Pakistan’s military president has a very fertile mind and churns out ideas to resolve the Kashmir situation at an extremely fast pace and he gets very frustrated when he sees that his pearls of wisdom are not picked up and implemented as fast as he makes them. But Pervez Musharraf is not about to stop trying.
In fact, he is trying every trick in the book or “out of the box” as he would prefer to have it, to try and delink the Muslim-dominated Kashmir Valley not just from the rest of India but also from the rest of the other constituents of the State. Hence the suggestion that most of the State be carved up into regions and given self-governance under the joint sovereignty of Pakistan and India.
Yet he has some hesitation over the future of the Northern Areas through which the strategic Karakoram Highway gives comforting connectivity with China with which he has recently signed a Treaty of Friendship; one clause of it implies that any attempt by anyone to disturb the status quo would invite Chinese intervention.
But there is great method in his cerebration as is evident in his latest brainwave that Indian troops be withdrawn from three cities – Srinagar, Baramulla and Kupwara – and he promised that the terrorists could be asked to stay their hand a quid pro quo. This is in many ways an admission that he can control the supposedly “indigenous” terrorism in these towns which is a departure from his oft-repeated statement that he has no control over it even while Pakistan is providing full “moral, political and diplomatic support”.
The Americans know better: Remember that categorical assertion by US undersecretary Richard Armitage during a visit to the subcontinent that if, as India has consistently stated, there are terrorist training camps in Pakistan and POK “they would be gone tomorrow”.
It is a different matter that they are still operational and it is hotly debated whether Musharraf is in control or not. The method is in a game plan of decimation of political entities, who could attract political support in a democratic exercise of choice. The murder of a minister of the Jammu and Kashmir State government in a high security zone and the uncovering of a conspiracy to assassinate former Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed by a member of his own party who had taken shelter in daughter Mehbooba Mufti’s house while planning the hit on orders from the Lashkar-e-Toiba are the more recent examples.
Assassination as a tool to achieve political goals is consistent policy and no one knows this better than the leader of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Farooq whose father was killed by terrorists owing allegiance to Pakistan. Similar is the case of Billal Lone who is related by marriage to Syed Salahuddin and whose father too was shot dead at a public meeting.
Both the murdered men were adherents of “aazadi”, which did not quite coincide with Pakistan’s policy of annexation which in realpolitik put them on the other side of the so-called “struggle for self-determination by the people of Kashmir”.
The message is clear: If you are not with us in toto, you are against us which makes Pervez Musharraf’s offer of shutting off the terror tap in exchange for demilitarization suspect.
That Baramulla should be selected for demilitarization is significant. It was the town that suffered the worst atrocities in the first wave of Pakistani liberators in 1948. Historians have noted that had the invaders not taken time off to commit indiscriminate murder and rape, they would have reached the heart of Srinagar instead of being halted on the periphery of the airport by Indian troops who flew in after the Maharaja signed the Instrument of Accession with India.
After Kargil it would be foolhardy for India to accept demilitarization without ironclad a priori guarantees of an end to terrorism that means that terrorism must be demonstrably ended before demilitarization can take place. More so because Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) has become the base camp of jehadi organizations whose passage with arms is currently in a state of semi-animation given the demands of helping the earthquake victims and the deep snow that has engulfed Kashmir making movement difficult. Those who are still attempting to infiltrate across the Line of Control are being more easily picked off by the Indian security forces (another reason why demilitarization is such an urgent requirement for President Musharraf).
Pakistan newspapers have made it a point to suggest that a demilitarization of the Siachen glacier is imminent. It is difficult to comprehend what sign or signal has occurred that presages so soon a volte-face by the Indians from insisting on first a delineation of the actual position on the ground of troops on both sides. Terrorist attacks as far away as Bangalore executed with the intention of harming the scientific establishment which is that city’s forte does not lend credence to any early military movement out of Siachen. In fact, the Chief of Army Staff J.J.Singh reiterated his hesitation in the face of the continued attempts at infiltration and the political orientation of the more recent onslaughts in Jammu and Kashmir itself.
Clearly, General Musharraf is operating on two levels.
On one, he is moving along with measures which should under certain circumstances instil confidence – the reopening of the second railway link across the Munabao-Khokhrapar salient in Sind which was in disuse since the Indian Army made its thrust towards Karachi in 1971, and the Amritsar-Lahore bus service.
On the other, he cannot restrain himself from utilizing the low-cost option of maintaining the thrust of the proxy war because a direct confrontation with the Indian military will, as usual, attract retribution. Hence, pre-inducted moles have been given a specific orientation and given the freedom to choose targets of opportunity that further the overall game plan of undermining India’s acknowledged and vaunted conventional military capability.
That is why the ceasefire along the Line of Control is holding because Musharraf is aware that simultaneous with an hyper-active search and destroy policy in Jammu and Kashmir, which is showing results by the day in the number of senior commanders of terror tanzeems biting the dust, the Indian armed forces have clear instructions to retaliate in strength against any firing across the LOC.
That was what was happening before Musharraf thought it prudent not to provoke a military machine on a high after the victory at Kargil, where the advantages of occupation of high ground and surprise were blunted by the Indian army with sheer tenacity and grit. In a change of tactics Pakistan is using the retired personnel of the Northern Light Infantry, who are largely local Kashmiris from POK as a forward echelon to lend credence to the claim that the “struggle for self-determination” is “indigenous”.
However, in the face of the earthquake and the abdication of responsibility of the Pakistan military establishment for the men under their command who were posted in POK (several thousand military personnel died) the Kashmiri element of the Northern Light Infantry is not very enthusiastic to fight Pakistan’s proxy war. Hence, the use of Pakistani moles in distant parts of India.
Courtesy : Syndicate Features
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