The optimistic version of events might read:
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, defying critics within his own party and the extreme Hindu right-wing,flew to Srinagar, and called for dialogue with Pakistan and the Kashmiri separatists it sponsors. He chose toaddress his call directly to the people of Kashmir, risking terrorist assault. And he made clear his rejectionof the intransigent nationalism which is supposedly the cause of the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir by choosingto end his April 18 rally in Srinagar with a plain and simple Namaskar, a traditional Hindu salutation,rather than the customary Jai Hind, which means 'Long Live India.'
The cynical interpretation might read:
Each summer, the British used to leave the scorching plains of India and take the train north into theHimalayas to their summer capital, Shimla. Each summer, the government of Jammu and Kashmir leaves thescorching plains of Jammu, and drives north to the more hospitable environs of Srinagar. Each summer, NewDelhi's peace envoys leave the scorching plains of the national capital, and fly north to Kashmir. The Stategovernment, of course, is working hard to revive tourism.
Peace and dialogue are indisputable virtues, and there is little doubt of Prime Minister Vajpayee's commitmentto both. In 1999, he defied security advisors in New Delhi and travelled to Lahore to meet Prime MinisterNawaz Sharif. He was rewarded with the Kargil war. The next year, he responded to a brief unilateral ceasefirecalled by a faction of the Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin (HM) with a prolonged cutback in offensive operations, fromNovember 2000 to May 2001. Again, the Prime Minister's ceasefire, initially intended to last just through theholy month of Ramzan was extended in the face of advice from the military, police and intelligence brass. Itwas to enable a brutal escalation in terrorist hostilities, which took the best part of a year to contain.This time, Vajpayee drew on his bitter experience, and launched a major new initiative. The securityestablishment in New Delhi, many of whom believed another ceasefire was to be announced, heaved a sign ofrelief.
Despite the enormous public relations hype surrounding Vajpayee's visit to Kashmir (for the record, Vajpayeeis not the first Indian Prime Minister to visit the region since 1987, that honour going to HD Deve Gowda whoaddressed a rally in Uri just six years ago) the fact is the Prime Minister said relatively little. Hepromised the people of Jammu and Kashmir peace - "Spring will return to the beautiful Valley soon",he proclaimed, quoting a somewhat trite passage from the Kashmiri poet Mehjoor, "the flowers will bloomagain and the nightingales will return, chirping" - but laid out no clear road-map for making thishappen. And although Vajpayee offered to initiate a dialogue with Pakistan, he did so squarely within the fourwalls of recent Indian official policy, making it clear at an April 19 press conference that negotiations werecontingent on Pakistan ending cross-border terrorism. There were no new concessions for the All PartiesHurriyat Conference (APHC) either, some of whose leaders chose to watch the Prime Minister's speech ontelevision from their offices in Srinagar's Gogjibagh area.
Does this mean the visit was worthless? Probably not. Vajpayee did succeed in attracting a larger audiencethan any leader has gained in Jammu and Kashmir, some 30,000-odd even on conservative estimates. Most of theaudience had been brought in by Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's People's Democratic Party, the partythat leads the coalition government now in power in Jammu and Kashmir. Although mainly rural, the audiencecame from a wide spread of areas, including some with strong traditions of secessionist mobilisation, likeBaramulla, Bijbehara and Chrar-e-Sharif. Yet, few seemed to be there awaiting the announcement of a grandprogramme to address what is called the 'Kashmir problem'. "Most of the clapping", reported the DailyExcelsior, "was witnessed the moment Mufti or Vajpayee referred to the problem of unemployment."
There might be a lesson there for politicians in both Srinagar and New Delhi. The bizarre political line-upinspired by Vajpayee's visit suggests just how profoundly bankrupt political parties are when it comes to acoherent position on Jammu and Kashmir. Vajpayee received the enthusiastic political support of the People'sDemocratic Party - which is allied to the Congress (I) - and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), both ofwhich chose not to stay away from the April 18 rally. The Prime Minister enthusiastically praised ChiefMinister Sayeed's 'healing touch policy', which has been bitterly criticised by his own party, and attackedhis coalition partner in New Delhi, the National Conference, which like the Congress (I) boycotted the rally.All of this suggests the major political groupings are wholly uncertain about just how to proceed in Jammu andKashmir.
"Mufti Sahib ka kadwa sach, healing touch, healing touch", went one of the more popularslogans at the rally [Sayeed speaks the bitter truth, that a healing touch is needed]. The slogan takes one tothe heart of ongoing events in Jammu and Kashmir, and to one little-noticed reality. Sayeed's 'healing touch'in essence amounts to a revival of the Ramzan ceasefire. Offensive counter-terrorist operations have more orless been wound up, and security forces in Jammu and Kashmir now rarely act, except on the basis of veryspecific information about the presence of terrorist cadres. At first glance, Sayeed's ceasefire seems to beworking considerably better than Vajpayee's effort. On almost every conceivable index, Jammu and Kashmir hasbeen a safer place during his reign than during the same period in previous years. Between November 2002, whenthe PDP-led coalition took office, to March 15, 2003, the numbers of terrorism-related violent incidents,attacks on security force personnel, the killings of civilians and security forces, all felldramatically from the corresponding period of 2001-2002 and 2000-2001.
But one other figure gives cause for concern - and shows how misleading a casual glance at the data can be.The number of terrorists killed during Sayeed's reign has also fallen precipitously, from 797 between November2001 and March 15, 2002, to 462 between November 2002 and March 15, 2003. The decline in the elimination ofterrorists is far more marked than any other category of killings. There is nothing exceptionable about this,it might be argued, if the lives of civilian and security personnel are also saved. But the savage assaultinitiated after the Ramzan ceasefire actually saw security force killings fall in the November 2001 -March 15 2002 period from the same period of the previous year by 24.7%. By contrast, the fall from that timeand the Sayeed period is just 21.8%. The fall in civilian casualties in the Sayeed period is 10.1%; it was12.5% in the previous year of heightened warfare.
Put simply, then, the assertion that the 'healing touch' has led to a dramatic reduction of civilianand security force fatalities is flawed. In fact, the aggressive anti-terrorist operations of 2001-2002 wereable to secure even sharper reductions, in percentage terms. Some of these fallacies of analysis havebeen perpetuated by people who ought to know better, notably Chief of Army Staff General Nirmal Vij. Speakingto journalists on March 23, he attributed the overall decline in fire contact with terrorists to the"weakness of militants and the increase in counter-terrorist operations" (emphasis added).Although no figures are available on the overall number of operations, the sharp reduction in attacks onsecurity forces and killings of terrorists suggest these have declined. Even if Vij's assertion can beaccepted at face value, his claim of terrorist weakness is absurd. In the 2001-2002 period, 4.92 terroristswere killed for every security force trooper whose life they took. That figure has now come down to 3.47, anobvious indicator of improved terrorist efficiency.
The bitter truth, then, is this:
Prime Minister Vajpayee's hand-picked interlocutor for Jammu and Kashmir, N.N. Vohra, will arrive in Srinagarwith the intention of initiating a dialogue with terrorist groups and secessionist organisations who haverepeatedly rejected one. They reject dialogue in the absence of the inclusion of Pakistan, their main sponsor.Pakistan will only talk while terror continues, because the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir is its soleinstrument of leverage. Despite repeated plaints and promises, the United States of America has done nothingto actually push Pakistan to end cross-border terrorism. India cannot talk to Pakistan while terrorismcontinues, for precisely the same reason that Pakistan will only talk while it does. Peace initiatives inJammu and Kashmir are predicated on the belief that stripping violence of political legitimacy will undermineterrorism. It will not. In the early 1990s, the jihadi groups had great mass support. They have nonenow, but twice as many people die each year in terrorist violence.
New Delhi needs to understand that the keys to peace lie, not in Srinagar, but in Islamabad - and, moreimportant, to find ways to force open the locks if guardians of the keys continue to prove uncooperative.
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Praveen Swami is Special Correspondent, Frontline. This article appears courtesy the South AsiaIntelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal
