The Future of Kashmir? "Seven" Possible Solutions!

[Indiarox]

India is loosing kashmir now

Nope not happening any time soon J&K also has Buddhists,Hindus and Minorities not to mention the Pundits of the valley.

 

[Indiarox]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/14/world/asia/14kashmir.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Deadly Clashes Continue in Kashmir

By LYDIA POLGREEN
Published: August 13, 2010

Kashmiri protesters run for cover as Indian paramilitary soldiers chase them during a protest in Srinagar, India on Friday.


NEW DELHI — Kashmiris demanding independence from India flooded the streets in protests across the troubled region Friday[Rolling, your 'suggestion' just went down that drain which empties in Gulf of Mexico], clashing repeatedly with the police and Indian security forces, the

Four people were killed, bringing the total number of dead to at least 55 since the unrest began in June. Kashmiris have been marching in increasing numbers, and in increasingly bold defiance of strictly enforced curfews, in an effort to force India to withdraw its troops from the disputed region, which is claimed by India and Pakistan. It was the first Friday of the Ramadan fasting month, and many people in the mostly Muslim region tried to visit mosques to offer prayers.

The clashes dampened hopes that Ramadan, during which Muslims neither drink nor eat from sunrise to sunset, would cool the simmering anger here. The protests, which began when a teenager was killed by a tear gas shell in June, have spiraled into a broad, unarmed popular revolt that Indian authorities have struggled to control.

Poorly trained and equipped security forces use live ammunition to fend off angry, stone-throwing crowds. The resulting deaths have fed still more protests, and the state government has resorted to calling in still more troops to try to wrest control of the streets.

On Friday police officers fired on a crowd of protesters in the town of Pattan, and a 58-year-old man died of injuries sustained there. In the separatist stronghold of Sopore a large crowd gathered after Friday Prayers and threw stones at a camp occupied by Indian paramilitaries, who opened fire, killing two people, the police said. In Kupwara, a local official ordered the police to open fire on a crowd of 2,000 people who had gathered in defiance of curfew, police officials said. A 23-year-old man died of a gunshot wound.

In Srinagar, the regional capital, officials did not impose curfew, and Friday Prayers were held at the historic, pagoda-shaped mosque for the first time in six weeks. Officials had feared violence if they tried to prevent worshipers from visiting the mosque.

Many Indian paramilitary forces were deployed in Kashmir to fight a brutal, Pakistan-backed insurgency that swept across the Kashmir Valley in the 1990s. They operate under special laws that shield them from prosecution, and many Kashmiris say that this has led to many human rights violations in the region.

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

Do you expect the cops to stand and stare when their are quarter pound stone hurled at them at a rate of 40-50 per min.

 

[HitNRun]

Nope not happening any time soon J&K also has Buddhists,Hindus and Minorities not to mention the Pundits of the valley.

still international people and with sharp eye we can see india is loosing kashmire day by day and soon they will let go muslims majority area .... thats important for indian other states now ...

or the final result will be each state will declare indepandance.......

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

Do you expect the cops to stand and stare when their are quarter pound stone hurled at them at a rate of 40-50 per min.

because people in Kashmir just have a reasonless 'fetish' to just throw stones, right?

 

[HitNRun]

because people in Kashmir just have a reasonless 'fetish' to just throw stones, right?

very good point ..... as a human being indians need to think now ... how long they will kill innocent people.....

 

[Xeric]

^^ Have you people ever thought (for once) why at the first place these people are throwing stones?

i bet, had you done this for once, things must have been much easier for you in general and the Kashmiris in particular.

 

[Indiarox]

Oooo....my mighty indian (civil) armed forces (the one who claim to be the backbone of a regional superpower and on the basis of which she extends her influence all around its borders) is trying justifying use of excessive force against stone peddlers.

FAIL!

Do you know the effects of a quarter pound stone can have on the body when its hurled at you???

You guys are talking as though the Protesters are hurling pillows at the cops and the cops shoot back.

 

[zeeshe100]

yeah i also think Scenario 7 is the best solution for both countries....

 

[amit27]

The only viable solution is the one proposed by Musharraf and Vajpayee that the whole area could be demilitarised and made autonomous and be jointly controlled by India and Pakistan.

 

[EjazR]

MEHBOOBA MUFTI ON WHAT KASHMIR SHOULD BE
Tehelka - India's Independent Weekly News Magazine

NDIA AND Pakistan have been fed on the theory that it pays to go hard on Kashmir. They can’t deliver on corruption, development, electricity, or jobs but they want to get hard on Kashmir. Beating Kashmir is the easiest thing to do. But by doing so, we have pushed people into a civil movement. It is time, therefore, to look at what Jammu and Kashmir ought to be. We have enough scope in our country’s system to accommodate the urges and aspirations of the Kashmiri people, provided we are ready to walk the extra mile. We at the People’s Democratic Party want to see the unification of the two Kashmirs, by making borders irrelevant. This does not mean only that you can go across. It also means removing impediments like currency. We can use both Indian and Pakistani currency because we have trade in both Pakistan Administered Kashmir (PAK) and here.

We can have a joint mechanism where representatives of both sides can meet and be an advisory council. They may not discuss legal matters. They can talk about environment policy: how we feel about environment, how we use our resources, or how we should do tourism and trade together. If we are able to do that, it will kind of fulfil the aspirations of the Kashmiris who want to see the two Kashmirs together. We should also open the old routes that connected Kashmir. Kashmir is so well placed but we got squeezed after accession because you can’t grow without roads connecting with each other and also leading to the other world. Kashmir has land routes to Central Asia, South Asia, and China. All those routes have got closed. Only one route is left connecting us to Delhi and this gets blocked for months because of snow. People like to see those routes open. Kashmir offers options for projects to pass through it. Therefore, gas pipelines must be considered through Kashmir as well.

With regards to elected representatives, we already have in our Parliament about 12 seats reserved for the other Kashmir because we say that is part of our country. So, we can restore that in the form of a joint legislative council. Have 25 members from that side and maybe 25 or more from this side. New Delhi can nominate four or five persons from this side and Pakistan can nominate an equal number from PAK. Let that council have an advisory role; just be a symbol of unification. This will not undermine the sovereignty of our country in any way because we already say PAK is ours. But impact it can have. The whole of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir can then be a model for SAARC cooperation. Let India and Pakistan start in building this as a model.

At all times, Kashmir will be within the Indian Constitution. The only thing is that you have to throw Kashmir open to the world. You can have visa offices in Kashmir so we don’t have to rush to Delhi, if we have an international airport. This will also enable Kashmiris to feel a sense of freedom. You can’t give them freedom in technical terms, like saying India should vacate and go back. But without doing that, without undermining the sovereignty of the country, let us do what we can. Another important thing is financial self-reliance. We feel we have been cheated in the Indus Water Treaty. We cannot revoke that because both our country and Pakistan are benefiting, but let our country compensate us for that loss. Water resource is the only resource we have and we are incurring losses of ` 50,000 crore every year.

SELF-RULE also means decentralisation of powers within the region because we want Jammu and Ladakh to equally benefit. We want unification of Jammu and Kashmir with no exchange or conceding of territory from either side. It should be de facto (actually existing), not de jure (by right). The autonomy part comes in Centre-State relations where we want a Governor elected by rotation. So, if he is from Jammu, people there will feel they are sharing power with Kashmir. Article 356 of the Constitution must be revoked. It’s the people who elect the government and it’s the people who should have the power to remove it, except in the case of an emergency where the country may have a part.

If we take these steps, we might be able to reverse the slide of several months. Today, there are no guns in Kashmir but the sentiment is getting consolidated. You can fight guns with more guns, but when the thought starts getting transferred from person to person, consolidation of sentiment takes place. Then, everything else becomes irrelevant. People don’t really care even if you give them everything under the sun. So, for the political process to take off reconciliation has to take place. This is more likely if the Armed Forces Special Powers Act is revoked and troops are withdrawn from civilian areas. If we had started withdrawal of troops slowly and steadily, then we wouldn’t have an uprising against the forces.

If you deny people the basic freedom of democracy, you mutilate your own election process. You are denying them legitimate space within your system to voice their opinion. The voice of dissent grows, it collects mass, and there is more insecurity. This is what is eating the relationship between the Kashmiris and the rest of the country.

 

[ejaz007]

Amid conflict, mental stress, Kashmiris resort to suicides

* Resident says he tried 13 times to end his pain with suicide, sometimes slicing open his wrists

* Psychiatrist says depression, stress, mental illness are rampant as everyone is suffering

* Teens, torn apart by killing of relatives by Indian troops, regularly sniff glue, liquids, cooking gas

SRINAGAR: The wounds of Kashmir’s never-ending war are reflected in Arshad Malik’s red, downcast eyes, in the tremble of the cigarette in his hand, in the self-inflicted knife scars gouged into his left forearm.

Tormented by unrelenting memories of death and violence, he tried 13 times to end his pain with suicide, sometimes slicing open his wrists, other times swallowing fistfuls of pills, he said. “I was crying inside, but there was nobody I could talk to because everyone was grieving,” the 36-year-old said. More than two decades of brutal warfare between militants and largely Hindu Indian troops in this Himalayan region have left Kashmiris exhausted, traumatized and broken. The rate of suicide, once unthinkable in this Islamic society, has gone up 26-fold, from .5 per 100,000 before the insurgency to 13 per 100,000 now, according to Dr Arshad Hussain, a psychiatrist. Depression, stress and mental illness are rampant. “Directly or indirectly, everyone is suffering,” said Dr Muzzaffar Khan, who runs a small rehab clinic in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-held Kashmir (IHK).

One man turned to drugs after seeing an uncle and two cousins shot in front of him; another became an addict after he was kidnapped by a pro-government militia, Khan said. A third-grader wouldn’t go back to school for two years after he watched gunmen break into his classroom, tie up his teacher and shoot him, another doctor said. Villagers accustomed to late-night searches by security forces have developed “midnight knock syndrome” and are so jumpy they can’t sleep without pills, Khan said. Despite the fierce fighting, the tight-knit Muslim families of IHK formed a durable safety net. That fell apart when an insurgency erupted against occupying Indian troops in 1989. Children were caught in the crossfire between militants and the pro-Indian forces. Others were forced into informing on their families. Parents disappeared in the middle of the night, many into mass graves where their bodies were never unidentified.

An estimated 68,000 people were killed. Nearly every one of the valley’s 6 million people has been touched by violence. The conflict has created two lost generations, the teenagers of 1989 who saw their childhoods collapse into civil war, and the teenagers of today who never had a childhood at all.

About 19 percent of Kashmiris suffer from depression, said Dr Mushtaq Margoob, a psychiatrist who has done extensive studies on trauma in IHK. Nearly 16 percent have post-traumatic stress disorder. In the US, less than 7 percent of adults suffer from depression and 3.5 percent have post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. “They see someone get killed in their presence, some friend, some relative, and they get stuck in that moment,” Margoob said. IHK’s mental health network is overwhelmed. Before the conflict, Margoob and the other doctors at the psychiatric hospital in Srinagar saw 1,700 patients a year; now they see 100,000, he said. A newly opened psychiatric ward in a nearby hospital sees another 40,000.

One-third of Kashmiris questioned in a 2006 Doctors Without Borders survey said they had thought of killing themselves in the previous month. Most said they were nervous, tense or worried, were easily frightened and suffered from trembling hands. Nearly half had trouble sleeping and cried more than usual.

Children, inured to the violence, have become angry, aggressive and helpless, said Margoob. Worse, they don’t fear death. It is this generation that picked up rocks in violent protests this summer, ignoring a crackdown by security forces that has killed more than 50 people. There is a complete breakdown of the social fabric, said Dr Waqar Bashir, who is haunted by the 9-year-old he was unable to revive after the boy hanged himself four months ago. Children that young are simply not supposed to think about suicide, he said. Drug abuse has become widespread. IHK, a traditional centre of mystical Sufi Islam, has a long history of opium and marijuana use in cultural practices. But now many are addicted to smoking heroin and hash, while others are taking codeine-laced cough syrup and prescription opiates from the rash of unregulated pharmacies that sell even morphine without a prescription. Teens regularly sniff glue, liquids and cooking gas. ap

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

 

[ejaz007]

Do you know the effects of a quarter pound stone can have on the body when its hurled at you???

You guys are talking as though the Protesters are hurling pillows at the cops and the cops shoot back.

So you are justifying killing of unarmed people by the security forces.

This is exactly what the Indians were doing during their independence movement. So you were also wrong and Britishers were right in killing demonstrators. You were also not throwing pillows at the police then remember.

 

[Xeric]

Amid conflict, mental stress, Kashmiris resort to suicides

* Resident says he tried 13 times to end his pain with suicide, sometimes slicing open his wrists

* Psychiatrist says depression, stress, mental illness are rampant as everyone is suffering

* Teens, torn apart by killing of relatives by Indian troops, regularly sniff glue, liquids, cooking gas

SRINAGAR: The wounds of Kashmir’s never-ending war are reflected in Arshad Malik’s red, downcast eyes, in the tremble of the cigarette in his hand, in the self-inflicted knife scars gouged into his left forearm.

Tormented by unrelenting memories of death and violence, he tried 13 times to end his pain with suicide, sometimes slicing open his wrists, other times swallowing fistfuls of pills, he said. “I was crying inside, but there was nobody I could talk to because everyone was grieving,” the 36-year-old said. More than two decades of brutal warfare between militants and largely Hindu Indian troops in this Himalayan region have left Kashmiris exhausted, traumatized and broken. The rate of suicide, once unthinkable in this Islamic society, has gone up 26-fold, from .5 per 100,000 before the insurgency to 13 per 100,000 now, according to Dr Arshad Hussain, a psychiatrist. Depression, stress and mental illness are rampant. “Directly or indirectly, everyone is suffering,” said Dr Muzzaffar Khan, who runs a small rehab clinic in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-held Kashmir (IHK).

One man turned to drugs after seeing an uncle and two cousins shot in front of him; another became an addict after he was kidnapped by a pro-government militia, Khan said. A third-grader wouldn’t go back to school for two years after he watched gunmen break into his classroom, tie up his teacher and shoot him, another doctor said. Villagers accustomed to late-night searches by security forces have developed “midnight knock syndrome” and are so jumpy they can’t sleep without pills, Khan said. Despite the fierce fighting, the tight-knit Muslim families of IHK formed a durable safety net. That fell apart when an insurgency erupted against occupying Indian troops in 1989. Children were caught in the crossfire between militants and the pro-Indian forces. Others were forced into informing on their families. Parents disappeared in the middle of the night, many into mass graves where their bodies were never unidentified.

An estimated 68,000 people were killed. Nearly every one of the valley’s 6 million people has been touched by violence. The conflict has created two lost generations, the teenagers of 1989 who saw their childhoods collapse into civil war, and the teenagers of today who never had a childhood at all.

About 19 percent of Kashmiris suffer from depression, said Dr Mushtaq Margoob, a psychiatrist who has done extensive studies on trauma in IHK. Nearly 16 percent have post-traumatic stress disorder. In the US, less than 7 percent of adults suffer from depression and 3.5 percent have post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. “They see someone get killed in their presence, some friend, some relative, and they get stuck in that moment,” Margoob said. IHK’s mental health network is overwhelmed. Before the conflict, Margoob and the other doctors at the psychiatric hospital in Srinagar saw 1,700 patients a year; now they see 100,000, he said. A newly opened psychiatric ward in a nearby hospital sees another 40,000.

One-third of Kashmiris questioned in a 2006 Doctors Without Borders survey said they had thought of killing themselves in the previous month. Most said they were nervous, tense or worried, were easily frightened and suffered from trembling hands. Nearly half had trouble sleeping and cried more than usual.

Children, inured to the violence, have become angry, aggressive and helpless, said Margoob. Worse, they don’t fear death. It is this generation that picked up rocks in violent protests this summer, ignoring a crackdown by security forces that has killed more than 50 people. There is a complete breakdown of the social fabric, said Dr Waqar Bashir, who is haunted by the 9-year-old he was unable to revive after the boy hanged himself four months ago. Children that young are simply not supposed to think about suicide, he said. Drug abuse has become widespread. IHK, a traditional centre of mystical Sufi Islam, has a long history of opium and marijuana use in cultural practices. But now many are addicted to smoking heroin and hash, while others are taking codeine-laced cough syrup and prescription opiates from the rash of unregulated pharmacies that sell even morphine without a prescription. Teens regularly sniff glue, liquids and cooking gas. ap

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

indian army ki jay...!!

 

[KS]

indian army ki jay...!!

Good going ...blame everything on India..even if the undies of someone in Srinagar get stolen....

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

undies? that's random.

in the past did indian police or jawans steal Kashmiri existentialists' undies too?