Spotlight
New
Delhi, 31 August 2016
Kashmir Unrest
WILL CM
INSIGHT GET SUPPORT?
By Proloy
Bagchi
Preparations are afoot for an
All-Party delegation to visit Jammu & Kashmir, after over 50-odd days’ of
unrest. Curfew in some parts has been lifted in the Valley, but how soon
normalcy will limp back to the Valley is anybody’s guess. Will the youth heed
to Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s appeal to ‘return to educational
institutions instead of being on the streets’? Importantly, it needs to be seen
how much support her views get from the political parties’ leadership.
Handling the crisis has been the
biggest challenge for the young Chief Minister, since she took over in April.
She has tried to look objectively at the entire situation prevailing. In not trying
to throw homilies, Mehbooba has tried to reach out to the people by trying to
talk about the over month-long violence that had virtually brought all social,
economic, educational and political activities to a standstill in the Valley.
The problem, which flared up after
the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen jehadi Burhan Wani, like others, has
completely baffled her as she noted at a gathering that virtually every day
there is some militant or the other killed but this kind of disturbances had
never taken place before. For what happened earlier there used to be a reason
or two like in 2010 the alleged rape of two women in Shopian, which eventually
was disproved as it was found to be an ordinary case of drowning.
But the Kashmiri separatists had
whipped up an agitation which lasted for days and the Valley was completely
shut down. This time, however, there was no reason for such an eruption. No
Kashmiri innocent was killed as the man killed was a militant – a potential
killer of Kashmiri policemen or Kashmiri innocents.
The Chief Minister thought this time
it was not spontaneous as it appeared that a certain amount of preparation had
gone into it. Evidently, the organisers of the violence were waiting for an
opportunity to inflame passions and Wani killing provided just the right one
and was opportune. Obviously, it was the work of the separatists and their
cohorts. Mufti had said, yes, police were also violent but what could they do
against dire provocations. “You snatch away their guns and keep pelting stones
on them”, she has lamented. Under such circumstances any security force would
try to quell such ghastly civil violence using whatever methods they could
muster. In the process, some civilians were killed but some from the police
forces were also killed and a large number of them were wounded.
What is more, the Chief Minister has
been vociferous about the agitationists using women and children as shields.
Children as young as 10 years were wounded. What was a 10-year old was doing in
the agitation? If the child was hit by pellets the blame should go to his
parents who did not take care of him by keeping him at home. Allowing the child
to join violent demonstrations was not only unwise it was also criminal,
presumably, as it was abetting violent demonstrations.
Mufti repeated the same arguments at
the press conference the other day addressed jointly by her and Home Minister
Rajnath Singh. She even got worked up and appeared to be accusatory and snapped
at a reporter bringing the conference to a close. She apparently had caught on
to the machinations of the separatists, who were till now not able to organize
a long drawn-out confrontation.
This time, as is evident, a large
number of militants have been pumped into the Valley by Saiyed Salahuddin’s Hizbul
Mujahideen, a proxy for the ISI of Pakistan, located in Pakistan Occupied
Kashmir. A thousand of its trained militants were claimed to be in the Valley
and another thousand were waiting to infiltrate at an opportune moment. The
figures could be exaggerated as the militants tend to exaggerate their prowess.
But, there is no denying the fact that it is the foreign militants, ably
assisted by the mischievous separatists Geelani and Co., are behind this
stretched out confrontation.
At the back of it, however, is the
ISI of Pakistan which is the mastermind of such disturbances. I have immense
faith in what former RAW chief AS Dulat has written in his “Kashmir – the Vajpayee years”
because he was one official who met and developed a kind of trust amongst the militants
about his bonafides. They would come to him and talk about all things regarding
Kashmir militancy. During one such
conversation, a senior and influential militant had told him that at Dubai an ISI official had told him that nothing happens in
Kashmir without the ISI’s initiatives. It is
ISI that “Calls the shots in Kashmir”. From
sending terrorists across the borders to organising chaos and mayhem, it is the
ISI which does it all. Everyone is, therefore, aware that the whole thing is
inspired by the Pakistanis and their agencies with the assistance of their
proxies in Srinagar.
Only innocent Kashmiris are being used as cannon fodder.
Be that as it may, the Chief
Minister must tread ask her party men to tread cautiously. A case in point is
of the alarming views on the present unrest by Musaffar Hussain Baig, a former
Dy. Chief Minister and a Member of Parliament. He has said that the local
“struggle” runs the risk of becoming a (kind of) religious extremism – of
losing its political goal and getting a “religious vision”. He seems to be
quite ill-informed as the separatists know their political goals are never
going to be achieved. As Dulat has recorded, even President Musharraf, whom
they had met in Delhi, had told them there
cannot be re-drawing of the boundaries as India would never allow that.
Hence, they needed to change their thinking.
Besides mercifully, religious
undertones are presently absent in the movement. He sees a danger of the unrest
becoming a part of the “international struggle”. Being an MP from the PDP
perhaps such a comment was not expected from him. If he harbours this kind of a
perception it would have been wiser for him to communicate it to Mufti instead
of airing his apprehensions in public through a newspaper column to set alarm
bells ringing.
The whole thing is nothing but Pakistan’s way of inflicting those “thousand
cuts” of Zia ul Haq on India.
As Mehbooba repeatedly said it is the 5% of people, presumably the separatists,
who create these problems. The remaining 95% of Kashmiris want to live in peace
and harmony. India
has therefore, to ride out the present difficulties by being firm and dominate
over the disturbed areas. All eyes would be on what next the All-Party
delegation, which visits the State this Sunday, has to offer. ---INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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