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- vimingok posted India-Pakistan WAR (0 posts)
- https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/will-be-wrong-supreme-court-rejects-army-officers-petition-on-1999-kargil-war-7655133
Bhatnagar, a former officer of the 5th Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, had earlier raised questions regarding the discovery of the intrusions and the manner in which these were handled subsequently in the conduct of operations. He had earlier alleged that his inputs on Kargil intrusion were sent to his seniors as early as January-February 1999 but were ignored.
Bhatnagar had contended that when a full-scale conflict broke out, he was court martialed on another pretext and made to leave the Army.
The Kargil war took place from May to July 1999 after the Army detected Pakistan fighters inside the Indian side.
India has in the past repeatedly weaponised if not abused its position as the upstream party in the Indus treaty and also March this year when it stopped Ravi. Although India has exclusive rights to Ravi under the treaty there was no reason to do so except to entrench its upstream advantage for the purposes of threatening Pakistan with tens of millions of its people with dying of hunger and thirst. Without going into the numerous problems caused by the unplanned and often inhumane damming of rivers (and other irrigation works) in the name of "development" and in the interests of semi-feudal capital vassalized by imperialist and compradorial monopoly capital, this will harm agriculture and food systems on both sides of the border. The harm will multiply with the several impending climate and resource (including water) depletion related crises that are going to hit both countries by the end of this decade. Already there are whispers of what is coming. For the first time in my, or anyone else's life a number of our organic mango trees did not flower. This is happening all over India and no doubt Pakistan. Not a single flower in April. Randomly dead trees, trees with stunted leaves, fewer butterflies, fewer dove nests, fewer snake skins, fewer lizards crawling on the walls in the room where I'm typing this, only a single night of flying termites - and not even that many - invading the house at the end of April. The people who live and toil on this incredibly fertile subcontinent don't care one jot which river belongs to India or Pakistan. All of them belong to the trees, the wheat, cows and goats.
Anyway India is primarily responsible for this WAR, which of course is not a real war, at least not anymore than Kargil. Casualties for both sides in the Kargil WAR did not exceed 2000. Compare that to Russia/Ukraine - hundreds of thousands killed and probably more than a million total casualties on each side. Anything close to that scale (and proportionate to population) will lead to mutual ruin even without nukes. So instead a few hundred middle-caste middle peasant families on either side will lose a fully functioning son but they usually have a couple in reserve plus the dead one will bring in a cool 15 20 30 thousand rupees a month in pension to the parents which will be very useful when the time comes for a pacemaker or a daughter's wedding. Doesn't really matter if the Indus treaty is reinstated or renegotiated because India will keep "developing" ad hoc dams. So will Pakistan where possible, like in Azad Kashmir.
The "correct position" du jour of first world radleftists seems to be "calling" for "de-escalation" and "opposing" Indian left-liberals and parliamentary communists who have decided to "support" Modi as a gesture of Gandhian self-harm. Sort of like "calling" for an end to Israel's genocide except in this case the war itself is performative, so creating a performative politics around it is surplus to the requirements of anyone outside the region and certainly in the west.
If real war were a danger there'd be moves being made by all the large bourgeois parties with an axe to grind with the BJP followed by repression and emigration of the parasitic classes, just like in Russia. In fact more so than Russia because the latter's conditions have up to now allowed their "500,000 best families" to mostly "live their liiiives" to use a gen z expression, within Russia. In the short to medium term future (5-20 years) a real war is far more likely due to a combination of factors that for the sake of brevity I'll term "severe irreversible crisis". Who would be the aggressor is academic.