Just weeks after India and Pakistan took unprecedented steps towards normalization in Kashmir, the divided province is exploding into violence again. Yesterday, 13 were killed in a car bomb in Srinagar and gunfights between militants and security forces elsewhere in India-controlled Kashmir. (Times of India, May 11) Violence continues today, as a grenade attack on a Christian missionary school in Srinagar killed two women and injured 50, including 20 children. (Reuters, May 12)
In a new development in the struggle over resources that lies behind the ongoing Kashmir crisis, Times of India reported May 12 that the World Bank has appointed a Swiss civil engineer as a “neutral expert” to assess the international dispute over India’s ongoing construction of the Baglihar hydroelectric dam that would divert water from Pakistan-controlled territory. See our last blog post on the Kashmir water war that is being completely overlooked by the Western media.
More than 45,000 people have been killed since 1989 in political violence in Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state. The U.S., of course, continues to arm both sides (particularly its special client Pakistan) in a conflict with terrifying potential for nuclear escalation.
