JamesBond
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Kashmir | News & Discussions.
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Fireurimagination
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Instead of protesting against happenings in another country they should rather hold a demonstration against happenings in their own country where probably 100 folds death and mayhem happens that too on a daily basis, why it is so Pakistanis are more concerned about other countries rather their own?
Subramanian
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Honestly, I did make three separate attempts to understand your rant, but I must admit failure. In my opinion, you are mixing all sorts of biased interpretations of facts, myths and prejudices, and this flight of ideas prevents me from dissecting or discussing it intelligently.
However, I do understand your last line.
I respect your opinion that you consider the partition unnecessary, and will not comment on whether I consider it correct or not, but will point out that conclusion on your part means that your ire should have been directed at Her Majesty's government well over 60 years ago, and that, perhaps, is no concern of mine, or at least will not be a concern, until a time machine is invented!
There is no biased myth or prejudice.
It is all a fact of life.you just need to open your eyes to see it.thats all.
if you think pakistanis descended from stratosphere,just on the midnight of august 13thy,1947,i just find it laughable.
Subramanian
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there was no lies in that,why u scared of facing the truth is it?
fatman17
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Thousands fled India-controlled Kashmir. Are they better off in Pakistan?
Some 35,000 Kashmiris fled from Indian-controlled Kashmir during the 1990s to settle in Pakistan, a country that has not yet granted citizenship to up to 40 percent of the migrants.
A Kashmiri baker stands in his closed shop during a curfew in Srinagar, India, Oct. 12. The Muslim majority Kashmir region is divided between mainly Hindu India and mainly Muslim Pakistan and claimed by both countries in its entirety. Some 35,000 Kashmiris fled from India-controlled Kashmir during the 1990s to settle in Pakistan, according to government estimates.
Muzaffarabad, Azad Jammu Kashmir
While an insurgency raged against Indian authorities in the early 1990s, thousands of young men, including Rana Altafs father and uncle, were arrested by authorities, beaten, and tortured. Fearing for their lives, they eventually crossed the line of control that separates Indian-controlled Kashmir from the Pakistani side. They trekked on foot for three days over treacherous snowy terrain in a group of 60 people from neighboring families, avoiding Indian landmines.
Kashmir protests: Intifada comes to Kashmir Water supply of millions threatened by melting of Kashmir's glaciers In restless Kashmir, desire for independence grows We knew if we turned back we faced certain death. They would have shot us, recalls Ranas father, Abdul Rasheed. Rasheed says he was arrested three times and interrogated by a man he remembers as Major Sharma who threatened to have him killed if he did not give up the names of militants hiding in his village. Rasheed insists he had nothing to do with the armed struggle in which an estimated 84,000 civilians lost their lives.
Seventeen years later, like many who made similar treks, the family lives in a make-shift shanty on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan administered Kashmir. Though they count themselves lucky to be alive, the familys dream of a welcoming Pakistan was short lived.
Were grateful to Pakistan but were always made to feel different. The people here dont like us, dont mix with us, and its hard to get a job, says Rana who has not yet received Pakistani citizenship or an ID card, and is therefore not entitled to attend college or legally seek employment. Ranas mother, Sobia, complains that the family struggles for food each month as the men find informal work only occasionally.
A better option?
Some 35,000 Kashmiris fled from India-controlled Kashmir during the 1990s to settle in Pakistan, according to government estimates. They traveled difficult terrain and long distances to a country that claimed to speak for the beleaguered Kashmiri people. Years later, however, it has not yet granted citizenship to up to 40 percent of the migrants, mostly from the second or third generations. Most migrants live in camps and subsist on government handouts of about $8 a month per person.
These are a group of people who bring into focus a humanitarian factor of the whole Kashmir dispute. The fact that these people have been living for 20 years in camps remains virtually unknown, says Marjan Lucas, a Senior Program Officer at Dutch nongovernmental organization IKV Pax Christi who has been campaigning on behalf of the migrants.
Ms. Lucas suggests the government has been slow in awarding citizenship rights to the migrants because to do so would mean negating their right to self-determination. The Pakistan government continues to insist the 1948 United Nations Security Council Resolution calling for self-determination is the only acceptable mechanism through which to solve the Kashmir dispute with India.
They were invited and told to stay until the dispute was resolved. When they came they were welcomed but it was expected that their stay would be temporary so Pakistan said We dont have to give you ID cards because you have the right to self-determination.' " This situation continued and continued and theyre still in the same situation they were in when they arrived, and now the third and fourth generations have been born within the camps.
'We want to go back home, but only after the Indian Army has left'
At Ranas residence, a make-shift shanty home with a corrugated iron roof, on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad city, three families crowd into two rooms and subsist on government welfare checks of $17 per person per month. Not one of the family possess a Pakistani ID card including Rana and his younger brother Mushtaq, who was born in Muzafarrabad.
We left our lands, our properties, our animals and businesses to come here, says Abdul, the family head. We want to go back home, but only after the Indian Army has left. What business do they have in Kashmir? he asks.
Only 1 percent of the total population of Kashmir claims to have been able to visit friends of relatives on the other side in the last five years, according to a recent poll by the Chatham House think tank in London.
Kashmir protests: Intifada comes to Kashmir Water supply of millions threatened by melting of Kashmir's glaciers In restless Kashmir, desire for independence grows Having left behind their possessions, almost none of the migrants have been able to return to meet loved-ones, and some have not even been able to afford to make telephone contact. The much-touted bus service between the two Kashmirs, launched as part of peace efforts between India and Pakistan in 2005, is just for show they say, as bureaucratic hurdles make travel impossible for the common man.
A people without a home, 'it's like we don't exist'
At the Manak Piyan camp at Muzaffarabad, home to some 2,000 migrants, a school teacher who asked not to be named because of his past membership in a militant group supported by Pakistani intelligence, says: Nobody wants to take responsibility for us, its like we dont exist." Before fleeing India, the teacher studied at the Srinagar SP college.
He finally got his ID card seven years ago, after a long struggle with red tape. Some members of the community petitioned the High Court in 2005 for citizenship rights, but the courts ruling extended only as far as a few dozen individual cases. Other migrants were granted citizenship in 2006 in the run-up to the Azad Jammu Kashmir state elections, in what some felt was a cynical ploy by politicians to garner votes.
Mir Abdul Rasheed Abbasi, a member of the AJK parliament, acknowledged delays in granting citizenship to the migrants but said that poor record keeping and fraudulent petitions for benefits are partly responsible.
The school teacher and other migrants here say they once fought India as members of the Inter Services Intelligence backed Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. He says he was taken to Khost in Afghanistan for training under the command of pro-Pakistan Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He walks with a prosthetic left leg after hitting a landmine during one of his sorties with militants back into Indian administered Kashmir.
Not your average jihadi
But he is not a run-of-the-mill jihadi: He is a staunch supporter of womens right to education and work. He also says he is especially grateful for the work of Christian charities in the region and simply wants the world to recognize his struggle. Our right to fight the occupying forces is guaranteed under the United Nations Charter, he says, adding: We want to go back home but we are hostages to our situation. Though we respect the people of AJK, their government does not favor us.
Many within the camps still hold out hope for an independent Kashmir, and view armed struggle as necessary. Some find they do not fit in Pakistan because of cultural and linguistic differences migrants speak the Kashmiri language whereas many of the locals speak a dialect of Punjabi. Some migrants are too proud to accept a Pakistani ID, says Lucas of Pax Christi. The community itself is not classed as "refugee camp" by the UNHCR.
For these reasons, Lucas says that her organization, along with Pakistan's Mass Welfare Foundation, hopes to stimulate the debate amongst the migrants (about) what future they want for themselves.
Similarities can be drawn between the plight of the Kashmiri migrants in AJK to the struggle of the "Kashmiri Pandits" Kashmiri Hindus of Brahmin heritage, who were driven out of Indian administered Kashmir en masse during the uprising in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Up to 400,000 Kashmiri Pandits are believed to be displaced.
Groups like these tend to become exploited for propaganda purposes. The Indian establishment chose to use the Pandits as proof of the racist oppression of Muslim Kashmiris, to put them forward and say these are the victims of Islamic terrorism, says Lucas.
Pakistan has so far not exploited the Kashmiri migrants in a similar way, and this is very commendable, she says. But that might also be to avoid drawing attention to the conditions in which they are living in the camps.
Some 35,000 Kashmiris fled from Indian-controlled Kashmir during the 1990s to settle in Pakistan, a country that has not yet granted citizenship to up to 40 percent of the migrants.
A Kashmiri baker stands in his closed shop during a curfew in Srinagar, India, Oct. 12. The Muslim majority Kashmir region is divided between mainly Hindu India and mainly Muslim Pakistan and claimed by both countries in its entirety. Some 35,000 Kashmiris fled from India-controlled Kashmir during the 1990s to settle in Pakistan, according to government estimates.
Muzaffarabad, Azad Jammu Kashmir
While an insurgency raged against Indian authorities in the early 1990s, thousands of young men, including Rana Altafs father and uncle, were arrested by authorities, beaten, and tortured. Fearing for their lives, they eventually crossed the line of control that separates Indian-controlled Kashmir from the Pakistani side. They trekked on foot for three days over treacherous snowy terrain in a group of 60 people from neighboring families, avoiding Indian landmines.
Kashmir protests: Intifada comes to Kashmir Water supply of millions threatened by melting of Kashmir's glaciers In restless Kashmir, desire for independence grows We knew if we turned back we faced certain death. They would have shot us, recalls Ranas father, Abdul Rasheed. Rasheed says he was arrested three times and interrogated by a man he remembers as Major Sharma who threatened to have him killed if he did not give up the names of militants hiding in his village. Rasheed insists he had nothing to do with the armed struggle in which an estimated 84,000 civilians lost their lives.
Seventeen years later, like many who made similar treks, the family lives in a make-shift shanty on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan administered Kashmir. Though they count themselves lucky to be alive, the familys dream of a welcoming Pakistan was short lived.
Were grateful to Pakistan but were always made to feel different. The people here dont like us, dont mix with us, and its hard to get a job, says Rana who has not yet received Pakistani citizenship or an ID card, and is therefore not entitled to attend college or legally seek employment. Ranas mother, Sobia, complains that the family struggles for food each month as the men find informal work only occasionally.
A better option?
Some 35,000 Kashmiris fled from India-controlled Kashmir during the 1990s to settle in Pakistan, according to government estimates. They traveled difficult terrain and long distances to a country that claimed to speak for the beleaguered Kashmiri people. Years later, however, it has not yet granted citizenship to up to 40 percent of the migrants, mostly from the second or third generations. Most migrants live in camps and subsist on government handouts of about $8 a month per person.
These are a group of people who bring into focus a humanitarian factor of the whole Kashmir dispute. The fact that these people have been living for 20 years in camps remains virtually unknown, says Marjan Lucas, a Senior Program Officer at Dutch nongovernmental organization IKV Pax Christi who has been campaigning on behalf of the migrants.
Ms. Lucas suggests the government has been slow in awarding citizenship rights to the migrants because to do so would mean negating their right to self-determination. The Pakistan government continues to insist the 1948 United Nations Security Council Resolution calling for self-determination is the only acceptable mechanism through which to solve the Kashmir dispute with India.
They were invited and told to stay until the dispute was resolved. When they came they were welcomed but it was expected that their stay would be temporary so Pakistan said We dont have to give you ID cards because you have the right to self-determination.' " This situation continued and continued and theyre still in the same situation they were in when they arrived, and now the third and fourth generations have been born within the camps.
'We want to go back home, but only after the Indian Army has left'
At Ranas residence, a make-shift shanty home with a corrugated iron roof, on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad city, three families crowd into two rooms and subsist on government welfare checks of $17 per person per month. Not one of the family possess a Pakistani ID card including Rana and his younger brother Mushtaq, who was born in Muzafarrabad.
We left our lands, our properties, our animals and businesses to come here, says Abdul, the family head. We want to go back home, but only after the Indian Army has left. What business do they have in Kashmir? he asks.
Only 1 percent of the total population of Kashmir claims to have been able to visit friends of relatives on the other side in the last five years, according to a recent poll by the Chatham House think tank in London.
Kashmir protests: Intifada comes to Kashmir Water supply of millions threatened by melting of Kashmir's glaciers In restless Kashmir, desire for independence grows Having left behind their possessions, almost none of the migrants have been able to return to meet loved-ones, and some have not even been able to afford to make telephone contact. The much-touted bus service between the two Kashmirs, launched as part of peace efforts between India and Pakistan in 2005, is just for show they say, as bureaucratic hurdles make travel impossible for the common man.
A people without a home, 'it's like we don't exist'
At the Manak Piyan camp at Muzaffarabad, home to some 2,000 migrants, a school teacher who asked not to be named because of his past membership in a militant group supported by Pakistani intelligence, says: Nobody wants to take responsibility for us, its like we dont exist." Before fleeing India, the teacher studied at the Srinagar SP college.
He finally got his ID card seven years ago, after a long struggle with red tape. Some members of the community petitioned the High Court in 2005 for citizenship rights, but the courts ruling extended only as far as a few dozen individual cases. Other migrants were granted citizenship in 2006 in the run-up to the Azad Jammu Kashmir state elections, in what some felt was a cynical ploy by politicians to garner votes.
Mir Abdul Rasheed Abbasi, a member of the AJK parliament, acknowledged delays in granting citizenship to the migrants but said that poor record keeping and fraudulent petitions for benefits are partly responsible.
The school teacher and other migrants here say they once fought India as members of the Inter Services Intelligence backed Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. He says he was taken to Khost in Afghanistan for training under the command of pro-Pakistan Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He walks with a prosthetic left leg after hitting a landmine during one of his sorties with militants back into Indian administered Kashmir.
Not your average jihadi
But he is not a run-of-the-mill jihadi: He is a staunch supporter of womens right to education and work. He also says he is especially grateful for the work of Christian charities in the region and simply wants the world to recognize his struggle. Our right to fight the occupying forces is guaranteed under the United Nations Charter, he says, adding: We want to go back home but we are hostages to our situation. Though we respect the people of AJK, their government does not favor us.
Many within the camps still hold out hope for an independent Kashmir, and view armed struggle as necessary. Some find they do not fit in Pakistan because of cultural and linguistic differences migrants speak the Kashmiri language whereas many of the locals speak a dialect of Punjabi. Some migrants are too proud to accept a Pakistani ID, says Lucas of Pax Christi. The community itself is not classed as "refugee camp" by the UNHCR.
For these reasons, Lucas says that her organization, along with Pakistan's Mass Welfare Foundation, hopes to stimulate the debate amongst the migrants (about) what future they want for themselves.
Similarities can be drawn between the plight of the Kashmiri migrants in AJK to the struggle of the "Kashmiri Pandits" Kashmiri Hindus of Brahmin heritage, who were driven out of Indian administered Kashmir en masse during the uprising in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Up to 400,000 Kashmiri Pandits are believed to be displaced.
Groups like these tend to become exploited for propaganda purposes. The Indian establishment chose to use the Pandits as proof of the racist oppression of Muslim Kashmiris, to put them forward and say these are the victims of Islamic terrorism, says Lucas.
Pakistan has so far not exploited the Kashmiri migrants in a similar way, and this is very commendable, she says. But that might also be to avoid drawing attention to the conditions in which they are living in the camps.
Subramanian
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scrap article 371.
Omar1984
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The source of the article is non-reliable:
Thousands fled India-controlled Kashmir. Are they better off in Pakistan? - CSMonitor.com
Thousands fled India-controlled Kashmir. Are they better off in Pakistan? - CSMonitor.com
Awesome
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Hmmm the issues with that existed with the Kashmir population getting citizen rights will not be seen favorably in the big picture of resolving the Kashmir issue.
But an interim solution is needed, since the Kashmir issue may go on for another few decades and at least the current generation can get more rights.
Thats what I'm saying, you won't need to exploit them or anything. Make them a safe home in Pakistan the world will automatically notice.
But an interim solution is needed, since the Kashmir issue may go on for another few decades and at least the current generation can get more rights.
Thats what I'm saying, you won't need to exploit them or anything. Make them a safe home in Pakistan the world will automatically notice.
Frankenstein
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Simple, Yes they are better off in Pakistan,
Migration is Sunnah, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) Migrated from Mecca to Medina, due to hardships
Migration is Sunnah, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) Migrated from Mecca to Medina, due to hardships
somebozo
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Pakistan does not anymore grant citizenship to former Indians except for women by marriage. IOK Kashmirs are effectively "Indians" too. Their children however will be eligible for citizenship if they are born in Pakistan. However the Pak gov can issue them refugee identities and one time use passports for travel abroad. Just like they are issued to Afghans and Burmese taken refugee in Pakistan.
By the way Saudi charities such as SPAPEV has done a lot to up heal AJK living standards since the 2005 earth quake.
Saudi Public Assistance for Pakistan Earthquake Victims
What is the source of this article??
By the way Saudi charities such as SPAPEV has done a lot to up heal AJK living standards since the 2005 earth quake.
Saudi Public Assistance for Pakistan Earthquake Victims
What is the source of this article??
KS
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A good article.
Forced re-location(I will not call this migration due to economic reasons like some ppl call the Pandits) is always hard on the ppl who ever they are and the respective governments must take care of them and make arrangements for them to return to their native lands.
Forced re-location(I will not call this migration due to economic reasons like some ppl call the Pandits) is always hard on the ppl who ever they are and the respective governments must take care of them and make arrangements for them to return to their native lands.
Subramanian
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Indian economy keeps on growing,Indian population keeps on growing and there ll be no lack of covers.We ll keep it for eternity.
Subramanian
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Dude do you do anything besides say delusional things
Only indians like you would say Kashmir is an "integral" part of india, when most Kashmiris hate your guts and the world does not recognize Kashmir as a part of india
The world,whatever you mean by that give a ***'s arse about anything.That world's economies have crumbled big time and they dont have the power or initiative to do anything about it.
Infact more than anything else,they would support India to counter balance the power of China.
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