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January
8, 2002
Prudence
Crowther
Sting
Like a B-52
Nelson
Valdés
Al-Qaeda
at Guantanamo Bay
John Chuckman
Dark
Tales from the
Ministry of Truth
Richard
Corn-Revere
Do
We Fear Freedom?
Joan Hoff
The
Nixon You Haven't Heard
January
7, 2002
Lawrence
McGuire
Confusing
Economic Tales About Argentina
Wael Masri
They
Are Taking
Our Rights Away
Philip
Farruggio
Better
Medicine
January
6, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Students
Put the Heat on Foreign Sweatshops
Tariq
Ali
Battleground
Kashmir
January
5, 2002
Mark Schneider
Kifah:
The Movie Star
Israel Killed
Edward
Said
Is
Israel More Secure Now?
January
4, 2002
CG Estabrook
Anti-War
= Anti-Globalization
Jordan
Green
What's
Changed in New York
January
3, 2002
Walt Brasch
Exit
Cheney, Enter Ridge
Mokhiber
and Weissman
The
10 Worst Corporations
of 2001
Robert
Hunter Wade
America's
Empire Rules an Unbalanced World
Shahid
Alam
Is
There an Islamic Problem?
January
2, 2002
Ross Regnart
Patriot
Act Redefines the Mob as "Terrorist Associates"
John Chuckman
The
Republicans' Secret Plan X
David
Vest
Turn,
Turn, Turn
January
1, 2002
Kathy
Kelly
Iraq's
New Year
December
31, 2001
John Absood
An
Alternative to War in Iraq
Ramzi
Kysia
Iraq
Goes Radioactive
December
28, 2001
John Chuckman
Observing
George Bush
Suren
Pillay
Civilian
Bodies
Aaron
Lehmer
Inviting
Future Terrorism
December
27, 2001
Patrick
McNamara
Palestinian
Children Bear Brunt of Mideast Violence
Nelson
Valdés
A
Possible Scenario on the Location of bin Laden
Jensen
and Mahajan
Remember
the Afghan Dead
Philip
Farruggio
A
New Year's Resolution
Ramzi
Kysia
The
People of the Valley
December 26, 2001
John Chuckman
In
Praise of the Unspeakable
Sam Bahour
2002:
Year of the Twos
December 25, 2001
Jennifer Loewenstein
Israel's
Human Rights Record
December 24, 2001
Sam Bahour
It
Happened One Morning
Yair Khilou
Why I Resisted
Being Drafted into the Israeli Army
Michael
Chisari
War
as Diversionary Tactic
Cockburn/St. Clair
Enron
and the Green Seal
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
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About 9/11
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
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by Cockburn
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January
8, 2002
Kashmir Dispute Will Make Ground
Zero Seem Like a Bonfire
By Rafiq Kathwari
When I was a teenager about 35 years ago and in
my final year in college in Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir,
the movie "Battle for Algiers" was a big hit. It captured
my imagination as well as that of my classmates, one of whom
approached me a few days later and asked if I would commit myself
to the liberation of Kashmir. Yes, of course, I said, reading
a typed sheet my friend took out from his coat pocket. "Bear
Arms against a Sea of Troubles," I remember the title said.
"This is our manifesto," my
friend said as I read the aims and objectives, which included
blowing up bridges and the local radio and telephone buildings,
ambushing army convoys and killing soldiers. The text said nothing
about where we would get arms and ammunition, the number of members
in the group, how we would organize, who our leader was or when
we would execute our plan.
However, I remember the manifesto was
long on the why, with each point emphasized in the present tense:
Our cause is freedom. India promised us a referendum on our
future, but fails to keep its promise. Prime Minster Nehru, the
last Englishman to rule India, has kept our popular leader Sheikh
Abdullah in jail for over 15 years. To the extent that India
denies us our fundamental rights and subverts its own constitution,
to that extent, India is not a democracy.
It was great stuff for my impressionable
mind. My friend had energized me. If the Algerians could do it,
so could Kashmiris. I read the typed manifesto again before signing
it with a flourish.
A few weeks later that teenage flirtation
landed me for 11 months in Srinagar's Central Jail, where I met
12 of my classmates who had also signed the manifesto. (The college
Principal had been somehow alerted to the plan and called the
police.) Subsequently, India announced that it had cracked a
dangerous gang of terrorists trained in Pakistan. There was no
trial. We were just locked up and forgotten, until one beneficent
pro-India sycophant in Kashmir was replaced by another, who ordered
an amnesty. Soon after, I fled to the future of other continents.
The passage of 35 years hasn't dimmed
my memory. My passion for Kashmir's freedom is undiminished,
despite the horror of the last ten years during which anywhere
from 35,000 to 80,000 mostly civilians have been killed. Maddened
by merciless Hinduization of Kashmir's Muslim culture, the lack
of career opportunities and India's repeated betrayals during
the past 50 years, a rag tag army of young Kashmiri men took
on the third largest army in the world.
To obtains arms, those young men crossed
the Line of Control that divides Indian from Pakistani- administered
Kashmir, rode in buses to Kabul, where armaments supplied by
the CIA to the Mujahideen were readily available after the Soviets
withdrew from Afghanistan. India calls those Kashmiri youth "cross
border terrorists" and blames Pakistan for supporting them.
Pakistan, which has competing claims on Kashmir, calls them freedom
fighters. Many Kashmiris I know simply say, a plague on all your
houses, which, of course, includes my adopted home-I know it's
politically incorrect to say it- the United States.
Many young native Kashmiri men who took
up arms against a sea of troubles are dead or languishing in
India's jails. The fighting now is being mostly done by foreign
mercenaries, recruited by the elusive Mr. bin Laden, whose so-called
martyrs have changed the tenor of Kashmir's legitimate struggle
to that of an Islamic Jihad against Hindu India.
"See, we told you so," India
is screaming, "Kashmiris are terrorists." India has
fueled Western fears of resurgent Islam, propagandizing the militancy
as fundamentalist, which in turn enables India to flout all international
codes of conduct in Kashmir. If all Kashmiris are terrorists
and must be smoked out of the Himalayas by 500,000 Indian troops
stationed there, then let us at the very least agree on a working
definition of terrorism which must include both the unofficial
and official variety.
But, wait. Let's be honest. Prior to
the militancy, India portrayed Kashmir as the model for secularism
in India, as the warp of her pluralist democracy. What has propelled
Kashmiri society seemingly overnight from a model of secularism
to deranged fanaticism?
Under the present ultra right wing regime,
Indian society is becoming increasingly intolerant and absolutist.
There is a profound disturbance within Mother India. Many Indians
I know think of India as a super power next only to the United
States. I will believe that when Kashmir, the source of five
great rivers, gets a basic sanitation system and an unrestricted
flow of electricity the Kashmir valley itself generates.
Kashmiris have been enslaved for generations.
The West is finally taking note of the fact that regional conflicts
have a global reach. Nothing is remote anymore. It never was.
Now we must do whatever is necessary to win the hearts and minds
of alienated peoples such as the Kashmiris. Restore their dignity.
Fulfill longstanding promises, and watch how swiftly Kashmiris
sign a manifesto to honor democracy in a world that has changed
literally overnight after nine eleven zero one. Indifference
will make Ground Zero seem like a Boy Scout's bonfire gone awry.
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