Happy Birthday India and Julia Child!

On How India is like Israel

Israel is a democratic ally in a neighborhood that includes Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt and Turkey. India is a democratic ally which shares borders with Pakistan and China.

Both Hindu India and Jewish Israel are occupying lands wherein the majority of occupants are Muslims who believe their homelands have been unjustly annexed. Both India and Israel have nuclear weapons.

Summer of rage:

For decades, India maintained hundreds of thousands of security forces in Kashmir to fight an insurgency sponsored by Pakistan, which claims this border region, too. The insurgency has been largely vanquished. But those Indian forces are still here, and today they face a threat potentially more dangerous to the world’s largest democracy: an intifada-like popular revolt against the Indian military presence that includes not just stone-throwing young men but their sisters, mothers, uncles and grandparents.

... This summer there have been nearly 900 clashes between protesters and security forces, which have left more than 50 civilians dead, most of them from gunshot wounds. While more than 1,200 soldiers have been wounded by rock-throwing crowds, not one has been killed in the unrest, leading to questions about why Indian security forces are using deadly force against unarmed civilians -- and why there is so little international outcry.

Phone Cameras Fuel Kashmir’s ‘Intifada’



The US gives large amounts of foreign aid to Israel and Egypt so that they won't have a war. The US is trying to keep Pakistan focused on fighting the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, but Pakistan remains focused on its main enemy India. The Afghan Taliban are Pakistan's means to combat Indian influence in Afghanistan. (The Pakistani Taliban is the Muslim extremism of the Afghan Taliban metastasizing back into nuclear-armed Pakistan.)

The US needs to internationalize the Kashmir issue over India's objection so that the Pakistan can focus on the Taliban.

Stuck in the Middle

We need to "internationalize" the conflict in Kashmir, something India is dead set against.

A leaked trove of secret military reports from Afghanistan say that many believe Pakistan's spy service has been aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Pakistan's main concern is India. They use the Taliban in Afghanistan to fight Indian influence there, just as they employ Muslim extremists to fight India in the disputed region of Kashmir.

Pakistan has been fighting the Pakistani Taliban in Swat valley and Waziristan, partly as a result of the U.S. giving them $1 billion a year in aid (certainly India does not like all of this aid, some which is probably diverted to be used against India.) And with U.S. troops to begin withdrawing from Afghanistan in a year, no doubt Pakistan will have second thoughts about fighting extremists who can be used against India.

The conflict in Kashmir needs to be internationalized in order to end the conflict between India and Pakistan. Once Pakistan no longer sees India as a threat, it will no longer need Muslim extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan to use against India. This may sound like a pipe dream but it's what needs to be done. Otherwise what will happen is that once we pull out of Afghanistan, the Taliban will take over again with Pakistan's help - as they did after they beat the Soviets with money and arms supplied by us through Pakistan's spy service, the ISI. And once the Taliban have control, they'll allow terroist havens in their war-torn country as they did before 9/11.

One subject I've changed my mind on is the usefulness of sanctions, like the sanctions on Iraq. They wrecked the country - technically Saddam plus sanctions did - which made "nation building" so much more difficult after regime change.

Andrew Cockburn reviews Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions by Joy Gordon.

Tariq Ali on the recent killings in Kashmir.

India bullies Pakistan over water rights in Kashmir and increases tensions.