Please keep the other posts on topic. Use this for talking about whatever you want to talk about.
Afghan Peace Process; Postscript
From Dr Hamid Hussain
Following was an exchange with an old Afghan hand of ISI.Ā It may be of interest to some.Ā His comments in normal font; mine in bold.
26 February 2019
Ā Thanks Sir for opening more windows;Ā My comments essentially of a wandering dervish in red in your main text;
Hamid
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Dear HH,
A very thought provoking analysis with indepth knowledge of situation in Afghanistan.Ā My take:
- No party can have total control over Afghanistan particularly psuedo democracy.(You are correct that no single party is strong enough to impose its will on the whole country.Ā In good old times, a chap like Amir Abdur Rahman put the fear of God by beheading a large number of tribal leaders and exiling others far away from their homeland.Ā In this way, he was able to impose a central state on reluctant Afghans. Times have changed.Ā It is time for a grand bargain and compromise although Iām not sure whether Afghans are ready for it.)
- Taliban will emerge as the largest group but will not be allowed total control by big powers. Fear CIS & Russians from fundamentalists will keep them supporting tajik and uzbek groups.(Correct.Ā Interests of many countries are divergent and each state will support its own proxy.Ā It is fine as long it is for political jockeying but all need to be mindful that one heated argument after endless cups of green tea can tempt one to reach for AK-47.Ā This urge needs to be controlled. If not then;
aur jaāam toteein gein; iss sharab khane mein)
3.hazaras & other shia gps having tasted partĀ powers will not easily succumb to Taliban rule.Ā (Another reason for all Afghans to go for a bargain.Ā Like many highlanders, Afghans of all ethnicities have a distorted sense of honor.Ā They are willing to settle scores with gun for whatever perverted reason.Ā However, their grandmother is begging on the street, young son is molested in coal mines of Baluchistan (Shahrag mining town in Baluchistan is the most heinous place in this regard where boys as young as 8 or 9 from FATA and Afghanistan are being molested on daily basis) or daughters going into prostitution to put food on the table in Pakistan & Iran, and their honor is nowhere to be found. Reminds me the words of an American who had worked in Afghanistan.Ā He lived with his family among Afghans and worked in 1970s in Jalalabad for several years. Ā In mid 2000s, he went back for a trip to Jalalabad. He said that Afghans were poorer then but had honor.Ā Now they are richer but have lost their honorā. Hegel defined courage and bravery as āCourage among civilized peoples consists in a readiness to sacrifice oneself for the political community) Continue reading Afghan Peace Process; Postscript
Against being an intellectual subaltern
Over at my other weblog, The blood on brown hands is a legacy of all of history. Basically, a long essay where I fire broadsides at reductive postcolonialism in the context of Indian history and communal divisions. The motivation was straightforward: twitter is not really good to outline more subtle or detailed perspectives. But, it is a good platform for people to pepper you with many, many, questions.
Below is the first paragraph of the post:
Yesterday I put up a tweet which went a bit viral (I won’t embed since it has a vulgarity). It was the result of my frustration with a very liberal Indian American who was using unfortunate tensions in the Indian subcontinent to attack “white supremacy.” My frustration was due to the reality that a major conflict between India and Pakistan would not just impact India and Pakistan, though that is dire enough. In a globalized world, a war involving the world’s fifth largest economy, situated athwart the southern flank of Asia, would impact many people outside of the subcontinent. In the midst of this, the fact that someone was using this to promote their own ideological hobbyhorse was offensive to me.
Arundhati Roy on Kashmir; Pakistan is simply another Bantustan
A quick note on Ms. Roy’s thoughts:
NEW DELHI āWith his reckless āpre-emptiveā airstrike onĀ BalakotĀ inĀ Pakistan, Prime MinisterĀ Narendra ModiĀ has inadvertently undone what previous Indian governments almost miraculously, succeeded in doing for decades. Since 1947 the Indian Government has bristled at any suggestion that the conflict inĀ KashmirĀ could be resolved by international arbitration, insisting that it is an āinternal matter.ā By goading Pakistan into a counter-strike, and so making India and Pakistan the only two nuclear powers in history to have bombed each other, Modi has internationalised the Kashmir dispute. He has demonstrated to the world that Kashmir is potentially the most dangerous place on earth, the flash-point for nuclear war. Every person, country, and organisation that worries about the prospect of nuclear war has the right to intervene and do everything in its power to prevent it.
I followed another link to this article, In Pulwama Bomber Adil Ahmad Dar’s Village, It’s Another Day, Another Death, and I was shocked to see that the bomber was a native Kashmiri.
Kashmir is on fire and the Indian government doesn’t seem to have realised just how much of an own-goal this incident has been.
India should be viewing Pakistan and Bangladesh as the West Bank & Gaza Strip of the Subcontinent. These Muslims Republics are a great place for India’s demographics to be absorbed and in retrospect 1971 was not the great victory for India.
India pretends to be Israel but Israel has a strict Jewish First policy whereas India is territorial focussed. Israelis don’t hunker for a land between the Sea & the Euphrates but stay within defensible borders and hold on to their cantonments.
India shouldn’t be fighting corrupt Pakistani generals and businessmen; it should be bribing them. If Pakistan tomorrow becomes 5 banana republics; the Punjab border would be overwhelmed with Muslim refugees.
Post 1971 India was left with:
An estimate made in the year 2000 placed the total number of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in India at 1.5 crore, with around 3 lakh entering every year.Ā
I imagine the majority of these illegal Bangladeshi immigrants are not Hindu.
Like Israel, India will soon have to decide whether it wants to have a solidly Hindu future (with compliant Hindufied minorities) or a “Akhand Bharat.”
But deep down Indians, of all stripes (Hindutva included), cannot bear to part with Pakistan & Kashmir. There is an atavistic bond Hindus/Indians have to this mythical Mughal fantasy, that they just can’t quit Pakistan.
Any sensible Hindu leader would be advocating partition upon partition to isolate and quarantine these bantustan Pakistans. Isolated, weak, divided and led by a corrupt Muslim elite drunk on Indian money; these little Pakistans would have been wonderful pawns of India.
Instead India’s loss will be China’s gain; Israel doesn’t do such mistakes.
Complete Victory For Imran Khan
I'll hopefully publish this imagery tomorrow.
That might indicate that the IAF was under pressure from Pakistani jets and released without a full lock-on, but considering the GPS guidance preloaded with coordinates I would say it was a political decision to limit escalation.
— Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) February 28, 2019
Pakistan is offering to return the pilot as a gesture of goodwill. Huge humiliation for India on every level.
I’m extraordinarily impressed with Imran’s handling of the crisis. This is the end of Modi, who should have been the Indian Benjamin Nethanyahu.
Pakistan has been cool, strategic and conciliatory while India has been bombastic, hotheaded and bloodthirsty. Completely outfoxed and to lose in a dogfight with Pakistan is a big shame on the Indian air-force. Continue reading Complete Victory For Imran Khan
BrownCast Podcast episode 18: India and Pakistan; Confrontation in the Subcontinent
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Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen onĀ Libsyn,Ā iTunesĀ andĀ Stitcher. Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we donāt have a regular schedule is toĀ subscribeĀ at one of the links above. You can also support the podcast as aĀ patronĀ (the primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than everyone elseā¦). Would appreciate moreĀ positiveĀ reviews.
In this episode Razib and Omar talk to Major Amin and Dr Hamid Hussain. Major Amin and Dr Hamid are familiar to our readers for their regular contributions on military history. In this episode we discuss the current India-Pakistan confrontation and what comes next. Events may have moved on even as this gets posted, but I am sure listeners will find it an interesting review of the military and political aspects of the crisis.
Postscript: I may have been too hasty in concluding that only one plane was lost that day. It seems that witness accounts and initial Pakistani claims all mention two aircraft. Pakistan says that was another Indian plane, Indians say it was a PAF F-16. Right now, all we can say is that Abhinandan’s MiG 21 crashed without a doubt.. what happened to the second plane and who was it? We don’t know yet for sure.
Note from Razib: I tried my best, but there were a few issues with the sound on this podcast. But since the substance is timely and hard to find elsewhere I think it’s worth it!
A toxic cocktail of American narcissism and Indian American self-righteousness
Like many of you, I’m monitoring what’s going on in the Indian subcontinent. I’m not saying much because I don’t know much. No value to add.
But then this showed up in my timeline, and I honestly could not believe that the confluence of characteristics we’ve been talking about recently might lead to such bizarre self-obsessed comments:
I see this person’s comments in my timeline way too often. Best case scenario is that she’s some sort of ideological grifter who knows how to push buttons. But this indecent.
Tensions and BP Readership
I just was rifling through our readership numbers.
We are average 8x our average daily readership; 5x the views of our highest ever readership count.
I have no idea what’s causing the traffic specifically (it could just be general events) but to be honest it’s a tense day.
Why China needs Pakistan-
China's one-child policy will have a far-reaching impact on its society for years to come pic.twitter.com/LC02grSDOu
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) February 27, 2019
Pakistan’s destiny, if it survives the next few days, is to be China’s Bihar.
I now support quotas on (South) Asian Americans at elite universities (a)
This is a follow up to:
I now support quotas on (South) Asian Americans at elite universities
Video gets especially interesting 16 minutes in. Some main take aways:
- Almost half of all people in the world are Asians. Having a similar ratio of Asian students at elite US institutions is being “diverse”
- Many different parts of Asia are extraordinarily diverse with many different cultures (Vietnam, India, China, Indonesia). Allowing Asians into elite American institutions enhances diversity.
- Asians top every metric for admissions except personality profiles, where Asians consistently rank far lower than any other group.
- Mass discrimination against Asians creates segregation at schools since non Asian kids need to receive different separate remedial classes. Many non Asian kids at elite institutions upon entry lack the math skills to take entry level classes.
- Asians use to be America’s only reliable Republican voting block (for example backing George Herbert Walker Bush in 1992 and Bob Dole in 1996). The 2016 and 2018 elections are the first time Asians have overwhelmingly voted Democrat. Asians now vote more Democrat than Latinos.
- Many Asians think they can change Democrats from the inside. And they have had some success. They have persuaded many Democrats to vote for Asian interests on affirmative action.
- In the last 6 minutes they discuss how the massive over representation of Asians at elite educational institutions is causing a major shift to the left
- There are surveys of incoming freshman students. They reflect America and their parents. Or center right.
- Exit surveys of senior students find that they have shifted sharply to the left. They trend left to socialist to communist upon graduation.
My own observation is one that several leading academic professors have also noted. High School Asian American kids, particularly Desi ones, often have contempt for their parents, Asia, older Desis, Asian culture and Asian religions. They are often deeply ashamed and guilty about their Asian privilege and about the ways Asians practice “white supremacy”, racism, bigotry, prejudice, sectarianism, hate, oppression, exploitation towards others. There is a sense that the reason Asians are so successful around the world is because Asians steal from others. This phenomenon extends to undergraduate students but is still not common among Asian Americans over 22 years old.
How much of this phenomenon is being driven by self hatred, self loathing, guilt and a contempt for Asian and Desi cultures and religions? What if anything can be done about this?
As a partial aside, Brown Pundits podcast plans to interview some practitioner Dharmics (including Buddhist, Jain, Sikh) professors in academia. One question we can ask them is how much anti Dharmic phobia comes the indoctrination of Dharmic children in high school and undergraduate university against Dharmic faiths.