23 Oct, 2009
IT is unbelievable but Srinagar has changed beyond recognition in the past four years since I was there last. Right from the swanky new airport to the hotel, a distance of about 10 km, there is modern construction.
However, trees have been cut down mercilessly to accommodate fancy thoroughfares. Walls running along the road have been demolished and the rubble is there for all to see. As I covered the journey to my hotel, I missed the old Kashmiri houses from where women with long trinkets would peer out.
Shops are well stocked and full of customers. Too much money is flowing in and the guess is that it is from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and India in that order. The number of cars on the road is many times more than before. There are traffic jams and one has to keep the snarls in mind when one plans a trip. People move freely. I saw many women on the road without burka or headwear.
Militancy is by and large over. Some terrorists strike once in a while. They attacked the police at Lal Chowk recently. But I get the feeling that the media magnifies stray incidents. When attacks were a regular feature, there was curfew after sunset. Now the people are on the road even at 11 pm.
I did not see a single policeman on the road from the airport. Bunkers are mostly gone. I found one at Lal Chowk where some policemen stood with their fingers on the trigger. Papa One and Papa Two, the interrogation centres, have been closed. But detentions still take place. The biggest worry is the occasional disappearance of youth. Incidents like the rape of two women at Shopian are rare. But whenever they take place, they infuriate the people to the extent that they come out on the streets.
The mode of search, whether of a vehicle or a person, has changed. Policemen are more polite and less intrusive. Still a member of a very respected family told me how he and his wife were stopped on the road. A policeman wanted to search the woman but on his insistence a female officer did so.
The anti-India feeling is there beneath the surface. People are not afraid of saying so. However, pro-Pakistan sentiments have practically disappeared, more because of the Kashmiris’ perception of the mess in which the country is.
I found the Hurriyat leaders sober. One leader told me that they had vibes from Delhi that something positive would emerge. They are looking forward to talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. There is an effort to have a consensus among the different parties, including the Hurriyat, before the prime minister’s arrival. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah wants New Delhi to talk to all political parties but has also emphasised that India should have a dialogue with Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir problem.
It was an interesting talk which I heard when I was sitting with the Hurriyat leaders. A young Pakistani American told them that what had surprised him after the span of three years since his last visit was that Kashmir was “being assimilated by India quickly”. They were embarrassed but did not want to reply to him in my presence.
Born in Kashmir, this young man is a member of a think tank in Washington. He told them that free state elections, watched by a large number of Americans on televisions, had made a great impression. He said they were beginning to believe that the problem was “more or less over”.
Former chief minister Farooq Abdullah is more candid than his son, Omar, who is losing his popularity fast. Farooq says there are “paid lobbies” in the state to keep the problem alive. He accuses security forces, politicians and bureaucrats of having “a vested interest in the Kashmir crisis”. He has a point when he says that New Delhi has failed to make headway in resolving the problem. Not many solutions are hawked about now.
There is a suggestion that both Kashmirs should be demilitarised, India withdrawing its forces from the valley and stationing them on its border and Pakistan doing likewise and pulling out its forces from Azad Kashmir. But this depends on India and Pakistan reaching a settlement, supported by the Kashmiris.
The problem of Jammu and Ladakh has become ticklish. They do not want to stay with the valley. Jammu wants to join India and Ladakh wants a union territory status. True, the Hurriyat has never tried to woo Jammu and has seldom cared for the Kashmiri Pandits languishing there. Still both Jammu and Ladakh can be brought around if they were to be given an autonomous status by the valley within the state.
I have no doubt that the Kashmir problem will be solved sooner or later. But too much has happened in the state in the past. This makes it difficult for the old Kashmir to come back to life. Familiar symbols are dying. Sufism has been replaced by assertive teachings. Kashmiri music is dying out because society has been forced to acquire a religious edge. Old crafts attract fewer artisans because there is a race to earn a quick buck. The wazwan, a string of Kashmiri dishes served at one sitting, is still there but new cooks are hard to get.
The reintegration of Muslims and Pandits appears difficult. An Islamic identity has taken shape, reportedly more in the countryside. Kashmiriyat, a secular ethos, is beyond repair. The animosity among the three regions Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh, may dilute but will remain. It may still remain the state of Jammu and Kashmir. But its soul would be missing.
Courtesy: Dawn
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Any solution for
Dr Tariq Rahman
Resolving the issue and having peace is a matter of prosperity and power for
For
Why are we sitting on this ticking time bomb? Well, because we followed policies which brought us to this pass. Even if we dismiss Maj-Gen Akbar Khan’s account which suggests that the tribesmen who went into Kashmir in 1947 were aided by the employees of the state — if not the politico-legal decision-makers of the state — we still have to account for the follies of 1965, the proxy war with India from 1989 until recently and the Kargil operation of 1999.
It is said that all followed the same strategy: fighters were allegedly facilitated across the LOC in the hope of their sparking a revolt against
One fallout that nobody foresaw was the unleashing of militancy in the name of Islam. The young men who were brainwashed were from families which had been denied food, education and the comforts of life. Above all, they were neglected and insulted and abused. But now they have guns and an ideal, and one they consider sacred, to live for. They are not easy to defeat by the Pakistani state. That is why
The rationalisation of
Pakistani excuses have been just as hollow. If it was a question of the faith of the ruled, the Junagadh ruler’s decision to accede to
In any case, the Muslim League never applied the religion-based principle — nor did the Congress — to the princely states. So let us modify what I said before — nationalists don’t bother about the ruled; all they want is the territory they inhabit. Unfortunately, the common people of
More sophisticated people talk about the water which flows through
If
Courtesy: Dawn
Kashmir -- at a crossroads, again?
By Dr Maleeha Lodhi
The writer is a former envoy to the US and the UK, and a former editor of The News.
The news from occupied Kashmir in recent days has been dominated by the political drama of Omar Abdullah's resignation and then resumption of chief ministership amid allegations of his involvement in a scandal. But this farcical row between the state government and opposition does not obscure the reality of renewed unrest in the Valley, which remains the world's most militarized region. Its latest expression has been the popular protests over the Shopian atrocity.
Public anger erupted two months ago over the rape and murder of a pregnant woman and her teenage sister-in-law at the hands of state security forces. Initial denial of this crime and an official cover up intensified the public outrage. Even as the chief minister relented and ordered an inquiry, the protests widened beyond Shopian and spread across Kashmir.
The Shopian rape case was only the latest instance of the violence inflicted by security forces in the past two decades. It was a consequence of the "structural realities of militarization in Kashmir that foster genderised and sexualized violence", according to a brief prepared by an Indian NGO, the International Peoples' Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice.
Unrest over Shopian quickly morphed, as discontent on most issues in Kashmir often does, into strident demands for an end to Indian rule. This prompted The Economist in its June 27 issue to comment: "Sixty two years after India secured the richest portion of Kashmir, its Muslim inhabitants miss no chance to tell it to leave." Demonstrations continued through July over a series of other deaths which implicated the security forces.
Attending an international Kashmir conference last week in Washington against this backdrop, I found one question dominate the two day proceedings. This being: which way is the youth-driven peaceful movement, evidenced in the recent demonstrations as well as in the much bigger protests last year, headed? Organized by that indefatigable champion of the Kashmir cause, Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, the conference (attended by participants from the occupied state, India, Pakistan, Azad Kashmir, the US and Britain) posed a set of linked questions. What could happen if the Kashmiri struggle that has increasingly assumed the shape of a nonviolent movement, fails to achieve its objectives; if its grievances are not addressed; if the stalled Pakistan-India dialogue is unable to alleviate the demands of the movement? Will this be a game-changer?
To understand the significance of these questions, it is necessary to place them in the context of what has been happening in Jammu and Kashmir since 2008. This is the year the Indian authorities declared as the most nonviolent since 1989, when the Kashmir uprising began. The militancy, according to Indian officials, had been "crushed". A relative, though surface calm prevailed.
The eruption of protests shattered this illusion of normalcy.2008 witnessed the highest number of anti-India protests in Kashmir's recent history. The catalyst was the controversial government decision to transfer forest land to the trust that administered the Hindu Amarnath shrine. This provoked intense opposition, as Kashmiri Muslims saw parallels between this and Israeli settlement policy, and construed this as a design to alter the state's demographic and religious balance.
This triggered the largest demonstrations Kashmir had seen since the uprising broke out in 1989-1990. The protests snowballed into a people's movement with tens of thousands taking to the streets. When the government rescinded the decision, a blockade of the Valley imposed by Hindu nationalists in Jammu, added fuel to Kashmir's fire. Mass protests swelled to unleash long pent-up tensions.
While there were parallels with the political unrest of 1989, there were also important differences. What distinguished the 2008 upheaval from the past – there were several eyewitness accounts at the Washington conference – was that it was youth-led, remarkably well-organized and self disciplined as well as clear in articulating its demands. The protests of June-August 2008 saw tech-savvy students use the web to spread their message; they blogged their grievances and posted videos on You Tube. The authorities blocked internet access, but this did not dampen the rising wave of mass protest. The demand for "azadi" from Indian rule was articulated by those who had grown up on the memories and experience of 20 years of repression, torture, and the daily humiliation of occupation. "Nobody amongst us saw a childhood", said a young protestor. In a seminal piece in Outlook (1 Sept, 2008), Arundhati Roy wrote: "the young generation discovered the power of mass protest…. and the dignity to speak for themselves" and this became "a plebiscite that was never held".
The Kashmiri leadership was re-empowered by the people and forced to forge a common front. As the leader of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), Mirwaiz Umer Farooq put it at the time: "Purely indigenous, purely Kashmiri, even we were surprised by the force" of the protests.
The mass agitation shook the Indian establishment. Unable to blame Pakistan or the militants, Delhi didn't know how to respond. But respond it did with characteristic heavy handedness: a massive crackdown that left over 40 people dead, including an APHC leader, and hundreds injured. The movement's demands were contained in a memorandum handed in at the local UN office on August 18, 2008. This called for an end to Indian occupation, deployment of a UN peacekeeping force and an investigation into two decades of war crimes by India's security forces.
This was no passing episode as the renewal of protests in 2009 testified. It marked a new phase in the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination: using peaceful means of mass protests to press their case. At the conference it was not just Kashmiris from the Valley who stressed this point, but several Indian participants who also said that the mass rallies belied the official claim that elections had settled the issue. All of this raised the all-important question: if peaceful protests fail, what then?
An Indian delegate, Gautam Navlakha, from the Economic and Political Weekly, put it starkly. "If this peaceful movement does not find a democratic solution, the young will pick up the gun". He warned of radicalization on an unprecedented scale if Kashmiri aspirations are not addressed. This echoed what Mirwaiz had declared at the height of last year's upsurge: "The young will be forced to take up arms."
As for the likely response from Delhi, Mr Navlakha made the following comment: "For two decades well-intentioned Indians used to say that if the Kashmiris abandoned armed struggle, the Indian government would respond to their demands. But this has turned out to be a lie".
Other Indian participants concurred. Harinder Baweja, a journalist from Tehelka, spoke of India's enduringly obdurate stance of "containing" and "managing", rather than addressing the roots of Kashmiri alienation. An American academic, Dr Richard Shapiro injected into the debate his observation that Delhi uses the terrorism issue to "legitimate its repression of the Kashmiri people: traitors and terrorists become the template for the disproportionate violence unleashed in Kashmir".
The warnings voiced at the conference about the danger of radicalization suggests that the crisis has come full circle in Kashmir. Between 1987-89, a wave of peaceful protests swept the Valley, sparked initially by a rigged election. This was followed by the Gawkadal massacre in January 1990, when unprovoked firing by security forces on unarmed demonstrators, including women and children, in Srinagar left a record number of people dead. This became a defining moment in Kashmir's tortuous history and contributed to the conditions that led to armed resistance.
Kashmir may once again be at a critical turning point. What happens next can have grave implications for the region and beyond. Despite the potential ramifications for US policy in the region, it is astonishing that no American official came to the conference to learn about current dynamics in the world's most dangerous flash point, and listen to the grim prognosis from a diverse array of speakers.
The international community ignores the Kashmir powder keg at its peril. With Pakistan-India relations back to the default setting of 'no war, no peace, and no solutions to disputes', this does not hold out any promise of addressing Kashmiri aspirations and alleviating their plight. Tensions between the nuclear neighbours can easily be re-ignited by turmoil in the Valley. Paralysis in peace making and international apathy only heightens the danger in a volatile region that is poised at a tipping point.
Aug04,2009
Courtesy: The News
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