It is a good augury that separatists in Kashmir have renounced their oft-repeated demand for US intervention. Rather they have welcomed President Bush’s remark that Jammu and Kashmir be treated as a ‘bilateral issue’ between India and Pakistan. Hardliners in Kashmir had for long been insisting on US involvement, or at least its facilitation, but Bush, after clearing the US-India nuclear deal, made it known in Islamabad that the best way to resolve the ‘territorial dispute’ would be for the leaders of the two countries to negotiate a settlement. Even the Jamaat-e-Islami prankster-crusader for American intervention Syed Ali Geelani has now realised that people in Kashmir don’t favour US meddling because of its forays into Afghanistan, Iraq and now in Iran. This is a slap on the face of Farooq Kathwari, a non-resident Indian (Kashmiri), settled in America, who has been keen for US intervention in Kashmir.
The emerging new trend, discernible in India-US relationship, the Bush speak on Kashmir on Pak soil, and the civil war like conditions in Iraq, as also the recent spate of anti-Bush demos at home and outside seem to have changed the hardliners’ attitude towards America, as of now. Nothing can be predicted for future, though. Mirwaiz-e-Kashmir and Hurriyat Conference leader, Umar Farooq too is no longer overtly enamoured of US suggestions on Kashmir and its mediation. The pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) leader Yasin Malik is not hiding his disappointment. He had pinned high hopes on the Bush visit. He wanted American President to make India and Pakistan agree to grant Kashmiris their promised right of self-determination. Or as a minimum ‘seek a negotiated settlement, keeping in view their wishes and aspirations’.
Compounding their discomfiture and of Syed Ali Geelani, who leads his own Hurriyat faction, and men of his ilk, was the blunt speak of National Conference President Omar Abdullah, that too on Pakistan soil. The likes of Geelani harp on the ‘right of self-determination’ for the people of Kashmir. But Abdullah told President General Pervez Musharraf that Pakistan had rendered UN resolutions on Kashmir ‘irrelevant’ and that the ‘territory’ seized by it (Pakistan) had undergone a sea-change since 1947. He pointed out that Pakistan had failed to create conditions for holding a plebiscite--- now being regarded a dead issue, and instead made demographic changes and altered the map of Jammu and Kashmir in its possession. “On the contrary, the Indian part of Jammu and Kashmir is exactly what it was in 1947. Not an inch of it had been changed,” Abdullah, a junior minister for External Affairs in the NDA government, told Musharraf.
This grandson of the architect of the Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to India added as if on after thought: “The (original princely) State today ceases to exist, and I doubt very much whether we can be able to turn back the clock”. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khurshid M Kasuri was taken aback by the Abdullah speak and tied himself in knots in explaining as to why Pakistan believes plebiscite could not be held now.
Omar Abdullah was in Pakistan to attend Pughwash Conference. This was the second such conference on Kashmir, organised by Pughwash, a European think-tank. Its agenda was ‘self-rule’ and ‘demilitarization’; these are the talking points of Musharraf these days. The first Pughwash conference was held in Kathmandu in 2004, but it had no slot reserved for the elected representatives from Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan has since ‘recognized’ this ‘category’ and sought their attendance at the Islamabad meet. That was how mainstream politicians like Abdullah Junior landed in the Pakistan capital to join media personalities, elected representatives and separatists on both side of the LoC at the brain-storming session ‘to break new grounds’, since Pakistan, fed up with terrorism of its own creation, wants a face-saving device, before it is too late.
Be as it may, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has already responded to Musharraf’s proposal of ‘self-rule’ and ‘demilitarisation’ by offering a ‘white paper’ on measures India has been taking to promote such culture in Jammu and Kashmir. He has asked Musharraf to reciprocate by bringing out a similar white paper , as to what had been done in PoK and Northern Areas, which (Northern Areas) have been merged with Pakistan, as pointed out by Abdullah at the conference.
Leader of the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Democratic Freedom Party, Syed Shabir Ahmed Shah (who was once described in US as a ‘prisoner of conscience’) has taken exception to Abdullah’s conclave with Musharraf. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who stayed back in Srinagar after a leg fracture, sees ‘no harm’ in Musharraf’s ‘exclusive meeting’ with Abdullah. On his part, Shabir believes that the “very tribe which had facilitated Indian hegemony… is being extended overwhelming hospitality by the Pakistan establishment”. While Sheikh Abdullah was responsible for the state’s accession to India, his grandson was being profusely welcomed in Pakistan, according to him. Omar Abdullah appears to take his criticism in his stride. His take is “my grandfather, along with Maharaja Hari Singh had taken that decision (accession to India) in view of the prevailing circumstances (then)”.
PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti has acclaimed the ‘self-rule’ and demilitarisation proposals, although rejected by separatists. But her own party leaders took her to task. Omar Abdullah has dubbed her remarks as ‘an exercise aimed at fooling the Kashmiris’. The concept of self-rule is Greek to the PDP chief, as people in the state are already enjoying it, Omar Abdullah says, even as the PDP alliance partners have censured her.
The Chairman of the Diplomatic Committee of JKLF, Shabir Chaudhry, has accused Pakistan of changing its stand on Kashmir ‘dispute’ to meet its own needs. Geelani has refused to toe Musharraf’s line on ‘self-rule’. He instead has been hobnobbing with Musharraf’s detractors. But Pakistan government is putting lot of pressure on Hizbul and other militant outfits, considered as ‘Geelani’s respiratory system’, to rope in Geelani. But he remains a hard nut to crack.
Coinciding with the Pughwash conference, Pakistan government swooped down on top Kashmiri militants in POK; Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin, who heads the United Jihad Council, was not spared and he too was arrested as if to proclaim loudly the new Musharraf policy on Kashmir. Others arrested owe allegiance to Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Hizbul Moomineen. They were all sore that Pakistan Government’s attitude had ‘disillusioned’ Kashmiris and the US was going ‘backward’ to woo India over Kashmir.
At home, the Azad government has started taking legal action against militants for crimes committed by them during militancy. Non-bailable warrants have been issued for the arrest of JKLF activists. Prominent on the list is Javed Mir alias Nalka, who is accused in the December 1989 kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayed, daughter of Mufti Mohammad Sayed, who was the then Union Home Minister. Kashmir observers are unanimous that the inept handling of the Rubaiya episode had emboldened the militants to strike at will.
Courtesy : Syndicate Features
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