Responders At Risk: Surviving Violence In The Streets: Fill & Download for Free

Who really funds the trade in narcotic supply, and causes the violence required to keep it going.I thought I was a man of the world when I joined the police. I was 31, served ten years in the army, a couple of years on the news desks and a few more in drama production all over the world. A few weeks into my first beat I realised most of my assumptions of police work were Hollywood. I had a better idea of the ground situation in the Balkans than I did my own city.The yellow line is the boundary of City Road and Hoxton beat, Hackney, East London.This was my first beat in 2002. To the south were celeb and banker heavy clubs, bohemians and bright young things flaunting their success in the drinking squares. The remnants of the Curtain Theatre where Shakespeare learnt his trade sits squarely in the middle. It was a veneer factory when I attended it after a burglary and got to stand on the last 3ft of original stage.When I first walked it the Prime Minister’s home address was just off the top left corner of this map in Islington. The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony video was still popular and was filmed on Hoxton Street along the eastern boundary.The Provost estate sits in the top right corner of the beat. I entered my first crack den there: Two toms (prostitutes), a street artist (beggar) and a small business owner (distribution of car tyres) all cooking up while a half mummified dog was still chained to the radiator in the back room. The floor had been used as a toilet and newspaper put down to cover the mess, a four inch duvet of human waste.You could see the back yard of the Police Station from the window.At the end of my first year I had to turn in a file on my beat - an intelligence and ground picture of: prom nom sightings (prominent nominals - the bigger players in crime); PYOs (persistent young offenders - much the same but under 18); gang nominals; street dealers; drug prices; robbery hotspots; burglary trends; vehicle crime methods; drug dens and stairwells. The names of homeless and street drinkers; bouncers; shop keepers; prostitutes the lot.It was a record of what you had been up to and what you’d taken notice of.One important aspect was to build a map of your ground: active crack houses / drug dens were a big part of this picture, my bosses loved closing them down and getting pictures in the papers. Wherever they sprung up anti-social behaviour, criminal damage, robbery, theft from vehicles, snatches and begging would spread out like ink blots on a map.This is why drugs are bad - whole estates reduced to stinking derelicts as the locust-zombies meander around your patch devouring goodwill and community relations. So we closed them down on a regular basis. We’d push them onto the next beat and three months later they got pushed back to us and you started collecting the evidence again.The most common venues for drugs dens were the homes of vulnerable adults. Long ago it was decided that people with severe learning disabilities or chronic mental health issues would get more from life if they got their care in the community. The officials running this policy swiftly became inundated and the locusts descended in lieu. Nice little cash cows are folk on disability benefit. You can trash their house and the council will get them a new one.In my annual report I had found evidence of maybe thirty drug addled locusts in four squats. I may have missed some but they are not covert. Let’s say those addicts are using twice a day (the upper scale of use) thats 30 x £40 a day = £1,200 a day - £438,000 a year to be made supplying crack and heroin to the locusts in this small square of London.The yellow stars are where we would find the street dealers. The orange stars are where we found our drugs dens, stairwell shooting galleries and open air venues for the summer months. The lime stars are where our homeless alcoholics spent the day begging, drinking or shouting at street furniture.So the dealers were clearing around £438,000 a year. An NYPD study I have faith in looked at the economics of the sale of drugs in their city: They had the suppliers taking 70% of the profit (£306,600), distributors (Tier 1 gang nominals) taking 70% of what's left (£91,980). The Top Boys (Tier 2) on the corners got the rest of the money to run their crews. (£39,420)Top Boys do the graft. It’s their area to control and sustain. Overheads like knifes, packaging and shop floor space are fairly cheap and plentiful. Guns and silence aren’t. Everyone got families and folk to keep happy, less they snitch on you. Yet only a fraction of your silence budget goes out in cash, the remainder is bought though fear and intimidation. You do as you're told or you get perforated.You got to get word out you're selling, but not so far that Police hear. You gotta show you’re the one to do business with - lest you get attacked by another crew. So another 70% goes on marketing, hospitality, silence money and payroll. Your armed lieutenants will be on a retainer else they get ambition, but your runners and couriers will be on commission and most will be working for protection, from you.The estates provide the cover, refuge and vulnerabilities to exploit for the necessary security. He gets his car lease and insurance paid for by the social thru motability finance because he claims to be the carer for one of the vulnerable disabled people on his estate that he’s using as a shell company.Kids get chased off their playgrounds, curtain twitching neighbours get their windows get put in, homeless alcoholics are beaten and a teenager stabbed every so often to curb ‘disrespect’. They’re sink estates, we turn up, report it and no one speaks. Because no one really cares what happens on them.The locust zombies do an excellent job soaking up police work and provide enough stats to keep the coppers from looking any further. Their effects on the neighbourhood can be increased with a hot supply or decreased with a call to police. Very useful and expendable thermostat in your estate management.But still for turning an estate into your petty fiefdom, selling to just the addicts you have a net annual profit of £11,826. 2.7% return for your efforts.Huh!Unemployed seventeen year old Top Boys, can’t put their funds in a bank, that raises questions and leaves evidence. Can’t keep it in cash, they’ll get turned over by rivals.So you stream it, another word for launder. Buy and sell big ticket items, invest in local cash business and get a slice of the results. Think of it as a stock option portfolio if they survive their apprenticeship.The purchasing power can often halve again through this process. Not a lot of people sell big ticket items in cash anymore so Top Boys find themselves buying from those who know where their money comes from. Cars, rims, club entry, drinks, jewellery all come at double price. The value of your work now a miserly £5,913 p.a.And when we catch you, and we do quite often, we seize your money under the proceeds of crime act. But you still have to pay for your silence, your lieutenants and suppliers. You can find yourself in big debt, big time.I once took £5,000 off an eleven year old courier at the top of Hoxton Street. My Sgt warned me all I had done was put the shop floor into debt. Perfectly good arrest but be prepared - best result was the Top Boy legged it, or doubled up next week with aggressive marketing - by which I mean chase another crew off their turf or better still rob another crew.Most likely he would send lieutenants and wannabes out to snatch some mobile phones at knifepoint and raise my robbery stats. Less useful outcomes were to pimp out an underaged regular truant (boy or girl) or a stabfest on collection day.So all that effort, risk and graft for £113.71 a week. Unemployment benefit back then was £60.19 a week. Which they were probably claiming as well.And yet he’s wearing £550 trainers, a girlfriend wearing three times that, spends a couple of grand a night in the clubs, and has a two year old VW Golf with spinning rims. Gets everything replaced within the week.Huh!One night shift I was buying a snack from a 24hr convenience store, a fifty year old partner in the enterprise behind the till, a thirty year old employee outside among the fresh veg on display, another hanging around the drinks fridge and a twenty year old in the back drifting between the stock room and the cereal. All smiles and nods of the head.‘Wow I had no idea the 3am Tuesday economy for fresh tomatoes and artichoke could support the wages of four grown men?’ I wondered to myself.‘It can’t’ I realised half way down the road with some sugar in me.‘So what the hell is?’If I walked from the knick to the end of Hoxton Street along the main roads I would pass four such shops in a leisurely 15 minutes. Competition in the late night cucumber and washing powder markets was high.Every fourth or fifth 24/7 would be a Western Union outlet. You could pick up and send money anywhere in world while simultaneously buying your canned goods or buying flight tickets for your holidays. They used to have a nice little sideline in blue plastic transportation barrels. You could fill them with clothes and presents for family back home and they get collected by the same vans that delivered the next night’s kiwi fruit and lemons from Spain. Apparently it was a very cheap way to send stuff abroad.We found a blue barrel alone once, quite by accident, addressed to Lagos. We had to check inside to see if the owner had left contact details, make sure nothing had been stolen. 20 stolen mobile phones, hidden inside second hand clothes bought from the local charity stores. They didn’t even bother to mask them incase they went through an X-Ray, easier to write it off, the addresses were always bogus.Across from my beat and there were five more 24/7s before you got to the canal, which is when the restaurants that were always open and never full and the endless chicken and kebab shops began to stretch all the way up the A10 to Stoke Newington three miles up town.These stars marked in red are the major clubs, the blue stars are venues where temporary licence events were held on a semi-regular basis.Clubs are obviously full of drugs, the temporary licence venues were wholesale markets for streaming. They usually sprung up when a surplus was left over, funds were needed quick or a bad batch needed thinning out. When you tried to follow the money - it all ended up in cash, if you found someone holding the licence they were patsies paying off a debt with silence or vulnerable through influence, language and education.If you discovered drugs being sold at their event - well maybe they’d get a fine, maybe they wouldn't be allowed to run a temporary licence for a while.The red star directly above the blue star in the bottom right is where many years later on CID I responded to the rapper Professor Green when he had his throat ripped open by an angry glass.Thursday to Sunday night, peaking Friday and Saturday it wouldn't be uncommon to find 10,000 people milling around that area between 19:00 and 03:00. In and out of the pubs and clubs, standing for eons in queues for venues that boasted of the draw of celebrity sightings, while bouncers decided who was good enough to come in and join them.Oh, and they were all in and out the 24/7s for hydration and munchies, before heading to the chicken shops for dinner, or breakfast depending on how you view nocturnal sports.If only a fifth of them bought one gram of cocaine, or two tabs of ecstasy, thats: 2,000 people spending £30 a night for four nights, or £60,000 a weekend. £3,120,000 a year. I’m purposely taking the lower figures, it was easily treble.Huh!So the drugs industry made their coin at the weekend among the queues. We were talking big money now, something worth protecting with some ultra violence.I developed a plan. We used the council CCTV to playback the previous half hour at x 20 speed. Cars became streaks of light, the punters in the queues shuffled towards the doors and the dealers in the queues - the dealers stayed still - and stood out like street furniture.I watched one set up and start selling, ran down to the club and twenty minutes later I hauled him out of the queue. A bit of stop and search Sec.23 and I find 50odd tablets and £1,400 in twenties. Cuffs. He was a graduate student doing a masters in Pharmacology and selling fake ecstasy. Makes for a good story, but I've told it before:Next night the sped up footage shows one chap in an orbit that takes him in and out of the queue and round the back of the building three or four times. We grab him and he's got a money belt full of Ketamine and a sock full of £20’s. He tried to run and I ripped the knee of my trousers bringing him down the rascal.We get to search his flat share, not too far away in a rapidly gentrified area. Flatmates all young professionals with degrees and opinions on why we should ignore a ‘bit of K - it’s not like it’s bad’. Another half kilogram was found in a lovely hand carved ethnic display box on his mantlepiece.He was a freelancer in media/marketing. Times were lean and he had taken on a bit of event promotion. Handing out samples to encourage others into a temporary licence venue.We went back into the queues all weekend and got eleven arrests in two nights. One might be described as criminal class, the others all had jobs, education and the right attitudes to the emotive issue of the day. Estate rats look out of place in swish clubs, you need a trojan.The top boys were watching us from their corners. There is no way those stabbists were allowing these guys to work the queues without their permission. Which meant money flowing back to the gangs. If you followed the queue dealers and gang couriers long enough they always seemed to frequent - the same all night shops and chicken joints.The red circles are (to the best of my memory) where we had stabbings during my year on the beat in Hoxton. At least the ones I responded to. The black circles are where we had shootings. One shooting, one stabbing ended up dead, one stabbing ended up blind.Predominantly these were the younger elements of the dealer gangs getting hit. They were mainly people who lost something valuable, sold their own, got ripped off in a deal or were getting too mouthy. Quite often it was a promotion ladder exercise based on winner takes all. Two shootings were Tier 1 gang nominals from out of area settling debts, saving face or giving a proactive board meeting pep talk to their shop floor.Years later we got a call that a well-known member of a popular girl band had been stabbed in one of our temporary venues, so we piled in there, turned on the lights and once we had satisfied ourselves it was LoB (load of bollocks) we turned over some of the event promoters, found some drugs and the party thinned out.I later learned from some loose tongues the call had been made by a rival promoter looking to increase his market share. There is just no honour in events management these days.In and out of the all-night stores this little parade of humanity went, suppliers, dealers, clubbers and of course the ordinary civilians about their artichoke and chicory needs.The next year I went onto response team and started attending the houses of the local gentry. I would often see lovely little hand carved ethnic boxes on mantelpieces and I always wanted to look inside them. Unfortunately when you've been called to settle a neighbour dispute you can’t search houses. Eyes only.They would be complaining of burglary, stolen mobile phones, criminal damage, nasty looking people outdoors near their kids, dog crap on the street “aren't you going to get rid of it?”Sometimes they put their joints out before we got there and sprayed air freshener. Sometimes - especially the semi-retired - didn’t even bother to do that. It helped us really. A street notice warning for cannabis possession for personal use counted as an all important stat for the end of the month.One night we spotted an ageing transit van dragging it’s rear axle down the road. After a short foot chase produced two well-known local opportunistic thieves (they had more years in jail between them than I had breathing) we discovered where they found the two ton of authentic, antique London yellow clay brick (£60 a brick) they had thrown in the back of their van.They came from the driveway of a house under gentrification around the corner. A middle aged IT CEO answers the door in linen shirt, drawstring trousers, barefoot. You know the sort, thoughtful and kind with a well stocked mind and burgeoning house equity value. Buying free-trade coffee, responsibly sourced sandals and a three grand bike so he didn’t put money in the hands of oil cartels.“Good morning sir, sorry to bother you at 3o’clock but I believe we’ve recovered some property stolen from you! Are you having a party?”“You can’t come in here without a warrant!”Ok this went complianty in a hurry. The conversation went along the lines of ‘can you look at this giant pile of incredibly expensive brick you’ve left outside your house and tell me if any of it is missing’. His end of the conversation went: No, No, where? I don't live here all the time, no the brick isn't new, it’s been specially reclaimed from genuine east end buildings, no no no, yes, you can’t come in without a warrant!I wanted to put the baddies in the cells and at this rate I had nothing.“I tell you what sir, shall I come back in the morning to take a statement? When your eyeballs are back inside your skull and you can talk in complete sentences?” “If I may I would like to come inside and see the extension you’re building, just to check they haven’t damaged it? or I could wait until my colleague has got a warrant!”Flush go the toilets. “Yes they are brick! My brick, yes mine!”Good Morning sir!The only thing I hate more than scraping stabbed kids off their corners, trying to advise thirteen year old pimped out toms he doesn’t love you, and digging out locusts from their fecal mausoleums is the hypocrisy of the respectable middle classes who sustain the industry that keeps those children and vulnerable adults in hock to psychopaths.I volunteered to cover the Lovebox festival in Victoria Park for a bit of overtime. It’s a happy family event for white middle classes to listen to authentic ghetto music, drink wine and get their children's face painted. I was stood at the entrance just before opening and watched a tide of £300 sunglasses and £1,200 baby strollers assemble with their offspring.I told my skipper I didn’t like the middle classes. I felt they got away with too much of the shite we had to shovel round here. We hatched an idea, he called for a sniffer dog van. One was often skulking around the Shoreditch clubs in the early hours of a Saturday and over he popped for a quick spot of exercise.The first five people through the gates all got arrested for drug possession. A 13 year old thoroughly depressed grey skinned kid with £150 and a big bag of weed on him. A pair of yummy mummies pushing two kids, dragging two more with six tabs of E inside a lipstick tube and two more ingested. A couple of parents on day release and a minor celeb.When the crowd subsided we found bags and bags of cocaine, E and ketamine among the abandoned organic trail mix squashed into the soil where they had stood.I really wished I had got the mummies - they went way screaming as their children were taken into police custody and the social called. I got the ghostly sad sack.He was a lovely kid, very sad, very lonely and completely and utterly grassed up his mother for supplying him with the weed. It came from her exquisite hand carved ethnic wooden box on her mantlepiece.Mum was a bit cross when she arrived to take him home. Apparently I was a great number of bad things. My job was to find “real” drug dealers and the scumbags who vandalised her car not chase stupid tiny amounts of cannabis at festivals. The nature of my birth and my educational qualifications to stand in judgement on how she raised her child - whose father was a lawyer - were called into question.“There is absolutely no harm in a bit of blow!” She exclaimed so loudly the Custody Sergeant gave me the ‘get this over with now!’ face.“He hasn't got the size for it! madam, and neither do you!”I don't remember exactly what I said next but it was good. I asked where she bought the drugs, over the counter from the 24/7 shop that also fences your stolen phones, or direct from a 12 year old courier who your personal habits have pushed out of school and into the firing line of stabbists?Two nights ago, three streets from where you live, a 14 year old girl was violently sexually assaulted by members of the same gang that control drug supply in your postcode. It was most likely an initiation of a lieutenant, who was counting your money the next day.If you think your socio-economic status insulates your conscience from the horror your harmless hobby puts poorer families through when you fund the gangs who run their estates, I’m hear to tell you, I’ve been granted a Section 18 search of your home address as you are under arrest on suspicion of possession with intent to supply a minor with a controlled substance.The custody sergeant had a gaoler waiting.Felt so much better, and my skipper gave me a thumbs up. We had adana kofte with chilli sauce from Dirty’s on the way back.Honest to god, when it clicks and goes well it’s the best job in the world.This used to be called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, I have long been a member, and think it states my position on the drugs war well enough.About Us | Law Enforcement Action Partnership UKPolice, undercover operatives, intelligence service, military and a range of figures from the criminal justice system are joining together with civilians to raise awareness to the failed, dangerous and expensive pursuit of a punitive drug policy. Our main goals at LEAP are: To educate the public, the media and policy makers to the failure of current …http://ukleap.org/about/

Thank you for the A2A[1].I have written about this before on Quora, but the same question keeps coming back to haunt the Indian subcontinent.We just passed August 5, 2020. This date marks the first anniversary of the abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir by the Indian government. If you have missed the details on my earlier analysis on the Kashmir Problem, I invite you to read through this one.Edit 1:I thank all my readers for your overwhelming support for this writing. Many of you have expressed the hope that this post should reach all Indians, Pakistanis, people in the west, leftist-liberal Indian journalists, biased western media... that list is long. All of that can happen, only if YOU take the initiative to do YOUR bit. As Gandhi advised us - "Be the change you want to see in the world".If you are numb with the overdose of biased reporting from Washington Post, New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera (this list is long too), you can respond by doing this - share this writing through your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp accounts… whichever social medium you use. This will not happen without YOUR action. The false narratives on Kashmir can only be dispelled by supplanting them with the truth.When did Kashmir start losing its peace?[2]The world we live in today, if you were to ask for a commentary or analysis or opinion on the Kashmir problem, there is one argument that will garner unanimous agreement across the South Asian subcontinent (and even from foreign affairs experts around the globe and self-styled experts on Kashmir from the western media) - that the history of the Kashmir problem starts with 1947.Take a look at the 59 other answers to this question on Quora. 90% of those answers begin with the narrative of what happened in 1947.The expanse and the magnitude of this myopia is disconcerting!The seeds of the Kashmir problem were sown centuries before 1947 came into being. 1947 and the birth of Pakistan simply triggered what could be the beginning of the end for this most disturbing and perennially lingering episode in the history of the Indian civilizationWhat is the Kashmir Problem?Kashmir is not a territorial dispute.Kashmir is a dispute emerging from a civilizational struggle.A struggle for uprooting a civilization with an indigenous and deeply ingrained culture of peaceful coexistence between ethnicities and religions… and forcibly replacing it with a virulent strain of Islam that borders on the insidious and violent totalitarianism of Sunni Wahhabism.Kashmiri Hindus - The original Inhabitants of Kashmir[3]According to folk etymology, the name "Kashmir" means "desiccated land" (from the Sanskrit: Ka = water and shimeera = desiccate). In the Rajatarangini[4], a history of Kashmir written by Kalhana[5] in the mid-12th century, it is stated that the valley of Kashmir was formerly a lake. According to Hindu mythology, the lake was drained by the great rishi or sage, Kashyapa, son of Marichi, son of Brahma, by cutting the gap in the hills at Baramulla (Varaha-mula). When Kashmir had been drained, Kashyapa asked Brahmins (the highest caste among Hindus) to settle there.If we go by written history, Kashmiri Hindus are the aborigines of Kashmir. The native pagans who survived centuries of cruelty and oppression while keeping the flag of Indian civilization fluttering in the valley against all odds.However, as a result of the incessant invasions by Muslim barbarians, some parts of the Indian civilization began to witness a change in demographics in favor of Muslims. Kashmir happened to be a key example of one such region.Exodus of Hindus from KashmirKashmir and its original inhabitants - the Hindus of Kashmir have been in existence for centuries before Pakistan or any of the Muslim League leaders and the proponents of the 2 Nation Theory were even born.From the 14th century to the present times, the Hindus of Kashmir have been at the literal bleeding edge of the clash of civilizations. As a result, over the course of a few centuries most Kashmiris had been converted out of the Hindu fold by the force of intimidation and brutal violence that characterized the better part of Muslim Rule in Kashmir.By the turn of the 20th century, Kashmiri Pandits came to represent the bulk of the Hindu presence that remained in Kashmir. The Kashmiri Pandits (also known as Kashmiri Brahmins) are Kashmiri Hindus and a part of the larger Saraswat Brahmin community.Some westerners pose the question, why do all Kashmiri Hindus belong to just the Brahmin caste. Well, that is because all the other (Hindu) castes were converted to Islam by the swords of the tyrants who ruled the valley. Tyrants like Sikander Butshikan[6], Ali Shah, Shamsuddin Iraqi and others who not only carried out terrible genocides but also destroyed the centers of Kashmiri Hindu spiritual and intellectual life. History bears evidence to the desecration and destruction of great Hindu temples like the Sun Temple at Martand and countless other shrines.A rare photo of the ruins of the Surya Temple at Martand, which was destroyed due to the iconoclastic policies of Sikandar Butshikan, photo taken by John Burke in 1868.Source: Wikipedia on Sikandar Butshikan[7]Kashmiri Hindu women were beautiful. There was a time in Kashmir under Afghan rule when their striking looks became such a burden on their families that their noses had to be cut-off and their heads shaved, to protect the Hindu girls from the lustful eyes of the ruling barbarians.Such atrocities created pressure on the dwindling Hindu community to flee from Kashmir not once or twice but 7 times since Islam came to Kashmir. The demographics of the Kashmir region continued to change decisively in favor of Muslims. This episode will be continued to its climax when we get to 1990, the year Hindus were "ethnically cleansed" out of Kashmir.1947The Indian civilization finally woke up to an era of realizing its long cherished and hard fought dream of nationhood. However, fate had destined one last blow of plunder and pillage of a different nature.A man named Mohammed Ali Jinnah mistook independence from the British to mean the subcontinent had just turned into a once in a lifetime opportunity to a grab-all-you-can real estate bonanza[8]. He claimed that the Muslims needed a separate homeland, just because they were born Muslims, and needed protection from the violent and unpredictable Hindus in an independent India. Jinnah made sure they got one at the cost of 2 million dead and 14 million displaced from their homes. But, for Jinnah's overbearing lust for a kingdom and a throne, that was small price to pay so long as Muslims could secure their “only for us” homeland. A few decades down the line that cherished homeland for Muslims would turn out to be a paradise for the rich and the privileged among Punjabi Sunni Muslims and a purgatory for Muslims of all other types and sects. But, Jinnah didn’t know that yet.While Jinnah and his coterie enjoyed their newfound real estate, the British spiced up the situation with a menu of options to the autonomous princely states. Those options were - merge with either India or Pakistan, or remain independent.The king of Jammu and Kashmir, Raja Hari Singh chose the latter. His decision caused serious concern in Jinnah's homeland named Pakistan (Land of the Pure).Pakistan's Lust for Kashmir and the First Kashmir War of 1947 - 1948Neither the Indian Independence Act of 1947[9], nor the Radcliffe Boundary Commission[10] indicated that Kashmir "belonged to Pakistan".There is no documentary evidence that the British, at any point in history considered Kashmir to be gift-wrapped and handed over to Pakistan. All historical evidence strongly suggests that the British wanted the fate of Kashmir to be determined by its ruler, as was the case with all other princely states from the Union. For Pakistan to claim that Kashmir belongs to them on the basis of a Muslim majority will be as much a figment of their imagination as for Mexicans to claim that California belongs to them on the basis of an overwhelming majority of Hispanics in that state.Yet, rulers in Pakistan worried that Kashmir would either remain independent, or worse, join India. Pakistan's lust for Kashmir was born out of the perverted ideology that territories in the South Asian subcontinent, with Muslim dominated demographics, should belong to Pakistan.This twisted ideology of gabbing land with majority Muslims in the name of a “Muslim homeland” would be busted in 1971 when Muslim East Pakistan initiated a mass rebellion against Muslim West Pakistan. In return, Muslim West Pakistan launched one of the worst genocides recorded in recent history on Muslim East Pakistan[11].That genocide and the uncontrollable influx of refugees from Muslim East Pakistan into India resulted in India’s intervention and the subsequent surrender of West Pakistan before India… one of the only recorded cases in recent military history of one nation publicly surrendering to another. East Pakistan changed into the independent nation of Bangladesh[12]. But, Pakistan didn't know all that yet.To secure Kashmir, Pakistan dispatched tribal marauders to seize Kashmir by force. On 22 October 1947, Pakistan's Pashtun tribal militias crossed the border of the state. These local tribal militias and irregular Pakistani forces moved to take Srinagar, but on reaching Baramulla, they took to plunder and rape and stalled.Hari Singh's Decision to join IndiaMaharaja Hari Singh made a plea to India for assistance, and help was offered, but it was subject to his signing an Instrument of Accession to India. The then British Viceroy Lord Mountbatten would not allow India's intervention without a formal treaty with the Maharaja. The Instrument of Accession broke that stalemate. By executing this document under the provisions of the Indian Independence Act 1947, Maharaja Hari Singh agreed to accede to the Dominion of India. The Instrument of Accession gave India’s Parliament the power to legislate in respect of the state of Jammu and Kashmir only on the matters of defense, external affairs and communications.The events that followed on the battlefield, to the settlement at the Line of Control (LOC) are widely documented, and I will refrain from detailing facts well known. The Indian army succeeded in pushing the Pakistani marauders back, so that two thirds of Kashmir, including the Srinagar valley remained in Indian territory, while the remaining one-third of Kashmir including the region of Gilgit Baltistan came under Pakistani occupation. The irony is that Pakistan renamed that seized and occupied territory as “Azad Kashmir”, meaning liberated Kashmir. Liberated from what… from an infant Indian state that was still struggling to stand on its feet? India calls it “Pakistan occupier Kashmir” or PoK.Pakistan’s Contribution to Developing “Azad Kashmir”Today Muzaffarabad, the capital city of Azad Kashmir proudly serves as the global headquarters of the Pakistan military sponsored terrorist group Hizbul Muhahideen. Thanks to the Pakistan military, all of Azad Kashmir has a well developed infrastructure of terrorist training camps that are used regularly to launch terror attacks on the Indian side of Kashmir[13]. Global terror organizations such as Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) also share terror training centers along with the Hizbul Muhahideen in Azad Kashmir. The LeT and Hizbul have conducted multiple terrorist attacks on Indian soil. The Hizbul Mujahideen has been designated a global terrorist organization by the Unites States[14], European Union[15] and India. The Lashkar-e-Taiba has been designated a global terrorist organization by the United States[16], the United Kingdom[17], the European Union[18], Russia, Australia [19]and the United Nations[20] and India.The territory of Azad Kashmir is occupied and regularly used by the Pakistani military to recruit young, unemployed young men from families living below the poverty line and training them to become the Islamic fundamentalists and jihadis that can conduct sabotage and subversive activities on the Indian side of Kashmir. This arrangement fulfills 2 critical objectives for the Pakistani military.It builds into Pakistan’s narrative for the global audience that Kashmiri freedom fighters homegrown within India’s borders are fighting against Indian occupation.It allows the Pakistani military to wage a relentless proxy war on the Indian armed forces stationed in Indian Kashmir, without risking any of its regular personnel. Once the terror training mechanism is in place, terrorists can be produced a dime a dozen, as disposable war machines.So much for “Azad Kashmir” or PoK.Syed Salahuddin, the supreme leader of Hizbul Mujahideen in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), with his menSource: The Week[21]The Instrument of AccessionThe Instrument of Accession, which Maharaja Hari Singh signed with India was a simple document. In the blank spaces, it had a place to fill in the name of the state, the name of the ruler, the date of accession, a place to hold the signature of the ruler and lastly, a line where Lord Mountbatten would put in his signature.This simple document was used to persuade 602 princely states to join the Union of India. When a princely state signed the Instrument of Accession, it gave India’s Parliament the power to legislate on the matters of defense, foreign affairs and communications. Thereafter, the delegates of the princely states would meet with India's Constituent Assembly to gradually bring their kingdoms under the full purview of the Indian Constitution. The princely states were also participants in the formulation of the Indian Constitution. This process of political amalgamation was somewhat similar to the Constitutional Convention of the United States, also known as the Philadelphia Convention that took place from May 25 through September 17, 1787. This process would culminate in a complete adoption of the Indian Constitution by the state in question thereby consummating the accession of the state to the Union of India.With Jammu and Kashmir, the process diverged a bit. Though Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession, his government pointed out that they were signing the document under exceptional circumstances, as they were “under attack from a neighboring hostile entity - Pakistan”. So as not to be rushed into the process, they asked for more time to align themselves with the Union of India.The Constituent Assembly agreed to this special request.However, there was a debate on which parts of the Constitution would apply to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which would not, and at what length of time would the accession be complete. To accommodate Jammu and Kashmir's accession to India, the only temporary Article in the Indian Constitution was drafted. This was called Article 306A which later became Article 370.Article 370In March 1948, the Maharaja appointed an interim government in the state, with Sheikh Abdullah as the prime minister. In July 1949, Sheikh Abdullah and three other colleagues joined the Indian Constituent Assembly and negotiated the special status of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), leading to the adoption of Article 370. The controversial provision was drafted by Sheikh Abdullah.Article 370, which came into force in 1952, empowered J&K to be a near autonomous state since it limited the Indian government's authority to just external affairs, defence, finance and communication. This provision allowed J&K to have a Sadar-e-Riyasat for governor and prime minister in place of a chief minister till 1965 as well as its own flag and constitution.Article 370 ensured that the law of citizenship, ownership of property, and fundamental rights of the residents of Jammu & Kashmir is different from the residents living in rest of India. Under Article 370, citizens from other states cannot buy property in Jammu & Kashmir. Under Article 370, the Indian government had no power to declare financial emergency.Sheikh Abdullah wanted to turn Article 370, the only temporary provision in the Indian Constitution, into a written-in-stone edict that could not be replaced or terminated by future Indian governments. This violated the very understanding which India’s Constituent Assembly had reached with the state of Jammu and Kashmir - that the accession of the state to the Indian Union would be put on a slow but certain pace through Article 370.Fortunately for India, Sheikh Abdullah did not succeed in voiding the temporary nature of Article 370, which is why the Article reached it’s logical conclusion on 5 August 2019, under the Indian government led by Prime Minister Modi.Article 35AArticle 35A which comes under Article 370, gave the Jammu and Kashmir Legislature full discretionary power to decide who the 'permanent residents' of the state are. It gave them special rights and privileges regarding employment with the state government, acquisition of property in the state, settling in the state, and the right to scholarships and other forms of aid that the state government provides. It also allowed the state legislature to impose any restrictions upon persons other than the permanent residents regarding the above.Article 35A, proscribed non-permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir from permanently settling in the state, buying immovable property, acquiring land, applying for government jobs or any kind of scholarships, aids as well as other public welfare projects.The Night of January 19, 1990Almost 40 years after the First Kashmir War…Pakistan had not forgotten its unfinished business from the war of 1947 - 1948. It had captured a third of Kashmir. However, two-thirds of Jammu and Kashmir which included the prized Kashmir valley was still in Indian territory. Pakistan had been biding its time for an opportune moment to strike.That time came in the late 1980s. By 1989, Pakistan believed it now had a proven strategy. It was the one used to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan. The strategy of infiltrating well trained Mujahideen across the Indian border into Kashmir to train and arm locals and incite them to foment jihad against every Indian entity present in Kashmir.Also, Pakistan had the nuclear umbrella, to deter (as it hoped) any significant pushback from India in response to the proxy-war about to be launched in Kashmir. The nuclear threat was a tactic that Pakistan used very effectively against a far more powerful but surprisingly docile India, for a span of almost 25 years (till a man named Modi would come and call Pakistan’s nuclear bluff).Thus, Pakistan launched an asymmetric war in Kashmir.The cold, dark night of January 19, 1990, had stirred into life the worst nightmares of Kashmiri Pandits living in the Kashmir valley. Screaming from loud speakers and crowded streets was a message for the Sikhs and Hindus living in Kashmir - Ralive, Tsalive ya Galive which translated from Kashmiri means "Convert to Islam, leave the place, or perish".The threats had been coming in for a long time, but the night of January 19 is said to have seen a demented assault of a different level. Almost 3 decades later, Kashmiri Pandits shiver remembering the night that forced them into exodus.Colonel Tej Kumar Tikoo, a Kashmiri Pandit himself, describes that fateful night in his book, Kashmir: Its Aborigines and Their Exodus[22]."As the night fell, the microscopic community became panic-stricken when the Valley began reverberating with the war-cries of Islamists, who had stage-managed the whole event with great care; choosing its timing and the slogans to be used. A host of highly provocative, communal and threatening slogans, interspersed with martial songs, incited the Muslims to come out on the streets and break the chains of 'slavery'. These exhortations urged the faithful to give a final push to the Kafir in order to ring in the true Islamic order. These slogans were mixed with precise and unambiguous threats to Pandits. They were presented with three choices - Ralive, Tsaliv ya Galive (convert to Islam, leave the place or perish). Tens of thousands of Kashmiri Muslims poured into the streets of the Valley, shouting 'death to India' and death to Kafirs.""The (Kashmiri) Pandits could see the writing on the wall. If they were lucky enough to see the night through, they would have to vacate the place before they met the same fate as Tikka Lal Taploo and many others. The Seventh Exodus was surely staring them in the face. By morning, it became apparent to Pandits that Kashmiri Muslims had decided to throw them out from the Valley. Broadcasting vicious Jehadi sermons and revolutionary songs, interspersed with blood curdling shouts and shrieks, threatening Kashmiri Pandits with dire consequences, became a routine 'Mantra' of the Muslims of the Valley, to force them to flee from Kashmir."Ethnic Cleansing of the Kashmiri PanditsThrough the export of battle hardened Mujahideen into Kashmir, the Pakistan military and the ISI had set in motion a strategy which would later be described as "bleeding India by a thousand cuts".The Muslims in the valley were being trained physically and psychologically, to envision a Kashmir free of any Hindu influence, geared up to demand statehood and complete independence from India.Before the turn of the 21st century, Kashmir would be ethnically cleansed of Hindus that had called it home since the inception of the land.Those Kashmiri Pandits that Stayed Back or Returned…However, some Kashmiri Pandits would not leave or would come back to the valley. These are their stories.The teacher and his students: Neelkanth Raina was a school teacher who chose to stay back, despite the dire warnings from the Muslim fundamentalists. He was killed by his own students in cold blood while his neighbors assisted the killers in quickly escaping from the crime scene. The murder was meticulously planned and skillfully executed.The Lab Assistant: Girija Kumari Tikoo was a laboratory assistant at a Government High School. She had already left the valley along with other Hindus in early 1990, and was living in a refugee settlement in the neighboring Jammu province. Hindus living in refugee settlements in their own country just because their Muslim neighbors would no longer want them in the neighborhood - ever heard of such a travesty of fate in any other part of the globe? She went back to the valley for a few days to collect her dues from the school never to return. On her way to the school, she was kidnapped by Muslim fundamentalists, gang raped and sodomized before being cut into pieces in a saw mill. She was survived by a 4 year old son and a 2 year daughter.The Professor and his Wife: Professor K.L Ganju and his wife, Mrs. Prana Ganju were kidnapped along with their nephew. After showering bullets on the professor his body was quickly disposed of into the turbulent waters of the river Jhelum. Like in the movies, his nephew was given a choice - to jump into the river or watch his aunt's modesty getting outraged, of which he took the first choice, and survived. Mrs. Ganju, she was gang raped, her breasts chopped off before she was killed.If you dig into Kashmir's history circa 1990 and the early 90s, there are hundreds of gruesome cases of terror and betrayal against resident Kashmiri Hindus to narrate. But, the cases of Neelkanth Raina, Girija Kumari Tikkoo and the Ganju couple drive home an important point. All of them were killed after the Hindu community had already left. These atrocities were thus a signal from the Muslim majority community to the exiled Hindus, never to even think of returning to their homeland. Their houses had been occupied, their places were being renamed, Kashmir was no longer theirs.Just as the dust of Hindu eviction from the valley was settling, it dawned upon the terrorist leadership of the Kashmir valley, their mentors in Pakistan and their apologists in the media all over the world that the public perception of the secessionist movement in Kashmir was getting damaged. So, a narrative began to be promoted that the Indian government had conspired to get the Hindus evicted so that Indian security forces may freely oppress the Muslim population. The religious terrorism of the Kashmiris underwent a cosmetic surgery, and began to be called a political struggle.The underlying thought process actively promoted by Pakistan was - now that Kashmir has been cleansed of almost all traces of Hinduism from the valley, it is time to revert back to the 1947 formula concocted by a consortium of land-grabbing, power crazy demagogues from the Muslim League, that every piece of land with Muslim domination, should secede to Pakistan.To this day, Kashmir remains a religious and civilizational conflict. It has no political dimension except on the surface.2019: Pre August 5Kashmir and the Rest of IndiaThe picture below shows how young women in Kashmir spend their day. Pelting stones at Indian security forces is the high point of their morning or afternoon.Source: Zee News, IndiaAnd this is how many young women in the rest of India spend their day. Bouncing ideas off each other during the lunch hour so they could crack that technical challenge they encountered during the morning.The above picture is from one of the campuses Infosys[23] has built across India. Infosys is the legendary Indian IT behemoth that was the first Indian company to be listed on the US NASDAQ in 1999.I am not promoting Infosys, I have no personal interest in the company but, I have a point to make.Time for a Q & AQ: Does Infosys have a campus in Kashmir?A: No.Q: Why not? Wouldn't young women in Kashmir want to switch the low-paying job of stone pelting[24] with the far more lucrative job of code crunching on laptops?(Yup, sources within the Pakistani military run a well-funded operation[25] of financing young Kashmiri men and women for pelting stones at Indian forces stationed in Kashmir)[26].A: They cannot, even if they wanted to.Q: Why not?A: Not a single IT company- Indian or multinational has a presence in Kashmir.Q: I don't get it! India is the 5th largest economy globally and is home to almost all the major IT corporations of the world. Some of them like Oracle Corporation have even built their largest Development Centers outside of the US[27], in Indian cities[28]. And then like Infosys and WIPRO, India has its own litany of indigenous IT companies and many fledgling start-ups spread across the land. Azim Premji[29], the Chairman of WIPRO and one of the richest men in the world (as of August 2020, he is 253rd on the Forbes list of billionaires[30]) - is a Muslim himself! Then why have these IT business houses and their tycoons ignored the state of Jammu and Kashmir?A: Well, their hands are tied. The special status provided to Jammu and Kashmir by Articles 370 and 35A ensures that non Kashmiris cannot buy land in Kashmir. So long as Kashmir is "protected" by its special status within the gilded cage of Article 370 and 35A, there is virtually nothing that someone even as powerful as Azim Premji can do.The Developmental Hurdles Posed to Jammu and Kashmir by Article 370 and 35AArun Jaitly held cabinet positions as Minister of Finance, Minister of Corporate Affairs and Minister of Defence in the Narendra Modi government. As a former lawyer of the Supreme Court of India, he was regarded across the nation and even internationally as one of the finest minds in India's corridors of power[31]. He passed away on 24th August 2019 (just 19 days after Article 370 was abrogated by his government).In a blog post titled "How Article 35A hurt the people of Jammu & Kashmir", Arun Jaitley wrote the following."The State does not have adequate financial resources. Its ability to raise more has been crippled by Article 35A. No investor is willing to set up an industry, hotel, private educational institutions or private hospitals since he can neither buy land or property nor can his executives do so. Their ward cannot get government jobs or admission to colleges (as they are not Kashmiris). Today, there are no major national or international chains which have set up hotel in a tourism centric State. This prevents enrichment, resource generation and job creation. (Kashmiri) Students have to travel all over, including Nepal and Bangladesh, to get college admissions. Engineering colleges and hospitals, including super-speciality facility set up by Central Government in Jammu are lying under-utilized or unutilized since Professors and Doctors from outside are unwilling to go there. Article 35A has prevented investment and dismantled the State’s economy. ""Article 35A, which is constitutionally vulnerable, is used as a political shield by many but it hurt the common citizen of the State the most. It denied them a booming economy, economic activity and jobs.""The historic blunders of special status under Article 370 and Article 35A had cost the country both politically and financially."In one of his last comments after the abrogation of Article 370, Jaitley said - "Article 370 invoked the separate status that led to separatism (in Jammu and Kashmir). No dynamic nation could allow this situation to continue."With the revocation of Article 370 "A historical wrong has been undone today. Article 35A came through the back door without following the procedure under Article 368 of the Constitution of India. It had to go.""The decision of the government will help the people of Jammu and Kashmir the most. More investment, more industry, more private educational institutions, more jobs and more revenue will come,” he said, adding that “Kashmir’s regional leaders now feel they would not be able to whip up the fake issue of 'sentiment verses benefit'."Sentiment versus BenefitSentiment versus benefit, and economic, educational and financial benefits to be precise. Let's chew on that for a moment, and when we start drawing on the juice on that thought, we should think it through.For those of us here in the US, consider a hypothetical situation to understand what Arun Jaitley means. Say for example, I were born into a Hispanic family in California in the year 2000. In the year 2014, the population of Hispanics officially surpassed that of Whites in California. I am now a teenager dreaming of growing up and going to Stanford or UC Berkeley (just examples) for my college education, and later getting hired by Google or Facebook or any of the tech giants in California’s Silicon Valley. In effect, I have bright visions of my future as I see it playing out in my very own state, an economically vibrant part of the world.Now, a charismatic leader rises up in neighboring Mexico and starts a rant for the separation of California as a state from the US and its accession to Mexico, on the basis of an ever growing Hispanic majority in California.Is that a legitimate claim? Should I be thrilled with that?A final question to Kashmiris on BOTH sides of the borderIf you are a Kashmiri parent of Islamic faith on either side of the LOC, ask yourself this - would you be happier sending your child to one of the world renowned Indian Institutes of Technology or would your child have a brighter future attending the famous madrassas of Lahore?Your children will inherit the future you create for them.Sources:India's Move in Kashmir: Unpacking the Domestic and International Motivations and Implications - Christine Fair in LAWFARE, August 12, 2019Footnotes[1] Carla Stewart's answer to What are some real life examples, good or bad, of karma?[2] What is the Kashmir Issue?[3] History of Kashmir - Wikipedia[4] Rajatarangini - Wikipedia[5] Kalhana - Wikipedia[6] Sikandar Butshikan[7] Sikandar Shah Miri - Wikipedia[8] Carla Stewart's answer to What is your opinion about Pakistan becoming a secular country?[9] Indian Independence Act 1947 - Wikipedia[10] Radcliffe Line - Wikipedia[11] Operation Searchlight: Genocide unleashed on Bangalis in East Pakistan[12] Carla Stewart's answer to What are some real life examples, good or bad, of karma?[13] Militant Training Camps in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir: An Existential Threat[14] State Department Terrorist Designation of Hizbul Mujahideen - United States Department of State[15] L_2019209EN.01001501.xml[16] Amendments to the Terrorist Designation of Lashkar e-Tayyiba - United States Department of State[17] Terrorism Act 2000[18] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32003D0902:EN:HTML[19] Listed terrorist organisations[20] Sanctions List Materials[21] When I met Salahuddin in Pakistan[22] Kashmir: Its Aborigines and Their Exodus: Tikoo, Colonel Tej K.: 9781935501343: Amazon.com: Books[23] Infosys - Wikipedia[24] How Pakistan funds separatists, stone-pelters in Kashmir through illegal barter trade at LoC[25] ISI’s budget for Kashmir stone pelting is Rs 1,000cr - The Sunday Guardian Live[26] NIA roused after undercover STING on stone-pelter funding in Kashmir[27] Oracle to set up biggest development centre outside US in Bengaluru[28] Oracle's second largest campus will soon be a reality in Bengaluru[29] Azim Premji - Wikipedia[30] Azim Premji[31] Arun Jaitley, Bold Indian Finance Minister, Is Dead at 66

South Africa, a lot more tourists get killed or go missing than in any other country. South Africa is a crime ridden country, and the deaths due to violence resembles a war zone. If you can travel freely and alone, wandering about in a carefree manner in safe countries like Namibia, don't think you can also do the same in South Africa. That's asking for trouble.You shouldn't even entertain people in the streets asking for directions and so on. Exposing yourself as a newcomer, tourist or foreigner who doesn’t know the place is asking to get robbed, mugged or taken advantage of. The police in South Africa doesn’t respond to such incidences, most people never report, its a waste of time. Just thank God you never got stabbed, shot or killed because that’s what they usually do. If you are driving, be careful when you park your car or stop at traffic lights. Thousands of cars get hijacked by thieves.Find a secure hotel when you are there, preferably in upmarket places. Always lock your doors, minimize your movements in the area, avoid walking at night and certainly don't walk alone. Don't advertise yourself to locals trying to make friends and so on.Tourists have been attacked and robbed not only in the streets, but at the airports, taxi rank, hotels and vacation spots like Cape Town beach.Travel to South Africa at your own risk. A lot of white South Africans tend to minimize the threats because they are running businesses, so they don't want their businesses to suffer from lack of tourists. South Africa is very dangerous, there is a lot of vicious and hardcore criminals here. You want to go there? At least get some insurance to cover your medical bills after you get stabbed.British woman killed in South Africa after robbers torture her with blow torch and leave her husband for deadBritish tourist in Aids fear after rape ordealTourist Troubles: Another group of tourists caught in armed robbery on way homePastor warned murdered Chilean tourist about crime | Sunday TribuneAustrian Tourists Survive Attack On South African Beach, Noordhoek - SAPeople - Your Worldwide South African Community55 murders a day in paradisePIC: Know this man? Police have questions for him after French woman was attacked in Bo-KaapFrench woman violently attacked in Bo-KaapAttacks on tourists threaten S. African tourism: MPsDutch tourists attacked in SA return home