Excelsior Special Correspondent
JAMMU, Aug 4: Post-1990 heads of successive Governments in Jammu and Kashmir have had a common factor: acting as one-man Army against the secessionist militancy. Chief Minister here has a dual role. As chairman of Unified Headquarters, he has to direct and regulate the counterinsurgency operations of different armed forces and Police. As democratically elected head of a representative civilian Government, he has got to provide leadership to the entire political establishment.
While as in the Unified Headquarters, Chief Minister can succeed in his objective of restoration of peace only when he enjoys support and confidence from all constituents of the law and order and counterinsurgency grid, as the head of a political establishment he needs to have all of its political colleagues—Ministers, MLAs, MLCs and non-legislator leaders—on his back in the matter of restoration and sustenance of peace.
Former Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah deserves credit for firmly overruling all bureaucratic opinion in evolving a brand new system, constituting Unified Headquarters and accepting GOCs of Srinagar-based 15th Corps and Nagrota-based 16th Corps as his ‘Security Advisors’. That formulation moved smoothly through the regimes subsequently run by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, Ghulam Nabi Azad and now Omar Abdullah.
Notwithstanding the fact that over 90% of the complaints of human rights abuse lodged with the National Human Rights Commission could not be established during scrutiny and investigation, Dr Abdullah took a historic initiative in constituting J&K’s own State Human Rights Commission. Cynics quite often dismissed it as a ‘toothless tiger’ but a many facts—particularly the one that even today scores of complainants are approaching it with their faith—indicate that the Commission is not fully devoid of utility.
While Farooq’s successor, Mufti Sayeed, brought about veritable change in the situation with his ‘healing touch’ policy, Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad created history by putting senior Police officials, including SSPs, behind bars. Then SP Ganderbal, Hans Raj Parihar, will be shortly completing six years of continuous detention in jail.
In 2010, Omar Abdullah went a step farther by getting a BSF Commanding Officer arrested on an allegation according to which a paramilitary cavalcade had opened fire and killed a teenager under the officer’s orders in Nishat area of Srinagar.
On the other hand, all Chief Ministers provided unflinching support to armed forces in wiping out remnants of insurgency. Militancy has, by all admissions, fallen to its lowest ebb. Why then is peace so fragile in the Valley?
Notwithstanding his ultra-patriotic posture—some called it jingoism—the first post-1990 Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah emerged as a one-man Army against militants, Hurriyat and Pakistan. He pulled massive crowds and organized public rallies on occasions like the Martyrs Day of July 13th and Sheikh Abdullah’s death and birth anniversaries. On the other hand, most of Dr Abdullah’s Ministers and legislators remained tightlipped and hardly one of them confronted the secessionist forces politically. Even the party’s General Secretary took pride in claiming to the “only Kashmiri” who had never visited Delhi in the last 30 years.
Failing to take advantage of the changing situation in Kashmir and regaining confidence and empowerment of the anti-violence and pro-peace masses, NC ended up as a great loser in 2002 elections. Hardly anything substantial was done to strengthen and expand the base of the constituency that had refused to identify itself with the menacingly growing radicalism and culture of bloodshed in Pakistan.
Over the last 23 years, Police and security forces have done their maximum in curbing armed insurgency. By all official admissions, not more than 200 militants do still exist in Valley and most of them are on the run. Had the volume of insurgency alone been a problem, Kashmir would have regained the sheen it lost in 1990.
Conflict analysts are unanimous over the fact that the real job of restoration and protection of peace lies in pro-people political activity and good governance. Placating the rivals—some call it appeasement to separatists—is bound to be counterproductive. This plank failed in getting back Mufti Mohammad Sayeed as Chief Minister in 2008. Even in the Valley mainland, tally of the “anti-Hurriyat, anti-militant, anti-Pakistan” National Conference was no less than PDP’s in the 2008 Assembly elections. PDP not only lost two of the three Assembly segments in by-elections of 2006 but also failed to win a single Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha seat in 2009-10.
With Mufti functioning as Head of the Government and Chairman of Unified Headquarters, his daughter and PDP President, Mehbooba Mufti, outsmarted all separatist leaders in condemning “atrocities” by security forces, issuing statements and staging demonstrations against Police and units of armed forces allegedly involved in an incident of human rights abuse. Rather than empowering secular and nationalist forces, PDP played second fiddle to Hurriyat and other separatist outfits. Its key demands remained restricted to revocation of J&K AFSPA, withdrawal of troops, releasing of militants, involving Hizbul Mujahideen and Hurriyat in Indo-Pakistan dialogue process.
Even as Mufti simultaneously carried the mantle of nationalism and enjoyed Delhi’s confidence, almost all of his party colleagues exhausted whole time and energy in pulling down NC, demeaning Sheikh Abdullah’s dynasty and calling Kashmir an international dispute. That only buttressed what the politicians and military rulers had been saying in Islamabad and people like Syed Ali Shah Geelani in Srinagar. Litmus test of who had stolen whose base in Valley came first in 2008 and later in 2010. Both times, not only the nationalist NC but also the pseudo-separatist PDP vanished from the surface. The slogan was: Jeevay jeevay Pakistan and kaun karega tarjumani: Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
For a change, Ghulam Nabi Azad always called the militants as “terrorists”. Among the three Chief Ministers, he floated a major developmental package, focused sharply of governance and asserted loudly against corruption. It was decades after Bakhshi Ghulam Mohammad’s Government that someone was out to transform Kashmir into a developmental constituency. Azad introduced double-shift system of working in PWD and spent enough of his time visiting sites and reviewing the construction programmes with officials and bureaucrats. Still, most of his political colleagues and party men remained either mute or apologetic to the forces of secessionism.
Demonstrating lack of self-confidence and labouring under complexes of inferiority and insecurity, NC in recent times has been a victim of identity crisis. Cadres whose grand fathers’ slogan was ‘halma aawar khabardaar ham Kashmiri hain tayyaar’ and whose father’s formed million-strong processions for Sheikh Abdullah until his death, are today barred from gathering at Martyrs Cemetery of Naqashband Sahab despite having their own government in place.
Observers believe that NC’s traditional strongholds in Muslim-dominated areas of Jammu, as well as in Valley, are shrinking not only for want of “full time leadership” [a President like Sheikh Abdullah and a General Secretary like Sheikh Nazir of 1980s] but also the inertia and inability of most of the young CM’s party colleagues in pursuing Sheikh’s legacy of pluralism, secularism and Kashmiriyat.
As long as the resultant political vacuum is advantage Pakistan, Hurriyat and militants, prospects of a 2008 and 2010 ‘Ragda’ are very much there.
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