Kashmir:
The Hour of the Vulture
Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict
Management
A
plan of campaign should anticipate everything
which the enemy can do, and contain within itself
the means of thwarting him.
Napoleon
Bonaparte
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It
cannot be unreasonable to inquire whether there
are at least some avoidable deficiencies in a
‘peace process’ that so escalates violence, destabilizes
established equations, provokes a dramatic hardening
of positions, pushes areas of relative peace into
sudden carnage, raises political tempers and polarizes
political constituencies.
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The Indian
state bought itself a few precious days of ‘peace’ –
actually, the absence of fatalities (though some of
those injured in earlier violence did die during this
phase) or of high levels of mass violence – through
a relentless 15-day curfew that paralysed life across
the Valley, and the diversionary spectacle of the ‘All
Parties Delegation’ to Jammu & Kashmir (J&K).
The pious intentions of the Centre and the State Government
have, since, been encapsulated in an ‘eight point peace
package’
that has done nothing to assuage the volatile separatist
constituency in the State, and has been rejected even
by the ‘moderate’ factions of the Hurriyat.
Preliminary
reports at the time of writing suggest that, while curfew
has officially been lifted from ‘most parts’ of the
Valley, it is, in fact, even now been imposed in all
but a few upscale neighbourhoods and arterial roads
in Srinagar. As for the Government’s resolve to open
educational institutions, and to provide special and
dedicated transport, under protection, to school children,
this is already falling apart. Syed Ali Shah Geelani,
the principal leader of the current disorders, has already
announced a new ‘calendar’ of shutdowns, commencing
Monday, September 27, the date on which schools were
to open, and has declared, that, "by showing false
sympathy for our children, India is only trying to deceive
us." Early reports suggest that few children were
actually on the buses Monday morning, and several acts
of violence had already been witnessed, including damage
to vehicles, despite the overwhelming Security Forces’
(SFs) presence. The move to open schools can be expected
to quickly collapse, with few, if any, parents willing
to risk the lives of their children in the Centre’s
gambit.
Over
the past weeks, the sheer and criminal ignorance of
the policy discourse has been repeatedly exposed in
what appears to be a competition to produce the most
vapid statements. Among these, the winner must certainly
be UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s call for "an
immediate end to violence in Kashmir" and for "calm
and restraint by all concerned". Unsurprisingly,
the impact of this sanctimonious nonsense on the situation
in the Valley has been no different from that of the
high-sounding garbage that has been spewed out by many
‘leaders’ over the past twenty years of violence.
As for
the All Parties Delegation – that blind, ignorant clutch
at ‘peace’ – what were they thinking? What obscure secrets
was this gaggle of ill-informed politicians, drawn from
distant provinces across the country, expected to uncover
during their brief and directionless visit? Their ‘discoveries’
cannot conceivably have been expected to include anything
that was not already known to ‘Delhi’. What this sad
assemblage of discordant political voices has produced
is just another edition of the enduring incoherence
of policy that has systematically eroded governance
and the hard won possibilities of peace in J&K.
It cannot
have been otherwise. Initiatives based on contra-factual
assessments of the prevailing ground situation cannot
produce effective policy interventions, and the entire
political assessment of the situation in Kashmir, and
of the emergence of the current disorders, is contra-factual.
According
to the dominant narrative, the present ‘disorders’ or,
as the separatists like to style them, ‘intifada’,
commenced abruptly as a reaction to the death of Tufail
Ahmad Mattoo, who was fatally hit by a tear gas shell
on June 11, 2010. The internal contradiction of this
narrative should have been obvious at this very point:
evidently, the SFs were already using tear gas against
presumably violent crowds at this stage, so the disorders
clearly preceded this incident.
A quick
look at the facts – something ‘Delhi’ and the All Party
Delegation apparently have had little time for – will
establish that, with the sharp and continuous decline
in terrorist activities in J&K since 2001, essentially
as a result of rising internal and external pressures
on Pakistan, the separatists and their backers had decided
to engineer a transformation of their movement to an
intifada model – violent street mobilisation,
backed by calibrated terrorist incidents. Sufficient
cumulative intelligence of such intent has been available
over at least the past five years.
Crucially,
these intentions had already been irrevocably demonstrated
in several cycles of violent mobilisation, prominently
including widespread disruption in the wake of the ‘prostitution
scandal’ of March 2006; in June 2007, when the rape
and murder of a teenager became instrumental in escalating
an ongoing xenophobic campaign against the presence
of migrant workers in the State; by the Amarnath land
transfer agitation in June-August 2008; in 2009, again
through June-August, in mass agitations and violence
organised around the Shopian rape-murder allegations.
Between these major mobilisations, there were numerous
lesser attempts, focused around various ‘moral codes’,
‘anti-vice’ campaigns, ‘un-Islamic’ content of Television
broadcasts, etc., most of which failed to secure significant
traction, but each of which provoked some disruptions.
The current
cycle of violent mobilisation is variously dated from
June 11, 2010, the date on which Tufail Mattoo was killed;
or from June 26, 2010, with the Krankshivan incident,
in which protestors from Sopore confronted the Police
in the middle of a counter-terrorist operation. Two
terrorists were killed, but two protestors also lost
their lives.
It is,
however, altogether incorrect to believe that something
new was initiated, either on June 11 or June 26. Indeed,
protests had never ceased at any time in the post-Amarnath
campaign phase. Since the supposed ‘end’ of the Amarnath
agitation, there have, in fact, been several incidents
of stone pelting every single Friday, often at multiple
locations, with a particular focus in the Srinagar Downtown
area. There was also the major Safar-e-Azadi
(Journey to Freedom) campaign, which witnessed as many
as 1,260 separatist rallies across the Valley, as well
as the India Ragdo campaign, which saw significant
street mobilisation. The situation had, in other words,
been kept on a continuous simmer.
Partial
data available indicates that there were 350 pelting
incidents in 2008, with 750 injured. In 2009, there
were 250 incidents, with 250 injured. In just January
and February 2010, there were 60 incidents, with 240
injured. In addition, the number of Policemen injured
by stone pelters in these years were, 2008: 140; 2009:
320; 2010 (Jan-Feb): 96. Nearly 4,000 SFs and 504 civilians
have been injured in street violence over the past three
months, and a total of 103 protesters and one Policeman
have been killed since June 11, 2010.
Between
January 2010 and end-May 2010 alone, 9,300 tear gas
shells were used in as many as 519 incidents, well before
the present ‘crisis’ was acknowledged to have commenced.
More
than three weeks of continuous disorders had been experienced
after the killing of two protestors, one on February
2 and another on February 4, 2010. Even after the Tufail
Matoo killing of June 11, 2010, while the troubles persisted,
they did not escalate dramatically, despite two fatalities
on June 20 in Srinagar.
It was
only after the Krankshivan incident, with the dovetailing
of terrorist and street mobilisation, that an abrupt
escalation was witnessed. The situation was infinitely
compounded by the earlier release, on June 8, of Masarat
Alam, and the innovation of the ‘calendar’ of protests,
that was implemented through a complex of widespread
rage at the continuous civilian fatalities, street and
house to house mobilisation, and outright intimidation.
Through
all this, the ‘strategy’ – if any – of the administration
and the security establishment, was simply to wait for
the trouble to break out, and then to react with the
use of available Force. Inevitably, in each such cycle,
someone would die – the sheer dispersal and intensity
of the stone pelting incidents ensured this. Significant
indices of intensity are provided by the fact that as
many as 32,162 teargas shells had been used in just
the period between June 26 and August 25, 2010; and
just between June 1 and August 12, 2010, 1,129 stone
pelting incidents had been recorded [recorded incidents
do not reflect a very large number of minor incidents
involving a few individuals, where little damage is
caused], averaging nearly 27 incidents a day.
The response
of the SFs to the agitation reflects a comprehensive
crisis of capacities. The lack of non-lethal weapons
and of training has been widely commented upon, but
is not the heart of the failure. Irrespective of weaponry,
personal armour and training (which are, of course,
factors that must be separately evaluated) current deployments
cannot deliver effective non-lethal riot-control responses.
The dispersal and size of deployments is simply too
small for effective riot control. Small, heavily armed
units, in some cases issued with additional ‘non-lethal’
weapons, including tear-gas rifles, pellet guns and
lathis, are presently the norm. In every deployment
in the worst affected areas, these units are too small
and too widely dispersed to escape the risk of being
overrun without recourse to firing. Indeed, firing has
ordinarily been resorted to in precisely such situations,
where large and violent crowds are on the verge of overrunning
such deployments [though there have been confirmed reports
of at least some incidents of panic or otherwise unjustifiable
firing].
Through
all this, and in the years, preceding, a systemic perversion
of the political discourse in J&K has undermined
or even destroyed every constitutional and democratic
political constituency, even as it has strengthened
the separatists. Both the Government of India (GoI)
and the State Government have undermined democratic
legitimacy and institutions, discounted and discredited
elected leaderships, privileged violence, appeased the
most intractable political formations and failed to
punish even the most heinous crimes. While no history
of the systemic defalcations in this context is possible
here, some of its broader contours demand attention.
Historically,
of course, there has been the blemish of the rigged
elections of 1987, and the failure to honour electoral
outcomes before that. More recently, however, the Assembly
Elections of 2002 were widely acknowledged as excellent,
and suffered from no such distortions; the elections
of 2008, with their higher participation rates, even
greater transparency, and unqualified endorsement by
a number of international observers, were even better.
And yet, the Centre has not engaged with the elected
representatives in J&K as the principal, if not
exclusive, interlocutors of the people of the State.
Indeed, there has been a progressive concession of the
separatist position that State elections are, at best,
an administrative arrangement, and not a ‘political’
one.
This
is a message that has been communicated to the street
and the State polity through numberless decisions and
incidents. An example is the by-election of April 2006
in Sangrama, after the local incumbent, Ghulam Nabi
Lone, had been killed by terrorists. Simultaneous by-elections
were held in four troubled constituencies at this time,
three in the Baramulla District, and one in Doda. Despite
a boycott call by the separatist Hurriyat formations
and by the principal terrorist groups, and significant
efforts to derail the election process through violence,
the average turnout in the by-polls stood at an astonishing
75 per cent. In Sangrama, despite an Improvised Explosive
Device (IED) explosion a day before the elections, the
turnout was 62.2 per cent, as against 23.1 per cent
in the Assembly Elections of 2002. This was a resounding
rejection of both the separatists and of violence, and
a clear articulation of faith in the democratic process.
And yet, within days of the election results, the Prime
Minister made an unconditional offer of talks with the
Hurriyat and other separatist formations, and the focus
of the succeeding Round Table Conference was once again
on Hurriyat participation.
Indeed,
the various ‘round table’ and ‘all party’ conferences
have only deepened this process of marginalisation of
the democratic constituency. Whatever the formal proceedings
or profile of participants in any of these ‘processes’,
the political, media and public focus remains exclusively
on which elements of the separatist constituency choose
to attend, and which of them stay away, and what is
stated by either of these. No sustained effort has been
made either to centrestage elected leaders in these
conferences, or to bring a focus on any other region
of the State. Indeed, other groups have often been discouraged
from articulating their grievances for fear of offending
or alienating the purportedly reluctant participating
of the separatist constituency. The interactions of
the recent All Parties Delegation remained entirely
within this ‘tradition’.
Indeed,
the ‘messaging’ of the Centre and the State Government
within the current crisis has also been entirely counter-productive.
At the
very peak of the crisis, statements emanating from the
highest offices have sought to bring a focus on the
‘solution with Pakistan’ which was ‘imminent’ during
earlier rounds of the dialogue with that country; have
made a gratuitous offer of talks to the separatists,
and of an ‘all parties conference’ at a time when it
was inevitable that such an offer would only meet with
a snub; have repeatedly made offers of political and
economic ‘packages’ at a time when every constituency
has already articulated the position that such ‘packages’
are no longer the issue; have repeatedly and defensively
engaged in the separatist-formulated discourse on the
withdrawal or dilution of the Armed Forces Special Powers
Act (AFSPA); and have openly criticised the SFs even
in cases where such criticism was entirely unjustifiable.
In other
words, every element of the separatist critique has
been internalised in the establishment discourse without
any realistic assessment of fact or of political consequence.
To the extent that these offers and statements are read
in the street as signs of rising panic in Delhi, they
encourage the false impression that, with just a little
more escalation, the agitators could even secure their
goal of ‘Azadi’. Perception is the key here, not reality.
Perceptions of ‘reality’ in the street in Kashmir are
very different from perceptions in the corridors of
power in Delhi.
Crucially,
within the Valley, the Centre’s position is already
taken as having conceded autonomy as the baseline of
any future negotiation. The separatist baseline, on
the other hand, has been consolidated around ‘Azadi’.
The status quo has, in other words, been conceded
as unacceptable even by the Centre. But the status
quo is, in fact, governance within the secular democratic
framework of the Indian Constitution; and ‘autonomy’
in all its current formulations, necessarily implies
a new set of divisions within the State along communal
lines. Such a communal division militates fundamentally
against the spirit of the Constitution. No constituency
in J&K, and no leader within the Central establishment,
has ever had the courage to state clearly that there
are irreducible frictions within the Indian Constitutional
scheme and the Islamist separatist notions of autonomous
spheres of power between communal formations. Worse,
in conceding the principal of communal separation within
schemes of ‘autonomy’, the Centre only validates the
fundamental secessionist ideology of complete separation
of communal groups.
There
is, today, among pro-Indian and constitutional groupings
in J&K, an endemic sense of betrayal and mistrust
of what leaders in Delhi say and do. This can only have
been intensified by the ill-conceived comments by the
Cabinet Committee on Security, at the very height of
the current crisis in Kashmir, about a "governance
deficit" in the State. The reality is, the Omar
Abdullah Government, by most assessments – including
many among the separatist constituency – has been no
better and no worse than any of its predecessors. Just
a few months ago, between March and May 2010, the media
and Delhi were celebrating the unprecedented flood of
tourists into the Valley as a measure of Abdullah’s
grand success. Abruptly, the poster-boy of dynamic and
youthful politics has become the principal villain of
the piece, with the most irresponsible elements in Delhi
recklessly encouraging speculation on a change of guard
at Srinagar, even as the escalatory cycle was gathering
pace. The unfortunate truth is, reality and political
perceptions have little in common, and the national
interest has never been the core concern of the Centre’s
feckless and partisan politics in J&K.
As for
the ‘governance deficit’, it starts at Raisina Hill,
and projects disorder and lawlessness to every corner
of the country.
Unfortunately,
the State Government’s record has been no better. Through
a succession of decisions and pronouncements, the State
Government has directly undermined the legitimacy of
the SFs and their capacity to contain growing street
and persistent terrorist violence, even as they have
compromised the security grid. A few examples will suffice
to highlight the magnitude of this defalcation.
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At
the height of street violence, the State’s Law Minister
chose to make a public declaration that the Central
Reserve Police Force (CRPF) leadership had lost
command and control of its personnel.
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In
a number of cases, after allegations of SF excess
or error, the Government chose to shut down SF camps,
even where this compromised the security grid. The
shutting down of the camps at Bomai and Khaigam
are cases in point.
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Similarly,
the hasty and panicked action against more than
70 policemen, including senior officers, in the
wake of the fabricated Shopian allegations, and
in the face of violent street protests, again demonstrated
the infirmity of the Government, undermined Police
legitimacy and authority, and validated false charges.
The impression has gathered strength that Omar Abudllah’s
Government will undermine state institutions and
the security grid under pressure.
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When
Omar Abdullah resigned in the wake of the sex scandal
allegations against him, moreover, the perception
was that he could be easily hectored and bullied
by an aggressive opposition.
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Even
as the current stone pelting campaign gathered force,
the Government announced that it would ‘rehabilitate’
stone pelters, thus incentivising violence, even
as it conferred a projected immunity on the pelters.
Nothing could be more counter-productive at the
height of this crisis. [If anything, this factor
has been further compounded by the Centre’s ‘eight
point formula’, which includes the release, without
charge, of all persons arrested for stone pelting,
arson and other violence during the current street
mobilisation].
The reality
of Kashmir, today, is that carrion feeders thrive in
the politics of the Valley. The intifada grows
on dead bodies, and the separatist leaders and their
fellow travellers in ‘mainstream politics’ celebrate
the increasing numbers of their ‘martyrs’ as milestones
on the way to the fulfilment of their political ambitions.
Children, sometimes as young as nine and ten years old,
are intentionally and cynically being thrust into harm’s
way in violent demonstrations on the calculus that the
death of a young child – whatever the circumstances
– would provide extraordinary provocation for dramatic
escalation.
As with
terrorism, the current street violence in J&K is
the manifestation of conscious, often coercive, political
mobilisation by extremist ideological formations. One
thing that must be abundantly clear is that the present
mobilisation is Islamist extremist at its ideological
core, irrespective of its pretensions to 'Kashmiriyat'
and moderation. As one chronic stone pelter and street
mobiliser expressed it, in this ideosyncratic interpretation
of the Faith, "the stone is a weapon sanctioned
by Islam." There remains, however, a large and
silent majority that is increasingly frustrated by the
enduring disruption of their lives – and of the future
of their children – by these volatile groupings, and
there have been several, albeit minor, demonstrations
of this resentment. Regrettably, such opposition has
been quickly and brutally silenced by extremist groups,
even as the state stands by in mute witness.
The Government’s
spin doctors appear to have run out of spin, and are
now regurgitating tired, failed, clichés in new
‘formulae’, even as the intent, the purpose, and the
sheer relentlessness of the radicalised separatist constituency
in J&K, and of their backers in Pakistan, remains
abundantly clear. Through each preceding cycle of violence
in J&K, one truth has been demonstrated inexorably:
vacillation and the unwillingness to impose order in
the early stages of violence have eventually forced
ever greater bloodshed on the state. Yet, this is a
lesson that has been buried deep by the mandarins of
Delhi, who continue to peddle their magic remedies in
a blind search for peace.