Days that led to the insurgency

The next three days resonate loudly in the history of modern Jammu & Kashmir. It was on these days that the course of the insurgency was set, but they are remembered for different reasons by the Kashmiri Pandits and Kashmiri Muslims. So confused were the times that the dates vary in different accounts.

Kashmiri Pandits today are convinced that their mass exodus began on January 19, the record will probably show that it spanned out through the first six months of the fateful year of 1990.Though the state had gone through turbulent weeks since the release of four top JKLF leaders on December 13, 1989, it was yet to see mass demonstrations that were to break out on January 19 following the appointment of Jagmohan as governor. On the next day, in a bid to show the new governor that they were actively implementing the curfew in the Valley, the state police chief and the CRPF ordered a crackdown which had the paradoxical impact of triggering mass demonstrations. So, the next day January 21, when Jagmohan and his security adviser Ved Marwah arrived in Srinagar, the police had lost control of the situation and the Army had to be called out to enforce the curfew. There were firings at several places resulting in many deaths, the largest number in Gowkadal. Official figures claimed 12 dead there, but unofficial estimates run between 38 and 100 and this has entered the books as the “Gowkadal massacre.”

 

 

The JKLF now decided to make January 26 their make or break day. The plan was to have small groups of people converge on the Idgah grounds on the pretext of offering prayers for the “martyrs.” Here, the Indian flag would be burnt accompanied by a declaration of independence. When foreign correspondents began arriving in the city, reportedly expecting a “big event” on that day, Jagmohan pre-emptively declared a curfew and made it clear that it would be enforced, as it was on January 21. The crowds stayed at home and the long insurgency began.

There have been several mass killings in J&K such as the Chapanari massacre in Doda, the Prankote killings in Udhampur district in 1998, the Chittisinghpura massacre in Anantnag, the Amarnath mass killing in 2000, the Khistwar massacre of 2001, Qasim Nagar massacre and Kaluchak killings in 2002, and the Doda killings of 2006.

Two major mass killing targetting the Pandits — the Wandhama massacre of 1998, where four children, nine women and 10 men were killed and the Nandimarg killings of 2003 when 11 men, 11 women and one child were killed.

The terror that led them to leave their homeland came from a stream of individual and often brutal murders of members of their community. The killings in late 1989 of Tika Lal Taploo, who headed the Kashmir unit of the BJP and N K Ganju, the sessions judge who sentenced Maqbool Bhat, were the harbingers of the future. The Pandit community began receiving threatening letters asking them to leave the Valley or face death. After January 20, some Pandits began sending out their families, while the men waited and watched. But in February, the killings, accompanied by random acts of brutality, became more persistent. Lassa Kaul, the head of the Doordarshan centre in Srinagar and executive engineer Ashok Misri were shot followed by Satish Tikoo, a young social activist who lived in Habbakadal. Ashok Qazi, who worked in the agriculture department was shot in the legs and left wounded for hours before the terrorists put him out of his misery. A week later Navin Saproo, a telecom engineer was shot dead in Kanikadal, Srinagar. On February 27, Tej Kishen was kidnapped, tortured and killed.

By May 1990, some 80 Pandits had been killed, some with great brutality. From February onwards the Pandits began leaving and by June some 58,000 families had relocated to camps in Jammu and New Delhi. Jagmohan tried his best, but there was little he could do to assuage the fear of a community that felt abandoned and helpless. With the BJP taking up the cause of the migrants, the secular establishment, sadly, played down the enormous human tragedy that had unfolded.

The Janata Dal government that came to power for 18 months after the elections of 1989, appeared to be in a constant state of crisis. Prime Minister V P Singh had little time or the inclination to pay attention to Kashmir. Actually, the entire political establishment of the country had not quite grasped as to what was happening in the state. In Jagmohan, it had a sincere, but limited man as a governor. In any case without New Delhi paying attention, there was no question of evolving the necessary strategy to deal with J&K. And so it has been since then. Many of the Pandits who fled, remain in exile, and even now New Delhi doesn’t seem to have a clear idea as to what its goals are in the state.

Mid Day January 19, 2016

Kashmiri Pandits today are convinced that their mass exodus began on January 19, the record will probably show that it spanned out through the first six months of the fateful year of 1990.Though the state had gone through turbulent weeks since the release of four top JKLF leaders on December 13, 1989, it was yet to see mass demonstrations that were to break out on January 19 following the appointment of Jagmohan as governor. On the next day, in a bid to show the new governor that they were actively implementing the curfew in the Valley, the state police chief and the CRPF ordered a crackdown which had the paradoxical impact of triggering mass demonstrations. So, the next day January 21, when Jagmohan and his security adviser Ved Marwah arrived in Srinagar, the police had lost control of the situation and the Army had to be called out to enforce the curfew. There were firings at several places resulting in many deaths, the largest number in Gowkadal. Official figures claimed 12 dead there, but unofficial estimates run between 38 and 100 and this has entered the books as the “Gowkadal massacre.”
The JKLF now decided to make January 26 their make or break day. The plan was to have small groups of people converge on the Idgah grounds on the pretext of offering prayers for the “martyrs.” Here, the Indian flag would be burnt accompanied by a declaration of independence. When foreign correspondents began arriving in the city, reportedly expecting a “big event” on that day, Jagmohan pre-emptively declared a curfew and made it clear that it would be enforced, as it was on January 21. The crowds stayed at home and the long insurgency began.
There have been several mass killings in J&K such as the Chapanari massacre in Doda, the Prankote killings in Udhampur district in 1998, the Chittisinghpura massacre in Anantnag, the Amarnath mass killing in 2000, the Khistwar massacre of 2001, Qasim Nagar massacre and Kaluchak killings in 2002, and the Doda killings of 2006.
Two major mass killing targetting the Pandits — the Wandhama massacre of 1998, where four children, nine women and 10 men were killed and the Nandimarg killings of 2003 when 11 men, 11 women and one child were killed.
The terror that led them to leave their homeland came from a stream of individual and often brutal murders of members of their community. The killings in late 1989 of Tika Lal Taploo, who headed the Kashmir unit of the BJP and N K Ganju, the sessions judge who sentenced Maqbool Bhat, were the harbingers of the future. The Pandit community began receiving threatening letters asking them to leave the Valley or face death. After January 20, some Pandits began sending out their families, while the men waited and watched. But in February, the killings, accompanied by random acts of brutality, became more persistent. Lassa Kaul, the head of the Doordarshan centre in Srinagar and executive engineer Ashok Misri were shot followed by Satish Tikoo, a young social activist who lived in Habbakadal. Ashok Qazi, who worked in the agriculture department was shot in the legs and left wounded for hours before the terrorists put him out of his misery. A week later Navin Saproo, a telecom engineer was shot dead in Kanikadal, Srinagar. On February 27, Tej Kishen was kidnapped, tortured and killed.
By May 1990, some 80 Pandits had been killed, some with great brutality. From February onwards the Pandits began leaving and by June some 58,000 families had relocated to camps in Jammu and New Delhi. Jagmohan tried his best, but there was little he could do to assuage the fear of a community that felt abandoned and helpless. With the BJP taking up the cause of the migrants, the secular establishment, sadly, played down the enormous human tragedy that had unfolded.
The Janata Dal government that came to power for 18 months after the elections of 1989, appeared to be in a constant state of crisis. Prime Minister V P Singh had little time or the inclination to pay attention to Kashmir. Actually, the entire political establishment of the country had not quite grasped as to what was happening in the state. In Jagmohan, it had a sincere, but limited man as a governor. In any case without New Delhi paying attention, there was no question of evolving the necessary strategy to deal with J&K. And so it has been since then. Many of the Pandits who fled, remain in exile, and even now New Delhi doesn’t seem to have a clear idea as to what its goals are in the state.
- See more at: http://www.mid-day.com/articles/manoj-joshi-days-that-led-to-the-insurgency/16875154#sthash.OmAnlrM9.dpuf

Living under the shadow of terror

Disparate incidents last week - the explosion in the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad, the bombing in Quetta targeting polio workers, the terror strike in Jakarta, and the harassment of a Muslim couple by a gang of vigilantes in Bhopal - can all be knit together to reveal the pattern of emerging dangers.

The attack on the Pakistani consulate is an indication of how much the ground has slipped from under Islamabad’s feet in the country it had hoped would provide it with “strategic depth” against India.

Blowback 

Just the week before, an ISI-organised attack had targeted the Indian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif, in the name of Afzal Guru. 

The damaged Pakistan consulate in Jalalabad, Afghanistan

Indeed, there have been several ISI-directed attacks on Indian diplomatic facilities in the country, usually executed by Pakistani proxies of the Haqqani network. 

But Pakistan itself becoming the target is a sign of the new times. Islamabad is being made to realise that just as arming religious zealots to prosecute its policy aims in India and Afghanistan led to a blowback in the form of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, similarly, its policy of attacking Indian facilities is being copied by elements inimical to its role in Afghanistan. 

Pakistan has to understand that its continued duplicity on the issue of using religious proxies for its proxy wars could well lead to the rise and consolidation of Islamic State (ISIS) elements in the AfPak region.

US President Barack Obama warned about the possibility of instability in Pakistan lasting decades, which could enhance the sanctuaries and training facilities of jihadis. Many will pay the price, but perhaps the biggest price will be paid by Pakistanis themselves, as is evidenced by the Quetta attack which sought to prevent the dissemination of the polio vaccine. 

In the past 35 years, the high tide of violent religious extremism has overwhelmed a large part of the world. Two major countries with large Muslim populations had been relatively immune - India and Indonesia. Now both are being buffeted, but for different reasons.

Deterioration 

In Indonesia, it is a case of attrition. Islamists have been active for decades, and there have been horrific terror attacks through the 2000s. However, complacency and lack of effective political leadership has led to an overall deterioration resulting in last Thursday’s incident. 

The incident near Bhopal where a Muslim couple travelling in a train were attacked by a gang of vigilantes who alleged they were carrying beef are yet another sign of the emerging danger that confronts India. 

It is no longer “intolerance” but an insistent effort to marginalise and humiliate the Muslim community. No community in whatever a majority cannot coerce a minority into obeying its diktat. 

The vigilantes of the Gau Raksha Samiti may be outliers, but they are very much the product of a movement led by the RSS which seeks to “Hinduise” India by establishing their twisted version of Hindu norms across society. 

Destabilising the largely peaceable Muslim population of India could lead to the development of something that has been absent so far- a large-scale domestic Islamist militancy. 

Radicalism 

We are at a point of inflexion where it comes to the threat of Islamist radicalism. Countries that were relatively immune like India and Indonesia could be under threat. And countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which sought to export their problems to their neighbours, could well go under. 

In the last decade all of us - India, Indonesia and Pakistan - have sought to counter radicalism in our own way. Pakistan has been a late entrant, but you should not doubt the scale of its effort that has led to thousands of its security personnel being killed. Since the threat seems to have metastasised, there is need for unified action against it. 

PM Modi is right, the international community needs to urgently conclude the international convention against terrorism. In the past two decades efforts to work one out have stalled on the issue of differing definitions of terrorism. 

This is the moment when Indonesians, Indians and Pakistanis can understand that those who target civilians, as in Mumbai in 2008, Bali in 2003, and Peshawar in 2014 are the same kind of people, regardless of what they call themselves. 

Pakistan, of all countries, needs to realise that cracking down on the Jaish-e-Mohammed is not about kowtowing to India, but about the future of Pakistan. Regardless of India, Pakistan will have to end that distinction between good and bad jihadis, because it is all too easy to contaminate the former with the latter. 

Likewise India needs to see that every step that Pakistan takes is not a victory for India, but a victory for both - New Delhi and Islamabad.

Mail Today January 17, 2016

Mufti Mohammad Sayeed (1936-2016): From 'soft-separatist' to 'collaborator'

I first met Mufti Mohammed Sayeed in 1986. He had just been purged from Jammu & Kashmir because of the Congress-National Conference accord and appointed Union Minister of Civil Aviation and Tourism. Puffing away at a cigarette in a style you no longer see, he wryly told me about his difficult years in a state where the National Conference had been the dominant party. “It has not been easy to be a Congressman in Kashmir,” he said, “You have to develop a thick skin for the abuse and difficulties heaped on you.”
Over the years, I met him several times, though I cannot claim to be any kind of a friend or even an acquaintance of his. Ours was a purely professional relationship of a journalist and a politician. But besides Civil Aviation and Tourism, Kashmir itself was suddenly rising in the national consciousness.
A fateful shift
Mufti Saheb did not stick long with the Congress, especially with the neophytes around Rajiv Gandhi who were running it. He quit with VP Singh and joined the Jan Morcha in 1987, a development which was to have fateful consequences for the country.




Typical of his style, where symbolism triumphed over substance, VP Singh decided to “solve” the simmering Kashmir problem, which had just led to a near total boycott of the 1989 General Election in the Valley, by appointing a Valley Kashmiri as the Union home minister in his government. The unintended result flowing from this was the detonator which triggered the Kashmir explosion. In a bid to free their colleagues, some militants of the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front kidnapped his daughter Rubaiya. Social pressure almost persuaded the JKLF to release Rubaiya but the Cabinet Committee on Security jumped the gun and agreed to the kidnapper’s earlier demands and ordered the release of the JKLF leaders in exchange. Two senior ministers – Inder Kumar Gujral and Arif Mohammed Khan flew down to Srinagar to compel a reluctant Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah to implement the decision. The sight of New Delhi caving in transformed the Kashmiri protest and triggered off the militancy.
Ups and downs
Like most Valley Kashmiris, Mufti, who was born in 1936 and educated in Srinagar and the Aligarh Muslim University, began political life as a member of the Democratic National Conference founded by G.M Sadiq in 1957 in opposition to the NC being run by J&K Prime Minister Ghulam Mohammed Bakshi. But central pressure forced Sadiq to re-merge his DNC with the National Conference in 1960. Mufti contested and won the Bijbehara legislative assembly seat in 1962.
However, after Bakshi lost support and was removed and later arrested in 1964, Sadiq became the Chief Minister and in 1965 merged the NC with the Congress. Sayeed who won the Bijbehara seat again, was appointed Deputy Chief Minister of what was now the Congress party government. In 1972, as a member of the Legslative Council, he became the Minister for Public Works in the state government headed by Syed Mir Qasim who had succeeded Sadiq. In 1975 he became the leader of the Congress legislature party in J&K. However, the carpet was swept under the feet of Congressmen when Indira Gandhi signed an accord with Sheikh Abdullah in 1974, paving way for the return of an NC government, confirmed by its victory in the state assembly elections of 1977 in which Mufti lost in his Bijbehara constituency.
Given this experience, Mufti and his fellow Congressmen never really liked the periodic flirtation of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi with the National Conference. They were happiest when ham-handed efforts by New Delhi to force Farooq to contest the 1983 State Assembly election in an alliance collapsed. But the National Conference swept the election and so, the following year, Mufti and Arun Nehru plotted to bring about the fall of the Farooq Abdullah government in 1984 through the instrumentality of the latter’s brother-in-law Gul Shah. But by 1986, Rajiv Gandhi reinstated the Congress-National Conference alliance and Farooq Abdullah returned as chief minister.
To facilitate the alliance between the Congress and the National Conference, Mufti was exiled to New Delhi.
Following the Rubaiya fiasco, and through the high-tide of militancy in the 1990s, Mufti lay low. He rejoined the Congress, he did put forward his daughter Mehbooba who won the 1996 state assembly election from Bijbehara on a Congress ticket when the National Conference won the election and Farooq Abdullah returned once again as chief minister. Mufti himself won the Anantnag Lok Sabha seat in 1998.
‘Soft-separatism’
In 1998, father and daughter walked out of the Congress, and founded the Jammu & Kashmir People’s Democratic Party and in a high voltage campaign contested and lost to Omar Abdullah for the Srinagar Lok Sabha seat in 1999.
But her hard work and Mufti’s shrewd politics resulted in the PDP forming the state government in coalition with the Congress following the state assembly elections of 2002, considered the fairest ever held in the state. Mufti’s big challenge was to create space for two mainstream regional parties in Jammu and Kashmir and he succeeded through a strategy dubbed “soft separatism” by his adversaries. At the outset, he called for an unconditional dialogue between the government of India and the Kashmiris to resolve the Kashmir problem. He emphasised the need for a healing touch in the state, called for action against custodial deaths and human rights abuses. However, as per the coalition arrangements, Mufti served till 2005, when the Congress nominee Ghulam Nabi Azad took over.
Mufti walked out of the Congress alliance over the Amarnath land transfer decision in July 2008 and the line up in the state assembly elections which were due later in the year, saw PDP gains, but not enough to offset the combined power of the National Conference and Congress.
The second innings
After a stint in opposition, the PDP, now well-established in the Valley, made a comeback winning 28, the largest number of seats in the 2014 state assembly elections. However, riding on the Modi wave, the Bharatiya Janata Party surged to 25 seats. Observers wondered just how the circle would be squared considering that the BJP famously stands for gutting whatever is left of Kashmiri autonomy, rather than enhancing it. Mufti decided to bite the bullet and go in for a coalition with the BJP.
The negotiations between the coalition partners were intense and lasted more than two months. The BJP decided to go out of its way to reassure the nervous Valley politicians and even gave up the idea of rotating the chief ministership and accepted Mufti as the chief minister for the full six-year term. Issues like Article 370 and the idea of removing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act were kicked to a committee. Mufti took office for the second time as chief minister on March 1, 2015.
As Mufti’s record shows, he changed his allegiance many times and has been called an opportunist. But he also had qualities of dogged determination as borne out by his leadership of the Congress party when it was not easy to be a Congressman in the Valley – the heyday of Sheikh Abdullah.
The PDP, founded by him and established by his daughter, has introduced a stabilising element into Kashmiri politics by ensuring that the National Conference does not see itself as the default party of the Kashmiri Muslims. More important, it is, like the National Conference, rooted in the belief that Jammu and Kashmir is very much a part of India. There can be little doubt that talented politicians like Mehbooba Mufti who will succeed him as chief minister, are far more gifted than the collection of leaders who call themselves the Hurriyat.
Scroll January 7, 2016

Attacks won't stop, but neither can talks

The Pathankot attack has brought out a lot of shortcomings in our system, from the quality of our border management to that of local policing and counter-terrorism response. One aspect has been the indication that the whole response is being directed from the very top by NSA Ajit Doval. If so, this is wrong, and Doval must not confuse his role as a strategic leader of India’s national security system with that of a tactician.

 As the supervisor of the intelligence agencies, he runs the loop and must, of course, keep the PM in it. But when it comes to actual ground action, he should leave it to pre-designated people along assigned lines of authority. The problem is, as the Pathankot events have revealed, there does not seem to be a clearly laid out line of command to deal with such events.

In the past two days, we have seen the base commander Air Commodore JS Dhamoon and NSG Major-General Dushyant Singh, brief the press in Pathankot, while in New Delhi, Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi and Air Marshal Anil Khosla (Director General Air Operations at Air Headquarters) spoke to the media. Earlier, we were told that the Air Officer Commanding in Chief of the Western Air Command, Air Marshal S B Deo, had reached Pathankot on the evening of January 1, several hours before the attack. So who was in charge?

With the Pathankot attack having dragged on for the third day, we need to ask questions about our counter-terrorist strategy and tactics. First, the strategic aspect: The attack was not entirely unexpected. Every time efforts are made for normalisation, there is a push-back by forces opposed to it. The question is whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise visit to Lahore was carefully thought through? Was there any effort to assess the mood of the Pakistan Army? Because you can be sure that the attack was ordered by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate of the Pakistan Army, which does not seem to be particularly happy about the Nawaz-Modi meeting.

Then there is the question of the Indian response. This is the fifth attack since September 2013, following a near identical pattern. A small group of militants in army fatigues cross the international border in Jammu & Kashmir, which runs roughly parallel to the National Highway 1A in a south-easterly direction from Jammu to Kathua, and then loops south at the Ravi river to Pathankot and Gurdaspur. After crossing the border they make their way to the highway, hijack a passing vehicle and attack their target, usually a police station or an army camp.

In the case of the Pathankot attack — from available reports — it seems the attackers crossed the international border and audaciously hired a taxi around 8 pm on December 31. When it had an accident, they hijacked the car of the SP of Gurdaspur, Salwinder Singh, near Dinanagar, and used it to reach the Pathankot air base. They hid out through the entire day of January 1 and launched the attack in the early hours of January 2.

Remarkably, by the evening of January 1, the authorities knew that an attack was imminent and the government had dispatched an NSG unit under Major-General Singh to Pathankot, along with the Western Air Command chief. Reportedly, two companies of the Army were also sent to the base.

Officials initially said that four attackers and seven security personnel had been killed by midday January 3. But subsequently, they said that some of the attackers may still be around and operations continued through till Monday, when the remaining militants were killed some time around noon.

There are many questions about the manner in which the attack was handled. Why, despite the SP and his driver alerting the Punjab Police, was nothing done by way of search and arrest operations through Friday? The Mehrishi press conference indicates that the NSG was only deployed after the attack was launched in the early hours of Saturday. Dhamoon acknowledged that the attackers had managed to reach the mess of the base, where unsuspecting jawans — possibly unarmed — were killed while readying for breakfast.

The biggest question really relates to the ability of the Pakistani teams to penetrate the border, which is supposed to be fenced, floodlit and surveilled with TV cameras and heavily patrolled by the BSF. True, the terrain is riverine and heavily serrated, but successive attacks should have led the authorities to raise their level of surveillance capabilities, perhaps adding thermal imagers, motion sensors and the like to their arsenal. In the history of recent and troubled relations between India and Pakistan, such terrorist attacks take place whenever there are efforts to improve relations. It would be downright foolish to play into the hands of these people and stop the process of normalisation. Sustained engagement is the only way to neutralise them.

But knowing that such attacks will occur whenever we try to improve relations with Pakistan, it becomes all the more important to anticipate them and be prepared.

Mid Day January 5, 2016