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Hair-Trigger Nuclear Alert Over Kashmir
India and Pakistan, where people starve in the streets, waste billions on military spending because of the Kashmir dispute. Now some of India’s extreme Hindu nationalists warn they want to reabsorb Pakistan, Bangladesh, and even Sri Lanka into Mother India.
Aug 11, 2019
Two of the world's most important powers, India and Pakistan, are locked into an extremely dangerous confrontation over the bitterly disputed Himalayan mountain state of Kashmir. Both are nuclear armed.
Kashmir has been a flashpoint since Imperial Britain divided India in 1947. India and Pakistan have fought numerous wars and conflicts over majority Muslim Kashmir. China controls a big chunk of northern Kashmir known as Aksai Chin.
In 1949, the UN mandated a referendum to determine if Kashmiris wanted to join Pakistan or India. Not surprisingly, India refused to hold the vote. But there are some Kashmiris who want an independent state, though a majority seek to join Pakistan.
India claims that most of northern Pakistan is actually part of Kashmir, which it claims in full. India rules the largest part of Kashmir, formerly a princely state. Pakistan holds a smaller portion, known as Azad Kashmir. In my book on Kashmir, 'War at the Top of the World,' I called it 'the globe's most dangerous conflict.' It remains so today.
I've been under fire twice on the Indo-Pak border in Kashmir, known as the 'Line of Control,' and once at 15,000 feet atop the Siachen Glacier on China's border. India has over 500,000 soldiers and paramilitary police garrisoning its portion of Kashmir, whose 12 million people bitterly oppose often corrupt and brutal Indian rule - except for local minority Hindus and Sikhs who support it. A bloody, bitter uprising has flared on against Indian rule since 1989 in which some 42,000 people, mostly civilians, have died.
About 250,000 Pakistani troops are dug in on the other side of the ceasefire line.
What makes this confrontation so dangerous is that both sides have important tactical and nuclear forces arrayed against one another. These are mostly short/medium-ranged nuclear tipped missiles, and air-delivered nuclear bombs. Strategic nuclear weapons back up these tactical forces. A nuclear exchange, even a limited one, could kill millions, pollute much of Asia's ground water, and spread radioactive dust around the globe - including to North America.
India's new Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is a Hindu hardliner who is willing to confront Pakistan and India's 200 million Muslims, who make up over 14% of the population. In February, Modi sent warplanes to attack Pakistan after Kashmir insurgents ambushed Indian forces. Pakistan shot down an Indian MiG-21 fighter. China, Pakistan's closest ally, warned India to back off.
Modi is very close to President Donald Trump and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, both noted for anti-Muslim sentiments. Modi just revoked article 370 of India's constitution that bars non-Kashmiris from buying land in the mountain state, and shut down its phone and internet systems.
The revocation means that non-Kashmiris can now buy land there. Modi is clearly copying Israel's Netanyahu by encouraging non-Muslims to buy up land and squeeze the local Muslim population. Welcome to the Mideast conflict East. China is also doing similar ethnic inundation in its far western, largely Muslim, Xinjiang (Sinkiang) region.
In an ominous sign, Delhi says it will separate the high altitude Ladakh region (aka 'Little Tibet') from its portion of Kashmir. This move suggests India plans to chop up Indian Kashmir into two or three states, a move sure to further enrage Pakistan and thwart any future peace settlement.
There's little Pakistan can do to block India's actions. India's huge armed forces outnumber those of Pakistan by 4 or 5 to one. Without nuclear weapons, Pakistan would be quickly overrun by Indian forces. Only massive Chinese intervention would save Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Kashmir, the world's longest-running major dispute, continues, threatening a terrible nuclear conflict. Making matters worse, both India and Pakistan's nuclear forces are on a hair-trigger alert, with a warning time of only minutes. This is a region where electronics often become scrambled. A false alert or a flock of birds could trigger a massive nuclear war in South Asia.
India and Pakistan, where people starve in the streets, waste billions on military spending because of the Kashmir dispute. Now some of India's extreme Hindu nationalists warn they want to reabsorb Pakistan, Bangladesh, and even Sri Lanka into Mother India.
Previous Indian leaders have been cautious. But not PM Modi. He is showing signs of power intoxication.
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Chinese Editorial Denounces Gun Violence as Stain on US Human Rights Record
"It's inhumane for the U.S., which boasts about its human rights record, to turn a blind eye to gun violence, snub increasing calls for gun control, and risk more innocent lives."
Feb 23, 2018
An editorial in a newspaper run by the Chinese Communist Party sharply criticized the U.S. in the midst of the current debate over gun control--a debate that's been resolved for decades in most of the world's industrialized countries--and accused the U.S. of hypocrisy in touting its human rights record.
"It's inhumane for the U.S., which boasts about its human rights record, to turn a blind eye to gun violence, snub increasing calls for gun control, and risk more innocent lives," read the opinion column in the English-language version of the Global Times. "The U.S. has no other choice but to adopt gun control. The right of life is the most fundamental human right. The right to bear arms cannot overpower the individual's right to live."
While the U.S. government acts as an arbiter of human rights abuses around the world, the paper said, it has failed to protect its own citizens as many legislators accept donations from the National Rifle Association (NRA), the powerful gun lobby which has opposed even widely popular gun reforms like universal background checks and has aggressively marketed military-style semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15, frequently used in mass shootings, as an appropriate firearm for hunting and home-defense.
" Washington has been pointing an accusing finger at other countries over human rights... However, more Americans have been killed by gunfire in the country than American soldiers being killed in all U.S. wars," read the column. "Gun ownership in China is strictly regulated, which helps reduce gun-related crimes and deaths. The U.S. should learn from China and genuinely protect human rights."
While China has its own record of human rights abuses, its stringent gun control measures have kept mass shootings like the one the that took place in Parkland, Florida last week from becoming the regular occurrence that they are in the U.S.
In China's annual report on global human rights last year, it noted the U.S. government's "serious infringement on right to life [and] personal security."
"In 2016, the U.S. government exercised no effective control over guns, law enforcement departments abused their power, and crimes were not effectively contained," wrote China's State Council Information Office. "As a result, civil rights, especially the right to life, were seriously threatened and people's personal rights were continuously infringed upon."
The report listed several recent deadly mass shootings, and also decried the incarceration rate in the U.S.--higher than any other country in the world.
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Time to End the Lost Afghan War
Media reports claim President Donald Trump let loose on his generals behind closed doors, blasting them royally for their startling failures in Afghanistan, America's longest war.
The president has many faults and is a lousy judge of character. But he was absolutely right to read the riot act to the military brass for daring to ask for a very large troop and budget increase for the stalemated Afghan War that has cost $1 trillion to date.
Aug 05, 2017
Media reports claim President Donald Trump let loose on his generals behind closed doors, blasting them royally for their startling failures in Afghanistan, America's longest war.
The president has many faults and is a lousy judge of character. But he was absolutely right to read the riot act to the military brass for daring to ask for a very large troop and budget increase for the stalemated Afghan War that has cost $1 trillion to date.
Of course, the unfortunate generals are not really to blame. They have been forced by the last three presidents to fight a pointless war at the top of the world that lacks any strategy, reason or purpose - and with limited forces. But they can't admit defeat by lightly-armed Muslim tribesmen.
The truth is, simply, that America blundered into the Afghan War under President George W. Bush who needed a target for revenge after the humiliating 9/11 attacks. Instead of blaming Saudi Arabia, a US protectorate which was clearly involved in the attacks, Bush went after remote but strategic Afghanistan and cooked up the Osama bin Laden bogeyman story.
Sixteen years later, the US is still chasing shadows in the Hindu Kush Mountains, rightly known to history as 'Graveyard of Empires.'
The US invasion of Afghanistan was based on the unproven claim that anti-communist fighter Osama bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. We have yet to see conclusive proof. What we have seen are phony documents and faked videos put out by bin Laden's foes, the Afghan communists and their Northern Alliance drug-dealing allies.
As I've written in my books on South Asia, the so-called 'terrorist training camps' in Afghanistan were mostly bases for training anti-Indian Kashmiri liberation groups run by Pakistani intelligence. Claims by the right-wing US media that Afghanistan would become a jihadist base if the 9,800 US troops there now withdrew are nonsense. The 9/11 attacks were planned and mounted from Germany, Spain and Florida, not Afghanistan. They could have come from anywhere.
After sixteen years, the US military and its Afghan mercenaries troops have failed to defeat the Afghan Pashtun tribal resistance forces, Taliban. In fact, the Taliban alliance now controls at least half of Afghanistan and keeps US and government forces pinned down. The US installed 'president,' Ashraf Ghani, barely clings to power.
What keeps the US in control of parts of Afghanistan is the US Air Force and naval air power. US warplanes from Afghanistan, Qatar, and aircraft carriers keep a 24/7 combat air patrol over distant Afghanistan and can reply in minutes to attacks on US or Afghan ground units. No other nation could do this - or afford the immense cost.
Gasoline trucked into Afghanistan over the Khyber Pass from Karachi costs $400 per gallon delivered. The authoritative 'Aviation Week' magazine reports that keeping US warplanes on station over Iraq and Syria costs an astounding $600,000 per mission. It's even more over Afghanistan.
But without 24/7 US airpower, US forces in Afghanistan would be soon isolated, then driven out. This is just what happened to the British and Soviets, dooming their efforts to crush the independence-loving Pashtun, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group.
Bereft of new ideas, the US keeps repeating its mistakes in Afghanistan: colluding with the worst, most corrupt elements of Afghan society; condoning torture and murder; relying on the big, drug dealing tribal chiefs.
The UN reports that opium (the base for heroin) exports doubled last year. The sputtering Afghan economy runs on opium and hashish.
The United States is now the proud owner of the world's leading producer of opium and morphine base. If the drug trade is ever cut off, the government in Kabul and its warlords will collapse. Ironically, when Taliban ruled Afghanistan before 9/11, the drug trade was almost wiped out. But you will never read this in the tame US media.
Now America's imperial generals are asking Trump for 4,000 more troops. A basic law of military science is concentration of force. Penny packets of troops are a fool's strategy. The main function of US troops in Afghanistan is to protect the strategic Bagram and Kandahar air bases and US installations in Kabul.
Now, hard right Republicans are pushing a daft proposal to contract the Afghan War to a US-paid mercenary army led by an imperial viceroy in Kabul. Shades of Queen Victoria. Break out the pith helmets.
Trump has proposed pressuring Pakistan, India and China to end the war. What an absurd idea. For Pakistan, Afghanistan is its blood brother and strategic hinterland. China plans to turn mineral-rich Afghanistan into a Tibet-style protectorate. India wants to outflank Pakistan by taking over Afghanistan. India and China are in a growing military confrontation in the Himalayas.
Trump had better come up with a better idea. My solution to the 17-year war: emulate the example of the courageous Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. He pronounced his Afghan War unwinnable, told his angry generals to shut up, and ordered the Red Army out of the war in Afghanistan.
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