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NEWS: India and Pakistan

We're The Great Old Ones Now

13:09 / 31.05.02

Heopfully, we won't need this topic. But:

British and American citizens have been advised to leave India, according to ITN news.

Oh, and CNN gets my award for dumbest headline:

"Nuclear War Could Kill Millions"

Oh, really?

Our Lady of The Two Towers

14:46 / 31.05.02

Who says American media is dumbing down?

18:08 / 31.05.02

and british and american diplomats are also leaving, i just heard.

18:13 / 31.05.02

But Donald Rumsfeld is still scheduled to go there next week, to try and 'settle things down', or has that been scrapped? At least they're not sending Colin Powell...

01:04 / 01.06.02

Why is it that EVERYTIME something goes down the Americans immediately send people over to try to work things out? I for one would love to have a country with something going on and turn around an tell the yanks to fuck right off. But thats just me.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:59 / 01.06.02

Personally, I'd've got the fuck out sometime last week. I don't think I'd've needed to wait for Jack Straw to tell me things were a bit scary. But then, I'm fairly highly-strung.

10:01 / 01.06.02

Well its not just the Americans going in and being undiplomatic, the UN, EUrope and probably every bugger else in India and Pakistan's neigbourhood are doing stuff, but frantic talks over the phone and between medium level diplomats aren't that sexy and have a tendency to be done on the quiet.

Also I won't have a word said about Colin Powell. He's one of the few sane people in the Bush Administration compared against the full on hawks who want to declare war on lots of people. Go Colin.

14:38 / 01.06.02

Why is it that EVERYTIME something goes down the Americans immeadiatly send people over to try to work things out?

What would you like us to do instead?

shirtless, beepers and suntans

16:53 / 01.06.02

if india and pakistan want to play "americans 'n' soviets," i say have fun at your own risk. but for now, why the hell shouldn't the U.S. send someone, anyone, to try and defuse that situation? i mean, that conflict is so much more interesting than the israelis and the palestinians.

as a self-centered, unilateralist american, i am concerned how this will affect our operations in western pakistan/eastern afghanistan.

i'm sure osama bin laden is laughing his lanky ass off now that the pakistani army's withdrawing from the afghan border because of all this. (i'd be surprised if he and his buddies didn't orchestrate the attacks on the indian parliament to provoke a war to distract the pakistani military). the whole american operation there turned into a big steaming pile of shit a long time ago. in my opinion, we should have deployed a couple thousand troops to tora bora when we had the chance to kill the bastards once and for all. i guess rumsfeld and pals didn't realize if you want the job done right, you gotta do it yourself.

i can easily picture a scenario in which mushareff (if he isn't charcoal by then) is overthrown in a coup by islamic fundamentalists who already have ties to al qaeda. of course, no sane regime wants nuclear war, but the united states would then have reason enough to invade pakistan: an fundamentalist/terrorist regime with a working nuclear weapons program.

see, i'm all about comforting thoughts.

oh well. if there were a nuclear war between india and pakistan, at least it might reduce india's overpopulation problem somewhat.

i'm sorry, that was really wrong. as you might guess, i've had a really tasteless sense of humor all my life. it can all be traced back to a bizarre coathanger accident when i was a fetus.

gentleman loser

19:41 / 02.06.02

More brilliance from shirtless, beepers and tans

i can easily picture a scenario in which mushareff (if he isn't charcoal by then) is overthrown in a coup by islamic fundamentalists who already have ties to al qaeda. of course, no sane regime wants nuclear war, but the united states would then have reason enough to invade pakistan: an fundamentalist/terrorist regime with a working nuclear weapons program.

Surely you aren't so naive as to think that the U.S. is any more capable of invading Pakistan as it is of invading Afghanistan.

You better hope it doesn't happen, since it's far more likely that terrorists will smuggle a nuke in to a U.S. city (Sum of All Fears! Sum of All Fears! [TM]) or just use them to vaporize invading U.S. forces.

oh well. if there were a nuclear war between india and pakistan, at least it might reduce india's overpopulation problem somewhat.

i'm sorry, that was really wrong. as you might guess, i've had a really tasteless sense of humor all my life. it can all be traced back to a bizarre coathanger accident when i was a fetus.

Yes, but you might want to get wise to the fact that it makes you look like a tasteless cretin.

20:33 / 02.06.02

Also I won't have a word said about Colin Powell. He's one of the few sane people in the Bush Administration compared against the full on hawks who want to declare war on lots of people. Go Colin.

Of course, "sane" is a relative term here. In another environment, Cohlin "My Lai" Powell would be considered a nutcase.

it is good to have someone who seems even faintly connected with the real world in that company, but it looks like Rumsfeld et al are quite keen on marginalising the man

shirtless, beepers and suntans

20:56 / 02.06.02

hey thanks for your input, comrade. putting smiles on people's faces makes my day, and hopefully having a smile upon yours brightens your day just the same.

what i meant by that first statement was, as near as i can tell, the biggest reason the united states hasn't invaded pakistan is because pervez's regime has so far been our strongest ally in that region, at his own political risk. take him out the picture, pakistan becomes another afghanistan. let the bombing begin.

it's worth noting that pakistan has 10 nukes with limited deployment capability. it would be a waste to use them to "vaporize" (what a cool word!) a couple thousand troops, especially considering the united states has a couple thousand nukes ready to go on a moments notice. again, the biggest threat would be a bomb smuggled into a large city.

even if taliban-style fanatics were to take over pakistan, they would they wouldn't have time to consolidate their power. the real taliban at least had a couple years to set up shop. it would be pointless for the united states to send 10s of thousands of troops over at once in a D-Day-type invasion.... well, you remember hearing about d-day, right? of course you do.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

07:45 / 03.06.02

Vajpayee blows off peace talks as British intelligence officers "predict a war in the next fortnight"

From the Guardian:

India's prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee last night hinted that India was inching away from a decision to attack Pakistan - but said he had no intention of meeting Pakistan's military ruler General Pervez Musharraf at a crucial regional summit later today.
Speaking before flying to Kazakhstan, where he will meet Russia's president Vladimir Putin, Mr Vajpayee said he had noted Gen Musharraf's recent promises to crack down on militants, India's key demand. "We have observed the statements being made by Gen Musharraf. If there is solid proof of Gen Musharraf's assurances being implemented on the ground, then we will examine the situation seriously and take appropriate steps."

Mr Vajpayee's remarks suggest New Delhi is still waiting to see whether infiltration by Pakistan-based militants into India has genuinely stopped before embarking on a war against its nuclear rival.

But Foreign Office officials believe the situation remains extremely grave. Sources in London have said concern within Whitehall was "white hot" - and that in recent days cabinet ministers have been meeting in the Cobra war room - reserved for wars and national emergencies - to discuss the crisis as the growing threat of a nuclear disaster looms. Some intelligence officers predict a war in the next fortnight.

12:35 / 03.06.02

i guess rumsfeld and pals didn't realize if you want the job done right, you gotta do it yourself. true-ish, but not an oversight: they simply preferred to risk UnAmerican lives before American ones. Based on the same line of reasoning the US won't invade or attack Pakistan unless they feel that they absolutely must, or until they find another army willing to do it for them. The logical candidate is India, and I don't exactly see Dubya cheering Vajpayee on. Yet.

the united states would then have reason enough to invade pakistan: an fundamentalist/terrorist regime with a working nuclear weapons program. I don't think they'd bite, frankly. Until Revenge of the Son of Bride of Star Wars goes live, assuming it ever does, then I could see it happening.

12:38 / 03.06.02

PS- the latest from the Beeb:

Also, reports in the Indian press suggested there was now some evidence that Islamabad was curbing militant operations from across the Line of Control in Kashmir.

India is said to have intercepted communications from militant groups which suggest they had received an order from Pakistan to halt infiltration - something General Musharraf has publicly pledged to do.

13:46 / 03.06.02

Naked Flame: "Until Revenge of the Son of Bride of Star Wars goes live, assuming it ever does, then I could see [a US invasion of Pakistan] happening."

Pakistan has no missiles capable of reaching the US, and Star Wars wouldn’t work against nuclear infiltration.

17:20 / 03.06.02

...and of course, we have every reason to believe that the Pakistani government is going to sneak a nuke into the US, don't we?

or is that just a little paranoid?

There are two other ways it could happen. (a) a government gives the 'freedom fighters' a nuke to effect a nuke by proxy. (b) a 'freedom fighter' gets ahold of a nuke on the black market.

How likely is (a) given the history of backstabbing in proxy wars? And in the case of (b) there would be no causal link between said nuke and Pakistan.

Mind you, I suppose that didn't stop them invading Afghanistan. And after all, that went so well.

08:54 / 05.06.02

i was just reading (www.bbc.co.uk) that india has proposed joint kashmir patrols with pakistan. this seems like a good sign, as until now india has appeared unwilling to engage in any kind of discussion on the current crisis.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

13:02 / 05.06.02

Today's papers make much of the "fact" that "the crisis has been averted"- hmm, not sure on that one. I'm still scared. And if I'm wrong to be scared, the whole thing would remind me of JG Ballard's (hope I got the title right) "The Secret History of World War Three", in which WWIII happens, but everyone's too busy watching the state of the US President's health in constant TV updates that they don't notice. (I'm thinking Queen, I'm thinking World Cup. Good time to bury such bad news as impending Armageddon, maybe?)

12:19 / 06.06.02

...and today's Torygraph predicts an Indian invasion of Kashmir within two weeks.

14:35 / 06.06.02

i hope everyone's read this one by arundahti roy, already, on the issue of inda/pakistan nuclear threats--
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0602-02.htm
(originally published in the London OBSERVER)

12:33 / 10.06.02

well it appears things might be easing a little more: india has just ok'd civilian flights from pakistan to fly over their airspace again. i realise i'm looking for good news on this, because the alternative is too horrible to really contemplate. people are still being killed over there, but the shelling of the line of control let up last night. of course, the whole dispute over kashmir still urgently needs to be resolved. i wonder how much the other nuclear powers will learn from this?