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J&K: Forward to the Past?
K.P.S. Gill
President, Institute for Conflict Management
Three weeks of
negotiation, after the declaration of the fractured mandate in the State
Assembly elections in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), have finally yielded a
Chief Minister designate - ironically the leader not of the first or
second, but the third largest Party in the new Assembly. People's
Democratic Party (PDP) leader Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's 'victory' over
Ghulam Nabi Azad, who was projected as the Indian National Congress'
(INC) Chief Ministerial candidate, came after at least a measure of the
popular goodwill secured by the Alliance had been eroded in what was
seen as a somewhat unashamed scramble for the cakes and loaves of power.
Attempting to predict the future is, of course, an activity fraught with
danger, but it is safe to speculate on the basis of the historical
record that Sayeed's elevation at the present stage of the conflict in
J&K bodes ill for the counter-terrorism effort in the State. Sayeed was
Home Minister in the ill-fated V.P. Singh regime that came to power at
Delhi in December 1989, and, to those unfamiliar with the facts, such
experience may suggest strong qualification to deal with the problems
that plague J&K. The truth, however, is that as Home Minister, Sayeed
was an unmitigated disaster. On December 11, 1989, barely five days
after he was sworn in, Sayeed's daughter - Rubaiya Sayeed - was abducted
by what was at that time an inchoate and insignificant separatist group
in Kashmir. Even as intelligence agencies were negotiating the release
of the hostage, the Centre unconditionally conceded all the terrorists'
demands, and with this single act of abject capitulation all of Kashmir
simply exploded into a full-blown insurgency within days. The Rubaiya
Sayeed incident - and the then Central government's response to this
crisis - is now widely acknowledged as the central event that triggered
the terrorism in J&K that is now in its thirteenth year, and has already
cost at least 33,159 lives in the State.
The Rubaiya Sayeed incident sent out an unmistakable message to
extremists all over the country: the new Government - and evidently its
Home Minister - had neither the will nor the understanding to define and
implement a cogent and resolute policy against terrorist violence. The
impact was pervasive, as the case of Punjab - at that time afflicted by
India's bloodiest terrorist movement - illustrates. When the V.P. Singh
regime took over, the Sikh fundamentalist terrorist movement in the
province of Punjab had been pushed inexorably into a corner, with over
76 per cent of all incidents contained within four police districts of
the State (out of a total of 15 police districts), along the border with
Pakistan. Indeed, even within these districts, the terrorists' sway was
limited, with just 13 police stations (out of 217 police stations in the
State) accounting for nearly 65 per cent of all terrorist crime. The
V.P. Singh government implemented a policy of conciliation and
appeasement encapsulated in a phrase the then Prime Minister was
inordinately fond of using: 'healing hearts'. It was assumed that, with
a few sympathetic, sentimental gestures, the terrorist movement - at
that time in its tenth year in Punjab - would simply 'wither away'.
Instead, the years 1990-1991 proved to be the bloodiest in the entire
course of the terrorist movement in the State [Fatalities:
1990 - 4263; 1991 - 5265; as against 1988 - 2432; 1989 - 2072] as
terrorists coordinated their activities with increasingly powerful and
disruptive overground political movements. By the end of the brief V.P.
Singh regime, only four of the 15 police districts in Punjab registered
a monthly average of civilian casualties below 10, and terrorist
violence engulfed virtually the entire State.
The evidence of the PDP's election campaign, and Sayeed's innumerable
statements before and since his designation as Chief Minister of J&K,
suggest that there has been no evolution of a counter-terrorism
perspective, or any understanding of the nature of the Pakistan backed
movements in J&K among the leadership of this political formation. The
dominant 'response' is still framed within platitudes about 'winning the
hearts and minds' of 'the people'. Sayeed has repeatedly underscored his
hostility to the ongoing anti-terrorist operations in the State. He has
declared that the only anti-terrorism law currently available in the
country, the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA),
2002, would not be applied in J&K. This is crucial, particularly in view
of the disastrous record of convictions through normal judicial
processes. In the thirteen years of terrorism in J&K, there have been
exactly 13 convictions for terrorist offences; eight of these have been
on relatively minor offences relating to illegal border crossing and
illegal possession of arms; only five relate to a single case in which
murder was on the chargesheet; not a single terrorist faces the death
sentence; and this is in a State where nearly 12,000 civilians have been
killed by terrorists. The judicial process operates a virtual turnstile
system, under which arrested terrorists are easily and repeatedly
enlarged on bail, and it is POTA alone that has some provisions - under
strict monitoring clauses - for the preventive detention of terrorists
for a reasonable period of time. Sayeed has also promised the disbanding
of the Special Operations Group (SOG) of the J&K Police, though this has
now been diluted - through negotiations with the PDP's alliance partner,
the Congress-I, to a merger of the SOG with the regular cadre of the J&K
Police. Sayeed has also declared that terrorists in custody for 'minor
crimes' would be released, and that a 'political process' involving
negotiations with all extremist formations in J&K would be initiated.
Much, if not most, of Sayeed's rhetoric on terrorism in the State has
been directed against the Security Forces and the counter-terrorism
campaign, and it is evident that, as Chief Minister, he will seek to
dilute and undermine these operations, and to appease volatile and
extremist groupings in the mistaken belief that he can bribe or seduce
the terrorist movement out of existence.
In some measure, the greatest of Sayeed's intended excesses may be
constrained by the imperatives of coalition politics and the sobering
effect of the INC and of other supporting parties. There are, however,
grave dangers here as well. In the first instance, the record of the
Congress Party has not been particularly consistent on terrorism, and it
is likely that, as the party consolidates its position at the national
level, it will consider it expedient to project a posture that rejects
the option of hard action against terrorists. This is already evident in
the actions of an irresolute Congress regime confronting a range of
terrorist movements in Assam.
More significantly, there are now dangers of the emergence of a new and
extra-Constitutional 'Centre', with Sonia Gandhi's Congress now
controlling a majority of State regimes in the country, either directly
or through coalitions. This raises the dangers of power without
responsibility, and in the absence of extraordinary sagacity - a virtue
that has not been in great evidence in any section of India's political
leadership - partisan considerations and political brinkmanship will
tend to undermine any surviving possibilities of a coherent
counter-terrorism perspective and strategy. The three-year term that has
been awarded to Sayeed under the 'rotation' scheme means, moreover, that
the scope of effective political action would be no more than two years
- a time-frame that may have been sufficient for a political
dispensation with a clear mandate to crush terrorism, but hardly enough
for one that vests its entire faith in an inchoate philosophy of winning
hearts and minds, and ignores the realities of the sub-conventional war
that is being executed by Pakistan in the province of J&K. Sayeed's
pronouncements and the Common Minimum Programme of the PDP-Congress
alliance also reflect a significant measure of Kashmiri parochialism,
and incline to a neglect of the Jammu and Ladakh regions, proclivities
that will deepen divisions and perceptions of a regime that seeks to
appease only the most radicalised elements of the population.
The sentimentality of Sayeed's perspectives on terrorism is not new, and
this is a position that is common virtually across the board in populist
Indian politics. It has, moreover, been repeatedly translated into a
state policy of vacillation and drift in various theatres of terrorism
and mass political violence with consistently disastrous results. In
Punjab, for instance, after the Rajiv-Longowal Accord and the subsequent
assassination of Harchand Singh Longowal, the Akali government headed by
S.S. Barnala that came to power after the elections of September 1985,
pursued precisely such a policy of appeasement, and among its first acts
was the release of over 2,000 extremists at that time under detention.
The impact on terrorist violence was palpable and immediate, and the
Barnala regime collapsed in the chaos of its own creation within a
little over 19 months. Clearly, despite Sayeed's air of ingenuity when
he articulates his platitudes, he is, in effect, re-inventing the wheel,
and it is only a question of time before the imperatives of governance
and the maintenance of order reassert themselves. In the interim,
however, the body count can be expected to escalate.
Clarity, consistency and continuity are vital in any successful
counter-terrorism strategy. While a measure of continuity can be
expected in J&K, since the primary tasks of engaging the terrorists in
the field are entrusted to Central Forces, there are vast areas of
intervention that fall into the purview of the State Government.
Moreover, a recalcitrant State Government can create virtually
insurmountable hurdles to an effective counter-terrorism campaign. While
political initiatives, developmental programmes and 'good governance' (a
much touted phrase which has found little correspondence in the reality
of Indian politics) are immensely important, the dilution of the
counter-terrorism thrust in J&K will result in the reversal of very
significant gains that have been made, particularly over the past year.
Regrettably, it appears that India will have to relearn a lesson that it
should already have learned extraordinarily well by now: you cannot
negotiate with terror on your knees. It is not clear whether Chief
Minister designate Mufti Mohammad Sayeed has the courage to get off his.
[Courtesy:
South-Asia Terrorism Portal] |
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