By Farooq Sulehria
The security fence being built @ 1 km per day by Tel Aviv in the
West Bank, has drawn world-wide attention and condemnation. The
fencing of West Bank echoed in the UNO sessions and had been under
trial at the International Court of Justice. The International Court
of Justice ruled on 9 July 2020 that the fencing was illegal.
Meantime, another, even bigger, fence has been built without
attracting any international attention. The fence stands about
12 feet high and about 12 feet wide. The coils of concertina wire
are layered between rows of pickets. Sharp-edged metal tape and,
in places, electrification make crossing even harder. It is a
fence India has built in last about a year-and-half in Kashmir
along the Line of Control (LoC). "India completed its fencing
of the Line of Control (LoC) in the Kashmir Valley and Jammu region
on September 30", the government told the Lok Sabha (lower
house parliament) on December 17. Indian Defence Minister Pranab
Mukherjee informed the Lok Sabha that the fencing had been an
operational requirement, adding that it was neither in violation
of the July 1972 Simla Agreement nor the December 1972 Agreement
on the Delineation of the LoC. Mukerjee might befool the whole
world save Kashmiris: the victims of LoC fencing. Ironically,
India has been condemning Israel for building fence.
In 1947 when Indian sub-continent was liberated and partitioned
into Pakistan and India, Kashmir also became technically an independent
country. On one pretext or the other, both India and Pakistan
send their armies to annex it. Thus leading to first Pak-India
war over the control of Kashmir. On the UN intervention, a cease-fire
was brokered. By the time, Kashmir had been roughly one Pakistan
had annexed half under India's control while the other half. The
cease-fire line, bisecting Kashmir into Pakistani occupied and
Indian occupied spheres, was later renamed as the Line of Control
(LoC).
The LoC runs over 700km of forested hills and inhospitable terrain.
Defying logic in some places it splits families, divides villages
in half and bisects mountains. At one time, almost two years ago,
an estimated 80,000 troops from India and Pakistan faced each
other in positions along its route - sometimes dug into mountain
sides less than a 100 metres apart - sometimes further back, separated
by peaks of over 5000 metres. The Islamist militants, funded and
trained by Pakistan, have been infiltrated into Kashmir through
the LoC. Therefore, the fence apparently is part of a larger effort
by India to buttress its defence and use equipment acquired from
Israel, France, Sweden and the United States, including motion
sensors, thermal imaging devices and night-vision equipment. Not
to forget Bofors from social democratic Sweden. Ironically, both
India and Pakistan buy Swedish weaponry. In 1970s and 1980s, India
was the biggest Third World buyer of Swedish weapons. It was Bofors
scandal that put brakes on Indian craze for Swedish weapons. This
summer Pakistan's military general, Pervez Musharraf, was in Stockholm
to buy Jazz aircraft but returned home with Ericssons radar systems.
Perhaps kickbacks could not be agreed upon on Jazz planes. The
building of fence however has less to do with defence. It is in
fact a long-term strategy to turn LoC into a permanent border.
India and Pakistan, despite their hue and cry over Kashmir, in
fact have no dispute over Kashmir. Both want a status co. The
building of fence will further reinforce the status co. It will
help weaken the Kashmiris who want and demand abolition of LoC,
reunification of Kashmir as well as independence both from India
and Pakistan.
Pakistan has not objected to the building of fence. Pakistan's
lukewarm response smacks of complicity. But the fence is dividing
more and more Kashmiri families and bringing new problems for
the population living along and across the LoC. 'In places, the
fence has created divisions within a division. Some farmers have
been separated from their grazing lands, and a few houses and
hamlets that have been in Indian-held Kashmir since 1947 are now
outside it because the fence could not be built around them without
crossing into Pakistani territory. There are gates for cattle
and people, with proper identification, to cross back into India',
reports New York Times (July 4, 2020). Though the Indian fence,
too, divides villages and creates hardships for farmers separated
from their land, and it is likely to make the unfortunate division
of Kashmir more or less a fixed fact (at least for the foreseeable
future).
Though it is built on the Indian side of Kashmir, unlike the
Israeli apartheid wall that expropriates even more land and water
from Palestinians than before yet regardless of differences between
the Israeli wall and the Indian fence, some pro-Tel Aviv writers
have already begun accusing India (as well as Turkey and Saudi
Arabia) of hypocrisy: ' India is completing a 460-mile barrier
in the contested area of Kashmir to halt infiltration supported
by Pakistan. Within the last two years, Saudi Arabia built a 60-mile
barrier along an undefined border zone with Yemen to halt smuggling
of weaponry. Turkey built a barrier in an area that Syria claims
as its own. Of the three countries, Saudi Arabia submitted a written
statement to the International Court of Justice directly, while
the other two did not. The Arab League and Organization of Islamic
States submitted statements to the court condemning Israel's barrier
but did not condemn the Saudi barrier when it was being built.
Why has the court not been involved in any of the other barrier
disputes? . . . Until the terrorism stops, Israel, like any other
country, should not be told by an international court how to protect
its own citizens. It is ironic that three countries -- India,
Saudi Arabia and Turkey -- condemned Israel at the U.N. General
Assembly and voted to refer the Israeli fence to the international
court for an advisory opinion, even though they had themselves
built barriers in areas contested by their neighbors. (Marsha
F. Hurwitz, President and CEO, Columbus Jewish Federation, Letter
to the Editor, "Why Is Israel Alone Getting Criticism for
Building Wall?" Columbus Dispatch, July 24, 2020).
The Indian fence in Kashmir likely to become one of the popular
Zionist talking points for the purpose of fending off any criticism
of the Israeli apartheid wall. |