As a delayed and extended in monsoon lashes and floods plains in both India and Pakistan like never before in the past century, it is raining stones in India’s Kashmir Valley.
After two meetings of all party leaders in New Delhi on September 13 and 15, the delegation scheduled to visit Jammu and Srinagar for surveying the situation and interacting with various leaders there, must note what two former governors of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) have recently highlighted in articles published in this daily, statements of other national leaders as well as statements and actions of some of the leaders and separatists there.
Ex-J&K governor, Mr Jagmohan said, “A dispassionate survey of the last 63 years of the Kashmir scene would show how, at every crucial moment, decision-makers were carried away by short-term and superficial considerations, ignoring the distant but disastrous fallout of their acts.” Lt. Gen. S.K. Sinha (Retd.) said, “It appears we suffer from the Panipat Syndrome — lack of strategic mission, remaining unprepared for dealing with crises and a refusal to learn from the past. We have blundered from one folly to another and have repeatedly scored self-goals in Kashmir.”
The all-party delegation must also go into the events straddling the 2008 Amarnath land agitation, as that was the issue the separatists used as a turning point of resorting to incite the public. Speaking to this newspaper, Gen. Sinha recalls that the bogey raised by separatists then was that 100 acres Amarnath shrine land, meant for a tented camp for visiting devotees and habitable only for eight months of the year, was a ploy to try to settle Hindus in the Valley and change its demography.
Timed with the Amarnath land agitation, the Pakistan Army began violating the ceasefire on the Line of Control and part of the international boundary in J&K, which had been adhered to since early 2004. These violations have continued till date with the specific aim of inducting terrorists, who have effectively been directing Kashmiri separatists in the Valley to incite men, women and children to defy security forces and attack them in a highly organised and orchestrated manner with stones provided in plenty and instructions conveyed on mobile phones.
During the PDP’s tenure, its pressure on the Centre had led to a substantial reduction of the Army’s strength in the Valley, which facilitated Pakistan’s aim of inducting terrorists to regain control of their former “strongholds” — Sopore, Pulwama, Anantnag and Baramulla — painstakingly sanitised by the Army easier.
In 2009, the death by drowning of two girls was deliberately twisted into lies to discredit the Army. While the Army is not involved in handling the current crisis, separatists have made the Army’s very presence and the AFSPA a major issue.
While this daily in the recent past amply elaborated on the reasons why this act must neither be amended nor lifted from J&K, the same has been expressed by defence minister A.K. Antony, Chief of Air Staff and Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee, Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik and a number of other political leaders recently. Army Chief General V.K. Singh has reiterated that AFSPA is not arbitrary.
On the eve of the crucial all-party meeting convened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to discuss the situation deteriorating day by day in Kashmir, BJP leader L.K. Advani emphatically opposed any dilution of AFSPA, or withdrawal of troops, saying it would mean “surrendering before Islamabad’s strategy of breaking India’s unity”. This has been further reiterated by some analysts.
The minister for renewable energy and former chief minister of J&K, Dr Farooq Abdullah, states, “Power hungry PDP is abetting violence in Kashmir… there are a handful of people who have created such a situation, where innocents are on the receiving end.”.
Speaking to an agency, Ms Mehbooba Mufti said, “Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s speech to Kashmir leaders (in August) here was a ‘good beginning’, but proposals based on autonomy cannot solve the 63-year-old Kashmir issue, which has ‘international ramifications’... ‘step-by-step integration’ of the Indian and Pakistani Kashmiris in various fields is the way forward. We had the maximum autonomy for the past six decades. Pacts like the Indira-Sheikh (Abdullah) accord and Rajiv-Farooq (Abdullah) accord have failed to deliver. There is no point in trying the old formulae.” Her praise of Syed Ali Shah Geelani, “who turned the recent violent protests to a peaceful one”, is nothing short of ridiculous.
For Ms Mufti and her father, Mufti Mohammad Saeed, Gen. Sinha — who during his tenure as governor did much top promote Kashmiriyat — was like a red rag to a bull. For chief minister Omar Abdullah, who began his tenure with goodwill, Ms Mufti has been a major impediment.
Appointed as “amir” by Pakistan for organising and funding terrorism against India since the late 1980s, Geelani, while admitting that he is behind the stone-pelters, threatened to intensify the stir after Id if J&K was not accepted as disputed. His latest stunt was a call for holding protests in front of Army units as part of his “Quit Kashmir” campaign and then cancelling it, saying that the Army was preparing to massacre protesters. Maulvi Umar Farooq, heading the “moderate” Hurriyat faction, converted a religious gathering into a large-scale orgy of burning public property. He has been hobnobbing with the Chinese, whose Army has made forays into southeast J&K, had joint military exercises with the Pakistan Army there and has now deployed 11,000 troops in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
Dukhtaran-e-Millat chief Asiya Andrabi, who for many years in hiding directed attacks on women not wearing burqas and beauty parlours and was also active in the stone-pelting spree, has finally been arrested.
A large number of incriminating messages and conversations between organisers/directors, including and particularly those in Pakistan, handlers of stone-pelters, mohalla representatives etc, have been intercepted.
Lashkar-e-Tayyaba renamed Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, planner/perpetrator of the 26/11 terrorist attack on Mumbai, has piped up again with his recommendation of for jihad to “free Kashmir”. The Sikh community in the Valley has been targeted by way of incidents of chopping off hair of some males and sinister messages for Sikhs settled there for generations to convert to Islam. Local Sikhs and the few Kashmiri Pandits who remained behind have become very apprehensive about their safety.
This people’s violence movement, which began with the June India-Pakistan foreign secretary-level talks is being built up to grab foreign attention during the Commonwealth Games and US President Barack Obama’s forthcoming visit to India. Pakistan Army, Kashmiri separatists and those duped by them have ruined the Valley this summer. From 2004 till 2008, elections saw large turnouts of voters, peace and prosperity returned with 100 per cent hotels and houseboats occupied by tourists. Compare that with this summer.
All the above and some other factors have a major bearing on India’s integrity and security. Soft or politically expedient solutions will only further endanger both these aspects. If Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had Sheikh Abdullah jailed for 11 years at a stretch and then some more, then Geelani and all others involved in inciting Kashmiri men, women and children, deserve much more to be jailed and tried for treason. House arrest is of no use.