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Kashmir : Upsurge in violence

	September 08, 2003

The state is witnessing an escalation of violence following the killing of the Jaish terrorist leader Ghazi Baba in Srinagar. Car bomb attacks, ambushing of security forces and a massive show of defiance in Kathua, with the encounter now entering a week, are indicative of the militants’ fury at the death of the key operative, who had been behind the attack on Parliament as well as the State Assembly.

There have been two suicide attacks, one on an Army camp near Poonch town, and the second - the more serious - on a Border Security Force (BSF) camp in Srinagar during the Prime Minister’s visit. The capture of a Lashkar-e-Taiba contact in Delhi last week pointed to a major operation in the capital. Another militant apprehended in Uttar Pradesh has disclosed of a plan to assassinate three top BJP leaders including its president. These are not obviously normal times in the Valley.

Officials continue to blame foreign mercenaries crossing over from Pakistan for the upsurge in violence and prefer to term the spurt in violence as “static”, which in layman’s terms means the number of daily deaths across Kashmir remains more or less the same as it has been during the past few years.

But Kashmir watchers are not impressed. “Till the recent past, senior intelligence officers called it ‘residual militancy’, implying that it would end sooner than later. Now they too are redrafting their reports. Vernacular newspapers have again started carrying advertisements of “missing youth” - whose relatives claim they left their homes and have not returned for weeks and months. There is a large section of the local society that blames the lack of employment avenues among educated youth for the renewed swelling of guerrilla ranks.

Chief Minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed has been a strong advocate for arresting militant tendencies among the youth by giving them employment so that they can contribute to the state’s progress and become responsible citizens. But after having been in power for almost a year, Sayeed has been unable to do much to generate employment in Kashmir. Financial constraints and over-burdening of the administrative apparatus by previous governments have added to complications. Sayeed’s government had inherited financial ills it was battling hard to address. But assurances of lavish central assistance by Prime Minister Vajpayee could help Sayeed tackle the problem of unemployed youth in Kashmir.

Former Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah gave away government jobs to more than 140,000 youth during his six-year tenure, when not many youth were reported to have joined the separatist ranks. Ironically, despite employing so many locals during his tenure, Abdullah’s National Conference party was routed in last year’s elections.There are many locals, however, who believe that Kashmiri young men do not simply turn to the gun because they cannot get jobs.



Invitation to separatists

Meanwhile, on the political front, the invitation of the Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani to separatists in Jammu and Kashmir for talks is seen as reflecting the changing ground realities in the state. However, observers feel the latest offer by Advani should not be considered as suggesting that a political breakthrough in Jammu and Kashmir is on the anvil. Advani made the offer while addressing a news conference in Srinagar, on the sidelines of the meeting of the inter-state council. He was reacting to statements made by the leadership of the umbrella separatist alliance, the All Party Hurriyat Conference, that they would be willing to carry out a dialogue with the political leadership in New Delhi but not through civil servants or former bureaucrats.

While Advani said that both the Prime Minister and he were willing to meet separatist leaders informally in Delhi, an official dialogue would have to be carried out through the officially designated interlocutor, N.N. Vohra. This softened attitude on the part of Advani as well as the separatist leadership is indicative of the correlation of forces that is currently operative in the state. The APHC is no longer, if it ever was, a monolithic pro-Pakistan, anti-India organization. The current chairman of the outfit, Moulvi Abbas Ansari, is a pragmatic politician who has been realistic enough to have realized that there is little possibility of a tripartite dialogue between India, Pakistan and Kashmiris.

Under the circumstances, recognizing also that the APHC is beginning to get totally marginalized, the Chairman has taken a prudent political initiative. Moreover, Pakistan’s hold on the Hurriyat is also beginning to weaken. The departure of the hardliner Jamat-e-Islami leader, Ali Shah Geelani, from the Hurriyat executive and the continued presence on it of the moderate People’s Conference leader, Bilal Lone, is reflective of this new reality.

New Delhi clearly also believes that this moment may be right to arrive at an understanding with the separatist leadership. However, analysts feel, there are two potential problems on the horizon. First, it is not clear what the Centre can offer in a deal with the separatists. It is common knowledge that there has been little thinking within the bureaucracy or the political leadership about what should constitute the bottomline in Kashmir. Second, if Pakistani or pro-Pakistani forces feel that New Delhi is about to do a deal with a section of separatists, they will do their best to sabotage the process.

In fact, the recent increase in militancy related incidents in Srinagar signal what might be a new phase of violence in the state. It is important that while a dialogue is critical, it is essential that the Centre proceeds cautiously before public expectations are heightened once again.



Fighting terror

Coming back to terrorism, the extent of damage the remarkably successful operations by the security forces have achieved in Srinagar and Delhi on Pakistan’s terror machine is not yet known. But there is no doubt that it is significant. Ghazi Baba, killed by the Border Security Force in Srinagar was the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad’s (JeM’s) chief commander of operations in Jammu & Kashmir. In his thirties and an expert in guerrilla warfare, his death is bound to have an impact on the terrorist organisation’s activities not only in the State but also elsewhere. As his role as the mastermind of the attack on Parliament on December 13, 2001, shows, his activities were not restricted to J&K alone.

Apart from its physical impact, his death has considerable symbolic significance and sends out an important message: Top terrorist leaders are not invulnerable.

The demoralisation that Ghazi Baba’s death is liable to cause in the JeM and among its potential recruits, will no doubt be aggravated by Delhi Police’s destruction of almost an entire module of the outfit in the nation’s Capital. In a series of swift operations, it arrested five of its members and killed two and arrested two others from Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh.



BJP dismisses protests over Israeli PM’s visit

The visit to India by the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon beginning today (Sept. 8) has taken strong political shades and the pro-Arab lobby, including the Left parties, has launched a verbal onslaught questioning the government’s welcome to the leader. But the BJP has rejected the protests as “routine’ and pointless.

The BJP said protests by some political parties against Sharon’s visit is a typical Left rhetoric and ritual even when the world scenario has changed and Palestinians too have entered into agreement with Israel. “What would the Leftists do when Sharon is invited by Russia and China ?” party spokesman Prakash Javadekar asked. He said no public issue was involved in this visit and the left parties were protesting because they are opposed to anything from Israel. “How would Leftists explain the visit to Israel by veteran Left leader Jyoti Basu? Why didn’t they object to it ?” he asked.

Meanwhile, the Communist Party of India (CPI) has lambasted the BJP-led NDA government for inviting Ariel Sharon to India. “Sharon’s visit is part of the BJP’s ideology, politics and policies,” CPI General Secretary A B Bardhan said at a protest meeting organised by the Indo-Arab Islamic Association against Sharon’s visit. Calling the Palestinian issue, a “question of not only Muslims but of 100 crore Indians”, Bardhan questioned the rationale of an “India-US-Israel” strategic relationship to combat terrorism. “When Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani visited a small country like Israel, he stayed there for five days. Could we know what was actually discussed?”, Bardhan asked.

Adding to the protests, eight prominent leaders of political parties too opposed the visit of the Israeli Prime Minister and termed the decision of the Vajpayee Government to invite him as “unfortunate” and as an “insult” to the country’s support to the Palestine people. In a joint statement, the leaders said Sharon had earned notoriety for his “brutal repression” of the Palestinian people and that as the Defence Minister of Israel in 1982, he was “directly responsible for the massacre of over 3,000 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon”.

Even today, Israel’s armed forces occupied Palestinian towns on the West Bank. There were daily military attacks and targeted assassinations of Palestinian leaders and activists. The wrecking of the Oslo accord and the recent peace initiatives were primarily due to the policies of the Sharon Government, they said.

“To have such a person as a honoured guest is an insult to India’s longstanding tradition of unequivocal support to the struggle of the Palestinian people for national liberation and an independent state. We, therefore, strongly oppose the visit by the Israeli Prime Minister to India. We call upon all democratic organisations and citizens to protest against this visit,” the statement said.

The signatories to the statement included the former Prime Minister, H.D. Deve Gowda, the Rashtriya Janata Dal president, Laloo Prasad Yadav, the CPI(M) general secretary, Harkishan Singh Surjeet, CPI leader A.B. Bardhan, the Samajwadi Party general secretary, Amar Singh, and the general secretaries of All-India Forward Bloc, Debabrata Biswas, K. Pankajakshan (RSP) and Dipankar Bhattacharya (CPI-ML).