Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** Warning of Kashmiri escalation.  On 8 April, Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari visited India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi for talks, the first visit to India by a Pakistani head of state for seven years.  As we reported at the time, the talks came against a background of improved security in Kashmir.  According to the Director-General of Police Kuldeep Khoda, there was a 45% decrease in militancy-related incidents in the first three months of 2012 compared with last year (26 versus 48).  Moreover, there was a 47% fall in militancy-related issues during the first three months of 2011 compared with 2010.

On 24 April, however, the chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), Mohammad Yasin Malik, warned that the group would start the armed struggle again if a solution was not soon agreed between India and Pakistan.  He said that freezing the Kashmiri issue was not acceptable and that “the Kashmiris should be allowed to decide whether they wanted to merge with Pakistan or India or they wanted a sovereign state".

Speaking in Lahore, he said that since the Kashmiris had given up their armed struggle and begun a peaceful movement, India had started “their genocide” in a bid to crush the freedom movement.  Malik said the Kashmiris were being arrested and tortured, and he warned that the Kashmiris would be forced to begin their armed struggle again.

Alongside Malik at the press conference was Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) chief Syed Munawar Hasan, who was critical of Pakistan as much as India.  He said: "The Pakistani government, political parties and even the media are ignoring the Kashmir issue.”

*** France mocked by internet.  The first round of the French presidential election (see this week’s main briefing) also provided a nice illustration of the impotence of governments in the face of determined internet users.  There is a French electoral regulation banning the publication of exit polls.  Twitter users, however, found ingenuous ways of getting round this.  President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose father came from Hungary, was referred to as the Hungarian Tokaji wine, while socialist challenger Francois Hollande was referred to as the Dutch cheese gouda.  French Twitter users then broadcast exit polls published abroad by using devices like: “Dutch cheese at 27 euros, Tokaji wine at 25 euros”.

*** South Korea warns of 3rd North Korean nuclear test.  On 24 April, a South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman said that North Korea is ready to conduct a third underground nuclear test.  He said: "Substantial preparations have been made.  We have information that all that remains is a political choice.”