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India-Pakistan Clashes in Kashmir

By Muhammad Akbar Notezai

The two countries struggle to make diplomatic progress amid ongoing clashes.

July was a busy month for India-Pakistan relations. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Ufa, Russia, with the two agreeing that their respective national security advisors would meet to discuss ways to combat terrorism.

But just a week or so after this diplomacy, the two countries once again exchanged gunfire across their disputed frontier in Kashmir. According to reports, a heavy exchange between the Indian and Pakistani troopers took place along the line of control (LoC) in Jammu’s Poonch district. As usual, each side blamed the other for the incident. An unnamed Indian defense spokesman was reported as accusing Pakistani troops of opening fire on several posts along the Line of Control that divides Kashmir. He was quoted as saying that Indian forces responded with their own barrage to the “unprovoked firing” by Pakistani forces. In contrast, Pakistani officials had earlier said in a statement that Indian troops used heavy weapons on July 18, when Muslims were celebrating the Eid-ul-Fitr (marking the end of the holy month of Ramazan), to pound Nezapir in Kashmir.

Over the past week more clashes were reported, including one in which an Indian soldier was reportedly killed by a Pakistani sniper. It was in fact the third sniper attack this month, and the 18th ceasefire violation in a month that has four people killed and 14 wounded. The exchanges have continued into this weekend.

Meanwhile, a single attack in Gurdaspur, Punjab on Monday left seven dead. India has blamed Pakistani terrorists for the attack, an accusation Pakistan has vehemently denied.

The incidents have raised concerns that the planned meeting of the national security advisors would be derailed, although for now, the talks – tentatively scheduled for late August – look to be going ahead.

A History of Trouble

Hari Singh, the last ruling Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, wanted to be independent but under pressure from both India and Pakistan, in 1947 elected to accede to India. That led to the first war between India and Pakistan in 1947-48. Since then, the Kashmir region has been a flashpoint between the two countries.

Since it was created in 1949, the United Nations Military Observer Group in Indian and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) has been supervising the ceasefire in the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region. Pakistani army officials say they have informed the UNMOGIP about alleged recent ceasefire violations by India and asked the monitors to investigate the incidents. Subsequently, a team visited Sialkot Working Boundary, and inspected the areas targeted by recent firing by the India Border Security Force. According to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations, the UNMOGIP officers visited the Sullehpor, Chaprar, and Milanay sectors of the Line of Control. Pakistan also summoned the Indian ambassador after a “spy drone” was downed in disputed Kashmir.

Meanwhile, New Delhi has lodged its own complaint with the UNMOGIP, when one of its civilians was killed during gunfire on the border.

The U.S., China and Russia have for years been trying to push India and Pakistan to repair relations. The antipathy between the two countries is a factor in regional conflicts, notably in Afghanistan.

In 2003, India and Pakistan did agree to a ceasefire along the Line of Control in Kashmir, and subsequently began peace talks. That process was suspended in the wake of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants.

Amit Ranjan, a Delhi-based scholar, pointed out to The Diplomat that incidents regularly occur just as India and Pakistan are about to enter negotiations. According to Ranja, the blame can be laid at the feet of institutions that do not approve of talks, and which seek to derail the process. Take, for instance, the bonhomie created between the Indian and Pakistani prime ministers at Lahore in 1999, which quickly gave way to the Kargil War. Then, in 2007-08, when the two countries were looking for a breakthrough on the Kashmir issue, the devastating attacks on Mumbai occurred. There are more examples, all suggesting that those who have profited from conflict are reluctant to give peace a chance.

Now, Ranja notes, “Despite the meeting of the two prime ministers at Ufa, gunfire [has been exchanged] on the India-Pakistan international border, even on the eve of Eid, when the two sides used to exchange sweets. Who started firing is like a chicken and egg puzzle which one cannot resolve; both sides accuse the other.”

Ranja concludes that unless these institutions agree to permit a breakthrough, their machinations will always defeat the goodwill gestures of the political leaderships of India and Pakistan, scuttling any chance of peace between the two countries.

Pakistan - #Shame #PMLN - Islamabad’s evictions

There should be no confusion or lack of clarity about what has happened in Islamabad earlier this week. The government’s move to destroy Afghan Basti, a katchi abadi in I-11, and evict its tenants by force, represents nothing less than a continuation of its long war against the poor. Thousands of people have been rendered homeless, moving from a position of abject poverty to absolute destitution, hundreds have been injured, and many have also been arrested for the ‘crime’ of resisting the brutality of a state machinery inured to the use of violence against the subordinate classes. While it would be tempting to say that this incident has revealed the government’s true colours, the truth is that the government has always displayed an eager willingness to trample all over the rights of the poor in its pursuit of the interests of the rich and powerful.

When the government first began its demolition of Afghan Basti, its approach bore all the hallmarks of similar exercises undertaken in the past. Armed with a court order that conferred the proceedings with a dubious legitimacy, allowing for the settlement to be razed to the ground without even mentioning the need to help the displaced and dispossessed, the government’s description of its activities as being a ‘clean-up operation’ was inadvertently revealing; it was clear that, to the government, this settlement represented a blight on the face of Islamabad and the CDA’s plans for the city, and that its residents were little more than human detritus that needed to be disposed of to make way for shinier and flashier buildings and people. Claims that the Afghan Basti was a hub of iniquity plagued by drugs and criminality were supplemented by an openly racist narrative that associated such activities with the Afghan refugees living in the settlement; the fact that this was factually incorrect (the majority of the Afghan Basti’s residents are Pakistani citizens, and levels of crime are no higher than comparable low-income areas in other parts of the country) is also irrelevant when considering how basic human decency, if nothing else, dictates that we should treat everyone with respect and empathy regardless of their national origins.

Once again, the old bogey of ‘development’ was also invoked to justify the unjustifiable, providing a veneer of acceptability and respectability to proceedings that were anything but. As always, no real attempt was made to outline exactly what this development would be or who would benefit from it but if past experience is anything to go by, the contours of the process should be abundantly clear. With their focus on mega-projects that serve as showy symbols or ‘progress’ as well as great opportunities for graft, successive governments in Pakistan (most notably those headed by the PML-N) have repeatedly demonstrated how their visions of ‘development’ have no room for the poor. Amidst all the massive roads, glitzy buildings, and billions of dollars of investment, little to no attention has been paid to addressing the basic needs of Pakistan’s poor, with spending of healthcare, education, and welfare remaining abysmally low. Instead, shadowy cabals of well-connected businessmen, landowners, and government officials continue to carve up the economy amongst themselves, ensuring that Pakistan remains a country that exists to protect and pursue the interests of the few at the expense of the many.

In the context of the I-11 evictions, it is clear that the government has failed to provide the populace with low income housing, even though the right to shelter is enshrined in the constitution. The thousands of families forcibly removed from their homes and deprived of their belongings in Afghan Basti have been offered no compensation or any form of resettlement, and will be left to fend for themselves. For the government, and for much of society, the ultimate fate of these people is of no interest or consequence; they are invisible, intruding on the public consciousness only when they attempt to resist the forces responsible for their impoverishment, or when they disturb the comfortable status quo that characterises elite spaces and privilege in this country (as evinced by the clearly classist entrance fee introduced by Islamabad’s Centaurus Mall in the weeks prior to Eid).
To their credit, the PTI and the JI raised the issue of the I-11 evictions in parliament but did little more than engage in the verbal castigation of a government to which they are inimically opposed. This is unsurprising given that these parties, like their other mainstream counterparts, are constrained by the same structural logic that sees them all beholden to the property-owning classes and in thrall to the logic of capitalist development. They are inherently limited in the extent to which they will oppose the economic status quo, and cannot be relied upon, or expected to, engage in anything even remotely resembling a robust defence of the interests of the working classes.

Instead, resistance to the evictions was spearheaded by the Awami Workers Party whose activists were at the frontlines of the struggle helping to mobilise the residents of the settlement in their attempts to resist the bulldozers of the CDA and the batons of the police. In the event, some of these activists, as well as many residents of the Afghan Basti, were arrested and are currently being booked under Pakistan’s draconian anti-terror laws. While these arrests, like the rest of the eviction ‘operation’, are a travesty that needs to be protested against vocally and repeatedly, this entire episode, has once again, demonstrated how those who oppose the economic status quo and challenge the interests of the elite are guaranteed to be met with the full force of the state.

Pakistan - Traders’ country-wide strike on 0.3pc withholding tax, a warning to PMLN Fed Govt: PPP

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Karachi Division President Syed Najmi Alam, Sardar Khan, Izharul Haq Hasaanzai and Habib Hasan Balouch while addressing PMLN Federal Government said it should learn a lesson from the country-wide strike by the traders across the board against the tyrant imposition of 0.3 percent withholding tax, which was in its initial stage was 0.6 percent.

They said that the PMLN Federal Government deliberately ignored sane suggestions and advices from concerned political parties and traders’ associations and preferred to impose the tyrant decision of 0.3 percent withholding tax on all bank transactions. This led to instillation of strong wave of disappointment, hatred against the PMLN Federal Government, unrest among the traders and the masses across the board.

They said that the PPP had time and again advised the PMLN Federal Government to avoid policies and decisions that would hurt the interest of the common man and the country and also discard the idea of selling the strategic national institutions like PIA and Pakistan steel Mills but the government did not hear the cal of the day.

They once again warned the PMLN Federal Government to immediately withdraw the 0.3 percent withholding tax on bank transactions or else it should be ready to face more protests in which the PPP would be on the forefront with the traders and the masses

https://mediacellppp.wordpress.com/2015/08/01/traders-country-wide-strike-on-0-3pc-withholding-tax-a-warning-to-pmln-fed-govt-ppp/

Pakistan - #PPP supports strike call of traders

PPP Punjab expresses it total solidarity with the traders’ community and supports its strike of 1st and of 5th of August to press for their demand of withdrawal of with-holding tax, said Mian Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo, President PPP Punjab, while talking to a delegation that called on him at the PPP Punjab Secretariat here today.The delegation was led by Suhail Milk, Vice President PPP, consisting Nadir Khan, zonal president and ticket holder,Waheed Qureshi,Arif Khan,qaiser Mustafa,Chaurdhry Sadiq,Imran Athawal and Muhammad Hussain.

Mian Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo said that the government was contemplating the economic genocide of the small traders but the PPP would scuttle their malevolent designs because it always stood with the victims and against the tyrannical forces.

He added that PPP considered the small traders as its constituency and would not leave it at the mercy of the hostile circumstances created by the government of the day.

He regretted the generosity of this government as it gave hundreds of billions of rupees exemption in custom duties to the big industrialists but its parsimonious against small traders at the cost of their vital interests was unforgiving.

He advised the government to concentrate on broadening the tax net instead of levying new taxes on traders whose capacity to pay in this count was grossly limited.

He anticipated that if the government did not withdraw the tax it would embolden money laundering and flight of capital leading to shake the foundations of the country’s economy.

He also asked the government to plug the loopholes of corruption in the FBR that was causing hundreds of billions of rupees to the public exchequer. It is embarrassing and indeed cast aspersions on FBR’s performance because Tax-GDP ratio of 9% in Pakistan is the lowest among the countries of this region.

He urged the government instead of wasting time in setting up committees to look into the matter it should withdraw the withholding tax that was being deemed by traders’ community as a type of official extortion.

https://ppppunjab.wordpress.com/2015/08/02/ppp-supports-strike-call-of-traders-mian-manzoor-ahmed-wattoo%e2%80%8f/