Something’s going on between India and Pakistan
And it’s not the least bit friendly:
Pakistan says it has shot down two Indian military jets and captured a pilot in a major escalation between the nuclear powers over Kashmir.
India said it had lost one MiG-21 fighter and demanded the immediate and safe return of its pilot.
Pakistani PM Imran Khan said the two sides could not afford a miscalculation with the weapons they had…
They have fought three wars since independence from Britain and partition in 1947. All but one were over Kashmir.
A comment on another website: Not counting the Siachin glacier and Baltoro range (both uninhabitable being the second most coldest place on earth) Kashmir valley is just one small part of a much larger state. It has 8 regions. Hindu majority (Jammu), Buddhist majority (Ladakh), Sunni majority (Kashmir) all part of India. Sunni majority (Neelum valley) and Shia majority (Golgit & Baltistan) in Pakistan occupation. Shaksegam valley sold by Pakistan to China illegally and Aksai Chin (Buddhist Majority) controlled by China.
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From the above comments it seems that the phrase “Muslim-majority” and Kashmir is suspect given the religious distribution in the Indian-controlled Kashmir,
This worries me. I have long believed that if a nuclear war started, it would start between India and Pakistan.
And our Pol’s are “grilling” a liar and cheat. Not good about what is going in the Region. Remember that China is a neighbor. Scott, you are right to be worried.
The nuclear powers closer to fighting that no one pays attention to but china…
When we were in western India, we stood on our roof during Diwali to look at the fireworks. My husband told his employees it looked like Pakistan was invading; everyone laughed. Not too long later came the massacre in Mumbai. It’s really not funny, but we can hope that it will stay at the level of small retaliatory sorties on either side.
Since Kashmir is Sunni majority, it is effectively part of the Ummah. Allah has declared it to be so in the Qur’an, case closed.
This is also now the case in Antwerp, Belgium. The second most populous metropolitan region after Brussels. How long till that is the case in Brussels?
As for how this will play out… totalitarian ideologies inherently view “live and let live” as abhorrent. Islam proclaims territorial expansion to be a gateway to paradise, glory in this world and the next.
When people complain about the establishment of a tiny country on the Mediterranean as a Jewish state, I think of the horrors engendered by the establishment of a much, much larger Muslim state, Pakistan, at about the same time. The first is actually a liberal state which grants equal rights to minorities. The second became a sharia state, often drenched in the blood of minorities.
I am reminded of spending Thanksgiving with my brother’s family when the hotel in Bombay got bombed. My comment: “The work of ISI.[Pakistani intelligence agency]” Which is what it turned out to be.
I am not sure what it is that India finds so valuable in Kashmir. It appears that the assignment to India in 1947 was pretty arbitrary. With a Sunni majority, it will always be a problem for India.
At this point, of course, if Pakistan attained control, the entire Hindu population would probably have to be relocated.
Off topic sort of. A significant percentage of the staff, mostly MDs, at my SoCal medical provider is Indian origin. One time I was talking to a Nurse who told me her family were Christians in India. I asked how they fared with their Hindu and Muslim neighbors; and she said they lived only in protective enclaves. Of course, like the ghettos of Poland, those could easily become death traps.
Oldflyer…my sense is that if either India OR Pakistan had full control of Kashmir there would be wholesale relocation (or genocide) of the “other.” Hindus have no problem persecuting non-Hindus and Muslims…well…we know what they do to infidels.
I don’t believe either nation “wants” a full on shooting war…but they’re both on edge enough to get what they don’t want. I have read locally (as Australia has something of an interest in what goes on in that sort of proximity) that India’s standing armed forces are supposed to be better than Pakistan’s but Pakistan has a default “nuke” Plan B C or D…They actually have a nuclear option true to its name. I’ll hunt around to see if I can find that source…
Yes, Oldflyer. I knew Christians in India. Many came from formerly Dalit, that is, untouchable, families. The ones I knew were all acquainted with someone who had been beaten, or killed. Evangelism was dangerous. This applies to all the Protestant groups; Catholics also are mistreated, but fare a little better because many early Catholic converts came from formerly Brahmin families, with higher status. Indians still know what caste people spring from and react accordingly.
Hindus in the US whom many of us know are not a danger to Indian Christians here. These immigrants come from educated classes. They probably would not marry Indian Christians, but the mob violence aimed at Christians in India does not come from these educated families in general.
Other than Kashmir, which used to be ruled by Hindu pandits, I don’t think India actually wants Pakistani territory, which might argue against any kind of invasion triggering a nuclear response. Hindus who fled Punjab and Bengal at the partition have pretty much settled into new homes. I didn’t hear anything about a “right of return” like that which is proposed for Arabs who fled the Israeli founding.
It makes me nervous to see anybody named Khan involved in any brouhaha with doomsday weapons, Asian land wars, etc. Is it just me?
This post at CNN has a good map of the region; seems to be a straight-forward news report. Via PowerLine headlines.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/27/india/india-pakistan-strikes-escalation-intl/index.html
What sparked this off was a Muslim suicide bombing that killed dozens of Indian soldiers. The Indians then bombed a terrorist training camp in Pakistani Kashmir, killing some 300 there.
Sovereign states are obliged, under international law, to prevent their territory from being used as a base for attacking neighboring state. Pakistan ought to suppress such activity, but it actually supports it. The Pakistani intel organization, ISI, organizes and supports the terrorist activities in Kashmir, elsewhere in India, and in Afghanistan. Given that Pakistan is not carrying out it obligations, India has the right to chase the terrorists and destroy them in their sanctuaries in Pakistan.
Unless forced to do so, Islam does not recognize itself as being subject to International Laws and, even when forced to do so it views yielding to that force to be a temporary condition.
Just like China does not recognize the World Court’s ruling that its actions in the South China Sea illegally violate International Laws and treaties to which it is a party.
Of course, both China and Islam do recognize and support International Law when it happens to favor their interests.
And both reject the charge of hypocrisy, justifying that rejection as the natural province of their inherently superior ideology. As by definition, all totalitarian ideologies proclaim themselves to be the ONLY valid set of beliefs.
Which is why those who imagine that China’s ideologues value money over ideology are profoundly mistaken. Ideologues do not worship at the altar of Mammon.
On paper, India has the advantage. Elections in India will color how she responds. Let’s hope she holds back. Nuclear war is not a pretty affair. Push comes to shove the Pakistani have to go nuclear. They are the weaker power. A conered rat is a dangerous foe.