May 11,
2008: Ten percent of the 22,700 terror
related deaths last year occurred in the Indian controlled portion of Kashmir.
Located in northwest India, the province has been a source of friction between
India and Pakistan since 1947. Pakistan seized the northern third in the late
1940s, but India holds on to most of the province, and has been fighting
Islamic terrorism in the area for nearly two decades. Before the invasion of
Iraq in 2003, Kashmir was the magnet for Islamic terrorists, who got their basic
training in Pakistani camps.
It's an
open secret that Pakistan instigated the terror campaign, and has supported it
for years. But Pakistan will not openly admit this. However, quiet diplomacy
between Indians and Pakistanis over the past three years has resulted in a
reduction, but not an elimination, of Islamic terrorism in Kashmir. The
Pakistanis are less blatant in their support. The Pakistani army, for example,
no longer lays down mortar and machine-gun on Indian border troops, to make it
easier for Islamic terrorist reinforcements, and supplies, to get across the
border. But Pakistan still tolerates the Islamic terrorist camps in northern
Pakistan, and does not interfere when the Islamic radicals recruit all over the
country. In the past few years, the Pakistanis have arrested some of the
Kashmir oriented Islamic militants, and harassed some of the militant
organizations. But because the goal of making Indian Kashmir part of Pakistan
is so popular, the government is unwilling to just shut down the terrorists.
Another
problem is a growing Islamic militant problem in the tribal areas of the west
and southwest (along the Afghan border.) The Islamic militant problem is even
worse in Afghanistan, where about 8,000 people died from terrorist violence
last year. There were only about a thousand deaths inside Pakistan last year,
and Pakistan would prefer that the Islamic militants kept their violence next
door, in India and Afghanistan.
Islamic
countries in general follow this practice. Iraq, where 60 percent of terrorist
caused deaths occurred last year, has been a magnet for Islamic terrorists
throughout the region. Nations with lots of Islamic radicals, do not interfere
when these maniacs want to travel to Iraq. The trip is usually a one-way
effort. And many of those who come back, arrive with depressing news about
Islamic militancy getting your killed (it doesn't work they way you were told
in the Mosque), rather than renewed enthusiasm for killing their countrymen
back home.
