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OPINION

Pakistan's Demilitarization Demand
VINOD VEDI

[“Pakistani refusal to accept what is known as the actual ground position line, AGPL, as the basis for eventual withdrawal from that sector makes demands for demilitarization in the rest of Jammu and Kashmir meaningless. This is because it is rooted in the Pakistani contention that the presence of the Indian Army is illegitimate and, therefore, is an extension of the argument denying the accession by the ruler of Jammu and Kashmir to India. This too underscores the falsity of President Pervez Musharraf’s contention of looking for new solutions to the old problem or his claim to “thinking out of the box” for supposedly innovative solutions for a settlement in Kashmir”, says the author]

Every so often these days one hears Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf or such like-minded Kashmiri leaders as Mirwaiz Omar Farooq urging India to demilitarize Jammu and Kashmir as a prelude to bringing peace to the insurgency-inflicted former princely State.

Quite apart from the snide attempt to make it appear that India is retreating under the pressure of a successful operation conducted by “Kashmiri freedom fighters” the demand flies in the face of repeated announcements by terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Hizbul Mujahideen that notwithstanding any agreement arrived at between India and Pakistan, they would not end their cross-border attacks.

That being the case it is purile to expect India to withdraw its troops without ironclad assurances that there will be no pogrom of the kind launched by the Pakistan army against the Shia majority population of the Dras-Kargil sector through the intense artillery barrage that was intended to scare away a population that does not see eye-to-eye with Pakistan’s Sunni proclivities as enforced by its army. The intrusion into Kargil was, therefore, a military manoeuvre intended to occupy territory which, if it had succeeded to attain any permanency, over time would have resulted in a systematic cleansing of the local population as was done with the Hindu and Sikh Kashmiris of the Valley before that.

It is just this kind of attitude that has held up the demilitarization of the Siachen Glacier even after eight rounds of talks spread over 15 years. It was intended to be a confidence-building measure (CBM) that could open a new era of relations. Instead, it has been overtaken by other developments that do not have the same kind of inherent permanence that a demilitarization of the highest battlefield of the world would have.

There is a talk that the two sides would clear the logjam before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh makes his long awaited trip to Pakistan some time in July. It needs to be said that there can be no forward movement without an acceptance by Pakistan that the Indian Army is posted all along the Saltoro Range that guards the entrance to the Siachen Glacier.

Pakistani refusal to accept what is known as the actual ground position line (AGPL) as the basis for eventual withdrawal from that sector makes demands for demilitarization in the rest of Jammu and Kashmir meaningless. This is because it is rooted in the Pakistani contention that the presence of the Indian Army is illegitimate and, therefore, is an extension of the argument denying the Accession by the ruler of Jammu and Kashmir to India. This too underscores the falsity of President Pervez Musharraf’s contention of looking for new solutions to the old problem or his claim to “thinking out of the box” for supposedly innovative solutions for a settlement in Kashmir.

The underlying intention of the demand for piecemeal demilitarisation in Jammu and Kashmir is to remove the one element that renders the Pakistani claim that the war is being conducted by “freedom fighters” totally false. Such has been the abysmal failure of both the so-called “freedom fighters” as well as the Pakistan armed forces to try and delink the Valley from the rest of Jammu and Kashmir since the very moment when both countries attained their independence in 1947.

Removing the Indian Army prematurely from the places demanded by Pakistan will leave in place the proxy army which Pakistan is using as its tool. It consists of the approximately 2,00,000 retired and serving personnel of the Northern Light Infantry (NLI) of the Pakistan Army, who are a mix of local Kashmiris of the Mirpur area and tribals drawn from the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan region of Pakistan.

If demilitarization is to have any meaning the removal of this core group as well as the approximately 10,000 armed Islamic fundamentalist jihadis owing allegiance to the many factions of the United Jehadi Council (UJC), who have been trained and equipped in the dozens of camps set up by the Inter-Services Intelligence in POK and Pakistan itself after the failure of its attempt to delink Punjab from the rest of India under the spurious movement called Khalistan.

The history of the “struggle for self-determination of the people of Kashmir” is thus nothing but the anecdotal existent of the war by proxy by Pakistan. The demands for the withdrawal of the Indian Army are thus intended to give the Pakistan Army a free hand in Jammu and Kashmir.

The announcement by General Pervez Musharraf that he is willing to drop Pakistan’s traditional insistence that the UN Resolution on plebiscite be implemented is nothing but subterfuge for the continued presence of the Pakistan Army and the so-called “tribal” freedom fighters, both of whom had been ordered, under the UN Resolution, to first vacate Jammu and Kashmir before the plebiscite can be held.

Demands for demilitarization and self-rule for Jammu and Kashmir are, thus, premature. These have to be preceded by the laying of concrete foundations for a withdrawal from Siachen that has all the earmarks of permanence ensured by both technical and manual means of supervision and surveillance intended to prevent any surreptitious attempt by either side to reoccupy it.

So far as “self-rule” is concerned this is predicated to the contention that if the hard-line elements of the Hurriyat Conference are not in power in Jammu and Kashmir the situation cannot be described as “self-rule”. The failure of pro-Pakistan Kashmiris to test their popularity in any elections grows out of a knowledge that if any process that requires them to abjure the use of violence to make their presence felt is implemented, the people would reject them just as they have defied threats at the time of every election to cast their votes. This fact alone lies at the root of the phenomenon that did not allow any direct or even indirect (proxy war and insurgency) to succeed.

The camp of the supposedly pro-Pakistan Hurriyat is itself divided between those who would want to merge with Pakistan and those who talk of “azaadi” from both India and Pakistan. Both ideologies do not have enough sympathizers to make it a reality notwithstanding the several lakh signatures that Yasin Malik of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front had collected for his school of thought. Kashmir people know the ground realities on both sides of the Line of Control. They are not making a great hue and cry about it but it is not lost on them that those on the other side have yet to get a sip of the “self-rule” that is being offered by General Musharraf to the Muslim-dominated population of the Kashmir Valley (mind you not to the Buddhists of Ladakh, the Hindus of Jammu and the Shias of the Dras-Kargil salient).

The analogy of King Solomon is appropriate in the current circumstances. Only one with no legitimate claims can with such alacrity demand the dismemberment of a unified whole.



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