Capitalism Read Free

President Obama said that solving the dispute over Kashmir’s struggle for self-determination—which has led to three wars between India and Pakistan since 1947—would be among his “critical tasks.” 1 His remarks were greeted with consternation in India, and he has said almost nothing about Kashmir since then.
    But on Monday, November 8, 2010, during his visit here, he pleased his hosts immensely by saying the United States would not intervene in Kashmir and announcing his support for India’s seat on the UN Security Council. 2 While he spoke eloquently about threats of terrorism, he kept quiet about human rights abuses in Kashmir.
    Whether Obama decides to change his position on Kashmir again depends on several factors: how the war in Afghanistan is going, how much help the United States needs from Pakistan, and whether the government of India goes aircraft shopping this winter. (An order for ten Boeing C-17 Globemaster III aircraft, worth $5.8 billion, among other huge business deals in the pipeline, may ensure the president’s silence.) But neither Obama’s silence nor his intervention is likely to make the people in Kashmir drop the stones in their hands.
    I was in Kashmir ten days ago, in that beautiful valley on the Pakistani border, home to three great civilizations—Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist. It’s a valley of myth and history. Some believe that Jesus died there, others that Moses went there to find the Lost Tribe. Millions worship at the Hazratbal shrine, where a few days a year a hair of the Prophet Muhammad is displayed to believers.
    Now Kashmir, caught between the influence of militant Islam from Pakistan and Afghanistan, America’s interests in the region, and Indian nationalism (which is becoming increasingly aggressive and “Hinduized”), is considered a nuclear flash point. It is patrolled by more than 500,000 soldiers and has become the most highly militarized zone in the world.
    The atmosphere on the highway between Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, and my destination, the little apple town of Shopian in the South, was tense. Groups of soldiers were deployed along the highway, in the orchards, in the fields, on the rooftops, and outside shops in the little market squares. Despite months of curfew, the “stone pelters” calling for azadi (freedom), inspired by the Palestinian intifada, were out again. Some stretches of the highway were covered with so many of these stones that you needed an SUV to drive over them.
    Fortunately the friends I was with knew alternative routes down the back lanes and village roads. The “long cut” gave me the time to listen to their stories of this year’s uprising. The youngest, still a boy, told us that when three of his friends were arrested for throwing stones, the police pulled out their fingernails—every nail, on both hands.
    For three years in a row now, Kashmiris have been in the streets protesting what they see as India’s violent occupation. But the militant uprising against the Indian government that began with the support of Pakistan twenty years ago is in retreat. The Indian army estimates that there are fewer than five hundred militants operating in the Kashmir Valley today. The war has left seventy thousand dead and tens of thousands debilitated by torture. Many, many thousands have “disappeared.” More than 200,000 Kashmiri Hindus have fled the valley. Though the number of militants has come down, the number of Indian soldiers deployed remains undiminished.
    But India’s military domination ought not to be confused with a political victory. Ordinary people armed with nothing but their fury have risen up against the Indian security forces. A whole generation of young people who have grown up in a grid of checkpoints, bunkers, army camps, and interrogation centers, whose childhood was spent witnessing “catch and kill” operations, whose imaginations are