NEWSLINKS
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTION 99
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

The Rediff Special/ The Economist

Talking and killing in Kashmir

SOPORE, an apple-growing centre 40km north of Srinagar, has seen more than its share of turmoil during Kashmir's decade-long insurgency, but on May 25 it was perversely quiet, its streets deserted but for nervous, helmeted police. The bodies of six young men from the area had just been brought back from graves near the Line of Control that divides Kashmir into areas administered by India and Pakistan. They were killed while sneaking into Pakistan for training in terrorism, say the authorities. They were murdered, say the locals. Their protest the day before prompted the undeclared curfew.

Not far down the road back towards Srinagar, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, intercepted on his way to console the young men's families, sat with several comrades on the verandah of a police station. The government caused a flurry of excitement recently by offering to talk to the All Party Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella organisation for separatist groups, of which Geelani is chairman. He is not in a talking mood. "Is this an atmosphere for dialogue?" he asked. The government's offer of talks is aimed at "deceiving the world community".

Where Geelani sees deceit, normally despairing Kashmir watchers see a smidgen of hope. The Indian government recently released several Hurriyat leaders from jail, under pressure, it is widely thought, from Bill Clinton, who had visited India and Pakistan in March. Around that time, India suggested talks.

"It is an enormous shift on Delhi's side to be suggesting dialogue at all," said a Western diplomat in the Indian capital. Though the offer has yet to be made formally, the separatists are thinking about it. Dialogue, if it happened, would be merely the first knot in a giant carpet. Peace would have to take account of Kashmir's minorities -- including the Hindus of Jammu and the Buddhists of Ladakh -- as well as the Muslims of the Kashmir valley, which the Hurriyat mainly represents. It requires the assent of Pakistan, which provides the bases and, probably, the money on which the separatist militants depend. It would have to settle not only who governs Kashmir but also how. Corruption and injustices by the current state and central governments fuel separatist sentiment; it will not go away if a new dispensation delivers the same bad sort of government.

And there is something of a deadline for progress: if the Hurriyat boycotts the state assembly elections due in 2002, the current initiative will have been a failure. Two formal obstacles stand in the way of talks. One is India's insistence that they should take place within 'the framework of the Constitution', which no group in the Hurriyat accepts. The second is the Hurriyat's demand that the talks must include Pakistan, which controls about a third of the state and regards the rest of it as its rightful territory. India considers Kashmir an integral part of the union and is not about to negotiate with Pakistan over its sovereignty.

The hurdles are surmountable. India can treat its Constitution as sacrosanct without insisting that the Hurriyat does likewise; perhaps India can avoid talking to Pakistan and the Hurriyat at the same time or in the same place. The bigger snares are thickets of politics and ideology in which all the principals are enmeshed. The Indian government, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has little tolerance for special claims by minorities, is ambivalent about talks and likely to be more so about the sort of autonomy that some separatists might accept in lieu of secession. The Hurriyat has two dozen constituent groups, which disagree about such basic ideas as whether Kashmir should be independent or part of Pakistan and whether it should be secular or religious.

Outsiders read the failure so far to find a successor to Geelani, whose term as chairman expired in April, as evidence of rifts. The most dangerous and implacable foes of Indian rule fall outside the Hurriyat's large tent. They include Pakistan-based militant groups such as Jaish-i-Muhammad, which supply much of the manpower to the insurgency, in which 25,000-70,000 people (depending who you believe) have so far died. These largely foreign fundamentalists are uneasily allied with the Hurriyat; they could turn hostile to leaders thought insufficiently committed to Islam or to Pakistan.

Pakistan itself has little reason to cheer better relations between India and the separatists. India refuses to talk to Pakistan since its forces seized and briefly held territory on India's side of the Line of Control last year. If talks between India and the Hurriyat make headway, it is likely to be at the expense of Pakistan's aspiration to rule the state.

Pakistan's military-led government may not have enough influence over militant groups to deliver peace, but it has enough clout to veto it. Yet the prospective participants also have something to gain from dialogue. Pakistan, potentially the biggest loser, faces international pressure not to stand in the way. India may spy an opportunity to detach the Hurriyat from Pakistan, and parts of the grouping from each other. The Hurriyat's leaders must balance the risks of being co-opted against the chance to be recognised as the representatives of the valley's Muslims and to do them some good.

An explosion a day

'Peace with honour' is a formula often heard on the lips of moderate Kashmiris. At the moment there is neither. The insurgency is running at full tilt, with bomb attacks on the security forces and other official targets. On May 15, the state's power minister and four of his companions were killed in a blast. Hardly a day seems to go by in Srinagar, the summer capital, without an explosion. India's efforts to contain the menace are winning it no friends. Kashmiri leaders say the number of custodial killings -- essentially, murders of suspected militants held in custody -- has risen, a claim backed by human rights groups in Delhi.

The authorities insist that such charges are cooked up by separatists for political purposes. Perhaps, but without independent investigations and punishment of the guilty, few Kashmiris will believe that. The father of 15-year-old Riaz Ahmed Kaboo, one of the dead boys from Sopore, expects 'no justice' for his son. The comments of a senior policeman would not change his mind. He indicated that it was an open and shut case of legitimate force and the investigation would take a 'couple of days'.

Talks with the Hurriyat would not clean up the justice system, satisfy Pakistan's ambitions, reassure Kashmir's minorities or turn separatists into loyal Indians. They might lower the level of violence and of hostility between the security forces and the people they ought to be protecting. Kashmir's Muslims might even begin to feel that India's government was listening to them.

Kind courtesy: The Economist

The Rediff Specials

Tell us what you think of this feature