our apologetic attitude since we've given them a pass on so many issues under the prodding of our fake allies, the Americans.

Time to rollback Pakistani concessions.