🇮🇳 Jammu & Kashmir

[Saif]

Blaming Pakistan won't help India to bring about peace and tranquility in Jammu and Kashmir. India has to stop its law enforcing agencies from committing crimes against humanity in Jammu and Kashmir if it seriously wants to bring peace in the region.

Police blame Pakistan for strife that killed 12
Dozens injured over the last three days



Police in India's territory of Jammu and Kashmir yesterday blamed arch rival Pakistan for a spurt in militant attacks that killed 12 people and injured dozens over the last three days, just weeks after a large turnout for general elections.

Pakistan claims the Himalayan region, which has been roiled by militant violence since the start of an anti-Indian insurgency in 1989 that killed tens of thousands, although violence has waned in recent years.

"Our hostile neighbour wants to damage our peaceful environment," Anand Jain, police chief of Jammu, told reporters in a reference to Pakistan, which India has accused of stoking violence in the region for decades.

A spokesperson for Pakistan's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters. It has denied such claims in the past, saying it has given only political and diplomatic support to the insurgency.

Gun battles in the area on Tuesday killed two militants and a paramilitary soldier while injuring a civilian and six security personnel, authorities said.

The incidents came two days after nine Hindu pilgrims were killed and 41 injured when militants attacked a bus taking them to a Hindu shrine on Sunday, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi was sworn in for a third term.

The latest violence has prompted criticism of Modi by opposition parties demanding action against the perpetrators.

"Unless we talk to our neighbours we will not be able to solve the problem," Farooq Abdullah, a former chief minister of the region, told news agency ANI.

The sudden rise in violence comes after the region's director general of police, R R Swain, said the number of local militants was dropping, although 70 to 80 foreign militants continue to be active.

"We are moving from resident terrorism to foreign terrorism," Swain said last week.

Ties between the neighbours have been frozen since India ended the special status of Jammu and Kashmir state in 2019, splitting it into two federally administered territories.

On Monday, the leaders of the nuclear-armed rivals engaged in diplomacy on X as Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his elder brother and former three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif posted congratulations to Modi for his third term.​

 

[Saif]

Eight killed in gun battles in India’s Jammu & Kashmir

Two soldiers and six suspected militants were killed in two separate gun battles in Indian’s Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), police said yesterday.

www.thedailystar.net

Eight killed in gun battles in India's Jammu & Kashmir
Two soldiers among dead

Two soldiers and six suspected militants were killed in two separate gun battles in Indian's Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), police said yesterday.

Kashmir police inspector general Vidhi Kumar Birdi told AFP that authorities in the disputed territory had "carried out two different operations" in villages in the Kulgam district.

Birdi said two members of the security forces had been killed, with clashes continuing in Modergram and Frisal Chinnigam villages.

"We have retrieved the bodies of two terrorists from Modergram, and four others from Frisal Chinnigam," said Birdi.

This is the latest incident in an uptick of attacks in the disputed territory.

India and Pakistan both claim Muslim-majority Kashmir in full and have fought three wars for control of the Himalayan region.

Rebel groups have waged an insurgency since 1989, demanding independence for the territory or its merger with Pakistan.

The conflict has killed tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels.

In June, nine Indian Hindu pilgrims were killed and dozens wounded when a gunman opened fire on a bus carrying them from a shrine in the southern Reasi area.

Kashmir police inspector general Vidhi Kumar Birdi told AFP that authorities in the disputed territory had "carried out two different operations" in villages in the Kulgam district.

Birdi said two members of the security forces had been killed, with clashes continuing in Modergram and Frisal Chinnigam villages.

"We have retrieved the bodies of two terrorists from Modergram, and four others from Frisal Chinnigam," said Birdi.

This is the latest incident in an uptick of attacks in the disputed territory.

India and Pakistan both claim Muslim-majority Kashmir in full and have fought three wars for control of the Himalayan region.

Rebel groups have waged an insurgency since 1989, demanding independence for the territory or its merger with Pakistan.

The conflict has killed tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels.

In June, nine Indian Hindu pilgrims were killed and dozens wounded when a gunman opened fire on a bus carrying them from a shrine in the southern Reasi area.​

 

[Malang]

No Sir

Jammu and Kashmir is not India’s. It is was were will be part of Pakistan.

You should have kept the title of Jammu and Kashmir

 

[Saif]

No Sir

Jammu and Kashmir is not India’s. It is was were will be part of Pakistan.

You should have kept the title of Jammu and Kashmir

I have deleted 'India' from the title.

 

[Saif]

India’s strategic railway bridge closes the gap to Kashmir

The Chenab Rail Bridge, the highest of its kind in the world, has been hailed as a feat of engineering linking the restive Kashmir valley to the vast Indian plains by train for the first time

en.prothomalo.com

India's strategic railway bridge closes the gap to Kashmir
But its completion has sparked concern among some in a territory with a long history of opposing Indian rule, already home to a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 soldiers
AFP Reasi
Updated: 24 Jul 2024, 10: 00


Indian Railway conducts a trial run on the newly constructed world's highest railway bridge-Chenab Rail Bridge, built between Sangaldan in Ramban district and Reasi on 20 June. Rail services on the line will start soonANI

Soaring high across a gorge in the rugged Himalayas, a newly finished bridge will soon help India entrench control of disputed Kashmir and meet a rising strategic threat from China.

The Chenab Rail Bridge, the highest of its kind in the world, has been hailed as a feat of engineering linking the restive Kashmir valley to the vast Indian plains by train for the first time.

But its completion has sparked concern among some in a territory with a long history of opposing Indian rule, already home to a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 soldiers.

India's military brass say the strategic benefits of the bridge to New Delhi cannot be understated.

"The train to Kashmir will be pivotal in peace and in wartime," General Deependra Singh Hooda, a retired former chief of India's northern military command, told AFP.

Muslim-majority Kashmir is at the centre of a bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan, divided between them since independence from British rule in 1947, and the nuclear-armed neighbours have fought wars over it.

Rebel groups have also waged a 35-year-long insurgency demanding independence for the territory or its merger with Pakistan.


But, as well as soldiers, the bridge will "facilitate movement" of ordinary people and goods, he told AFP.

That has prompted unease among some in Kashmir who believe easier access will bring a surge of outsiders coming to buy land and settle.

Previously tight rules on land ownership were lifted after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist government cancelled Kashmir's partial autonomy in 2019.

"If the intent is to browbeat the Kashmiri consciousness of its linguistic, cultural and intellectual identity, or to put muscular nationalism on display, the impact will be negative," historian Sidiq Wahid told AFP.


'Biggest military logistics exercise'

India Railways calls the $24 million bridge "arguably the biggest civil engineering challenge faced by any railway project in India in recent history".

It is hoped to boost economic development and trade, cutting the cost of moving goods.

But Hooda, the retired general, said the bridge's most important consequence would be revolutionising logistics in Ladakh, the icy region bordering China.

India and China, the world's two most populous nations, are intense rivals competing for strategic influence across South Asia, and their 3,500-kilometre (2,200-mile) shared frontier has been a perennial source of tension.


Soldiers stand next to a vehicle after an attack by suspected militants on an Indian Army convoy in Kathua district of Jammu and Kashmir, on 9 July, 2024Reuters
Their troops clashed in 2020, killing at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers, and forces from both sides today face off across contested high-altitude borderlands.

"Everything from a needle to the biggest military equipment... has to be sent by road and stocked up in Ladakh for six months every year before the roads close for winter," Hooda told AFP.

Now all that can be transported by train, easing what Indian military experts call the "world's biggest military logistics exercise" -- supplying Ladakh through snowbound passes.

The project will buttress several other road tunnel projects under way that will connect Kashmir and Ladakh, not far from India's frontiers with China and Pakistan.

'Holy book'

The 1,315-metre-long steel and concrete bridge connects two mountains with an arch 359 metres above the cool waters of the Chenab River.

Trains are ready to run and only await an expected ribbon cutting from Modi.

The 272-kilometre railway begins in the garrison city of Udhampur, headquarters of the army's northern command, and runs through the region's capital Srinagar.

It terminates a kilometre higher in altitude in Baramulla, a gateway trade town near the Line of Control with Pakistan.

When the road is open, it is twice the distance and takes a day of driving.

The railway cost an estimated $3.9 billion and has been an immense undertaking, with construction beginning nearly three decades ago.

While several road and pipeline bridges are higher, Guinness World Records confirmed that Chenab trumps the previous highest railway bridge, the Najiehe bridge in China.

Describing India's new bridge as a "marvel", its deputy chief designer R.R. Mallick, said the experience of designing and building it "has become a holy book for our engineers".​