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FIFTH COLUMN
Pendulum Politics
The
Centre is swinging from one extreme to another in Kashmir. What's going
on?
By
Tavleen
Singh
What is
going on in Kashmir? Does anyone know? Little of what has happened in
the past few weeks makes any sense. There is, they tell us, a peace process
but add that they will not involve Pakistan in it because Kashmir is a
domestic problem. Fine, but why then are we speaking to a group of terrorists
who were put into business by Pakistan with the specific objective of
furthering that country's cause in the Valley? Has everyone in the Home
Ministry forgotten that the Hizbul Mujahideen burst mysteriously on the
scene in the early '90s only when the JKLF (Jammu and Kashmir Liberation
Front) refused to play for Pakistan?
Since then
Pakistan's intelligence agencies have shown considerable creativity not
just in the manner in which new terrorist groups appear and disappear
like genies out of some magic lamp but also in the nomenclature these
outfits use. Lashkar-e-Toiba, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Al Faran, Jaish-e-Mohammed.
To those unfamiliar with the situation in Kashmir it might seem as if
we were fighting all of Allah's armies. In fact, these are only different
names for Pakistan's pawn soldiers.
So, how
do we know that the Hizbul-Mujahideen is not talking to the Union home
secretary in Srinagar only on orders from Islamabad? How do we know the
talks were not a ploy to distract attention while one of its murderous
brother organisations massacred pilgrims on the Amarnath yatra? Frankly,
why are we talking to those strange men if we refuse to talk to their
commander-in-chief, General Pervez Musharraf?
The General
in Islamabad is not an attractive man. His efforts to woo the Indian press
have partly succeeded since most of the hacks he invited to Islamabad
for a guided tour of Pakistani democracy came back with favourable impressions.
Despite this to most Indians he is the man who caused the Kargil war and
who is also a dictator. Usually, not the sort of Pakistani we like talking
to, but if we are going to have a peace process in place let us talk to
him since he is the boss.
A peace
process involving Pakistan is necessary and inevitable. But the bureaucracy
refuses to accept this. And since we have a political leadership that
is guided totally by babus they are being led into the usual traps. Start
a peace process not because we think it will work but because it will
look good. Refuse foreign mediation because we want to continue pretending
there are no international dimensions to the Kashmir problem. Insist on
bilateral discussions because even if the Simla Agreement failed it was
our idea and we should stick to it. The end result of the current peace
process, as any perceptive observer should see, is likely to be zero.
There are
other puzzling things about the prime minister's Kashmir policy. When
Farooq Abdullah passed his autonomy bill there was general hysteria in
Delhi. Farooq became, instantly, in everyone's eyes a traitor, an enemy
of India and someone not worth speaking to anymore. He was only asking
for autonomy within the Union of India, not secession. Yet, we now have
a situation in which the Indian Government is talking peace to a group
whose only objective is secession and they are doing it with the support
of the media and almost everyone else.
There is
something surreal about this. Something sick about it when you consider
that more than a hundred Hindu pilgrims were being butchered while the
talks were taking place. Which brings us to another disturbing aspect
of what is happening in Kashmir. Why could the yatris not have been protected?
Most estimates say we are dealing with no more than around 3,000 terrorists
in Kashmir. What are our five lakh troops in the state doing? If the army
cannot rid us of four small terrorist groups we should disband it and
hire Israeli commandos instead.
We should
also disband our intelligence services for they are unable to provide
us even the minimum intelligence on Kashmir. It is time the Government
examined what has been going on inside Kashmir and why all our measures
to control a small group of terrorists have failed so shamefully. Part
of the answer is everyone connected with the state in Kashmir -- the administration,
the army, the police -- all work from inside security cocoons so solid
that they could be made of concrete. This reduces their contact with ordinary
people to zero and this could, perhaps, explain why we seem to have no
consistent policy on Kashmir.
So, one
minute autonomy is the worst thing in the world. The next minute we are
ready to talk about azadi. One minute we cannot talk to the legally elected
chief minister of Kashmir as he demands autonomy and the next minute we
talk to terrorists who demand a merger with Pakistan. One minute we cannot
talk to Pakistan and the very next minute we are ready to talk to the
pawns in its proxy war in the Valley. Seriously, what is going on in Kashmir?
Does anyone know?
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