Although the Indian media has largely downplayed Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s thinly veiled threat that “guns can be a permanent solution for Jammu and Kashmir”, after his November 10 meeting with Sartaj Aziz, security and foreign relations advisor to the Pakistan Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif, the statement cannot be divorced from the escalation of border incidents since the swearing in of the Nawaz Sharif regime, its patronage to the Jamaat ud Dawa, and attempts to persuade the US President to intervene in the issue.
Nor can it be delinked from the growing radicalisation of the Valley. Pakistani dissident journalist Tarek Fatah has observed that the so-called Kashmiri nationalism of the past has given way to hard-core pan-Islamism, with the youth between the ages of 15 and 30 years hoisting placards of Osama bin Laden and carrying Taliban flags in their anti-India rallies, while the Shia youth host pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini and Hezbollah. Fatah is visiting India and is currently in Srinagar; his observations are based on a simple walk around the Lal Chowk and conversations with police officials on duty.
Although Geelani later slightly modulated his stance to, “Guns could be one of the options for permanent solution of the Kashmir issue besides other political means,” political observers have no doubt that the separatist leader is stirring the pot with public rallies to advocate a boycott of next year’s Assembly and General elections. The ruling National Conference released Geelani from a nine month arrest just last week.
Geelani’s new found venom cannot be dissociated from Nawaz Sharif’s denigrating Dr Manmohan Singh as a “dehati aurat” to an Indian journalist in September, and attempting to involve US President Barack Obama in the issue in October. At present, the US has a $ 10 million bounty on the head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, believed to be the mastermind of the Mumbai 2008 terror attacks.
Then there are deeper undercurrents linked to America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan next year and anxiety to work out a deal with the Taliban. The Government of India recently granted a visa to Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the organisation’s contact person with the outside world, to visit the country. Observers feel that under Washington’s pressure, New Delhi may be exploring options for a ‘working relationship’ with the Taliban. Zaeef, a close confidante of Taliban chief Mullah Omar, was present at the Think Fest in Goa at the same time as Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram and other ministers. He is said to have delivered speeches at the event on both Saturday and Sunday (November 9 and 10).
New Delhi’s sudden shift has triggered concern in many quarters, as only in September, while attending the UN General Assembly in New York, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had told President Obama about the growing incidents on the border, including attacks in Jammu (on a police station and an army camp) emanating from Pakistan. Singh specifically mentioned the threat posed to India by the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which has received “handsome financial support” from the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) government of Punjab in Pakistan.
Meanwhile, separatist leader Asiya Andrabi, who also met Sartaj Aziz on Sunday, said she believed that Islamabad now felt that the policies pursued by General Pervez Musharraf were a “mistake” and that “self-determination” was the way ahead. This conforms to the observations made by Tarek Fateh. It is significant that the Pakistani High Commissioner to India, Salman Bashir, was present at the meeting with the hard core separatist Dukhtaran-e-Millat leader.
That a larger hand is operating behind the scenes seems obvious. For several weeks, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had raised temperatures in the State, making unilateral statements about the accession by the last Maharaja not amounting to ‘merger’ with the Indian Union. Now, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) leader Mehbooba Mufti has welcomed the meeting between Kashmiri separatists and Sartaj Aziz, saying the process “should be carried forward in all its dimensions”. She dismissed criticism of the meetings by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), pointing out that Hurriyat leaders have been meeting leaders in India and Pakistan for the past several years, and have even visited Pakistan many times.
The Pakistani Prime Minister’s top adviser, however, failed in his effort to get the Hurriyat factions led by Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, and the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik, to unite. All factions, as also Asiya Andrabi, met him separately. Meanwhile, in an attempt to deflect criticism of the Centre for permitting the separatist leaders to meet the Pakistan Prime Minister’s special advisor, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid, who met Sartaj Aziz on the sidelines of Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), said certain recent events were “not seen by the government or by anybody in India as encouraging”. Aziz met the Kashmiri separatists immediately after his arrival for ASEM ministerial meeting, which New Delhi felt was an “extremely unfortunate” misuse of a multilateral forum for partisan ends. The BJP president Rajnath Singh called it a “diplomatic blunder” by the UPA.
Aziz was denied audience by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Khurshid reportedly impressed upon him that peace and tranquility along the LoC was a precondition for forward movement in India-Pakistan relations. He regretted that Pakistan had done little to bring to justice the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attack.
The sudden revival of Geelani’s eminence, however, must be viewed as part of a larger Western strategy that goes back a long way. In 2010, when the stone-pelting saga was being staged with vicious ferocity against the police and security forces in Srinagar, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon made a series of statements about the need to end the unrest in the Valley, and expressed the hope that India and Pakistan would furnish an ‘official request’ for a UN role in Kashmir.
As if on cue, the UN Information Centre hosted an India Ragdo (crush India) type of seminar in its official premises in New Delhi on September 29, 2010. Disguised as a dialogue, Sisters for Peace: Voices from Kashmir, it was put together by the Women’s Initiative for Peace in South Asia (WIPSA), the National Foundation for India, and the UN Information Centre. The invitees were almost exclusively rabid secessionist women from Srinagar Valley, who loudly called for ‘azadi’ and even showed a short news clip that depicted the Syed Ali Shah Geelani as a hero of the so-called struggle for self-determination.
It goes without saying that the other non-Kashmiri panelists were proud anti-Hindu leftist-liberals; the politico-religious agenda was obvious. The few Muslims invited from regions like Ladakh were asked to “shut up” when they spoke against ‘azadi’. Later, when reports of the proceedings became known to the Union Home Ministry, Ban ki-Moon issued a public denial that the UN planned to interfere in Kashmir. But current developments make it imperative that all nationalist stakeholders keep a close eye on the situation pertaining to Jammu and Kashmir.
Niticentral.com, 13 November 2013