Kashmir - The Real Story:
INDIA-PAKISTAN
INDIA'S KASHMIR GAMBIT
By Sadanand Dhume
Issue cover-dated June 06, 2002
India's stepped-up diplomatic offensive against Pakistan to end its support for armed groups in Kashmir is meant to achieve a larger goal: shutting down a 13-year-old insurgency that continues to claim lives, drain the national treasury and tarnish India's international reputation.
In late May, during a rare visit to Kashmir, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee offered a glimpse of both legs of India's strategy--international and domestic. Addressing Indian troops massed near the Line of Control, the de facto border between India and Pakistan in Kashmir, Vajpayee urged them to prepare for a "decisive battle." The message to the world: India would attack Pakistan unless it agreed to cut off support for Islamic militants in Kashmir.
The next day, at a heavily guarded press conference in Srinagar, Vajpayee unveiled the other leg of his Kashmir strategy, a $1.3 billion economic aid package for the battle-scarred state and a promise of free and fair state elections--an implicit admission that past elections have been rigged.
"The upcoming elections can start a new chapter in Jammu and Kashmir," said Vajpayee, using the formal name of the state. "If people vote, they will choose a government of their choice, which can develop their state faster."
India's Kashmir gambit is meant to pacify Kashmiris, many of whom would prefer independence or being part of Pakistan to being part of India. The strategy is based on a view widely held in New Delhi that Kashmiris are tired of violence, and that the once-popular rebellion is now sustained largely by Pakistani men and matériel. New Delhi hopes to break the militants' back by leaning on Islamabad, and then quickly follow up by offering Kashmiris a slice of power by conducting fresh state elections.
The only problem with Vajpayee's Kashmir gambit is that it isn't working. For starters, it's not clear whether Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf is willing or able to cut off all of Islamabad's links with Kashmiri Islamic militants. Meanwhile, New Delhi's attempt to woo Kashmiris is not faring much better. Vajpayee's aid package was greeted with disdain by Kashmiris, who say that their problems are political and not economic.
Security for Vajpayee's visit to the region from May 21-23, his first in two years, was so tight that the only evidence of his presence for ordinary Kashmiris was even more machine-gun-toting Indian soldiers on Srinagar's streets than usual. That the prime minister did not meet with a single Kashmiri politician opposed to Indian rule only underscored the mismatch between his prescription and what the Kashmiris say is their ailment.
"An economic package is not the solution to the Kashmir problem," says Shabir Shah, a leading pro-independence Kashmiri politician. "He needs to invite people to talk."
To make matters worse for India, the murder of a popular Kashmiri leader has set back New Delhi's efforts to inject credibility into the elections by persuading some people who have long opposed Indian rule to participate. On May 21, unidentified gunmen shot dead Abdul Ghani Lone, a member of the All Party Hurriyat Conference, an alliance of 23 anti-India parties. Unlike most of his Hurriyat colleagues, Lone condemned not only Indian rule, but also foreign militants sent across the border from Pakistan. He was also one of the few anti-India political figures in Kashmir willing to negotiate with India without insisting on Pakistan's inclusion in the talks, which made him more acceptable to New Delhi.
According to Mehbooba Mufti, leader of the Srinagar-based People's Democratic Party, Lone's killing has created a "fear psychosis" and will deter other separatists from entering the electoral fray. Elections without separatists will have little credibility, says Zafar Meraj, the editor of Kashmir Monitor, a newspaper published in Srinagar.
With Lone dead, say Meraj, New Delhi will hope to persuade two young separatists--Shabir Shah and Umar Farooq--to enter the elections. But both are openly sceptical of Indian intentions.
"This is old wine in a new bottle," says Farooq, a 28-year-old hereditary Muslim religious leader and a leading member of the Hurriyat. "Elections are not acceptable to us if their purpose is to legitimize Indian rule." Farooq says that he will endorse the elections only if they are a stepping stone to wider negotiations on the future of Kashmir rather than an end in themselves. He adds that these negotiations must include Pakistan, though perhaps not at first.
Another person said to be flirting with the idea of participating in the upcoming elections is Abdul Majid Dar--a leader of the only predominantly Kashmiri militant group, Hizbul Mujahideen. In recent years, the group has lost ground to the better trained and more ferocious cadres of groups such as Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.
In the unlikely event that New Delhi gets the likes of Shah, Farooq and Dar on board, it will still have to convince Kashmiris that this time elections really will be fair. Mufti says that this won't be possible unless India first dismisses the incumbent state government led by Farooq Abdullah, who won a 1996 election marred by low voter turnout and a large-scale boycott.
Continuing human-rights abuses by state forces is another problem that India has failed to address, Mufti says. She says all government forces are guilty, and that the worst abusers belong to the so-called Special Operations Group, a collection of former militants and criminals employed by the state government and better known for extortion from innocent villagers than for fighting diehard militants.
Omar Abdullah, Farooq Abdullah's son, agrees that there have been human-rights abuses in the state. He says his party, the National Conference, will find ways to address these during the election campaign. The junior Abdullah is also India's junior foreign minister, so when it comes to the peace process in Kashmir, he's more clear. "I don't see any process moving forward at all until Pakistan addresses the concerns India has." Back to square one.
feer.com
It's obvious that PM Vajpayee is aping Ariel Sharon but he should bear in mind that Kashmir is not the West Bank and Pakistan is not Lebanon... and the "I" of AIPAC is for Israel --not India.
Gus. |
