The Great Kashmir deluge.

Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup


 The Great Kashmir Deluge.

 Hafiz Saeed, one of South Asia's most dangerous militants, has no doubt who is to blame for devastating Sept., 2014 floods that have submerged swathes of Pakistani countryside and claimed hundreds of lives.

"India irrigates its deserts and dumps extra water on Pakistan without any warning," he accuses doing his very best in exploiting the floods to turn people against India."If we don't stop India now, Pakistan will continue to face this danger." he warns. The fact is that such calumnious views might get currency in Pakistan because many Pakistanis believe that rival India uses its upstream dams to manipulate how much water flows down to Pakistani wheat and cotton fields, with some describing it as a "water bomb" designed to weaken its neighbor.

It is said that the valley of Kashmir was once a lake which in ancient Purana was known as Satisar and the legend goes on to say that Kashyap Maharshi caused it to be drained to dry land for his people to inhabit the valley. This time, torrential rains of unprecedented fury and volume again rendered the valley to a virtual lake

The demon Jalodbhava whom many Kashmiris know in legend, tormented the inhabitants of the valley again in the form of heavy torrential rains unprecedented in the last 60 or even 100 years which hit the Jammu &; Kashmir region as well as Pak Occupied Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Pak Punjab. As a result, an estimated 200 people in India and 280 people in Pakistan died in the floods.  By 5, September, the Jhelum River in Srinagar was reported to be flowing at  4.40 feet (1.34 m) above the danger mark in Srinagar and by 12 feet in Ananthanag district. The discharge rate in the river was recorded as 70000 m3/s against the normal discharge of 25000 m3/s.  2600 villages were reported to be affected in Jammu and Kashmir, out of which 390 villages in Kashmir were completely submerged. 1225 villages were partially affected and 1000 villages were affected in Jammu Division. By September 8, in many parts of Srinagar's neighborhood, the water was about 12 feet (3.7 m) deep, submerging entire house.

 Landslides triggered by heavy rainfall had damaged roads, dozens of bridges, buildings and crops. 50 bridges were reported to have been damaged across the state. The preliminary assessment of damages to property was estimated between Rs. 5000 cr to Rs. 6000 cr . Similarly, the Chenab River was also reported to flow above the danger mark by which hundreds of villages were affected in Pakistan.

India's Defense  forces: the Army, Air force, and Navy mounted massive rescue and aid operations.  82 aircraft and helicopters, 10 battalions of Border Security Force 329 columns of Indian Army and 300 boats were in the rescue operations. Two IL 76, One C-130J and one AN 32 aircraft carried a total of 50 tonnes of supplies including food, water and medicines. 300 boats were dispatched to South Kashmir for excavation of people from submerged areas.[13] Armed Forces including Border Security Force (B.S.F) and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) rescued over 200,000 persons from different regions of Jammu and Kashmir. 10 VSAT systems were air lifted to restore critical telecom towers and a satellite link from Bardula had been provided for crucial communication.

Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi offered an assistance of Rs.1000 crore (US$170 million) to the state government, in addition to Rs.1100 crore (US$180 million) already earmarked for the disaster. Aid poured in from other states too. Chief Minister of Maharashtra and Chief Minister of Telangana announced an aid of Rs.10 crore (US$1.7 million) each from the chief minister's relief fund for the rescue and relief for Jammu and Kashmir flood victims,  Also, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, announced an assistance of Rs.5 crore (US$830,000) each
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Of course it was a demon of all floods, truly a  Jalodbhava (born of water), but the real demon according to environmentalists is a combination of unprecedented and intense rain, mismanagement, unplanned urbanization and a lack of preparedness. They would ascribe the floods to manifestation of an extreme weather event linked to climate change. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its fourth assessment report, said extreme rainfall events were set to increase over the Indian subcontinent. In its fifth assessment report, the IPCC said the intensity of rainfall in India would increase. A study by  the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in 2006 had predicted changes in rainfall across India and especially over the Himalayan range, which would have a high impact in the region, apart from the west coast and central India.

The study of data between 1950 and 2000 showed that the incidence of heavy and very heavy rainfall (more than 100 mm and 150 mm/ a day) had increased and moderate rainfall decreased. They point out that  in 2004, a remote sensing data-based study of Jammu and Kashmir had shown that 55 per cent of wetlands, drainage channels and water bodies had been encroached upon. Jammu and Kashmir had an intricate system of water management. The lake areas had diminished, the holding capacity of many water bodies had gone down, and houses were built in places they should never have been.

In Uttarakhand or in Kashmir it may be the enactment of the same story: man's avaricious, thoughtless, assaults on nature and its balancing system, and nature hitting back fiercely. And we never heed or learn. The columnist rightly said"We are a disaster when it comes to disasters”

And amidst all this herculean efforts going on by the Indian Government, its Defence Forces, NDRF, and the rest of India, there are the despicable and discordant elements like separatists who pelt stones at the helicopters and boats of the Army and NDRF, and separatist leaders like the 84-year Sayed Ali Shah Geelani who speaks to Pakistan TV channels that "Indian Army men were moving around in boats with TV crews only to stage an act of rescuing a few locals for the purpose of publicity and propaganda,". Gilani is mortally afraid that if the fact that Indian Defence forces and Agencies rescued over 200000 people including separatists like Yasin malik, while his own followers were not visible anywhere doing any thing good, whatever little appeal he has in the valley will be dead before him. Yasin Malik who was rescued by the Army personnel on 13 Sept. from his downtown Miasuma residence. just bit the hand that saved his life by hijacking an Army boat with its food and aid supplies meant for the flood victims, virtually stealing food from the mouths of his own starving people. .Now have you any doubt why the land of such inhabitants went down under?. It is these people that brought such devastating calamity to the land as a  nature's reprisal for their wrongs.

The U.S. Incursion of Iraq and Creation of ISIS.

Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup


 The U.S. Incursion of Iraq and Creation of ISIS.

 

A sign of what was to come: fighters parade a commandeered Iraqi military truck through Mosul.

 In what a slow and steady way the USA bungled and tumbled in Iraq! Eleven years after the U.S. invasion, Iraq remains steeped in violence, with militant extremists gaining ground, civil war hanging in the balance and no clear resolution to the chaos

With staggering pace the invasion proceeded to crumble the Iraqi Army, drove president Saddam Hussein to hide, and and then get caught and put in captivity and rule the streets of Iraq, only to be confronted with the task of securing and governing a complex nation of 30 million people utterly unfathomable to Americans. Not surprisingly the series of bungles started to roll, with almost similar alacrity seen in the invasion. The Iraqi National army was disbanded. Hussein's Ba'ath Party was divested of all professional positions.

 Within hours of disbanding the army insurgency erupted. The de-Ba'thification alienated the skilled Sunnis leaving them disenfranchised, angry and as potential recruits for the nascent insurgency. In a few months the insurgency was in full force.  White House got cold feet driving it to decide to leave Iraq too soon. Authority was handed over to Iraqi Governing Council and American troops withdrew to fortified bases in haste.

This was the situation Sunnis wanted - try and subjugate the Shia majority. Shias patiently bore the brunt of the string of attacks till Iraqi Al Queda, eager to provoke a sectarian war, pushed the Shias over the edge by destroying one of their holiest shrine,(Al-Askari Mosque in Samarra). Fierce reprisal and bloodshed followed cocking a snook at American presence. President Bush responded by hoisting Nouri al-Maliki who it was believed could rally the Shias but also not be perceived ,as too sectarian by the Sunnis and Kurds, as the new Iraqi leader, and on the ground, by what was termed the "surge", - dispatching  an additional 30,000 U.S. troops who moved off the large, fortified bases and into the neighborhoods. The result was that the U.S. forces sustained their heaviest losses during this period as both Sunnis ans Shias turned their ire on the coalition forces. This continued till a truce was arranged with Shias, while the Sunnis were bought out by cash not to attack U.S.troops but only Al Queda. Somehow the Iraqi violence was reduced to a low grade insurgency.

And enter President Obama with his electoral promise of pull out from Iraq and subsequent pull out dateline of Dec.2011. By December 2011, almost all U.S. forces had left Iraq, leaving Maliki to govern on his own. Left to himself, Maliki lost no time to turn against the Sunnis and by a series of actions gave a clear message that  there would be no role for Sunnis in Maliki’s Shia regime.

Disenfranchised Sunnis found an outlet in a militant group that had recently coalesced in the fight against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. ISIS, which had a reputation for ruthlessness, gained a rapid foothold in Iraq, capturing the towns of Fallujah and Ramadi in January, and Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, in June.

The world was surprised by how quickly the Iraqi army fell to a small force of fighters. Shia militias have stepped in to fill the void, and sectarian killings are on the rise again. The world, not only Iraq, was aghast at the audacious declaration of an Islamic caliphate by ISIS including territories under its control in Iraq and Syria and demanding all Muslims pledge obedience to its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS is feared as the most noxious outfit of all Muslim terrorist organizations, bloodcurdlingly brutal and savage.“They make bin Laden’s 2011 Al Qaeda look like Boy Scouts.” The throat-cutting ISIS is the fiend that came out of U.S. incursion of Iraq with its professed intention of subjugating the entire Muslim world,  which the U.S is now trying to blast out by aerial bombing.