|
THE
NATION: KASHMIR
No
Chance For Peace
Hopes
of a breakthrough in the Valley recede as Delhi's cease-fire gambit seems
to be going awry. Militant groups intensify their attacks and Pakistan
has neither the will nor the ability to stop them. An embarrassed Vajpayee
Government dithers between playing peacenik and getting tough.
By Harinder
Baweja with
Ramesh Vinayak
in Srinagar
On
the face of it, there are compelling reasons to call off the cease-fire
that began on November 26 last year in Kashmir. In the past few weeks,
the militants have intensified their activities. They have attacked the
Red Fort, targeted state Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, threatened to
attack the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and sent suicide squads to the
high-security airport in Srinagar and 15 Corps headquarters.
The decision
to extend the cease-fire beyond January 26 will, however, look at various
factors, for the whole move is also about the fine art of politics and
diplomacy. It was always a gamble. When it was first announced on November
19 by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, it aimed at holding out an
olive branch to the battle-fatigued Kashmiris, putting pressure on the
Hurriyat Conference and testing Pakistan Chief Executive General Pervez
Musharraf's hold over the jehadis. There was another element-to show the
world that while India was pursuing peace, the Pakistani establishment
was unwilling or unable to rein in the fanatics who were exporting terror.
 |
|
|
| ONE-WAY
TRUCE: Farooq's opposition and rising violence are threatening to
negate any diplomatic gain that Vajpayee may have counted on with
an extended cease-fire |
Unlike last
year's short-lived Hizb-ul Mujahideen cease-fire initiative in which the
Centre emerged as pro-peace and the Hurriyat and Pakistan the spoilers,
this time the gambit hasn't entirely gone Delhi's way. The architects
of the cease-fire-and they include PMO officials-believed they would be
able to show up the Hurriyat as a divided house. Now they find they have
erred on two counts.
First, the
belief that the Hurriyat would be persuaded not to boycott the panchayat
elections under way in the state. Secondly, and more important, they were
reasonably sure of persuading the Hurriyat moderates to keep Jamaat-e-Islami's
(JEI) hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani at bay. They tried to get moderates
like their chairman Abdul Ghani Bhat and senior leader Abdul Ghani Lone
to include JEI chief G.M. Bhat instead of Geelani as that party's representative
in the delegation that was named for Pakistan. The strategy failed.
The embarrassment
wasn't only on account of having provided a degree of legitimacy to the
Hurriyat, which claims to be the "true" representative of the
Kashmiris. The Centre now does not know how to wriggle out of issuing
passports to the entire team without appearing a spoiler. Home Minister
L.K. Advani has categorically said that only those "eligible"
will be given travel documents but a section of the PMO is still in favour
of letting the full team travel. Their reasoning: they can only return
empty-handed for they are not in a position to even temporarily silence
the guns of groups like the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). But even as the debate
over the Hurriyat delegation rages and acquires shades of a Home Ministry-versus-PMO
tussle, the news from the Valley is grim.
The security
forces in Kashmir are getting increasingly impatient with the one-sided
truce that has been bleeding them more than the militants. For them, the
cease-fire has turned into a "game of diminishing returns",
and there are unmistakable signs of exasperation. It is the militants
who have been making the most of the "go-soft" approach by reactivating
cadres and shifting bases from the hinterland to the urban areas. The
militants have quietly reversed the pre-cease-fire ascendancy of the security
forces.
The rising
graph of militant violence is a stark indicator of the slide back. This
is what Farooq told Vajpayee when he met him on January 18 to explain
why the cease-fire should not be extended. Pleased with the panchayat
poll turnout, Farooq is once again positioning himself as the only player
who can be relied on to bat for India.
Pg
2
Top
|
METRO TODAY
