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2007-03-27 India-Pakistan

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Posted by Fred 2007-03-27 00:00|| || Front Page|| [8 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 In 2003, Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed moved to fill the fact void. In an effort to draw votes from supporters of the secessionist movement and win the support of the Hizbul-Mujahideen, Mr. Sayeed promised a full investigation into what he then characterised as large-scale killings of innocent civilians.

Within months, the government introduced numbers to the argument. In March 2003, Law Minister Muzaffar Beig announced that 3,744 people were missing from Jammu and Kashmir a figure that was seized on by activists to claim that their allegations of large-scale enforced disappearances had been vindicated.

Mr. Beig's figure was, however, only a compilation of the numbers of persons reported to be missing for any reason at all. Later that year, Chief Minister Sayeed declared that just 60 persons had in fact "disappeared" since 1990 or, put more bluntly, had been established to have been kidnapped and then presumably murdered by security forces.

Mr. Sayeed's figures came from scrutiny of a list of 743 provided to the Jammu and Kashmir Government by human rights groups, notably the Association of the Parents of Disappeared Persons. Led by Parveena Ahanger, the mother of one of those missing, and lawyer Parvez Imroz, the APDP had fought a sustained campaign on the issue.

Investigators first focussed their attention on the 84 disappearances human rights activists said had taken place between November 2002, when Mr. Sayeed took power, and August 2003. Of these, the Jammu and Kashmir Police discovered, the names and addresses of only 58 tallied with actual individuals.

For example, the lists put out by human rights activists contained the name of Mohammad Altaf Yatoo of Aripathan village in Beerwah. Investigators, however, obtained signed statements from Aripathan residents that no one of that name had ever lived in the village.

Of the 58 verifiable cases, the police said, 26 were traced to their homes a fact journalists were able to cross-check with relative ease. Another "disappeared" individual turned out to be in Srinagar central jail. Six others, the police said, had turned terrorists, while two were kidnapped by jihadi groups. Still others had been killed in exchanges of fire.

While human rights groups protested part of these findings, no full rebuttal was prepared. Given that organisations such as the APDP had long been claiming that between 8,000 and 10,000 individuals had been victims of enforced disappearances, the failure to put out a credible list of just a few hundred was a significant failure.

Posted by John Frum 2007-03-27 07:09|| 2007-03-27 07:09|| Front Page Top

#2 Mr. Zahir-ud-Din's compilation suffers from its failure to draw distinctions between innocent civilians kidnapped and killed by security forces and terrorists who crossed into Pakistan individuals for whom the Jammu and Kashmir Government or Indian Army cannot reasonably be expected to account for.

For example, several independent media accounts have said there were thousands of young men from Jammu and Kashmir living in jihadi training facilities or refugee centres in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Others may have been killed while crossing the Line of Control but security forces would have no way of establishing their identity.

Posted by John Frum 2007-03-27 07:09|| 2007-03-27 07:09|| Front Page Top

#3 When I read this story, I did find myself thinking that a lot of those "disappeared" J-K citizens are currently fighting in Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Chenya, Kosovo, Leeds, or Minneapolis. Possibly even laundering towels and kits for the Pak national cricket team.

Posted by Seafarious">Seafarious 2007-03-27 07:53|| 2007-03-27 07:53|| Front Page Top

#4 Thanks to the fence, with its US and Israeli supplied sensors, the average life expectancy of the jihadi infiltrator is now down to about six weeks.

Those that don't die on the fence are killed by Army or Kashmiri Police SOG units.

Native Kashmiris are now fairly adverse to jihad activity within J+K. They know all to well what happened to an entire generation of youth that fell under the spell of jihad and went over to Pakistan for training in 1988. They're pretty much all dead. Now Kashmir has a surplus of females in that age group.

One reason that Musharraf makes so much noise over demilitarization is that the COIN grid in J+K has so many soldiers and police that the average jihadi like span is now a deterrent to recruitment.
Perv even got Condi Rice to forward his request for certain regions to be demilitarized. She should have ignored her staff at State and contacted Pacific command (which gets briefings from the Indian Army) since the areas were known infiltration routes where the sheer Indian manpower (a couple hundred thousand men deployed) makes terrorist activity difficult.

Posted by John Frum 2007-03-27 16:07|| 2007-03-27 16:07|| Front Page Top

#5 good info that, thanks John.

Posted by RD 2007-03-27 16:31|| 2007-03-27 16:31|| Front Page Top

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