Confused on Kashmir

It has been said so often by so many but it still bears repetition that Pakistan’s foreign policy agenda has only one item on it — India. For pursuit of this obsession, Pakistan has followed policies in the region that allowed itself to be in a situation where US secretary of state Hillary Clinton rebuked Pakistan while in Pakistan recently. Those of us here who delude ourselves that this would galvanise Pakistan to now quickly change policy might do well to shed this delusion. The rest of us know that Pakistan will not change its policy and indeed it cannot afford to.

Pakistan’s quest for equality, if not supremacy over India, has rested on the tripod of the nuclear option, terrorism and strategic depth in Afghanistan. The China-Pakistan nexus was and is a valuable add-on to both because it continues to give Pakistan added muscle to take on India. Although Pakistan had taken the terror route much earlier, its missile and nuclear capability with a loudly proclaimed low threshold has impressed the West enough, leading to greater adventurism. If China found a low cost option in Pakistan’s ambitions and fears, the Pakistan Army found the terrorists useful and expendable cannon fodder. The nuclear and terrorist weapon provided the Pakistan Army security and primacy.

Pakistan intransigence in meeting US strategic interests along with its duplicity has hobbled US policy rendering it unable to deal with Pakistan either as an enemy or as an ally. Pakistan’s refusal to deal with the Haqqani group as demanded by the Americans indicates the extent to which the former is willing to go down the road on this one. The stoppage of military aid and the fear of a possible stoppage of funds have not deterred Pakistan. If Pakistan can throw out US objections or ignore its protests there is no reason to believe that Pakistan will change its stance on India. The terrorist option will not be scaled down nor will the nuclear option surrendered.
Thus flummoxed by Pakistan obduracy and exasperated by its duplicity, the Americans have been looking for escape clauses, one of them being pressuring India to raise Pakistan’s comfort level on bilateral (read Kashmir) issues so that Pakistan cooperates fully with the US. That is the US position, but that does not mean that this should be India’s position too. And even if it is accepted that talks will do no harm, unilateral concessions under the mistaken belief that we should be magnanimous are counterproductive.

That said, it is worth remembering that Pakistan does not really want to resolve the Kashmir issue because if it does, then the Pakistan Army will lose its most important cause celebre that allows it to retain ownership of Pakistan. There will be a huge problem of redeployment of the jihadi foot soldiers rendered unemployed after Kashmir is “solved”. We should not expect Pakistan to shut down the 42 training camps it has in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Pakistan to train its jihadis against India. Therefore, for us to be continually making concessions reveals a confused policy both with regard to Pakistan and internally with regard to Kashmir. In Kashmir we must learn that we need patience and the urge to do something for the sake of doing something is deeply flawed. Further, that political expediency in Kashmir or anywhere else will always be subsumed by national security considerations.

Take the case of the withdrawal of AFSPA from certain districts of Jammu and Kashmir, come what may. This may be needed to show some political results in the Valley and a measure of independence from New Delhi, and also to blunt the People’s Democratic Party opposition and hastily provide a positive gesture to Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s offer to talk to New Delhi. The issue of the withdrawal of the AFSPA has been discussed in various contexts in the country. The four main provisions of the AFSPA are authority to the Army to arrest, search, engage and destroy. It is only fair that if we expect our Army to counter insurgency within our borders we must provide it legal cover. These powers are much less than what the police has in the state.
Besides, one does not see the wisdom of withdrawing the AFSPA from the border districts knowing that the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Tayyaba is forever trying to infiltrate. Partial withdrawal also means that terrorists could commit terror acts in one district and run to the other for a safe haven. One also wonders if a chief minister can take unilateral decisions on such issues. If Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah is really interested in making progress on ensuring the withdrawal of the Army, then he could begin by withdrawing the Disturbed Areas Act, which is within his power. Meanwhile, it would be best not to play politics on such issues.
There was an air of inevitability about incidents in Kashmir on the Diwali eve. To suggest that the Army itself orchestrated this is a measure of the general negativity in the country that we are prepared to believe the worst about all our institutions. Mustafa Kamal’s outburst against the Army was irresponsible and unfortunate; subsequent recantations were received with amusement at best or cynicism at worst. We ought to also factor in that if there is peace and tranquillity in Kashmir, Pakistan ceases to be relevant. Pakistan will never want that situation and more, the Pakistan Army cannot afford this.

Eventually, the AFSPA will be withdrawn from Jammu and Kashmir, maybe next year but that should happen as a result of a consensus among all those involved. Till then, we must work towards that consensus. It cannot be that one arm of governance can hold the Centre to ransom. It cannot be that we want to give concessions just to look good. Or shore up domestic political standing. Emotions run high in Srinagar from time to time, but decisions cannot be based on emotion and sentiment; instead there have to be reason and realism. Partial withdrawal of AFSPA is an idea whose time may not have come yet.


Source : Asian Age , 28th October 2011

Hopeless Solutions

THE DISCOURSE heard most loudly in New Delhi is that it wo­uld be magnanimous to withdraw the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), as if this were the cause of the trouble, overlooking the fact that it has been the failure of governance both in New Delhi and Srinagar that has led to the present unhappy state. This misplaced grandst­anding establishes an unfortun­a­te equation between terrorists and a sovereign Army by sugge­s­ting that if the AFSPA were withdrawn, i.e. the Army went ba­ck to the barracks, then the terrorists would also withdraw as a quid pro quo. The AFSPA is a legal empowerment given by the nation to the Army to legally pr­o­tect the Army while it physically protects the nation against the kind of elements we have seen in Jammu and Kashmir. True, there have been very bad slippages and an empowered Army must also be accountable and transparent. But to pretend that if the AFSPA were to go away the violence and the political mess in Jammu and Kashmir would ma­g­ically disappear, is being self-delusional. The Army has not fired a single bullet on the streets of Srinagar or at any demonstrators elsewhere during the recent troubles. Let us not blunt our own instruments. On the other ha­nd, any concession that is gi­ven now without bringing the situation under state control might only buy temporary peace without solving anything.

The other expression frequently heard is “the legitimate aspirations of the people of Kashmir”. How are these aspirations different from those of the people of the rest of the country? Surely all of them want for themselves and their families a quality of life — health, education, employment and security — that improves steadily with time, along with the freedoms and equalities guaranteed by our Constitution. Any demand outside the Constitution is, therefore, illegitimate and cannot be entertained by the rest of India. Besides, any demand must also relate to people from Jammu, the Srinagar Valley and Ladakh — to Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Gujjars and Bakarwals and not only a section of the Muslims from the Valley. Meanwhile, the Kashmiri Pandits have been pushed into the arid desert of our votebank politics and sacrificed to our secular beliefs. The writings that come out from Jammu and Kashmir are only about the aspirations of the people of the Valley, the Muslim majority and not about the rest of the state. Farooq Abdullah’s recent comment that Jammu and Kashmir was a part of India that did not want to be part of Pakistan has to be repeated, over and over again.

One of the country’s mainline newspapers carried a picture of a young Kashmiri man with two stones in each hand. These sharply jagged pieces of rock hurled at some speed at anyone would be quite lethal. So those whose hearts bleed should understand that this is not the age of innocence. The destruction and burning of a school in Tangmarg in protest against Quran burning in the US which never happened was an opportunity for the likes of Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Massarat Alam to arouse religious-Islamist feelings among the youth and had little to do with political aspirations. Ensuring closure of schools and specialised institutes like the National Institute of Technology for long spells is in itself a tactic. It leaves students uneducated and, therefore, the right material for indoctrination or unemployable for want of qualifications. There is frustration either way.

It is true that there is anger on the streets that will not go away easily. The problem is political but it is one that has been created and nurtured all these years for sectarian and regional gains by one side and allowed to fester through political ineptitude on the other. One mistake has been that we have tried to reach Srinagar through Islamabad without realising that Islamabad will never let a solution be found. We have assumed that peace with Pakistan will get us peace in Jammu and Kashmir. This will never happen because it is in Pakistan’s interest to have India in this impasse. There are signs that Pakistan, beleaguered as it might be with its own existential problems, seeks to impose itself in Jammu and Kashmir once again. Statements emanating from Pakistan foreign office, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) leader Nawaz Sharif and, not to be out done, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the ideological inspiration for Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, indicate an overt pattern. The covert pattern is evident from the kind of money being handed over to violent demonstrators and the increased numbers of encounters with infiltrators. One should expect that the situation will be ratcheted further till at least US President Barack Obama’s visit in November.

The question is what to do next. Surely the writ of the state must be seen to be running first. The people of the Valley have to be made to understand that the rest of India will not allow another partition; nor allow any kind of autonomy that the rest of the country does not have. It has to be made clear to the people of India — Jammu and Kashmir included — that no government in the country has the mandate to alter the status of the Valley.

The main demand in the Valley would be to ensure that justice is delivered and seen to be deliver­ed. It is no use throwing in more mo­ney now; the state is not exactly poor with its high rate of subsidy and a nationally competitive per capita income. The youth of Jammu and Kashmir need to be drawn out of their feeling of discrimination and deprivation. Instead, New Delhi should be offering opportunities to them to seek education in the rest of the country which makes them employable and accepted all over where they will get what the rest of the youth in India get nothing more nothing less. This will broaden their horizons and keep them away from the growing influences of bigotry which, in turn, has to be tackled separately.

There will be resistance to all these efforts, even sabotage. It is a long haul but we need to persist. It will take time. Amalgamation always does.

Source ; Asian Age , 22nd September 2010 , Vikram Sood , Former head of the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s external intelligence agency

Intifada or not - Kashmir defies definitions

By Smita Prakash (ANI)


The recent spurt in violence in a few districts of the Kashmir Valley is being termed as an Intifada by many journalists. Perhaps because they perceive that the fight is popular and the street protestors are fighting a repressive regime.

Let us go back to see what exactly is an Intifada. In Arabic, the term means "shaking off". Webster defines the Intifada as an armed uprising of Palestinians against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The first Intifada (1987-1993) and the second Intifada (2000-2004) led to the popularisation of the word and soon any revolt, armed or unarmed, by the Muslim people came to be termed as an Intifada.

The recent protests in the Kashmir Valley were first termed as an 'Intifada ' by The Kashmir Action Committee of Pakistan (KACP). This is a Lahore-based organisation, run by Justice Sharifuddin Bokhari, a retired Chief Justice of the Punjab High Court. Consisting mainly of some retired bureaucrats and ex-army men, it gets support from expatriate Pakistanis, who remain convinced that the so-called liberation of Kashmir is an issue supreme in the minds of ordinary Pakistanis.

This organisation, which though located hundreds of miles away from Srinagar, is miraculously aware of the minutest details of the recent uprising. This organisation decided that it was time to give the stone throwers of the Kashmir Valley an aura of respectability; so Intifada, they labeled it. It is no coincidence that this is a term that foreign journalists and American think tanks and publications are familiar with.

The term was duly picked up by the local media in Indian administered Kashmir and then by foreign correspondents that visited the Valley. Of course, a similar revolt in Balochistan, in Pakistan, has been termed by international media (NYT) as " a nationalist movement led by armed ethnic Baluch groups (that) has long sought greater provincial autonomy."

That the Baloch want secession from Pakistan goes unreported. The reason for the near black out of the civilian uprising in Balochistan is because the foreign media cannot enter the province. Why foreign, even domestic media in Pakistan, faces repression in the economic and backward province where, simmering hatred towards the Pakistani regime is beyond control now.

But it largely goes unreported, as it is much easier to cover the uprising in Srinagar than Balochistan. India allows free access to media, both Indian and foreign, in its part of Kashmir, like it does in any other part of the country. Incidentally, Pakistan administered Kashmir or POK is as inaccessible to media as Balochistan.

Despite the overt similarities in the recent visual images from Kashmir with the images from Palestine --- the stone throwing mobs, use of face masks, women and children being used on the frontlines of these mobs --- there are major differences between the two situations.

The Intifada was against the occupying forces of Israel. Palestinians had been thrown out of their land where they had lived for centuries.

India is not an occupying force in Kashmir, despite the sensational sound bites that are given by the ubiquitous boatman or a teen with a stone.

In 1948, Maharaja Hari Singh, the erstwhile ruler of Jammu and Kashmir, signed the instrument of accession like 500 other rulers, accepting its union with India. The accession to India was also publicly supported by the most popular Kashmiri leader of the time, Sheikh Abdullah.

Unlike the Palestinians, Kashmiris were not asked to vacate their lands so that "occupying forces" could occupy their land and homes. The immediate cause for the first Intifada in December 1987 was the incident in the Jabalya refugee camp when an Israeli army tank ran into a group of refugees, killing four and injuring seven. Do you see tanks ramming into civilians in Kashmir? This, despite the well documented fact that there are militants among stone pelters inciting and threatening them to throw stones and lynch policemen and burn down police stations.

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah termed stone pelting as an "industry" saying: "We have, in fact, been able to identify to a couple of big business houses, one in particular, who has used, through his network of dealers, to route money through."

The involvement of women and children in the 2010 uprising in Srinagar is said to be similar to the first Intifada, in which, women provided cover for men who pelted stones and hid behind skirts.

Asiya Andarabi of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat, a women's organisation championing the cause of "freedom", is at the forefront of this so-called women's movement in Kashmir. At her mildest best, Asiya "urges" women and children to abandon the safety of their homes and schools and get on to the streets to fight unarmed against security forces who have shoot-at-sight orders.

Rage has many manifestations, but, women and children coerced to go onto the streets to hurl stones, is the most despicable of them all.

And, the most pathetic, is to see the same women pleading with policemen to release the men who have been arrested, or mourning the dead who were caught in this vicious cross fire.

All this, while the so-called leaders of the "Intifada" sit in air-conditioned homes guarded by state security and travel in bullet proof SUVs.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani of the Hurriyat Conference defended the action of stone pelters, saying: "I have been urging the youth to keep these protests peaceful, but due to the atrocities of the troopers, the situation has taken a serious turn."

But women in Srinagar are not on the streets because they believe in freedom, independence or any such esoteric cause. They are protesting against the overwhelming presence of security personnel on the roads, which is preventing them from walking their children to school or going about their daily chores. They have lost their children, husbands and brothers to bullets. They want the protests and bloodshed to end. This is markedly different from the two Intifadas in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. There, it was an Islamic struggle against a Jewish occupation. Here, in Kashmir, the very thought of throwing out religious minorities from Kashmir is alien to Kashmiris. It is a radical view thrust and shoved into their struggle by Pakistani infiltrators and their agents.

On a recent visit to a Palestine refugee camp, in the West Bank, a group of Indian journalists had the opportunity to meet with people who had witnessed both Intifadas. Most of those we spoke to admit that violence had achieved little. They would have preferred peace talks.

The deputy mayor of Bethlehem, a Fatah leader, said that everyone, from Osama bin Laden to the smallest terror group on earth, has used the Palestinian cause to further their own ends.

This, he admitted, had harmed the cause of the Palestinian people and painted them as a violent race.

The Intifadas gave no respite to ordinary Palestinians. There are electromagnetic fences that divide the Palestinians from the Israelis. The violence shows no signs of abating. We visited the town of Sderot in Israel that lies on the Gaza border.

This town has suffered thousands of rocket attacks. There are bomb shelters every few miles, which are painted in bright welcoming colours so that children are not scared to run to them when the missile warning goes off.

In a Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem, we saw a school with no windows. Glass windows could shatter during a missile attack and injure children so they study closeted in window-less classrooms.

Many of us draw parallels with the situation in Kashmir, thinking that the hardships that people face in conflict zones are almost similar. But the politics behind it is not. The Intifadas of Palestine are peculiar to that region. Not to Kashmir.

On 23rd August, shopkeepers at Peerbagh in Budgam district of Central Kashmir confronted separatists who were forcing them to shut shops and join the protests. The shopkeepers said their business was being affected and they could ill afford the daily shut down calls. The brave citizens then filed an FIR at the police station against the separatists who they said were violating the peace and harming their businesses.

The law enforcing agencies operating in the Valley are also now using non-lethal means of crowd control like pumping action shotguns. Tazer guns, rubber bullets and pepper balls will also be used, which should have been done as a matter of procedure right from the start of these protests.

Some commentators who have drawn an analogy between the Kashmir problem and the Palestinian conflict forebode that if the stone pelting incidents peter down or loose steam in the days ahead, it would only be a lull in the storm.

General Shankar Roychowdhury, a former Chief of Army Staff, writes "The Pakistan Army is attempting to co-opt Intifada into its own jihadi playbook, as a tactic of opportunity against India in the Valley. Keeping the history of Intifada in mind, it would be prudent to anticipate and prepare for possible increasing tempo of suicide bombing and fidayeen-type attacks in the country, both within and outside Jammu and Kashmir."

But this is where the separatists and their minders have been innovative. They have already gone through the suicide bombing, hijacking, and hostage taking tactics. It failed to win any public support in the state, in the country and internationally, and did not achieve their goal of "azadi".

Imran Nabi, a professor at the Islamic University of Kashmir recently commented, "We don't know what is Intifida, what is it, we don't have any clue who is running it? You must be knowing better, what you are seeing on the streets of Kashmir is the angry outburst against the indifferent government."

Stones, face masks and women protestors do not make an Intifada alone. Intifada, notwithstanding the superficial and misplaced use of the term to describe the recent protests in Kashmir, is an alien concept to India and will not work. Kashmiris know it. It is now time for commentators to realise it. By Smita Prakash (ANI)

Source : Yahoo News , http://bit.ly/9Pvszw, 25th August 2010

Naivete in Srinagar

It is a cliché to say that the situation in Jammu and Kashmir is complex and that Kashmir is burning. But this is true also. The situation today is the result of political mismanagement, indifference and lessons not learnt over past few years after the security forces had brought the situation under control.

The troubles that erupted during the 2008 Amarnath yatra should have provided some lessons, but these were lost in the congratulatory mood that followed the largely successful state elections in early 2009. The fact that the separatist was alive was reflected in the low turnout in Anantnag, Sopore and Srinagar, but was glossed over. Hartals and infiltration increased immediately after the elections.

What is happening today is the result of political naivete, inexperience and indifference in Srinagar, accompanied by complacency and indecision in New Delhi, with Pakistan taking advantage of this without having to reveal its hand. Today it has become a people’s protest movement using stones, insults and anti-Indian slogans as weapons, with separatists operating alongside. The protest movement is not like Gandhian civil disobedience. It is against a constitutionally elected government and is not non-violent. Omar Abdullah, the young chief minister, is considered remote and aloof from his people, and thus unable to strike a chord with the ordinary Kashmiri. New Delhi has been reading the signals of increased tourist traffic and declining rates of terrorist attacks as a sign of an improving situation.

The basic lesson is that sometimes the number of terrorist attacks decline because the terrorists choose not to attack and not necessarily as a result of counter-terror efforts. Yet it was apparent that from early this year that the tactics had changed. Aware that terrorist tactics were becoming increasingly unacceptable in the West, a people’s revolt led by unarmed locals (with Pakistani agents provocateur lurking in the background) was the answer. This would bring the Kashmir issue back to the frontburner without resorting to terrorist violence.

Possibly the intention is to continue the protests until the government caves in and the CM has to go. Then the tactics would be repeated with the next CM, until the state becomes ungovernable. In many ways, we have a more sympathetic response from the West today on the issue of terrorism. But this needn’t necessarily translate into total support on how we handle the Kashmir issue. We must not forget that the United States needed Pakistan when it began its campaign in Afghanistan in 2001, and needs it more now that it plans to leave.

The questions then are: what next, and how?

New Delhi has to ensure the continuity of the present elected government, with the present CM in position. It must be seen to be supporting the CM to ensure that his authority or that of the State in Srinagar does not get eroded. Judging from the unhelpful attitude of the other main party in Kashmir, People’s Democratic Party, there is little hope that it will place long-term national interests above short-term narrow electoral gains.

The most difficult problem is how to douse the flames in the context of large angry protesting crowds. A mere show of force or its use will produce some results, but this is not the only solution. India cannot afford a Tiananmen Square. The protesters’ tactics must be turned against them. Their means of communication, propaganda and incitement should be disrupted. Take pre-emptive measures to prevent the assembly of large gatherings. It is a war of attrition that has to be fought, not simply one set-piece battle. And none of this is easy, nor can it be achieved overnight.

The battle for hearts and minds is very complicated and nuanced. The terrorists, who never fully went away from the Valley, have used ideology, fear and coercion to win support for their cause. The paradox is that for the security forces to win hearts and minds, there has to some stability and the area liberated of malcontents and insurgents. Force is required to restore order, which will ine­vitably draw am adverse reaction from the local population. This in turn will be exploited by the terrorists. This vicious circle needs to be broken now.

Force has to be used to control the situation in the short term, but there is no magic formula to determine exactly how much force is required. Much depends on the nature and availability of the force in question, on how well trained and equipped it is, and above all on the ingenuity of its leader. Troops coming face to face with angry mobs always mean a hair-trigger situation: the forces will only be able to answer with its weapons as it has no other mandate. Yet, having failed to control the situation itself, the political class and civil administration invariably seeks to blame the forces for the deaths that follow their deployment. Suspensions, transfers, courts of inquiry are announced in the heat of battle damage morale like nothing else can. It is far better at such moments to observe public solidarity and resort to private reprimand. Besides, an outside force will always have the disadvantage of lack of knowledge about the population, its customs and traditions. The state police is on the other hand usually far too frightened to take on locals for fear of reprisals.

Finally, we must treat Pakistan differently from how we treat Kashmiris. The latter perceive they have a problem while the former intrudes as the problem. Pakistan is the adversary, Kashmiris are not. Pakistan as a self-imposed interested party will seek to prolong and not solve the problem, just as it has not helped the Americans in Afghanistan. If we keep saying this is an internal matter, then we must engage Kashmir’s elected representatives in a continuous dialogue, listen to what they say and not just hear them out. We must make people like Ali Shah Geelani irrelevant, and refuse to give importance to those like Mirwaiz Omar Farooq who say openly on television that they are scared of the consequences of talking to New Delhi. Unless these elements are put to pasture, they will keep reinventing themselves under guidance from Pakistan.

There are no easy options and no quick solutions. Above all, what must be done is to restore the authority of the state government. It will not happen overnight; it will need a lot of patience, fortitude and luck to restore normality and then begin to address grievances — some real, and some not so real.


Source : Asian Age , 5th August 2010 , Vikram Sood , Former Head of the Research and Analysis Wing .