1000 unmarked graves

IN 18 villages of Baramula District of Kashmir, about a thousand graves have been discovered which are unmarked, it was recently announced by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons. Human Rights groups claim that about 10,000 people have disappeared since the uprising in the valley against Indian Occupation. Most of them, are believed to have been secretly disposed of by burying them in such nameless graves. But for a protest rally in Muzaffarabad and a brief comment by the Pakistan Foreign Office on the discovery not much seems to have been done to put under sharp focus a tragedy of such apocalyptic proportions. Pakistan has rightly demanded that India allow an independent probe by international human rights organisations into the unmarked graves and issue of missing persons. The FO spokesman said Pakistan was deeply concerned over the discovery of these graves. Asked if Pakistan government would raise this issue with India, the spokesman was not specific; he only said when the foreign secretaries of the two countries meet next month in the framework of composite dialogue, focus would be on Kashmir dispute as part of the agenda. Ironically, over the last some years when Pakistan injected a basic change in its Kashmir policy by putting the UN resolutions on the backburner and offered to India a host of confidence-building measures (CBMs) - mostly unilaterally - the human aspect of the Kashmir dispute has been almost forgotten.
Quite naively, to prove to the outside world that Pakistan is no more helping the Kashmir freedom fighters, the Indian government has stopped taking notice of large-scale murder and arson that its forces carry out in Held Kashmir on day to day basis. Every day non-combatant peaceful men and women are arrested and killed in the so-called encounters with ‘terrorists’. Nobody takes notice of these killings of innocent people, because thanks to the moral and legal perversions justified by the 9/11 episode killing a “terrorist” is no crime. Therefore, as oppression in the Held Kashmir deepens the UN is silent, OIC indifferent and Pakistan looks the other way. Isn’t it diabolic that Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak was recently in Held Kashmir for “a ringside view of counter-terrorism drills” conducted by the Indian troops. If Pakistan has decided to remain aloof from the plight of Kashmiris’ human rights, one may ask, has Islamabad made any worthwhile gains on the political side? One may also ask: In return for about a dozen or so CBMs offered to India, is Pakistan any distance nearer to the solution of the Kashmir dispute? Of course, there has been some progress in non-political sectors of bilateral relationship like trade and cultural cooperation. But as regards the Kashmir dispute there is absolutely nothing to report as progress. It is hoped that next month when the fourth round of composite dialogue gets underway Pakistan would be able to bring in the human rights violations in occupied Kashmir within the ambit of talks. In the meanwhile, the new political leadership in Islamabad would be well-advised to revisit the policy on the crucial Kashmir issue. To say relations with India cannot be held hostage to the Kashmir issue, is too cavalier an attitude and must be shunned, especially when nothing has come out of a plethora of unilateral concessions given by the outgoing Pakistani leadership.




Dwindling credibility

THE 12 Palestinians, including five youths, one as young as 12, killed by yet another Israeli assault on Gaza is the latest indication that Israel’s pullout from the strip was never a real withdrawal. Israel enters, leaves and re-enters Gaza whenever it pleases, killing, wounding, raiding houses and destroying them with impunity. Helping Israel come and go into Gaza is the Ehud Olmert policy — backed by the US — of divide and rule. Olmert pursues a dual policy of hitting Hamas along with “serious and responsible negotiations that can lead us to agreements” with the Fatah movement, led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas, in turn, helps Olmert’s cause by agreeing to meet the Israeli prime minister whose government oversaw the recent genocidal onslaught against Gaza. How Abbas continues to hold these cordial meetings with Olmert while refusing to meet Hamas continues to amaze. A dialogue with Hamas, even as its leaders rebel, is just as important, if not more, than chummy chats with the genuine enemy.
What is just as perplexing is the actual inability of the two leaders to agree when they do meet. When Abbas asks Olmert to halt settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Olmert’s reflex response is to demand that Abbas stop the firing of homemade rockets against Israel from the Gaza Strip. When Abbas tells Olmert that Gaza is not under his control, Olmert’s invariable reply: That’s not our problem. When Abbas pointedly reminds Olmert that Israel’s settlement expansion is in clear violation of the terms of the road map, Olmert’s immediate justification is that expansion is consistent with President Bush’s infamous letter to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2004 in which Bush assured Sharon that major Israeli settlements in the West Bank, especially in the Jerusalem region, would remain within Israel as part of a final-status solution with the Palestinians. When Israel is urged to remove the roadblocks and checkpoints that choke the flow of goods and people between Palestinian towns in Gaza and the West Bank, only a small number of dirt piles are pushed aside while the main obstacles to Palestinian movement that seriously disrupt Palestinian life and make impossible meaningful commerce remain intact. And so the peace process goes, frustratingly slow and its credibility dwindles fast. Despite the ongoing violence and the peace talks meandering aimlessly, Olmert and Abbas have one more surprise in store for us: an “optimistic” outlook. But Israeli officials make clear that even if a final status agreement is concluded by year’s end, it will not be implemented before the Palestinians have complied with the road map, which requires them to close down the armed wing of Hamas and other resistance groups. Thus, again the vicious circle is propagated. Perhaps this latest round of bloodshed in Gaza will not derail talks. But with Israel doing little more than blaming the Palestinians for failing to reach peace, a final-status agreement on the creation of an independent Palestinian state before the Bush administration leaves the White House in January 2009 is simply too far-fetched to credit.

—Arab News