Posts Tagged ‘Pankaj Mishra
OMNI-TV File (October): Pakistan, its ISI and America…; Kashmir – the politics of slaughter and mass graves…
Kashmir and DNA testing — dissappearances, mass graves and the politics of slaughter
Imagine reading on the front page of your favourite newspaper or watching on your favourite TV newscast that thousands of bodies have been discovered in mass graves in a country – the result of extrajudicial killings – imagine the hue and cry in the Canadian Parliament – imagine the outrage and condemnation – headlines would continue for days – well, we did live through a similar scenario just recently – Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of the Indian state of Kashmir, announced that DNA testing will be carried out on hundreds of bodies found in mass graves – human rights activists say thousands of people, suspected by Indian security forces of either being militants or having links to such groups demanding independence for India’s Muslim majority state of Kashmir, were summarily detained and killed – Across the valley, more than 8000 relatives live in enduring uncertainty, hoping that missing relatives may one day come home alive – while on the one hand, this DNA testing decision is a testament to India’s democracy, on the other hand this democratic response has been rather slow and reluctant and condemnation from the champions of democracy in the western world non-existent – the disappearances have been documented for years in well-known magazines and in books such as Pankaj Mishra’s Temptations of the West – Booker prize-winning author Arundhati Roy never stops talking about the disappearances of Kashmir’s young men – but don’t expect a hue and cry in Ottawa – after all, these are all just Muslims, and these days Muslims are fair game for drone attacks and extra-judicial killings, or simply because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time – Think about it, I’m Zuhair Kashmeri but with no connection to that troubled state.
Pakistan, its ISI and America: is there some mischief afoot?
Once again, Pakistan’s spy agency, the ISI, is in a spotlight of infamy – it has been accused by one of the highest-ranking American military officers, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of organizing two of the deadliest bombings in Afghanistan – in mid-September, a NATO outpost south of Kabul was truck bombed, killing five people and wounding 77 foreign troops, plus an armed assault on the US Embassy left 16 Afghan police officers and civilians dead – the admiral told a Senate armed services committee open quote with ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted that truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy end of quote – Mullen said the Haqqani group is an arm of the ISI – US intelligence says it also was able to determine through cell phone wiretaps that the ISI was behind the 2008 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul which left several dead – the story played out in the media for two days and then simply vanished – but if you reflect on it, this is a very serious charge against a country, Pakistan, which I have said time and again is a totally failed state that should never have been created in the first place – for lesser accusations than this, people have been hauled in as war criminals and put to trial – is the head of the ISI, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, going to be extradited to face charges of war crimes and murder? – Of course not – but it does lay a media manipulation groundwork for America to undertake its unfettered extrajudicial killings outside of any international law that it imposes on other countries –Think about it, I’m Zuhair Kashmeri.