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Thursday, August 5, 2010

Inside the White House: Letters to the President

Every day, President Obama reads ten letters from the public in order to stay in tune with  world's issues and concerns. "Letters to the President" is an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the process of how those ten letters make it to the President's desk from among the tens of thousands of  letters, faxes, and e-mails that flood the White House each day.

You can also call or write to the President:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Please include your e-mail address
Phone Numbers
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461
e-mail address: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

NATO Pulls Pakistan Into Its Global Network

Rick Rozoff
By Rick Rozoff
Srinagar:
August, 5: In four months the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will hold a summit in Lisbon, Portugal. The host country was one of the 12 nations that founded the United States-dominated military bloc 61 years ago reports Intelligence daily.
The Warsaw Pact dissolved
The rival grouping that was created six years after NATO’s formation and its expansion into Turkey and Greece in 1952 and the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955, the Warsaw Treaty Organization (Warsaw Pact), formally dissolved itself almost twenty years ago.

NATO's expansion

In the interim since its formation, having grown to 16 members by 1982 with the incorporation of Spain, NATO expanded from 12 to 28 members and absorbed 12 nations in Eastern Europe over the past 11 years. The last dozen were, except for two former Yugoslav federal republics (Croatia and Slovenia), earlier part of the Warsaw Pact and in three instances (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) also of the Soviet Union.

The North Atlantic military bloc’s sole right to maintain its name is that its major powers do largely have coastlines on the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean. The majority of its members do not. Since the Warsaw Pact’s demise and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO has subordinated all of Europe through full membership and the Partnership for Peace and more advanced programs.

"Partnership for Peace"

The newest members of NATO graduated through successive stages of integration from the Partnership for Peace to Individual Partnership Action Plans and Membership Action Plans to full membership. All supplied troops for the occupation of Iraq and now have forces serving under NATO in the Afghan war zone.

Current members of the Partnership for Peace program in Europe are: Austria, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Finland, Ireland, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine. Bosnia, Moldova and Montenegro now have Individual Partnership Action Plans and Ukraine was recently granted a special Annual National Program. Russia was a member of the Partnership for Peace from 1992-1999, but suspended participation in that program and the Permanent Joint Council with NATO over the Alliance’s 78-day bombing war against Yugoslavia in 1999. However, in 2002 the NATO-Russia Council was inaugurated and though in abeyance after the 2008 Georgia-Russia war is functioning again.

All three former Soviet South Caucasus states – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia – are Partnership for Peace members. The first two also have Individual Partnership Action Plans and Georgia its own Annual National Program, which NATO awarded it shortly after its five-day war with Russia in 2008.

In Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are in the Partnership for Peace. Kazakhstan is the first country outside of Europe (inclusive of the Caucasus) to receive an Individual Partnership Action Plan.

Middle East and Africa
In the Middle East and Northern and Western Africa, the following countries are NATO Mediterranean Dialogue partners: Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. Israel and Egypt each have an Individual Cooperation Program with NATO introduced in the last three years under enhanced Mediterranean Dialogue provisions. Egypt and Jordan have small troop contingents in Afghanistan.

Under the auspices of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative of 2004, NATO has strengthened military ties with the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. All but Oman and Saudi Arabia have formalized military cooperation arrangements with NATO. The United Arab Emirates is one of 46 official Troop Contributing Nations for NATO’s war in Afghanistan and there are also Bahraini soldiers in the war theater.

Contact Countries
The Brussels-based military bloc also has a category of military cooperation called Contact Countries, which to date include Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. All four have assisted the war in Afghanistan in various capacities and all but Japan have provided NATO with troops. Other Asia-Pacific states have deployed troops to serve under NATO in Afghanistan and as such are arguably already Alliance partners. Those countries include Singapore, Mongolia and Malaysia.

Tripartite Commission
NATO has initiated a Tripartite Commission consisting of its International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the armed forces of Afghanistan and Pakistan. A complement to the U.S.-Afghanistan-Pakistan Tripartite Commission, in 2008 former Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Karl Inderfurth referred to it as the Trilateral Afghanistan-Pakistan-NATO Military Commission, which is a more accurate, if not its formal, title.

A tally of 28 full NATO members and the partners mentioned above produces a list of at least 70 of the 192 members of the United Nations which are linked to the Western military bloc in some manner.

NATO's Grip on PakistanOf all those nations, Pakistan is the second largest, its population of 170,000,000 only surpassed by that of the U.S. It is also one of only seven nations that acknowledge possessing nuclear weapons.

NATO’s grip on Pakistan was increased in 2005 when the military bloc became involved in an earthquake relief operation in the country, NATO’s second mission in Asia.

After that Pakistani military officers attended training courses at the NATO School in Oberammergau, Germany for the first time in 2006. The Pakistani Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, General Ehsan ul Haq, visited NATO Headquarters in Brussels in the same year.

In 2007 Jaap de Hoop Scheffer became the first NATO secretary general to travel to Pakistan. In the same year Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz visited NATO Headquarters.

The next year President Pervez Musharraf made the same trip, followed by his Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, ten months afterward.

In January of 2009 NATO chief Scheffer visited Pakistan to meet with newly installed President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Army chief General Kayani.

Returning the favor, Kayani paid a visit to NATO Headquarters in May, and the next month President Zardari, nine months after assuming his post, traveled to NATO Headquarters for a meeting with the bloc’s top governing body, the North Atlantic Council, being the first elected president of Pakistan to do so. In October of last year NATO conducted an international seminar on Pakistan in Brussels which included the ambassadors of all 28 of the bloc’s member states. In December NATO launched an Individual Tailored Cooperation Package to consolidate the integration of Pakistan.

This year Pakistani Foreign Minister Qureshi was at NATO Headquarters in February to meet with the new secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and to address the North Atlantic Council, and last month Prime Minister Gilani led a large government delegation to the same location, where he also met with Rasmussen and addressed the North Atlantic Council.

On either end of the International Conference on Afghanistan held in Kabul on July 20, NATO Secretary General Rasmussen visited Tajikistan, where French NATO forces have been stationed since 2002 and where recent reports detail plans for the U.S. to open a training center [1], and Pakistan.

On July 19 Rasmussen met with Tajik Defense Minister Sherali Khairulloyev and Security Council Secretary Amirkul Azimov to coordinate a common Afghan strategy.

He arrived in Pakistan on July 21, six days after a twenty-member Pakistani parliamentary delegation completed a four-day trip to NATO Headquarters in Belgium “to share information about the Alliance’s policies and activities and to strengthen political dialogue between NATO and elected representatives of Pakistan.” [2]

The group was also taken to the Allied Command Operations Headquarters, formerly known as Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), the central command of NATO military forces.

While in Islamabad this Wednesday, Rasmussen was accompanied by a large delegation which included NATO Spokesman James Appathurai and Robert Simmons, NATO’s Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Security Cooperation and Partnership and its first Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia. [3] Simmons was also in Pakistan in May when he spoke at a conference entitled “NATO’s Transition and its Relation with Pakistan.”

His comments at the time included the assurance that “Pakistan is NATO’s valued partner and our common challenge is war in Afghanistan.”

A report of his visit stated, “Simmons emphasized that NATO does not want to limit [itself] to high level dialogue with Pakistan but also to have practical cooperation by making use of the instrument of [an] Individual Cooperation Program to cover civilian and military affairs” [4], the same name as that used by NATO for its advanced partnerships with Israel and Egypt.

On May 21 Rasmussen and other NATO officials met with Pakistani President Zardari and with Chief of Army Staff General Kayani and Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Tariq Majid in separate meetings at the military’s General Headquarters. During the meeting with General Majid, discussion “focused on the future NATO strategy for Afghanistan [and] the status of NATO-Pakistan relations including a proposed framework to institutionalize enduring, broad-based and mutually beneficial future cooperation.” [5]

During Zardari’s meeting with Rasmussen, the Pakistani president stated he “appreciated training facilities offered by NATO to Pakistani officers and called for further increasing such facilities,” and “hail[ed] NATO’s intended support for training counter-terrorism units.” [6]

Last year the Pakistani military launched a “counterinterrorist” offensive in the Swat Valley and adjoining parts of the North-West Frontier Province that dwarfed in comparison fighting on the other side of the Durand Line, leading to 3,000,000 civilians being displaced according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Oxfam among other sources. There can be little doubt that the operation was ordered by Washington.

Over the past two years the U.S. has killed over 1,000 people with drone missile attacks in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. There have been reports of NATO helicopter gunship and commando raids in Pakistan launched from Afghanistan.

On July 21 NATO chief Rasmussen said that “Pakistan and NATO enjoy an important relationship and intend to build upon it…it goes beyond Afghanistan.” Indeed. Rasmussen also “commended Pakistan’s operations in the Tribal Areas….He mentioned the tripartite arrangement with NATO and said [NATO] would encourage Pakistan to continue it.” [7]

NATO’s first war in Asia and its first ground war is not limited to Afghanistan. In touting his organization’s “long-term partnership with Pakistan,” the Alliance’s secretary general added that NATO’s presence in Afghanistan and several adjoining nations was “driven not by calendar, but by commitment.” [8]

NATO is in South and Central Asia to stay. In Afghanistan, in Pakistan and in the former Soviet republics of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan following suit and India next in line. (The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, began a two-day visit to India on July 23, and pledged a continued “commitment” to South and Central Asia.)

In November NATO will endorse its new Strategic Concept, the first since it began its Eastern expansion at the fiftieth anniversary summit in Washington, D.C. in 1999. It is NATO’s first 21st century, first avowedly expeditionary military doctrine. It is the blueprint for global NATO, with partners and operations on at least five continents.

References:
   1. Afghan War: Petraeus Expands U.S. Military Presence Throughout Eurasia
      Stop NATO, July 4, 2010
   2. North Atlantic Treaty Organization, July 16, 2010
   3. Mr. Simmons’ Mission: NATO Bases From Balkans To Chinese Border
      Stop NATO, March 4, 2009
   4. Xinhua News Agency, May 21, 2010
   5. South Asian News Agency, July 21, 2010
   6. Associated Press of Pakistan, July 21, 2010
   7. Daily Times, July 22, 2010
   8. 8) Ibid

About the author: Rick Rozoff has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. He is the manager of
Stop NATO international.

Why the US and India Demonize Pakistan's ISI


By Sheikh Gulzaar
Org. Logo of ISI
Srinagar, August 5: Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence agency, or ISI as it is popularly known, is seen as their nemesis by those who have tried to undermine the security interests of the country one way or the other. It is no wonder then that in past few years the Americans unleashed a strong ISI-bashing campaign, with India following suit.

The Americans made no bones about their dislike for this agency, blaming it for working against their interests in Afghanistan. The Indians also see an ISI agent behind every rock in Kashmir and in Afghanistan where they are trying to dig their heels. They do not hesitate to pin on ISI the blame for the freedom struggle in Kashmir or for acts of terrorism by Indian extremists. Until recently the Karzai government dominated by the anti-Pakistan Northern Alliance also remained hostile to ISI. 

Not too long ago, under intense American pressure the weak Zardari government made an unsuccessful attempt at neutralizing and subduing this agency in disregard to the existing sensitive regional security environment, by moving it out of the army control and placing it under the controversial and embattled Zardari loyalist interior minister - Rehman Malik. This did not succeed for a simple reason. The role of ISI as the eyes and ears of the Pakistan’s military - the bedrock of country’s security, is critical particularly at a time when the country faces multiple threats to its security. 

Washington's darling in the Afghan-Soviet war

Ironically, this is the same ISI that was Washington’s darling during the 1980s when it was master minding the jihad against invading Soviet forces in Afghanistan. The role that ISI then played was congruent with American interests. The defeat of the Soviet Union would have meant realization of an American dream - avenging the humiliation of Vietnam. They held ISI in high esteem for its competence and professionalism and gladly funneled arms and funds to the Afghan mujahedeen through it. The ISI strategized the resistance and organized and trained the mujahedeen fighters, working in close collaboration with the CIA and the mujahedeen leaders, forcing the Soviets to retreat.

But as soon as the Americans had negotiated a quid pro quo - Russian withdrawal from South America in exchange for safe Soviet exit from Afghanistan, they disappeared in the middle of the night leaving Afghanistan in a quandary. The political turmoil that followed created chaos and instability owing to the failure of mujahedeen leadership, presenting as a result a security nightmare for Pakistan.

Taliban-US-Pakistan relations and the Indian Threat
In this chaos a group of young Afghan religious students, many of them former fighters from the resistance, calling themselves Taliban (in Pushto language Taliban means students), swept through the country with popular support to establish their rule. Interested to keep their presence alive, the Americans maintained contacts and supported them, ignoring their orthodox beliefs, their harsh rule and even the presence of Al Qaeda in their midst. This continued until it was time for the Americans to overthrow their government in order to serve the changing American interests.   

While the Taliban government was in control, Pakistan too maintained friendly relations with them in the interest of keeping its western border secure, extending whatever support it could. The ISI played a role through the contacts it had developed during war against the Soviets.

In the wake of 9/11 things began to change. Having invaded Afghanistan in the name of war on terror, branding Taliban as brutes and their resistance as terrorism, the Americans wanted the Pakistan army and the ISI to join the war.

This posed a serious security concern for Pakistan. It could destabilize the Pak-Afghan border and strain relations with the Pashtun tribes on both sides of the Durand Line, the British drawn boundary that cut through the Pashtun region to divide British India and Afghanistan and which Pakistan had inherited. The fact that Pakistan’s border region, called Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is autonomous where the writ of the Pakistan Government does not prevail made matters more complex.

Pakistan’s military doctrine is based primarily on meeting the main threat from India on its eastern border while maintaining a peaceful border with Afghanistan in the west. A direct conflict with the Taliban would have forced Pakistan to divert its military assets from eastern to the western front, thus thinning out its defenses against India. This was the last thing Pakistan wanted to do because of its unfavorable ratio of 1:4 against India in terms of conventional forces. Understandably, President Musharraf was unwilling to do the American bidding.

U.S. projection of its military failures onto Pakistan

There always is a problem with powers that begin to act in imperialistic fashion. Their vision of the world becomes colored. They tend to believe that pursuit of their imperialist designs takes precedence over the national interests of those who cannot stand up to them, even if that means compromising their own national and security interests. America had also been behaving as one such imperial power and treated its smaller allies more like colonies. President Musharraf was threatened that in case of noncompliance with America’s wishes, “Pakistan would be bombed into the stone-age”. Musharraf was coerced into conceding to American demands.

Despite the state-of-the-art surveillance equipment and military hardware, the US and NATO forces failed to stop the Taliban fighters from moving back and forth into the unmarked Pak-Afghan border that passes through a treacherous mountainous region to regroup and strike on the invading foreign troops. The American commanders reacted by demanding that the Pakistan army engage these fighters and seal the border. Those with even the slightest knowledge of the area would know that the Americans were asking for the moon. This was physically impossible.

Pakistan army’s operations failed. In the process it earned a severe backlash from the local tribes who resented army’s action against their kinsmen from across the border who sought refuge in their area, as it violated the old tribal custom of providing sanctuary to any one who asked for it, even it was an enemy. The Pakistan army paid a heavy price. More soldiers died in this action than the combined number of casualties that the US and NATO troops have suffered in Afghanistan so far.

President Musharraf under advice of his army commanders and the intelligence community called off the action and resorted to persuasion instead. Through jirgas (assembly of tribal elders) effort was made for the tribesmen to voluntarily stop the influx of Taliban fighters. It didn’t succeed either. This was not to the liking of the American commanders. They blamed the ISI for working against their interests.

Washington accuses the ISI of complicity with insurgents

Washington and the American media frequently alleged that elements within ISI were maintaining contacts with the Taliban and attributed the failure of American troops in combating the Taliban to these contacts. Such allegations were also found to be part of the raw, unverified and even fabricated field reports ‘leaked’ in Afghanistan recently and splashed in the western media. The Americans have in the past also described the ISI to be out of control and demanded of the Pakistan government to purge the agency of Taliban sympathizers.

This is ridiculous. Firstly, ISI is a military organization operating under strict organizational control and discipline where officers are rotated in the normal course. It functions according to a defined mandate, unlike armed forces in some other countries and unlike the CIA which is known to be an invisible government on its own. Above all, Pakistan and its military are committed to weeding out religious extremism as a matter of state policy.
Secondly, if the American troops are so incapable of overcoming a rag tag army of Taliban and if the complicity of ISI with the Taliban can be instrumental in changing the course of the American war, then it is a sad day for America as a super power and the strength of NATO forces becomes questionable.

Thirdly, in the world of intelligence, contacts are kept even with the enemy and at all times. CIA keeps contacts within Russia and other hostile countries. Israel, the great American ally, spies on America itself. It is common for all intelligence agencies to do this in the security interests of their countries. Why then should America expect an exception to be made in case of ISI? Why should contacts that ISI developed with the mujahedeen and the Taliban earlier, and which if it does still maintain, become a source of such great concern for the American administration?
 
Demanding that the ISI subordinate Pakistan security to U.S. interests.

It is strange that America expects ISI to serve the American agenda instead of Pakistan’s interests first. One cannot forget that the Americans have a long history of abandonment of friends and allies and when they repeat this in Afghanistan citing their own national interest, despite their promises to the contrary, why should Pakistan be expected to be caught with pants down? Why Pakistan’s military and the intelligence agency should be expected to abdicate their duty and not do what is necessary to ensure Pakistan’s security in the long term? 

It has often been argued that America expects Pakistan to be actively engaged in the Afghan war in return for the military assistance it provides. The answer is quite simple. The American establishment is doing all that needs to be done in support of its own war and not for the love of Pakistan. The war is theirs, not Pakistan’s. Pakistan should do and is doing what is necessary and feasible, without jeopardizing its own security.

As for the assistance, bulk of the $10 billion that America gave in the past and was branded as “aid” was in fact the reimbursement of expenses that Pakistan had already incurred in supporting the war effort. The rest was to meet Pakistan’s needs for operations in the border areas and for fighting terrorism that arose out of the war. The Americans still owe $35 billion to reimburse the losses Pakistan has incurred due to this war. As for the F16s that Pakistan is getting from the US, it pays for them, despite strict restrictions over their usage.

The Indian-Israeli attempt to destabilize Pakistan

While Americans had their issues with ISI, the Indians and Israelis began having their own. The agency exposed the growing Indian and Israeli confluence in Afghanistan to destabilize Pakistan. This happened right under the nose of the Americans and obviously not without their knowledge and consent. India having deployed its troops in the name of infra-structure development in league with Karzai government and with American funding and having established seven consulates along the sparsely populated Pak-Afghan border was engaged in heavily bribing the influential but ignorant and susceptible tribal leaders to spread disaffection among the local tribesmen against Pakistan.

Evidence was also unearthed by ISI about how the Indians bought the loyalties of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a grouping of Pakistani tribesmen from FATA and Uzbek fighters from previous wars who settled in the region. The TTP were influenced by the same orthodox religious beliefs as the Taliban in Afghanistan and were active in propagating them in their own areas. They were recruited to launch terror activities in the urban centers of Pakistan, including the capital Islamabad, and were funded, trained and equipped in Afghanistan jointly by the Indian, Israeli and Afghan intelligence agencies. A group from amongst them managed to gain control of Swat area adjoining FATA through coercion of the local population, which was later cleared by the Pakistan army after a major surgical intervention.

The ISI also laid bare strong physical evidence of Indian involvement in supporting insurgency in Balochistan by way of funding, training and equipping misguided and disgruntled Baloch elements grouped under various names including the Balochistan Liberation Army that was led by the fugitive grandson of the notable Bugti tribal chief – Akbar Bugti. His comings and goings in the Indian consulate at Kandahar and the Indian intelligence HQ in Delhi were photographed and his communications intercepted. Numerous training camps in the wilderness of Balochistan were detected where Indian trainers imparted training in guerilla warfare and the use of sophisticated weapons, which otherwise could not be available to the Baloch tribesmen. Flow of huge funds from Afghan border areas to the insurgents was detected that was traced back to the Indian consulates.

Summary and conclusion
The objective of the TTP, and behind the scene that of the Indians and the Israelis, was to make the world believe that Pakistan was under threat of capitulating to terrorist and insurgent elements who were about to take control of Pakistan’s nuclear assets. Their goal: to denuclearize Pakistan through foreign intervention.

These efforts have not succeeded. Undoubtedly, the army and the ISI played a crucial role in foiling the plots of subversion in Balochistan and the Pashtun region and exposing the foreign hands involved, including those of CIA, RAW, Mossad, RAMA, NATO and MI6. Terrorism may not yet be eliminated but Pakistan faces no existential threat.

It should be no surprise to the Americans, Indians and the Israelis if they find in ISI an adversary to reckon with. It is also not surprising that the ISI is in their perception, a rogue organization, for it has stood between them and Pakistan’s national security interests. Their frustration and ire, therefore, is understandable.(Writer-South Asia)

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Over 100,000 people. One show of outrage. No violence in Pampore Today

By Johan Simith
Srinagar, August 04: One more youth, who was critically injured on Friday last in firing by security forces in the Chanpora locality of Srinagar , succumbed to injuries in the hospital even as mobs continued to defy curfew restrictions in the Jammu and Kashmir capital.

Iqbal Ahmad Khan (18) had received a critical bullet injury on his head during protests in Chanpora and had been admitted to the Soura Medical Institute where after an operation on Friday he had been put on the life support system.

Khan's injury had triggered protests and violence across the Valley on Friday in which so far 28 persons, mostly youth, have been killed and 180 others, including police and paramilitary personnel, wounded.

Since early Wednesday morning, loudspeaker-fitted police jeeps were making rounds in various parts of the city warning residents to stay indoors and not to violate the round-the-clock curfew, which is in force without a break since Friday.

However, mobs defied curfew restrictions in some parts of Srinagar and staged protests against the recent alleged human rights violations.

Thousands of people marched to south Kashmir's Khrew town where a peaceful rally was held in the afternoon.

Shouting pro-freedom and anti-India slogans, people, using all modes of transport available, reached the town where seven persons, including a 17-year-old girl, were killed  in Pampore on Sunday.The youngster clambered up a telecommunication tower and hoisted a green flag as onlookers shouted pro-Pakistan slogans during a protest in Pampore on today.
About 8 km south of Srinagar, the road seems to end. Hundreds of trucks, cars and motorbikes block the path. The men shout "azadi" and "Allah-u-Akbar" (God is great) in collective frenzy, Sheikh Aziz Teray Khoon Say Inqlaab Aachuka. They are all heading to Khrewa-Pampore, about 15 km from Srinagar, for the martyars memorial service.

There's no way you can proceed on the highway; so we take a detour through a dirty makeshift road past the stone quarries, the brick kilns and the shanty tenements of the Bihari labourers. There's Jhelum on one side with thick groves lining the embankment; the other side is lush with paddy fields. On the side, women sing songs saluting the 'martyrs' and kids offer free soft drinks to protestors.

But it's only when one steps into Pampore, famous for its saffron fields, that the real magnitude of the gathering becomes evident. It looks like most of Kashmir has turned up. The political mobilisation seems to have worked. Crowd estimates are always dicey — but some estimate the Pampore gathering at perhaps 1 lac. There's a sea of heads on the streets, rooftops, lanes, walls, even on telephone towers.

Over 100,000 people. One show of outrage. No violence. But there was something that hadn’t been there for a long time: pro-Pakistan slogans, Pro-Sheikh Aziz slogans.Such protest pictures should tell anyone with an unbiased opinion, that support (even military) for the people of  Kashmir is not terrorism, but occupation by Indian troops, is terrorism.
 
“More than love for Pakistan, it is anger against India that makes people raise pro-Pakistan slogans,” explains Sheikh GULZAAR, editor of the Writer-South Asia. “Pro-Pakistani slogans are mostly raised near CRPF and army bunkers and positions. That reveals the state of mind of the slogan shouters”. (Writer-South Asia)