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The situation in Jammu and Kashmir - The External Dimension | Since the day the Radcliffe Award was announced, Pakistan has tried every trick in the book to wrest Kashmir from
India. Whether it was to send in 'raiders' in 1947 or 'infiltrators' in 1965, whether it was training and sending in 'militants' since the late 1980s or Kargil
in 1999, Pakistan has pursued a single-minded policy on Kashmir. Irrespective of whether it was a short-lived democratic government under the shadow of the
military or the military itself, Pakistan's objective on Kashmir has been unwavering.
Pakistan's policy of waging a proxy war against India during the last two decades
has been well documented, well established and an internationally recognized fact.
It requires no repetition here. What is relevant to the current situation in Kashmir
is that Pakistan was caught unaware as was India when the agitations started in
June and took the shape that they have taken. Make no mistake about it. Pakistan
did not engineer the situation of the Machhil killing nor the mishandling of the
situation by the state government thereafter. What it has done is to take advantage
of the situation once it started to deteriorate. A direction from across the border
to agents in Kashmir to ensure agitations and violence in order to invite retaliation
by the security forces has also been documented. Pakistan's glee at the fury of
the agitators can well be imagined. The anti-India slogans and slogans of Azaadi,
while there in the background for the last two decades, have assumed an intensity
and volume not heard since the early 1990s. For Pakistan, it is again a situation
of now or never for Azaadi, an opportunity to wrest Kashmir that has presented
itself on a platter. In the 1990s, Pakistan had literally jumped the gun. Impatient
with political protests, marches and bandh calls, it had injected violence with
the hope that the process of 'Kashmir banega Pakistan' would be hastened. The
policy boomeranged. The Indian state has demonstrated that it can deal with violence
till the cows come home. But in the process, the Kashmiri struggle got discredited.
The international community was unwilling to accept violence as a means to change
the status quo. Moreover, to sustain levels of violence, Pakistan had first to
sideline the pro-Independence JKLF and build and project the Kashmiri alternative.
When that was not enough, it started injecting Pakistanis and others, the 'mehmans',
in a plethora of tanzeems. After various experiments and permutations and combinations,
they finally came up with the Lashkar, the Lashkar-e-Toiba. For a long time, it
was an article of faith with Pakistan that India could be brought to the negotiating
table only if the level of violence was notched up greatly in Kashmir- a kind
of softening up of India. This would force India to talk and to give concessions.
With violence not finding international acceptance, the current turmoil has suited
it very well. Recall the glee with which Pak Foreign Minister Qureshi told the
Pakistan media that how the situation in Kashmir would find a mention in the talks.
In fact, Pakistan used the Kashmir situation to blunt India's call for action
against the 26/11 perpetrators and in the process sidelined terrorism being the
main issue on the agenda. Why Pakistan will not rein in or act decisively against
the Lashkar will be the subject of another piece. Suffice to say here that despite
the political track being pursued by Pakistan at present, it has in no way given
up on the training and arming of militants, especially of the Lashkar variety.
It will also try and push in agent provocateurs to keep the agitational pot boiling
and at the appropriate juncture, instigate violence to provoke retaliatory firing
by the security forces. However, the issue is not merely of Pakistan not reining
in the Lashkar to do its bidding in Kashmir and in India. The danger to Kashmiriyat,
to Kashmiri culture, ethos, and way of life from the Lashkar is far worse than
anything that they have faced so far. The government, both state and central,
have totally failed to project this to the Kashmiris and to show what its real
agenda and that of Pakistan is. While Pakistan is certainly euphoric about developments
in Kashmir and about the opportunity that has presented itself, yet, it would
view these very developments with some amount of concern for two reasons: First,
recent developments have put the spotlight on Geelani and catapulted him in a
leadership role. In India, Geelani is viewed as a hardliner, even though it was
his call that was largely responsible for the agitators to stop stone pelting
and damaging public property. However, Pakistan has little reason to cheer about
him either. To them, he is an obstinate man who resisted pressures from Musharraf
downwards to change his stance on the Hurriyat or Musharraf's proposals a few
years ago. It was largely due to Geelani's obstinacy that Musharraf was not able
to achieve what he so desperately wanted. Second, while Pakistan has definite
links with the Hurriyat and that generation of Kashmiris, it is as ignorant as
India about the leadership profile of Gen Next. Worse, as most people have realized,
Gen Next is on the rebound from the Pakistan-sponsored violence of the past two
decades that has got them only body bags but no Azaadi. That it is equally on
the rebound from the traditional Kashmiris politicians would provide little comfort
to Pakistan. Moreover, the jury is still out on whether Gen Next has bought the
Pakistani argument that Azaadi means accession to Pakistan. It is one thing to
shout anti-India slogans, it quite another to sacrifice Azaadi to fulfill Pakistani
aspirations. Rest assured, in the coming days, weeks and months, Pakistan would
pull out all stops to establish linkages with Gen Next and dictate their agenda
of 'Kashmir banega Pakistan'. Already Syed Salahuddin has been brought out from
semi-retirement and made to give inflammatory speeches that have been relayed
in various mosques. For India, this is both an opportunity and a challenge to
get its act together and reach out to Gen Next before it is too late for this
generation, too.
(The above article is the personal views expressed by the
author.) |
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