Amir Abbasi
Vietnam, which is one of the poorest countries, once fought with the most powerful military force plus the only superpower of the world, the United States, for a good 20 years and forced the American soldiers to eventually retreat from their land. It was purely through the Vietnamese nation’s valour and great nationalism that earned them the victory despite being faced with an army equipped with the best weaponry of the world. Since they had resolved to fight to the last, the Vietnamese chanted only one single slogan all throughout the battle: Country or Coffins
The people of Kashmir shout the same today: Freedom or Martyrdom. They too have been battling the Indian oppression for the last seventy years now. Over 100, 000 Kashmiris have been martyred so far, yet the Kashmiris seem too far from making any retreat. They are an immensely fearless and self-respecting people who have been combating the Indian forces for freedom for the last seven decades. This battle began to gather intensity specifically after the conclusion of Kargil Conflict when Indian government changed its policies in order to increase the number of their warriors in Kashmir and took extreme measures, killing thousands of innocent Muslim inhabitants there — most of these unlucky souls were just youngsters. The cruel Indian soldiers did not even hesitate to annihilate the chastity of a number of harmless women.
The American forces too had the same nasty attitude towards Vietnamese: they killed a great many irreproachable people and burned their houses down to ashes, which resulted in scores of Vietnamese people joining their army. In 1971, Bangladesh faced the same sort of situation wherein, according to the Indian and Banladeshi media, the Pakistani soldiers were doing something of the very same nature there.
The present scenario in the region bears great resemblance with the Vietnam War. The heart-wrenching way in which the Indian government imposed the never-ending curfew to nullify the status of Kashmiri people, that is, putting an end to the Article 370 along with A 35 was truly too dangerous; Kashmir is one disputed territory between two nuclear states and is seen as the most perilous flashpoint of the world. Before causing all that heartless commotion, India had not just tried to enforce the Israeli model in Kashmir but had also made a fruitless effort to drag Pakistanis under psychological pressure by claiming an imaginary surgical strike against Pakistan through enlisting help from Israel. The tables were, however, turned on Indians when Pakistan shot down two Indian jet-fighters and captured one pilot in the Pakistan-controlled Kashmir territory.
As a matter of fact, the geopolitics of India and Israel differ a lot. Israel is at war with the weakest nation, Palestine, whose economy is already in doldrums and Arabs do not seem to extend any military, political or diplomatic assistance to them after experiencing a loss of five battles to the Israelis already, whereas India-controlled Kashmir territory is connected on three sides by Pakistan, China and Pakistan-controlled Kashmiri region. Even after fencing off LOC over an area of 550 kilometers, India keeps laying charges of stepping the line against Pakistan. What Indian government fails to realize is that the Kashmiris are one separate nation who are residing in both the Pakistan- and India-controlled Kashmiri areas. They have the same culture, same language as well as the same religion, and they cannot be coerced into division that easily, especially while India itself says that the Kashmiri folks are backed by both China and Pakistan politically, ethically as well as in terms of strong military support from the said two countries.
When Americans launched war against Vietnamese, they made use of the land administered by the neighboring countries, namely Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. They had blocked all ways that connected the Northern and Southern Vietnam in order to render Vietnamese unable to attack the American combatants, but the Vietnamese gorillas used the same strategy as American did: they moved through the same neighboring countries to launch an attack on American forces and made them suffer a lot. In the very same way, the Kashmiris are also very well aware of the fact that their neighboring countries too would be there to provide help to them in their war of freedom. They have no psychological pressure even after a good twenty years of Indian cruelty have passed. They are cognizant of the fact that they too would be helped in the very same manner as Vietnam had been helped by China and Soviet Union, and the Vietnam War had proved to be a real nightmare for America that lost a total of 58, 000 young soldiers along with the financial loss worth one trillion dollars of the day.Coming back to the unceasing Indian tyranny in Kashmir, nearly 5462 Indian soldiers have lost their lives and some 2600 lie injured at the moment. Even after spending a greater part of the Defense Budget on their army, India has just been unable to gain full control in Kashmir. The Kashmiri nation is hell-bent upon continuing this war until they have achieved complete freedom from the Indian coercion. I feel highly tempted to conclude this article by highlighting that the resemblance between the Vietnam War and the situation there in Kashmir is just an expression of my personal viewpoints.