The Omens From Muzaffarabad

There are indications that in the wake of his failure to bring home from Agraa joint declaration or statement which could have been projected as a successfor his Kashmir strategy, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's self-reinstatedChief of the Army Staff (COAS), self-styled Chief Executive, and self-promotedPresident, has decided to further step up the proxy war in Jammu & Kashmir.

After a series of consultations with the National Security Council (NSC),some of his Corps Commanders and his kitchen Cabinet, Gen. Musharraf hasreportedly decided to send Major Gen Mohammad Anwar Khan to Muzaffarabad to be"elected" on August 1 as the so-called President of the POK on theticket of the Muslim Conference allied to the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) ofNawaz Sharif (now living in exile in Saudi Arabia).

Under strong pressure fromthe Army, the Muslim Conference has reportedly agreed to nominate him for thepost of the so-called President instead of Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan. Theelectoral college for the post of the so-called President comprises the POKAssembly (48 members), the POK Council (6 members) and the Federal Minister incharge of the POK Council, Sardar Sarfaraz Khan, a retired Army officer

Major Gen Mohammad Anwar Khan belongs to the powerful Sudhan tribe and is a resident of Tain village in district Poonch, which is also the home village of the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) Legislative Assembly Speaker Sardar Siab Khalid. .

Maj.Gen.Mohammad Anwar Khan, who is reportedly related to Lt.Gen.MohammedAziz, former Deputy Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),Chief of the General Staff and now a Corps Commander in Lahore, is presently theVice Chief of the General Staff, in the GHQ under Lt.Gen.Mohammad Yousef Khan.

Maj.Gen.Mohammad Anwar Khan had earlier served in the ISI under Lt.Gen.Aziz, whois also a Sudhan from POK, in the division responsible for training, arming andguiding the Army of Islam consisting of the Al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden, theHarkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the Al Badr. This Armyof Islam has since been joined by the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) of Maulana MasoodAzhar.

Under the so-called Interim Constitution of POK, no public servant cancontest any elected post within two years of his quitting public service. Toenable Maj.Gen.Anwar Khan to contest the election, the POK Governmentpromulgated an ordinance on July 28 removing this provision. It is expected thatMaj.Gen.Anwar Khan would take premature retirement from the Army on July 29 or30 and file his nomination.

Under a similar provision in the Pakistani Constitution, no public servantcan hold the office of the President of Pakistan until at least two years havelapsed after his quitting public service. Despite this provision, Musharrafpromoted himself as the President on June 20 while continuing as the COAS.

The elections to the POK Assembly were held on July 5. The nomination papersof 40 candidates of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) were rejected bythe Army-appointed electoral officer on the ground that they had refused to signan affidavit that they stood for Jammu & Kashmir's accession to Pakistan.

In a letter sent to the President, the Chief Executive, the Foreign Minister,the Minister for Kashmir Affairs and the heads of all important politicalparties of Pakistan, as well as to the President, the Prime Minister, the ChiefElection Commissioner and the heads of all political parties of POK, AmanullahKhan, Chairman of the JKLF, said that this provision in the nomination form wastantamount to keeping 40 pro-independence candidates from contesting theseelections and depriving hundreds of thousands of their supporters of their rightto vote for the candidates of their choice which was a gross violation of theirbasic human and democratic rights.

The Muslim Conference (MC) swept the polls winning 30 seats and defeating thehitherto ruling People's Party of Mrs.Benazir Bhutto, which could win only 17seats. The Jammu Kashmir Muslim League, which supports the Muslim Conference,won the remaining seat.

After the elections, it was widely expected that either Sardar Abdul QayyumKhan or his son Sardar Attique Khan would be elected by the MC for the post ofthe so-called Prime Minister. But on July 20, three days after the return ofMusharraf from Agra and after his meeting with his kitchen Cabinet,Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz and the General Officer Commanding Murree, Maj-Gen ShahidAziz, who is also in charge of POK affairs, visited Muzaffarabad and told SardarSikandar Hayat Khan and Sardar Abdul Qayyum that Musharraf had decided thatSardar Sikandar Hayat Khan, who was the Prime Minister of POK from 1985 to 1990and its President from 1991 to 1996, should be "elected" as the PrimeMinister.

Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan was accordingly "elected" as the PrimeMinister by the Assembly and sworn in on July 25. After taking over as the PrimeMinister, Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan had announced that he would nominate SardarAbdul Qayyum Khan to the post of President. But on July 26, Lt.Gen.Mohammad Azizand Major.Gen Shahid Aziz reportedly informed Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan andSardar Abdul Qayyum Khan that Musharraf had decided that Maj.Gen.Mohammad AnwarKhan should prematurely retire from the Army and be "elected" as thePresident with the backing of the MC. The ordinance was thereafter issued onJuly 28.

It is reported that these decisions were taken by Musharraf on the advice ofLt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz, who is regarded as the clandestine Chief of Staff of theArmy of Islam, in order to step up the proxy war in J & K to force India toaccept the Pakistani stand on J & K as projected by Musharraf at Agra. Theappointment of Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan as the Prime Minister is due to thefact that the proxy war in J & K had started in 1989 when he was the PrimeMinister and that he had helped the ISI in setting up the so-called KashmirLiberation Cell, consisting largely of retired ISI officers, to supervise theconduct of the proxy war. Musharraf was also reportedly unhappy with Qayyum Khanfor his statements of last year welcoming India's initiative for a ceasefire inJ & K.

Musharraf is believed to be planning to revive the Liberation Cell, which wasabolished during the second tenure of Nawaz Sharif as the Prime Minister, andpersuade the component units of the Army of Islam, whose headquarters andtraining camps are presently located in Pakistani Punjab, to shift them to POKso that Maj.Gen.Anwar Khan, as the "elected" President of POK, couldorchestrate them against the Indian Security Forces under the over-all guidanceof Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz based in Lahore.

Sixty-nine-year old Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan is the sixth Prime Minister ofPOK since the late Z.A.Bhutto introduced a façade of multi-party parliamentarydemocracy there in 1975. The POK Interim Constitution Act of 1974,under whichthis was introduced, however, limits the right to freedom of association in thestate when it says in Article 4(7)(2): "No person or party in Azad Jammuand Kashmir shall be permitted to propagate against, or take part in activitiesprejudicial or detrimental to, the ideology of the State's accession toPakistan".

Prospective candidates for elections to the Assembly have to sign anaffidavit declaring that they support the accession of J & K to Pakistan.According to the Amnesty International, people who do not subscribe to theaccession to Pakistan have also lost their jobs and have been denied access toeducational institutions.

Writing in the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung, a well-known daily of Zurich,Switzerland (May 28,1998), its Editor, Andreas Ruesch, who had visited the POK,said: "It is not surprising that the rump state of Azad Kashmir is kept onan extremely short leash. Though Pakistan has never annexed it in order not toviolate UN resolutions, it treats the area as one of its own provinces. AzadKashmir has its own parliament, prime minister and president, but theirauthority is very limited. Foreign policy is forged in Islamabad, Pakistanitroops guard the frontline, and the economically weak region lives on financialinjections from the "motherland." As one local journalist points out,whoever is at the helm in Islamabad has enough ways of manipulating thesituation to help their own party people to win elections in Azad Kashmir. Thedegree of the region's dependence on Pakistan is also illustrated by its 1974interim constitution, which forbids political activity that does not accord withthe doctrine of Kashmir as part of Pakistan - including Kashmiri independencemovements. Anyone wishing to run for a parliamentary seat in Muzaffarabad mustsign a loyalty declaration to that effect.

"It is difficult to judge how strong the supporters of the "thirdoption" are in Azad Kashmir. On the streets of Muzaffarabad, no one seemswilling to declare himself an advocate of independence. But how much isconviction, and how much the result of intimidation from higher up? A formerKashmiri partisan fighter, who was full of praise for Islamabad's policies whenin the company of Pakistani acquaintances, shows a very different face when weare in private, accusing the Pakistani regime of exploiting the Kashmir conflictfor its own ends. He is thoroughly convinced, however, that were he to speakopenly about his dream of an independent Kashmir, he would quickly find himselfin trouble with the authorities."

In an article in the "Dawn" of Karachi (October 2,2000), Mrs.AsmaJahangir, the well-known human rights activist of Pakistan, who was recentlycriticised by Musharraf for her alleged anti-Pakistan statements while he wasnegotiating with the Indian Prime Minister, Mr.A.B.Vajpayee, in Agra,wrote:"A leader, who claims he has little control over militants in hiscountry and "spiritually" supports the strategy of "jihad",is not likely to be taken seriously, especially as he does not officially headthe "jihadis", who are central to the tensions between the twocountries - India and Pakistan. A government which has banned politicalactivities and refuses to hold general elections in its own country can hardlybe expected to champion the cause of human rights of the people of Kashmir. Togive weight to his concerns regarding the situation of human rights in Kashmir,the Chief Executive would be best advised to improve the record of human rightsdomestically too."

She added: "Elections are regularly rigged in Azad Kashmir and thepeople denied basic rights. All this is glossed over in the name of security.Solving the Kashmir problem is not easy. It is complex and best left topolitical leaders. No interim government, without a public mandate, can hope todo much about it. It may well complicate matters. The only route to solving theKashmir issue is through a series of negotiations - but they cannot start untilviolence decreases in Kashmir. The recent cease-fire was a positive developmentbut short-lived. Whether it is a sustainable cease-fire or a series of talks,they can only be negotiated by a civilian elected government."

(The writer is Additional Secretary (Retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. ofIndia, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.