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Kashmir: a festering wound
America’s inhumanity THE article Dispensing naked justice by Humair Ishtiaq, on May 11, covered yet another inhuman act by American troops in Iraq. I was least shocked by the indecent act by the US troops. The reason is anything is expected from them as they are the “invaders” and have set many examples of targeting common people in Iraq, the environment they come from has declining moral values. Even within the US Army, insulting a soldier on the grounds of his race, religion and “might” is common. A 1993 survey of new recruits found that most US recruits come from homes where 78.4 per cent of the fathers and 84.5 per cent of mothers didn’t have college degrees. They come from the ranks of the unemployed, working in dead-end jobs as cashiers, in factories, at fast food franchises. A 1994 study on Army recruiting trends listed the youth unemployment rate, which has risen almost 27 per cent since 1989, as by far the most significant factor affecting the US Army’s ability to attract high quality recruits. Soldier after soldier tell stories of assaults, sexual violence, gang activity, serious alcohol and drug abuse, suicide, psychiatric problems, and racial hostility. These are young men and women who are shipped to countries they know little about and have little interest in, who are disconnected from their culture and their families and arrive overseas with a misguided sense of superiority because of their role as a protecting force. Yet, economically, they find themselves on the bottom rung of society. They are sent overseas to be hated in other people’s countries. Second thing that really saddened me was the reaction of the crowd. Weren’t they Muslims? Weren’t the people humiliated by US troops, their own countrymen? Why, instead of protesting, they criticized their own people? Of course thieves should be punished, but there is a proper process for that. There is a lesson to be learned from the Korean people who after hearing news of crime committed, against their people, by the stationed US troops protested in thousands. In the same way we should also protest whenever crimes are commited against us. SAIMA SAEED RAJPUT Karachi | ||
IN Asghar Khan’s interview, in the April 27, 2003 issue, he has suggested that Kashmir should become an independent state. Later Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan, in a letter, criticized that suggestion, and instead put forward his opinion that Kashmir should merge with Pakistan, and not India.|
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