My freedom fighter, your terrorist

Spearhead Research Analysis

One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. Afzal Guru remains one such example, who was hanged on 9 February 2013, convicted for attacking the Indian Parliament in 2002. Guru’s hanging has caused some disturbance in the civil and social order. The Muslim minority of India that enjoys a majority in the Kashmir Valley sparked out in protest of the hanging. Three youngsters have died in these protests and Yasin Malik (chief of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front), a charismatic leader, went on a hunger strike in Islamabad, urging Indian Civil Society to speak out against the inhumane treatment of Guru. But one rotten apple threatens the stock, and for the Indian government Malik poses a threat. He leads the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir in changing lines of citizenry. What government can tolerate that?

The right to self determination of Kashmiris is theoretically undeniable, yet so little has been done to materialize it. We can go back to 1947 when the United Nations never held the much awaited plebiscite, and the Muslim majority of Kashmir, who had voted for Pakistan, was forcefully occupied by the Indian Army. What started as a nascent freedom struggle in 1947 has progressively intensified with the simultaneous deployment of Dogra guards, provincial armed constabulary, Air force squadrons and Army brigades (with a strength of 9 divisions in the Valley alone). With such policing tactics being established on the Indian government’s orders, it is highly doubtful that the Muslims of Kashmir can ever integrate as normal citizens in wholehearted Mother India.

The relationship between Kashmir and Pakistan is also two-fold: in 1947 Islamabad struck a deal with Muzaffarabad (known as the Karachi deal) and 1974, AJ&K government gave Islamabad considerable authority, only through a protective shield: the Kashmir Council. The struggle for separatism led by parties like JKLF (Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front) excludes the possibility that problems they face might be less constitutional, and more administrative. Implying that the instability in the region has more to do with the Kashmir Council, and less with constitutional amendment, or more specifically that the solution lies within the current constitutional framework. But Kashmir’s story is incomplete without considering both the Pakistan and Indian side on the same canvas.

The Indian Occupied Kashmir becomes a different, and a relatively tragic story. With an escalating sense of their right to self determination, and more and more Kashmiri youth pushing the lines of citizenry that have been drawn by the Indian state, the conflict has become uglier over the decades. Since 1989 between 50,000 and 100,000 Kashmiris have been killed at the hands of Indian Army. The numbers of disappearances in the Kashmir Valley alone are at least 300 since 1990. The Indian government or any of the agencies operating in the region have ignored this issue completely, with only the possibility of ‘silent executions’ of the missing at the hands of the Indian state. Cutting off the wild corners of this periphery, repressing anti-state elements remains a common tactic. But worse in the long run is the tendency of the state to covertly label the freedom fighter ‘the terrorist’. This has become a very common phenomenon and a very dangerous one. Kashmiri freedom fighters have been time and again convicted under the Indian Terrorism Act. The more recent example of the misuse of such labels was witnessed last week when a PIL was filed in the Punjab and Haryana HC (India) for dismissing Yasin Malik’s Indian passport for partaking in anti-national activities.

The term ‘anti-national activity’ is a very dangerous one. Firstly, we must address the elephant in the room: Yasin is a freedom fighter struggling for new lines of citizenry, not settling for the current constitutional framework. Secondly, the anti-state label was sparked by his choice of company, a photograph of him with Hafiz Saeed, another ‘terrorist’. Whether or not Hafiz Saeed is a terrorist is a debatable concern, what it really takes to become a terrorist apart from a beard, Islamic outlook and rebellion frankly is uncertain. Guru was termed as such, and now so is Hafiz. By protesting for a more humane way to execute Guru in Pakistan, sitting next to Saeed, Malik seems to be treading on very thin ice.

It is so telling that a man who challenges the current order of oppression risks being labeled a terrorist without any need for concrete evidence. The Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front exists for the very purpose of a free state of Kashmir, at the very least free from claws of a growingly oppressive state that sparks more rebellion, more violence and more passion. If the Indian society was to hear out the Kashmiri Liberation leader, they would realize his demands are not so unreasonable. Yasin Malik only asks for the right of Mohammad Afzal Guru’s family to his body (that’s what the hunger strike was for). But in a more holistic picture he blames such executions for pushing a seemingly peaceful people towards resorting to violent tactics (after the execution of JKLF co-founder Maqbool Bhat in 1984).

Yasin’s struggle, the recent execution and the tens of thousands killed in Indian occupied Kashmir have unfortunately been shoved into the waiting room of a ‘globalized’ 21 ^stcentury where Pakistan is keen on making peace with mighty India, not bringing our suffering Kashmiris in the picture. As Malik once stated in an interview; just because we don’t have oil wells the world is not interested in our suffering. And the sad reality remains economic gain is the only incentive. As for protesting as a right of every citizen: Indians as well as Pakistanis should be looking at the meat before the label. The right to question the state must not be snatched in a democratic setup, nor should the right to protest. For the difference between an authoritarian/dictatorial state and a democracy is the citizen’s right to challenge the status quo.

KASHMIR: TIME TO MOVE FORWARD

By Air Commodore (R) Khalid Iqbal
Spearhead Research

Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid’s recent wish that: ‘it is high time India and Pakistan move forward together hand-in-hand’, is rather captivating. Recent overtures from both sides clearly indicate that two neighbouring countries want prosperity in the region and for that they agree that resolution of all disputes, including Kashmir, is a priority.

Pakistan has all along been pursuing this objective. It is unfortunate that some of very meaningful peace processes between the two countries went astray on one reason or the other. As Pakistan is likely to be a beneficiary in case of equitable resolution of most of territory related disputes, Pakistan is always keen to see the conclusive phase of the efforts aimed at resolving these issues. Unfortunately, the two countries have not been able to achieve anything worthwhile in territory related disputes.

Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has recently said that India wants to resolve all issues, including Jammu and Kashmir, with Pakistan through dialogue. Indian Independence Act had laid down clear terms of reference for the rulers of princely states. They were given the choice to freely accede to either India or Pakistan, or to remain independent, while doing so they were to take into account the aspirations of their people. Ruler of Kashmir failed to do so, and while under duress, he invited the Indian armed forces to invade his own state.

Kashmir is certainly at the pinnacle of India-Pakistan disputes – an issue recognized by the UN, and on which settlement framework has also been specified in the relevant UN resolutions. To remind the world about the continuation of the conflict, UN Observers mission continues to be stationed in the region. The first group of United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) arrived in Jammu and Kashmir on 24 January of 1949 to supervise the ceasefire between India and Pakistan. The UNSC resolutions remain arguably the best and judicious way out for settling this dispute. While addressing the 67 ^thsession of the General Assembly, President Zardari had rightly attributed the non-resolution of Kashmir dispute to the failure of the UN system.

Therefore, to succeed, any durable peace initiative between Pakistan and India must cater to break the stalemate on this important issue. It would have been in the fitness of thing had the Indian foreign minister put forward any fresh proposals on the Kashmir issue as well. Without demonstration of political will to tackle the Kashmir depute, even fairy tale wishes remain, at best, just noble desires; devoid of implementation tools.

Spells of Kashmir intifada, in their scope and scale, visibly get out of India’s control despite Indian army’s heavy presence. There is now considerable resistance from the Indian mainland as well, where conscientious members of the civil society have started to censure the central government for continued occupation of Kashmir. World watches with dismay that even by stationing of around 600,000 combatants for over a decade, India has not been able to subdue the spirit of Kashmir’s of the IHK.

IHK has the unenviable distinction of being the most militarised zone in the world. The hardest hit victim of the conflict has been the socio-economic fabric of the Kashmir. Agriculture which forms about 48 percent of the state domestic product is witnessing a negative growth. Tourism involving the livelihood of thousands of people has also been badly hit by the conflict. During October 2012, two reports were released pertaining human rights situation in the IHK. Reports by Amnesty International (AI) and Citizen’s Council for Justice (CCJ) were released in a quick succession. Both dossiers have adequately exposed the deplorable Human Rights (HR) conditions in IHK.

To make the people of Kashmir feel secure, it is necessary to scrap all the draconian laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), Public Safety Act, Disturbed Areas Act, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act etc. Moreover, as confidence building measure, it is essential to retrieve the armed forces to their barracks and let the police take care of the law and order. IHK government should also release all prisoners of conscience.

Pakistan has consistently maintained its stance on Kashmir. It wants the resolution of Kashmir issue in line with the wishes of Kashmiri people, as ordained by a number of UN resolutions and as envisaged by universally accepted democratic principles of the right of self determination. Pakistan will continue diplomatic and political support of Kashmiri people in their struggle to achieve their right to decide their future.

In this backdrop, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister has extended an invitation to 8 members of the executive council of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), to visit Pakistan from 15 to 22 December 2012. The initiative has been taken to begin a consultative process between the political leadership of Pakistan, AJK and pro-movement leaders of IHK. This initiative is expected to jump-start the process for peaceful resolution of Kashmir issue. Kashmir experts believe that such visits by the Hurriyat leadership suit both sides. Pakistan envisages that APHC could act as a catalyst in bridging the gap between the respective government’s standpoint and public aspirations of the people of Kashmir.

From Kashmiri perspective, leaders of both side of Kashmir should be facilitated to meet each other frequently to narrow down their perceptional gaps. And at the same time, India and Pakistan should continue with their good-will initiatives kick-started during President of Pakistan’s non-state visit to India, because this could enable both the countries to discover common grounds for conflict resolution. Pakistan feels that the Kashmiris of both sides should take advantage of the current improvement of relations between India and Pakistan, and it is in this context that APHC leadership has been invited.

Rumours have it that under pressure from India’s hawkish politicians and media elements, hurdles could be created to disrupt the process. Some elements of Indian media have started a negative campaign against the visit of APHC leaders branding them as ‘Separatists’. Understandably, some elements from India are not sincere towards resolution of Kashmir issue through consultative process. They do not want Kashmiri leadership to visit Pakistan and interact with Pakistani and Kashmiri political leadership. Their motive is to jeopardize the consultative process initiated by Pakistan. These disruptive elements are focusing at creating divide within the pro-movement camp by allowing only a few leaders to visit Pakistan. It would be unfortunate if India lets this opportunity slip by through administrative manipulation to deny right of travel to all the invitees. This will indeed be the first test of the new foreign minister of India.

India’s Orwellian drift

Jawed Naqvi

DURING the early rule of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, someone in his government placed two evidently unusable anti-aircraft guns of Second World War vintage on a visually prominent rampart of Delhi’s 16th-century fort, the Purana Qila.

The idea apparently was to deter airborne terrorists from attacking an approaching national day ceremony, but the subtext was not too hidden either. It became the first step towards a national campaign to instil fear – not unlike what had happened in America – of unknown and eventually unidentifiable terrorists. It was also a way for the government to farm out its growing list of phobias among the people, making them unwitting participants in a series of misadventures under the sobriquet of fight against terror.

Only this week, a Gujarat court controversially sentenced 11 Muslims to death and handed life sentences to another 20 for their alleged role in the death of 58 Hindus in a train inferno blamed on Muslims. Some 60 of the Muslims of Godhra, where the train tragedy occurred on Feb 27, 2002, were discharged last month as conspirators by the same court. They included men the prosecution called the masterminds.

The episode was of a piece with India’s prevailing ‘a-jaw-for-a-tooth’ mindset. A key parliamentary committee this week advocated death penalty for hijackers. What seemed odd was that a communist deputy headed the group. And Sitaram Yechury is no ordinary partisan. He is a politburo member of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), the country’s largest leftist group.

Several questions arose from the committee’s decision. Take Mr Yechury’s assumption that hijackers fear death, that capital punishment would deter them. In an era of suicide bombers what could be the significance of any decision to flaunt the gallows as retribution for ideologically-driven crimes, leave alone hijacking?

Hitherto the standard test of communist partisans in India was their readiness to listen to reason, their willingness to look for deeper causes of a given malaise, their fabled scientific diligence and a keen eye for humane remedies. There was a time in India when even its bourgeois political class displayed greater sensitivity to commonplace crimes that would be bracketed after a fashion (or expediency?) as acts of terror.

Before Mr Yechury’s advent as a parliamentarian, India was handling its problems with hijackers in a uniquely Indian way – with compassion, even humour.

Dalit Buddhists, Kashmiri Muslims, Sikhs and Brahmins had all hijacked planes in India. Their motives ranged from separatist politics to a laughable quest, if hijacking allows for humour, of seeking the postponement of college exams!

Two hijackers became Congress party leaders, one of them even a minister. Both men in the 1978 incident were Brahmins. In fact, they were brothers. Armed with toy guns they told the pilot they wanted Indira Gandhi freed from prison where she languished briefly after her opponents defeated her in 1977. Should they have been hanged?

A 1993 hijacker, Satish Chandra Pandey, was an admirer of Mr Vajpayee. A stated motive for his hijacking a plane on a cold January morning was to be urged by his hero, Mr Vajpayee, to surrender, which he did. The same year, four students claiming to be armed with explosives took charge of a domestic airliner to demand postponement of their annual university exams. Other passengers overpowered them. It was India’s second hijacking in two weeks and the third that year.

The students demanded that the government allocate Rs50m ($1.6m) to their college to begin a new Master’s programme. Would Mr Yechury want them dead?

On March 27 that year, a former trucker claiming to be a member of India’s governing Congress party took over another domestic airliner with 203 people on board to voice his frustration over the state of affairs in the country. The 37-year-old unemployed hijacker, who called India’s politicians “crooks”, surrendered to the police in Amritsar after failing to get permission for the plane to land in Lahore. Put him before a firing squad?

In January 1994, a lone hijacker, claiming to be a neo-Buddhist Dalit , commandeered an Indian Airlines Bangalore-Madras A-320 Airbus. The hijacker wanted Marathwada University to be renamed after Dr B.R. Ambedkar. Try tinkering with that, Mr Yechury.

I met one officially pampered hijacker in a Srinagar jail, where he was distributing copies of his memoirs to visiting journalists while armed guards at the high security jail offered generous rounds of Pepsi Cola with freshly baked pastries to the guests.

With a little bit of luck and more help from Indian intelligence agencies that are believed to be helping him vis-à-vis one of their mysterious agendas, Hashim Qureshi harbours ambitions to become chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir.

It would be tempting to look for comparison in Mr Yechury’s approach to any more recent hijacking with the more rightwards-leaning parties of India. The surprising fact is that during the Vajpayee era, which was as right as India has been as yet, there were three occasions when the Bharatiya Janata Party appeared to prefer the standard Indian middle course. It freed seven Sikh hijackers that Indira Gandhi had extradited from Dubai. It chose to save scores of precious lives rather than to allow insane criminals to blow them up, and it welcomed back Hashim Qureshi, a mastermind of the Ganga hijack episode of 1971, from Holland. Which of these would Mr Yechury have sent to the gallows?

The fact is that the near total silence of the parliamentary Left on the increasing militarisation of the Indian state – as also its growing participation in its self-defeating prescriptions on terror – seems akin to the last scene from George Orwell’s satire on communist Russia. The pigs in Animal Farm – depicting the ruling classes in Stalin’s Moscow – were beginning to walk on their hind legs, an act of hero-worshipping those they had sworn never to imitate.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

India’s Major Bulbul arrested in US

The Daily Mail

Former Indian Army Major accused of Kashmir HR activist’s murder

JAMMU(IOK) – A former Indian Army Major accused of the extrajudicial killing of a noted Kashmir human rights activist has been arrested in the US and would be handed over to the state police within a fortnight, Indian occupied Kashmir police said on Monday.

According to reports, fomer Major Avtar singh was arrested by the California police after his wife accused him of beating her. “It was the victim (wife) who informed the police in the US that he was also wanted in the murder case of one of the human right activists in Indian Occupied part of Kashmir ” the reports said.

On March 8, 1996, Major Avtar Singh, known as “Bulbul” (nightingale), of the 35th Rashtriya Rifles unit of the Indian army arrested Jaleel Andrabi, a human right activist near Barazulla on airport road when the activist was driving home along with his wife. The Jammu and Kashmir Bar Association filed a habeas corpus petition in the occupied Jammu and Kashmir High Court on March 9, and the court ordered the army to produce Andrabi. However, the Indian army denied that Andrabi was in custody. Over the next two weeks, the court continued to grant the government extensions for replying to the petition.

The trussed-up body of Jalil Andrabi, a prominent human rights lawyer was found in the Kursuraj Bagh area of Srinagar on the banks of the Jhelum river on the morning of March 27, 1996. Andrabi, who was forty-two, had been shot in the head and his eyes had been gouged out. An autopsy showed that he had been killed days after his arrest. As a result, the case for murder against the accused officer was pending adjudication in a Srinagar court.

Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) Srinagar, Mohammed Ibrahim Wani on Febuaray 6, 2010 issued interpol red corner notice against Major Avtar singh. The CJM directed the Ministry of Home affairs to forward the arrest warrant to Interpol through its office in New Delhi. The accused army officer, it is now learnt, has been hiding in Calfornia, US. “Yes we located the accused former Major. The US police informed the interpol and in turn they communicated us,” said Raja Ajaz Ali Inspector General of Crime wing in occupied Jammu and Kashmir police. Raja Ajaz , who is also laison officer of interpol in Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir, said that the accused was in the preventive custody of the US police in California and would shifted to Srinagar in fifteen days.

“We were asked by the interpol and the US police to furnish fresh warrants against the accused and we have acquired the same from sessions court in Srinagar,” IG crime branch said. According to IG Raja Ajaz Ali, the ministry of home affairs has also been informed about the intimation by the interpol.

Kashmir: A dangerous nuclear flashpoint

By Brig Asif Haroon Raja

Sixty three years have lapsed but Kashmir dispute remains unresolved. During this period, besides several military standoffs, two full fledged Indo-Pak wars and two localised conflictsin April 1965 and in summer of 1999 took place on account of Kashmir issue. India has been defying UN Resolutions on Kashmir and playing monkey tricks all these years to avoid resolving the dispute. Indian security forces have kept the people of Kashmir suppressed through use of brute force and has hid its gross human rights abuses under the cover of blatant lies and deceit. Today Kashmir has turned into a dangerous nuclear flashpoint.

The peace loving and docile Kashmiris patiently waited for 43 long years in the hope that India would fulfil its solemn commitment and hold a fair plebiscite but when they found that India will never give them their just right, they ultimately decided to pick up arms and push out Indian Security Forces (ISF) illegally occupying their land since 1947. Armed uprising in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) in end 1988 added fuel to fire to militancy in Pakistan, which had intensified during the eight-year Afghan Jihad.

Tens of die-hard Jihadi groups cropped up to assist the Kashmiri struggle. Large amount of funds were collected for the cause of Kashmir. The people of Pakistan who have always regarded IOK as part of Pakistan and an unfinished agenda of partition left behind by scheming British were deeply pained over the atrocities committed by ISF upon hapless Kashmiris. The ISF had been given a licence to kill and to use rape as a weapon to break the will of freedom fighters. The world took no notice of worst human rights abuses by ISF nor made any effort to find a political solution on the basis of UN Resolutions.

The US which had drawn closer to India after 1990 started changing its stance by undervaluing UN Resolutions and terming them as outdated. Israel which had also forged special ties with India imparted training to Black Cats Commandoes of India in specialised counter insurgency operations and taught them new methods of torturing detainees so as to break the back of movement. Indo-Israel propaganda machinery supplemented by western media started projecting Kashmiri freedom fighters as terrorists and Pakistan as an abettor of terrorism. Full throttle was given to the theme of cross border terrorism. Efforts were geared to get Pakistan branded as a terrorist state.

The religious right in Pakistan sympathised with Kashmir cause and took out rallies in their support and also took practical steps to alleviate their sufferings by providing financial and material assistance. The general public filled up money boxes placed in front of each mosque wholeheartedly. The seculars particularly the liberal elite by and large took least interest in the plight of Kashmiris. Rather, they subscribed to Indo-western propaganda and pressed the government to rein in Jihadists to appease India.

Reign of terror unleashed in IOK by over 700,000 ISF, Indian intelligence agencies and Hindu extremist groups have turned the vale of Kashmir into hell. The whole valley is drenched in human blood but the conscience of the international comity is dead. Shrieks and cries of ill-fated Kashmiri men, women and children get drowned under the din of gunfire, one-sided propaganda and patronage of USA and civilised west. Instead of cautioning India to restrain from human rights abuses, the entire pressure was exerted on Pakistan and held solely responsible for worsening security situation in IOK. Despite use of excessive force and worst form of torture, the flame of liberty lit by handful of Kashmiri fighters kept burning vigorously. No amount of brutality could weaken their resolve to keep fighting till the accomplishment of their due right of self determination as provided for in UN Resolutions.

Indian inhuman cruelty alienated the Kashmiris and their hatred for India touched new heights. Except for insignificant number of Indian toadies enjoying fruits of power at the cost of enslavement of five million Kashmiris, each and every Kashmiri yearns to get rid of India. Having seen the ugly face of India and miserable plight of Indian Muslims, they have lost all trust in duplicitous Indian leaders. Conversely, their love for Pakistan is growing by leaps and bounds. They want to be part of Muslim Pakistan and not of Hindu India where Muslims are treated as second rated citizens. They know that secularism in India is a big farce since Hindu extremist forces are far more powerful than Hindu secularists who are too weak to question them.

Takeover of power by Gen Musharraf in October 1999 brought smiles on the faces of depressed seculars particularly when he came out with his concept of enlightened moderation. The fortunes of Kashmiri resistance forces that were giving a real tough time to 700,000 ISF as well as Jihadi forces in Pakistan plummeted in the aftermath of 9/11. New laws framed by USA on terrorism changed the complexion of freedom movements within Muslim world overnight and freedom fighters were branded as terrorists. This rule was applied in IOK as well which impelled India to apply full pressure on Musharraf to change its policy on Kashmir.

Ten month military standoff in 2002 followed by the US pressure forced him to ban six Kashmir oriented Jihadi groups and to freeze their accounts. Besides allowing India to fence the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir, he took stringent measures to control cross LoC movement and also started hounding extremists. He also took on board moderate leaders of All Parties Hurriat Conference promising them an out of box solution to the dispute falling outside the ambit of UN Resolutions. These measures favoured India but went against the interest of Pakistan and resultantly rolled back the momentum of liberation movement. Indian military hastened to claim that it had succeeded in crushing insurgency in Kashmir. Pakistan thus lost the lone card of Kashmir which it could play against India which held several cards.

As a consequent to blocking Jihadi groups from assisting Kashmiris, these groups in revenge joined hands with Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and TNSM and started fighting Pak security forces, thus compounding Pakistan’s security problems. These groups facilitated TTP in launching suicide and group attacks within cities. Kashmiris saved the day for Pakistan when they bounced back in the valley in 2008 in the form of violent strikes and protest marches which flabbergasted India. Mumbai attacks were hastily engineered in November 2008 to distract the attention of the world from Kashmir, to put off Indo-Pak composite dialogue which was in advanced stages and to exert pressure on Pakistan to stay away from Kashmir.

Kashmiri movement took a new turn in 2010 when the teenagers with stones in their fists came in the forefront and kept raising anti-India and ‘freedom from India’ slogans despite being ruthlessly killed and tortured by ISF. Unarmed movement of tender age boys captured the attention of the world and for the fist time India found itself short of lame excuses. It could not possibly dub unarmed small boys as young as 8-15 years as terrorists. Nor could it justify its brutal actions against them. Apart from many in western countries, several intellectuals and human rights activists within India have started to sympathize with Kashmiris and are condemning ISF brutalities. Arundhati Roy has taken the lead and has not minced her words in saying that Kashmir is not part of India as claimed by Brahman Indian leaders and that justice should be meted to the people of Kashmir.

In a seminar recently organized in British Parliament, the parliamentarians lent unflinching support to the right of self determination of Kashmiris and have stressed upon their government to use its good offices to solve this chronic dispute. They also called upon India to withdraw its forces from IOK and to facilitate granting right of self determination to Kashmiris. Black day was organized by Kashmiris on both sides of the divide on 27 January and also in Pakistan and other parts of the world reminding India to prevent its forces from massacring innocent Kashmiris and to grant right of self determination to Kashmiris. Rumbling within India for a solution is getting louder.

Indian leadership will never risk holding a plebiscite since it knows that the result would be to its disfavor. It will keep dragging its feet until it is forced to give up its obduracy. The US must play its role to solve this dispute to avoid a nuclear holocaust in the future.

Why The Valley Blooms

A LIFETIME OF DEATH AND LOSS IS DRIVING THOUSANDS OF YOUNG KASHMIRIS TO DRUG ABUSE. PARVAIZ BUKHARI REPORTS ON A DISTURBING NEW EPIDEMIC

High yield A Narcotics Control Bureau worker destroys poppy crops in Pulwama district (below); an addict receives counselling at a Srinagar de-addiction centre (right)

UNTIL RECENTLY, Akhtar, 29, a resident of Srinagar, the capital of Jammu and Kashmir, could not start his day until he popped eight tablets of Spasmo Proxyvon, a painkiller, into his empty stomach before hitting the road with his auto-rickshaw.

Like him, Bashir, 54, a businessman in the saffron-rich town of Pampore outside Srinagar, would not eat for as long as six days in a row. Till he enrolled himself in a rehabilitation programme recently, Bashir would down half-a-litre of whisky every morning. A widow in the south Kashmir town of Pulwama still gives her teenage son money every day to buy cannabis, fearing he might otherwise become a militant.

The three drug abusers (names changed) reveal the tip of an iceberg. Two decades of conflict have ravaged the Kashmir valley, taking a huge toll on the mental health of its people. Indeed, the increasing consumption of medicinal opiates in Kashmir is emerging as a worrying trend. As more and more land comes under the cultivation of poppy and cannabis every year, a burgeoning number of people are falling to drug abuse in myriad ways.

Across Kashmir, tens of thousands of young men and women who have failed to cope with the cumulative effects of trauma in their daily lives are escaping to drug abuse and alcoholism. The student community that has come about amid the continuing socio-political disturbance and violence in Kashmir is the worst hit. De-addiction counsellors estimate that 40 percent of school and college students in the Valley have taken to drug abuse as a way to cope with distress.

“There could be at least 60,000 substance abusers (drug addicts) in Srinagar alone,” says Saiba Verma, a doctoral student from Cornell University in the US researching the emerging scenario in Kashmir. The population of Srinagar is about 14 lakh. Drug abuse is evenly spreading across the rural and urban areas in the Valley.

‘WE ARE ABOUT TO LOSE A GENERATION TO DRUG ABUSE,’ SAYS DR MUZAFFAR KHAN. ‘THE YOUTH ARE VULNERABLE’

Predictably, the government, as well as society, brush the catastrophe under the carpet. No comprehensive survey has been undertaken to deal with it. Most doctors and psychiatrists say 70 to 80 percent of the addicts who report for help use easily available prescription drugs and substances like alcoholbased cough syrup, painkillers, eraser fluid, nail polish and even shoe polish. The rest are alcoholics or use locallygrown cannabis mixed with tobacco.

“We are about to lose an entire generation to drug abuse,” says Dr Muzaffar Khan, a psychiatrist who operates a de-addiction centre run by the state police inside the premises of its control room in Srinagar. “The socio-political disturbance is the main reason that has made the youth most vulnerable.” Most addicts are in the 18 to 35 age group.

Driving an auto-rickshaw, Akhtar would often find himself caught in traumatic situations ranging from harsh cordon and search operations by Indian security forces to grenade attacks by militants. By 1998, he was suffering from continual headaches and was increasingly taking painkillers.

“Then another driver suggested I take something stronger,” he says. “I started taking a pill strong enough.” Akhtar did not know he had become an addict till he found himself “misbehaving” with his family. And he would not eat.

The state health department has virtually no de-addiction and rehabilitation services. In distress, Akhtar started looking for help and found Raahat, a 12-bed de-addiction centre run by an NGO, All J&K Youth Welfare. “On the very first day they chained me up as if I was a prisoner,” Akhtar says. Akhtar somehow fled Raahat, but volunteers from the centre came with the police and dragged him back. He left Raahat 40 days later, after spending Rs 30,000. Akhtar took to drugs again.

Ironically, the NGO is not even aware of the basic rules running a rehabilitation centre. “We have to be very strict with the addicts,” its general secretary, S Shabir, told TEHELKA. “Patients in psychiatric condition sometimes need to be tied to chains with the consent of a relative. Sometimes we do ask for the police to come with us to handle an unwilling patient.” Raahat has only a part-time technical staff of five: two doctors and nurses each, and one counsellor.

AKHTAR IS now recovering in the police de-addiction centre, which the police opened in 2008 from their welfare fund. So far it has counselled more the 3,500 addicts and treated 185 from across Kashmir. But there are thousands like Akhtar who do not have anywhere to go for help.

People with drug dependency problems dread going to the only and extremely overburdened psychiatric hospital in Srinagar. “They lodge us with mentally deranged and mad people there,” says a patient at the police deaddiction centre. The only other de-addiction centre is a two-bed facility inte – grated in the district hospital at Baramulla in north Kashmir.

Dr Marghoob, a leading psychiatrist, says counselling and rehabilitation clinics are needed in every nook and corner of Kashmir. According to him, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is the main reason driving people to drugs.

ONE REHAB CENTRE CHAINED A PATIENT, THREATENED HIM, AND HAD THE POLICE DRAG HIM BACK AFTER HE ESCAPED

“I have seen many patients who have not been able to sleep because of trauma and they resort to easily available drugs in the market and then become dependent on them,” says Marghoob. This is a dominant pattern with people across socio-economic classes who have seen violent deaths from close or lost family members to the armed conflict.

Medicinal opiates like codeine, Corex and Rexcof and prescription drugs like Alprax and Spasmo Proxyvon are available across the counter in medical shops that have mushroomed over 15 years. Despite being banned elsewhere in the country, variants of these drugs are sold in “huge quantities” in Kashmir.

Weed killers Measures to curb the illegal narcotics trade in Kashmir have proven largely ineffective in the past

“The young prefer these drugs because they don’t smell like charas or opium do,” says Yasir Zehgir, a volunteer with the police de-addiction centre who took up this work after his friend became an addict.

But prescription drugs are not the only worry. Poppy and cannabis cultivation has been steadily growing since the mid-1990s, after the law enforcement agencies completely withdrew because of the militancy. But the trend continued even after the militancy waned in 2004. Experts say that large-scale unemployment and poverty contributed to the growth in the cultivation of these lucrative crops in the south Kashmir belt from Pulwama to Anantnag.

Between 1995 and 2000, the area witnessed alternating floods and drought making normal agriculture almost impossible in vast and inaccessible areas. In the absence of government help, farmers switched to cannabis, further spreading its abuse. “People took to charas after their crops failed every year after 1995,” said Fayaz Ahmed, a lawyer who helps addicts in police cases against them.

The police have now launched a poppy destruction drive which has been successful in Pulwama, where this year land under its cultivation has been brought down to less than 25 acres compared to 750 in 2009. But in the adjacent districts of Shopian and Anantnag, cannabis cultivation remains unabated.

Jammu & Kashmir police Chief Farooq Ahmed admits that more and more land is still coming under poppy and cannabis cultivation every year. “One day we keep peace in a particular area, another day we are busy attending to law and order situations and most of the time the police force is dealing with counterinsurgency,” he says.

However, the key reason for government’s failure to check proliferating drug abuse is that the revenue authorities and the narcotics control department are largely comatose in preforming their role to curb drug cultivation. Section 133A in the Revenue Act empowers the authorities to seize any land under illegal cultivation. A one-time fine of Rs 5,000 can be imposed on the owner along with Rs 500 every day till the land is restored to its original crop. “This provision has never been invoked in Kashmir, even before the present scenario emerged,” says Farooq.

While poppy is sold to markets outside, mainly through truck drivers who come from outside the state, in raw forms like the powdered fukki, a substantial portion of charas extracted from the cannabis crop is consumed locally. Police say most of it goes to Punjab and Delhi while a tiny proportion of the refined drugs are sold in Mumbai at very high prices. “Fortunately, growers in Kashmir do not extract opium from their poppy crop, otherwise it will be uncontrollable,” says a senior police official who wishes to remain anonymous.

In the summer of 2006, businessman Bashir was inside a mosque near his house when men of a pro-government counter-insurgent militia led by the dreaded militant Papa Kashtawari barged in and dragged his neighbour and friend out. Bashir witnessed his friend being shot dead in the mosque compound. He rushed to get a vehicle to take his friend to hospital.

The militants he knew dragged another person from his house nearby and shot him dead too. Witnessing the violent incident, Bashir trembled and collapsed. “I took to alcohol and could not live without it until four months back,” he says. He sought help after Kashtawari’s arrest in 2008 and finally enrolled in the police de-addiction centre in Srinagar. It took Bashir over a year to end his alcohol addiction. Bashir says he knows at least 30 other men in his neighbourhood in a similar condition.

A 2006 STUDY by a team of experts from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) operating in Kashmir undertook a sample study about the mental health conditions in the region. It concluded that the suicide rate in Kashmir had risen a whopping 400 times in 15 years due to the armed conflict. That rate is now nearly twice India’s average of 20 per 100,000 population.

“[The] mental and physical health needs are high, while the coping mechanisms of individuals are predominantly dysfunctional,” the report said. “Even with a definitive end to violence, it could be expected that a substantial number of people would need support to overcome their problems. This assumption is confirmed by our findings of high mental health needs despite the decrease of violence since 2004.”

In south Kashmir, youths in entire villages have taken to drug abuse. On an average day, police stations are locking up groups of drug peddlers and addicts in their attempts to curb the phenomenon. These youth are becoming a social menace and the village elders have started reporting them to the army, on the pretext of having connections to militancy, after they failed to intervene socially. “But this is driving distress levels among the youth further up and renders them more susceptible to exploitation by vested interests from all sides,” says a top police official. Like the unending cycle of militancy in the Valley, drug abuse is now becoming a vicious cycle.

WRITER’S EMAIL
parvaiz@tehelka.com

CPI (M) flays BJP for “fuelling polarisation” in J&K

PTI

The CPI(M) on Sunday lashed out at the BJP over its plans to hoist the national flag in Srinagar on the Republic Day, saying the saffron party had a history of fishing in troubled waters to seek political advantage and sharpening communal polarization.

Flaying the BJP for being adamant on hoisting national flag at Lal Chowk in Srinagar on January 26, CPI(M) Secretary M.Y. Tarigami alleged that the saffron party and Sangh fountainhead RSS were whipping up frenzy against minorities.

“BJP’s choice of hoisting the flag in Srinagar alone and not elsewhere in the country is aimed at gaining political mileage by sharpening communal polarisation in the state,” he told reporters here.

“RSS does not use tricolour in its functions. The RSS headquarter at Nagpur does not hoist it nor do the RSS Shakhas display it in daily parades,” he said.

Mr. Tarigami said the saffron party has a history of fishing in troubled waters to seek political advantage and sharpening communal polarization.

The Amarnath Yatra Movement that the BJP spearheaded into 2008 resulted in wide spread dislocation of normal life and strengthened the alienation between the two religious communities along with widening differences between Jammu region and the Valley, the Kulgam MLA alleged.

Mr. Tarigami said the BJP was using the national flag to strengthen vote bank politics.

Stone pelters in BJP ranks?

Nazir Masoodi

Srinagar: In its Kolkata to Kashmir Ekta Yatra, the BJP’s youth wing is aiming to lead thousands of its members to raise the tricolour at Lal Chowk on Republic Day. The BJP says it’s a challenge to the separatists.

But the police say some party workers in the state are stone throwers, whose agitation took the Kashmir valley to the brink last summer. Since it is this kind of ‘anti-nationalism’ that the party claims to be trying to fight through its Ekta Yatra, the news has put the party in a spot.

At least two of the seven BJP workers arrested for trying to put up posters in Lal Chowk have been involved in stone-pelting incidents say the police.

“We have arrested some seven BJP activists yesterday. Two of them namely, one Waseem from Qamarwari and Imtiaz from Nowabazar, were found involved in stone pelting cases. Investigation is on and we will take action accordingly,” Zulfikar, Superintendent of Police East Srinagar told NDTV.

While presence of stone throwers in BJP may cause embarrassment to the party at national level, the local BJP leadership in Kashmir say they welcome stone pelters.

“They realised that stone pelting is a political drama and that they should join a nationalist party. We welcome them. Let them join and work for our party,” said Sofi Yousuf, the Vice President of BJP’s state unit, who was amongst those arrested on Saturday.

In New Delhi, senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley said, “I don’t know whether they have been arrested as stone pelters or not but we certainly know that in the valley a large number of our workers are being arrested.”

At a time when the BJP is accusing the centre and state governments of surrendering before separatists in Jammu and Kashmir, the presence of stone throwers in their own ranks may just blunt their yatra offensive.

Return of the stone rage in Kashmir (2010 in Retrospect)

sify news

Srinagar: Over 110 people dead in firing by security forces on protesters, four months of crucial academic session washed out due to frequent curfews and shutdowns, business worth an estimated Rs.14,000 crore ($3 billion) lost — 2010 was indeed haunting for the Kashmir Valley that witnessed another season of intifada, the stone throwers’ uprising.

At the beginning of 2010 spring, as peace was dawning on a state battling years of armed insurgency, the scenic valley was preparing to welcome tourists with hopes to revive an economy in shambles. But that was not to be.

Most of the tourist season was lost to stones – volleys of them flying in the air every day almost all over the valley. And security forces countered them with tear gas shells, non-lethal weapons and even bullets.

As soon as the tourist season began to peak – some 400,000 tourists had come to Kashmir by June, the death of a teenager, Tufail Ahmed Mattoo, in firing by security forces June 11 set off a vicious cycle of stone-pelting agitations and killings.

Mattoo’s death triggered widespread agitation against human rights violations in the valley. Separatist leaders capitalised on the anti-government anger by giving frequent calls for shutdowns and asking people to hold protest marches.

In nearly five months of the uprising, 111 more civilians were killed – painting the valley blood red.

The agitation, which revived the separatist campaign, kept the valley closed for most of the five months due to repeated shutdowns and curfews.

President of a business lobby, Shakeel Qalandar, said each day of the shutdown or curfew cost Kashmir around Rs.100 crore ($22 million). The valley remained closed for about 140 days in the unrest period.

‘Our economic losses have mounted to Rs.14,000 crore ($3 billion),’ Qalandar told IANS.

He said some 100,000 people also lost their jobs in the tourism, manufacturing and retail sectors in the 2010 unrest.

The valley has witnessed frequent closures in the last 20 years of separatist war. As many as 1,950 days have been lost to shutdowns and curfews since 1990.

‘Conservative estimates put the losses at around Rs.2 lakh crore ($44 billion) during the last two decades,’ according to Qalandar.

Education was only a collateral damage in the cycle of protests – at the heart of which was the Hurriyat Conference led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani.

When schools and colleges remained closed for about 115 days, the adverse effect on education can be anybody’s guess.

However, in all this maddening cycle of violence, the valley peacefully hosted the annual Amarnath pilgrimage – the way it has been doing since ages. Thousands of Hindu pilgrims from all over the country travelled to the cave shrine in south Kashmir Himalayas.

As the year began to close and winter chill seeped in, a sort of agitation fatigue led to a somewhat deceptive calm in the valley. The common sarcastic slogan doing the rounds is – ‘Khoon ka badla June main lenge’ [We will avenge the killings – of 2010 – next June).

The central government also took some steps to resolve the political problems in the state. In September, it approved an eight-point plan for Jammu and Kashmir and released Rs.100 crore ($22 million) for grants to schools and colleges.

Three interlocutors – journalist Dileep Padgaonkar, economist M.M. Ansari and academician Radha Kumar – were tasked to hold ‘sustained and uninterrupted dialogue with all sections of the people’ in the state.

During a visit by the interlocutors to frontier district of Kupwara Dec 22, thousands of people pledged not to throw stones at security forces – not a bad idea to end the year full of violence.

But the pledge came with riders. The security forces should not stop peaceful protesters and the government should take ‘solid and concrete steps’ for resolving the Kashmir issue, they held.

This is the third successive year Kashmir has witnessed a politically hot summer. In 2008, prolonged agitations, including stone pelting, was witnessed over land allotment to the Amarnath shrine board and in 2009, the Shopian alleged rape-murder of two women triggered widespread angry protests. But the 2010 protests were prolonged and furious.

(Sarwar Kashani can be contacted at s.kashani@ians.in)

Omer says Pak has role to resolve Kashmir issue

SANA News

JAMMU: Chief Minister of Indian Held Kashmir Omar Abdullah reiterated that Pakistan has a very important role in the solution of Jammu and Kashmir and if it does so it would be a great achievement for both the nations.

“Pakistan has an important role to play in resolving the Kashmir issue. But, it should play its role in right perspective and if Pakistan does this, it would be a big achievement for both the nations,” Omar told reporters on the sidelines of a function in Jammu, adding that he saw a role for Pakistan in Kashmir.

He, however, suggested that the neighboring country should play its role in right perspective.

Omar said; “When our interlocutors talk about role of Pakistan, media gets worried that why they discussed Pakistan, but when Obama makes a reference to it, you say he does the right thing.” “This dual policy is wrong,” he remarked.

International Community should help themselves by helping Pakistan

by UMAIRJ

What should the international community do to assist Pakistan?

That’s a mouthful. Really, it is, considering there are a number of significant problems that Pakistan is simultaneously dealing with.

My main premise for even writing on why the international community should assist Pakistan is a rebuttal to a recent article on the AFPak Channel. As an undergraduate Political Science student, it is better to leave such topics to the experts, but after reading said article, I had to interject.

The article discusses the problems that Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, is facing and though I do agree that the Taliban are undoubtably present in Pakistan (mainly because the ISI allows them to be), they are not why Karachi is burning to the ground. What the author does in this piece is not only add to the American paranoia that Pakistan is slowly being taken over by Islamic extremists, but it also silently promotes the MQM’s xenophobic policies against refugee Pathans. The MQM is not fighting against the ‘Talibanization’ of Karachi and the Taliban are not the biggest problem in Karachi. If you read my last article, you would have noticed that it is the ‘lyari’ gangsters who have been taking part in targeted killings; targeted killings by organized crime lords are a huge problem in Karachi. These drug lords are connected to the political parties running in Karachi, albeit silently, such as the PPP and the MQM which makes it harder for the police to crackdown on them.

The author also states three justifications for international assistance in the country: NATO troops, Afghanistan’s economy and Pakistan’s economy. I disagree simply because the international community’s concern should go beyond the economy and the well being of NATO troops, primarily American troops in the region.

The international community first needs to understand the history of Pakistan’s relations to militia groups and the Taliban if it really wishes to assist the region. Trouble within the region does not start with 9/11 for Pakistan. It began in 1948 to tackle the Indian influence in Jammu and Kashmir. Since 1989, the Islamic Republic has been funding militia groups and terrorist organizations to destabilize Jammu and Kashmir and force India’s hand in pushing for a peace resolution. However, since the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, the United States through Pakistan began to funnel money so that militia groups could fight against the Russians.

One such group was, of course, the Taliban and after the defeat of the Soviet Union and once the civil war broke out in Afghanistan, which the United States did not care for whatsoever, Pakistan could not afford to turn the other check. This was of course as a result of the fact that they shared a border with the country and hence decided to keep funding the Taliban to ensure a friendly neighbour to the west. Pakistan did not want to be surrounded by enemies and assisting the Taliban to power, in order to counter India’s influence in the East, was a pragmatic decision.

Hence, the international community must realize that if Pakistan is to become the strategic partner it wants to be, it is necessary that it first makes up its mind on the role that the Taliban and any other militia group will play in the Afghan government before it tries to assist Pakistan or ask it to apply pressure in Waziristan. The United States also needs to realize that the main factor for using militias by Pakistan’s military is the insecurity they feel vis-à-vis India. It believes that instead of facing head on with the country, it can use insurgents to fight small battles. Since the introduction of Nuclear weapons into the equation, Pakistan is more likely to use militias in its proxy war against India than ever before since a full fledge war can have irreversible consequences.

Aside from these two issues, Pakistan’s economy is also taking a batting. This is a domestic issue, however, in which the government must impose an income tax system so all citizens, regardless of social, political or economic status can assist in upholding the system. In the past, Pakistan survived on US funding but this will obviously not continue for long, especially since it must create a source of revenue for the redevelopment of the flooded areas. There are many areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that are cut off from the rest of the world because the government has been unable to fund the building of bridges and roads. This is just one of many areas affected by the lack of funding by the federal government.

Getting back on topic, essentially what the international community can do for Pakistan is to decide whether the Haqqani group and the Taliban are to be integrated within the new government, or if they are to be considered enemies. If reports coming from NATO are true, and the Taliban (the Haqqani network, not the Quetta shura) are in discussions with the Afghan government, then Pakistan after all is in the right. This means that the ISI should be praised for keeping ties with the Haqqani network in Peshawer and Mullah Omar in Quetta. Pakistan, however, cannot increase the pressure in Waziristan since this is the territory from where the Haqqani network primarily operates from. This creates a paradox for Pakistan who, unlike NATO, are not at war with the group and will not apply pressure on them. Particularly since, after NATO’s withdrawal, Pakistan may have to put up with a Haqqani included government from whom they would have now severed ties. Pakistan does not want to lose its locus standing with Afghanistan, especially with the growing Indian power to the east. Regardless of the actors within the Afghan government, the United States must ensure that their relations with Pakistan are first and foremost, if they truly want Pakistan to be comfortable with divorcing from ‘Jihadist’.

The United States also seems to be keen on including regional neighbours to assist in the stabilization of Afghanistan. Both Iran and India may play some part, as well as China and Russia. Russia most recently has been in the news since it will assist NATO forces in the region. Karzai has also admitted that Iran has been financially aiding the government for many years, an issue with which the United States has no problem. This is most likely because it is another method to counter Taliban influence. However, Iranian influence in Afghanistan is again countering the Quetta and Peshawar shuras with whome the Afghanistan government is negotiating. This, again, confuses Pakistan as to which stance the United States wishes to take with the Taliban. India’s role in Afghanistan and within the region is Pakistan’s main priority and therefore the United States must realize that the Kashmir question is at the heart of Pakistan’s security concerns via India. If the United States can at least attempt to garner a solution, it will go a long way in the eyes of Pakistanis.

India, of course, will not allow that to happen; it has always regretted international involvement in the Kashmir question. As Christine Fair so eloquently explains, there lies a fundamental difference between India and Pakistan’s approach to the issue. She states:

India seeks to engage Pakistan to legitimize the territorial status quo by finding some means to formalize the LOC as the legal international border. Thus for India, the status quo is a basis for a solution to the ongoing dispute over the disposition of Kashmir.

Where as the absolute opposite works for Pakistan:

Pakistan seeks to engage India to find some means of altering, in various ways, the status quo and publicly rejects the possibility of transforming the LOC into the international border as a viable means of dispute resolution. For Pakistan the status quo is the problem, not the solution to the problem.

(India and Pakistan Engagement: Prospects for Breakthrough or Breakdown?- January 2005)

India wants the status quo to remain; they have no problem with the Kashmir issue being just that, an ‘issue’. As long as they are in control of Kashmir, they have no problems. It is Pakistan that wants borders to change and the status quo to absolve. Yet, because India is stronger, Pakistan’s military cannot go to war with them and India will never voluntarily give up Kashmir.

Consequently, what the United States needs to do, and this is not at all an easy job, is bring the Kashmir issue to the forefront. If they can come to some sort of conclusion concerning Kashmir, Pakistan will have no use for terrorist cells and hence create a more stable Subcontinent. Pakistan will be able to focus more on their economic welfare and the wellbeing of their citizens.

In my opinion, since Pakistan controls the Quetta shura headed by Mullah Omar, if Pakistan feels that negotiations are beneficial, it will allow him to negotiate with the Afghan government. However, the main problem, as mentioned, lies in Kashmir unless the United States puts a concentrated effort into creating a solution for the disputed territory, nothing will change. If this does not happen, Pakistan will not divorce itself from terrorists, especially Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The odds, so far, do not look promising. In a recent report brought out by CNAS, written by Richard Armitage and Richard Fontaine, called Natural Allies: A Blueprint for the Future of US-India Relations, there was no mention of Kashmir whatsoever; though that is where the main problem lies. Kashmir can no longer be an issue only concerning Pakistani-American relations, but must also push over to Indian-American relations.

Until this takes place, Pakistan will continue to rely on militia groups and push the international community away.

Protesters urged to breach LoC

Roshan Mughal

MUZAFFARABAD: The United Jihad Council (UJC) on Wednesday urged people to prepare themselves for breaching the Line of Control (LoC) in protest against continued human rights violations in Indian Kashmir.

People in Muzaffarabad hold a rally to condemn the Indian occupation in Jammu and Kashmir on October 27, 1947. Photo: Express

The council issued the call during a protest sit-in on the LoC to mark a ‘black day’ against the illegal occupation of Kashmir by Indian forces in 1947.

“Will you trespass the bloody ceasefire line when the call is given?” Syed Salahuddin, Chairman of the United Jihad Council – an umbrella of the 12 organisations fighting Indian rule in Kashmir – asked a gathering during an Azm-e-Azadi conference here on Wednesday. ‘Salahuddin go ahead! We are with you,’ the crowd responded in unison.

On the occasion, Indian forces resorted to unprovoked firing in Hajira, Pandu and Bhadi sectors in Rawalakot and Hattain districts, where the Azad Kashmir and Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front had staged protest sit-ins.

“We are neither tired nor bent. Our fight will continue against the Indian army until each and every inch of Jammu and Kashmir is liberated,” said Salahuddin as he demanded the government send a freedom Flotilla similar to that of Turkey to Indian Kashmir to provide victims with food and medicines.

He urged the Pakistani government to launch a diplomatic offensive for the liberation of Indian Kashmir by getting out of confusions over the principled stance on the issue.

Salahuddin appreciated China’s stance over Kashmir, which decided to issue Chinese visas to Kashmiris without an Indian passport, hoping that it will continue.

“We are thankful to China who has adopted a principled stand on Kashmir and refused visa to the Indian general of the Northern Command,” he said.

Hundreds of people belonging to Hizbul Muajhideen, Jamat-ud-Dawa, and other organisations attended the conference which demanded of the US president to use his office for the settlement of the Kashmir dispute to avoid a war in South Asia.

Members of Tahreek Azadi-e-Jammu Kashmir Amir, Jamat-Ud-Dawa AJK, Al Badar Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen, Jaish-i-Muhammad, Hizb-i-Islami and Pasban-e-Hurriyat attended the conference.

Shaky start on Kashmir

Praful Bidwai

When the Indian government announced “a new political initiative” on Jammu and Kashmir on September 25, lofty expectations were raised that high-level interlocutors would soon begin a dialogue with the state’s parties and civil society. This was considered the only novel, and most important, feature of the 8-point plan of action, which otherwise recycles the shop-worn “package” approach to Kashmir. It was also the logical follow-up to the all-parties delegation’s September 20-21 visit to J&K.

However, the announcement of three panelists – journalist Dileep Padgaonkar, conflict resolution academic Radha Kumar, and Information Commissioner M M Ansari – has disappointed most people and attracted anger and ridicule. To many, it represents a desperate anxiety to pretend – just before President Obama’s visit to India – that the government is sincerely grappling with the Kashmir issue. The Valley’s moderates as well as extremists have declared the panel a non-starter. Indian parties, from the Left to the Right, have attacked its exclusion of politicians, who they feel should lead it. Their unanimous opinion is that the Centre is not serious about finding a Kashmir solution. There is no support for the panel from political, civil society or intellectual opinion, not even the ruling Congress.

Apparently, the government first approached Congress leaders Digvijay Singh (a heavyweight who mentors Rahul Gandhi), Prithviraj Chavan (close to the prime minister) and Salman Khurshid to join/head the panel. They refused. Hence the present “Team B” panel, without a proper chair of Cabinet rank. Given this hostile reception, it will be extremely difficult to persuade a senior politician to head the panel. His/her authority would already be dented by the absence of a chance to choose the other members.

How did the hope of September dissipate into the disappointment of October? None of the three nominees knows much about Kashmir, carries much political weight in general, or a positive profile in the Valley, in particular. Padgaonkar and Kumar have only had limited exposure to the Valley. Kumar recently coordinated a European Union-delegation visit there and also held conflict-resolution seminars. But she neither conveys gravitas nor an incisive grasp of Kashmir’s complex situation. Ansari is a non-entity, without a nodding acquaintance with J&K.

Kumar ventured in 2006 into “Frameworks for a Kashmir Settlement”, co-authored with ultra-hawkish Pakistan-bashing former diplomat G Parthasarathy. This contains some interesting suggestions for building governance structures from the bottom-up. But they are all based on the obviously unrealised presumption that India and Pakistan have already agreed to “soft borders”. Kumar carries ideological baggage from her involvement in the former Yugoslavia and the Council on Foreign Relations (US). The baggage, and her conservative pro-Western reputation, further weaken her acceptability. She’s regarded a political lightweight who wouldn’t bother with getting to know the nitty-gritty of Kashmiri society and politics. Nor is Padgaonkar distinguished for his grasp of Kashmir, or imaginative out-of-the-box solutions.

Several candidates, with superior understanding, experience, acceptability and reach, come to mind, including Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah, an Indian Administrative Service officer of the J&K cadre. He’s so highly regarded in the Valley that when he had a near-fatal accident some years ago, thousands prayed for him. There are also eminent individuals from J&K, including educationist Agha Ashraf Ali, economist Haseeb Drabu and vice-chancellor of the Islamic University of Science and Technology Siddiq Wahid (originally from Ladakh).

Among the politicians from the all-parties team who visited Kashmir, two made a particularly favourable public impression: the Communist Party (Marxist)’s Sitaram Yechury and Ram Bilas Paswan. Yechury grasped the nettle by knocking on hardline leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s door. Paswan visited the grieving family of Tufail Ahmad Mattoo, the 17-year-old, whose killing in June sparked a wave of protests.

As for the Valley’s politicians, it would have been eminently wise to associate people like Yasin Malik and CPM MLA Yusuf Tarigami with the panel. None of this was done. But let’s not focus solely on individuals and ignore the content of their mandate. A democratic government wrestling with a thorny dispute should have initiated the broadest possible consultation to generate the contours of a feasible solution. This alone can adequately clarify the interlocutors’ task and enable them to prepare for conciliation. Yet, the government, in its usual imperial style, consulted nobody – not even those involved for years in the Track-II and civil society dialogue with Kashmiris, nor the key individuals engaged in back-channel diplomacy with Pakistan, which by all accounts had almost yielded fruit by 2007.

Instead, it thoughtlessly nominated three panelists and entrusted them with “the responsibility of undertaking a sustained dialogue with the people of J&K to understand their problems and chart a course for the future”. Nothing suggests that the panel will “understand” the “problems” through a few desultory visits to Kashmir and that it’s better placed to suggest a way forward than dozens of recent civil society initiatives. It’s not easy to instil confidence among Kashmir’s widely divergent actors and produce worthy, consensual and practical solutions. In all probability, key groups in the Valley will boycott the panel. Kashmir is indeed the burial ground of countless attempts at mediation.

In constituting the interlocutors’ panel the way it did, the government is making two blunders. First, the present team patently lacks New Delhi’s confidence and a mandate to negotiate a deal – unlike the few past instances of successful reconciliation in Kashmir, like the defusing of the Hazratbal crisis of 1963 (caused by the alleged theft of a relic of the Holy Prophet) or the Indira Gandhi-Sheikh Abdullah accord of 1975. Second, there’s no indication that the Centre intends to treat the Kashmir issue qualitatively differently from other separatist/insurgency problems like those associated with the Nagas, Mizos, Bodos and other Northeastern ethnic groups, to whom it has been talking.

So far only the Mizo problem has been “solved”- mainly through financial inducements and lucrative offers of office. But this manipulative strategy hasn’t worked with the other ethnic groups. Dragging out talks with the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isaac-Muivah), while playing off various ethnic factions against one another, hasn’t produced a lasting truce or agreement on a contiguous state of the Nagas. The Kashmiris won’t be fobbed off with such manipulative negotiations or with flimsy half-solutions. The Kashmir problem is unlike any other because of its international dimensions and a long history of alienation of the Valley’s population from the Indian state, which has violated Article 370 of its own constitution. Military repression of the azaadi movement further aggravated matters after 1989. Pakistan cynically fished in the troubled waters.

Although the 2006 Assembly elections and the 2009 parliamentary elections restored a degree of normality in J&K, the Centre failed to use it to promote conciliation. The outbreak of the stone-pelters’ protest this past June was another ominous warning against New Delhi’s complacency – and an injunction to correct course. But the state substituted the all-party delegation visit – and now, the interlocutors’ team – for strategy.

The interlocutors could spread yet more despair, cynicism and anger in the Valley, obstructing a real solution. The Centre should go back to basics: wide consultation, formulation of a broad-framework solution, exploration of areas of agreement, and a clear mandate for a newly constituted interlocutors’ team which carries authority and political credibility.

The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and peace and human-rights activist based in Delhi. Email: prafulbidwai1@yahoo.co.in

Kashmir has never been integral part of India: Roy

SRINAGAR (Agencies) - Noted Indian human rights activist and booker prize winner, Arundhati Roy on Sunday dropped a bombshell stating that Indian-held Kashmir has never been an integral part of India.

She also advocated the right to self-determination for the people of Kashmir, She said that in 1947, British imperialism was replaced with Indian colonialism which has been in place to subjugate and oppress the people of such states which demand “azadi” (freedom) from India.

“Kashmir has never been an integral part of India. It is a historical fact,” Arundhati said.

She said India after getting independence from British emerged as a “new colonizing power”.

“India fought in Nagaland, Manipur, Punjab and Kashmir. It projects itself as the biggest democracy in the world and emerging economic power but at the same time it oppresses its states and the people of diverse cultures,” she added.

Speaking at a seminar titled “Whither Kashmir: Freedom or Enslavement”, organized by the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, headed by the local rights activist Pervaiz Imroz, at a hotel here, Arundhati asked Kashmiris to ponder on the type of society they have in mind for themselves.

“Imperial colonialism is being fast replaced by corporate colonialism and Kashmiris would have to make a choice whether or not they wanted the Indian oppression to be replaced by a future corporate oppression of the local masses,” she said.

“Your struggle has increased the consciousness in India about the oppression you face, but you must decide what type of society you have in mind once you are allowed to decide your future,” she said.

“Any kind of resistance makes the people stronger and more mature. Kashmiris have been fighting Indian occupation and they should understand what they have achieved and what they have lost,” the writer said.

Attacking the Indian government for the “oppression of the Kashmiri people”, she said India has been using Kashmiris recruited in the army and paramilitary forces to suppress the voices of dissent in the Northeast and vice versa.

“Kashmiris themselves should avoid being the part of oppressing machinery. They should avoid being the part of police and paramilitary forces.”

Besides Arundhati Roy, human rights activist Gautam Naulakha and Delhi-based trader unionist Ashim Roy also strongly voiced their support for the freedom movement of the people of Kashmir.

No mainstream or Hurriyat politician was present at the seminar although many local journalists and members of the civil society attended it.

Among the other speakers at the seminar were assistant editor of the Economic Times in Delhi Najeeb Mubarki, a Srinagar based senior journalist Parvaiz Bukhari, and a film maker Sanjay Kak.

Ruckus in J&K assembly over Omar’s remarks

Srinagar: There was chaos in the Jammu and Kashmir assembly Thursday as opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Panthers Party legislators tore papers and snatched mikes to protest Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s speech a day earlier.

The legislators, who gathered near the speaker’s podium, were marshalled out of the House. In the process, BJP legislator Durga Das was injured and received stitches in a hospital. He said he was hurt by the ‘kada’, or steel bangle, worn by one of the marshals. Two other BJP legislators also claim to have been injured.

The BJP, Panthers Party and the Jammu Morcha, who were also lashing out at the Chief Minister outside the Assembly, accused him of carrying out Hurriyat agenda. The MLAs have decided to boycott the rest of the session.

The opposition legislators were protesting Abdullah’s speech Wednesday where he had said Kashmir had acceded to India under an agreement and not merged with it. He had also asked why the BJP was repeatedly stating that Kashmir was an integral part of India, as it meant they had doubts about their own statement.

Omar had also asked leaders to desist from harping on the fact that Kashmir is an integral part of India.

(With inputs from IANS)