No Mourners: Death of Indo-Pak Peace Process
Ahmad Rashid

The inevitable has happened. The so-called peace process between India and Pakistan that began in February 2004 to resolve mutual differences including the issue of Kashmir has altogether, at least for the present, collapsed. The foreign secretary level talks have been called off, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s proposed Pakistan visit is nowhere closer to reality. Opening up of Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road for trade, which was scheduled to begin on July 16, has also been put on hold. 

The breakdown came about by India’s unilateral decision to pull out of the process in the wake of serial blasts in Mumbai and Srinagar on July 11, which left over 200 dead and nearly 800 injured. New Delhi squarely blamed Islamabad of inspiring and funding terrorists to cause these blasts. Pakistan has promptly denied the allegation but New Delhi seems far from being convinced.

The melodious peace song is completely now replaced by harsh and inconsiderate accusations. The Indian public and political opinion appears unanimous in ridiculing Pakistan. Some vindictive voices talk of taking even tougher position by striking militant camps inside Pakistan. For its part, Pakistan warned of “holocaust” should India risk for any such venture.

Conjectures are wild and galore that if the drift in the relations between the two countries is allowed the same way, there is likelihood of India and Pakistan returning to the climate of 2001-02 when they were at the brink of war. 

The tortuous move from engagement to estrangement has once again proved that the two countries are still obsessed with their past. They are little prepared to move out of their parochial hostilities that have been plaguing their relations. It comes somewhat as an anti-climax as at a time it did appear that the two countries were prepared to move beyond their usual rhetoric to a substantive plain of friendship and dialogue.

There is no denying the fact that New Delhi and Islamabad took some bold initiatives to build mutual confidence, and opened their borders for each other, though at a limited scale in the past two years. The opening up of Line of Control (LoC) that divides Jammu and Kashmir for a bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, and Poonch and Rawalkote were in particular landmark confidence building measures. But it also remains a hard fact that the two countries were never closer than what these were when they began the peace process in February 2004.

The initiation of peace process did, certainly help prevent a return to 2001-02 climate but they were never closer to resolving their problems, mainly the issue of Kashmir, which is a real bane in the Indo-Pak relations. The coldness in the relations between New Delhi and Islamabad had come up even much before 7/11 blasts. The blasts proved only a flashpoint.

The puncture in the peace process has genuinely caused discomfiture of sorts among a section of political leadership in Kashmir, more particularly among those, who had been a part of the process. The moderate faction of All Parties Hurriyat Conference led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has held several rounds of talks with the Indian central government. Mirwaiz and his group also visited Pakistan, and held talks with President Musharaf and other Pakistani leaders. The logjam on the “peace-road” has virtually pushed them to edge. The desperation among the amalgam leadership could be well judged from their frantic reaction that they would do everything to save the peace process. 

Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) chief Shabir Ahmad Shah too has expressed his anger over the fall of the process. Even as Both, India and Pakistan have kept Shah out of their dialogue gambit, he, however, is a staunch pleader of negotiated settlement of Kashmir problem, and supports the dialogue between India and Pakistan unconditionally.  However, Syed Ali Geelani-led Hurriyat faction seems little perturbed by the development. They deem it as natural corollary of the asymmetry of interests between India and Pakistan. Geelani says that the “so-called” peace process had been limited to peripheral issues and the primary issue Kashmir was sent to backburner. His much-often-raised slogan is “solve Kashmir problem, the rest will follow”. 

There are many takers to Geelani’s claim, and they have a genuine reason to believe so. Despite the peace moves between India and Pakistan, the situation in Kashmir is far from stable. In the embryonic days of normalization process (in 2004), violence and human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir diminished somewhat but it is again on the rise, amid concerns that it could reach earlier levels, since the two countries’ priorities remain at odds. Pakistan urges India to reach a solution on Kashmir; but Indian government instead stresses for the need to create an environment conducive for a stable peace.

A distant watcher may have been carried away by the hoopla created in the name of peace process but the keen Kashmir watchers knew it from the very beginning that it was not as easy to get New Delhi and Islamabad closer. The rhetoric of return of peace might have hit headlines in the media circles but this could never convince a man in the streets in Srinagar that something historic was happening in politically hostile sub-continent.

The cynicism is not quite misplaced. The talks of friendship and peace between India and Pakistan go in circle - talks - tension - and  more talks. Rather than enjoying the peace initiatives, one gets more concerned when the honeymoon is going to end. 

The last 58 years of Indo-Pak history records over 100 pacts, joint communiqués and agreements between the two countries. And almost all the aspects of joint relationship including the issue of Kashmir have been covered in these agreements. The initiation of the now-stalled peace process could at best be described as yet another addition to long list of existing pacts and pledges. What is common in all these agreements is that all these have been worked out after heightened tension between the two countries. But none of these agreements could ever prevent or pre-empt threat of confrontation between the two countries. History bears it that after every peace move, the tension between India and Pakistan has touched a new apogee.

The much hyped Lahore agreement, reached upon between Nawaz Sharief and Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1999 was followed by Kargil war. A year after India and Pakistan went into another bonhomie when the then Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee invited Pakistan President General Parvez Musharaf for a summit in Agra in 2001. But just within four months of Agra summit, India and Pakistan geared up their troops on war positions against each other for about eight months in the aftermath of an attack on Indian parliament. It is not just the asymmetry of political and geographical interests that more-often-than not sends Indo-Pak relations into reverse gear. It would rather be in apt attitude of things to say that Indo-Pak relations are governed by schizophrenic effect of religion as well. It is this hallucinating effect that turns even a cricket or hockey match between the two countries into an act of Jihad and Dharm Yudh or religious war for Hindus.

I remember, one of my Hindu friends in Jaipur (Indian state Rajashtan’s capital city) saying (sometime ago) “forget about Kashmir, we are not prepared to loose a cricket or hockey match against Pakistan”. Though, my friend sounded quite individualistic in his observation but it was an honest statement of overall mood and psychology of Indian public and government.

On February 21, 1999 just at the moment, when Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, during his much-hyped Lahore visit, was shaking hands and hugging with his Pakistani counter-part Nawaz Sharief at Wagah on Indo-Pak border in Punjab, frenzied scenes were witnessed at Kolkatta (capital city of Indian state West Bengal) simply because India was to lose a cricket match at the hands of Pakistan. Political analysts often loose sight of these things, and they try to make much out of nothing or something while delving into Indo-Pak relations. But hard realities cannot be wrapped by fabrications.

Pakistan, for the past few months, had been complaining of lack of response from New Delhi to its (Pakistan’s) flexibility on Kashmir dispute. Much to the chagrin of his own people, and a strong lobby in Kashmir, Pakistan President General Parvez Musharaf walked miles down his country’s historical position on Kashmir, and from the demand to implementing United Nations security Council Resolution on Kashmir, General Musharaf came out with a new proposal of demilitarization and self-rule as alternate solutions to the issue of Kashmir. This has been seen by many a people in Pakistan as also in Kashmir as “selling Kashmir down the river” but still it found little favour from Indian government.

All Parties Hurriyat Conference led by Mirwaiz Umer Farooq went whole hog against the public mood in Kashmir and held five rounds of talks with Indian government. But they too have little to offer in their report cards to the people. The amalgam leaders appeared quite defenceless when their rival, Syed Ali Geelani, who heads a hard-line faction of the Hurriyat Conference, sought them (Mirwaiz and his men) to reveal to the people what they achieved from the dialogue with New Delhi. Mirwaiz and his associates still favour continuation of the dialogue process but they are little hopeful of any positive outcome of the talks. Mirwaiz recently came down heavily on government of India with the accusation that New Delhi was not serious and sincere in resolving the issue of Kashmir.

What appears to have made Mirwaiz and his associates think negatively is not just the Indian government’s refusal to budge from its historical position - that Kashmir is integral part of India - but also the unending human rights violations by Indian security forces on ground. One could term the past two years, by and large, as peace-time for India and Pakistan but Kashmiris’ quest for peace remained largely unfulfilled. Despite a fall in militant incursions across the line of control, the human rights record has been no better than what it had been in the past.

The seriousness in the deteriorating rights record can well be gauged from the similarity in the assertions of all shades of politicians, including pro India, human rights and social activists on the issue. The pro India and pro freedom politicians in Kashmir are diametrically opposed to one another in their perceptions, understanding and assessment of the situation in Kashmir. But if one sees any kind of agreement among them, it is on the issue of human rights.

Mahbooba Mufti, the President of Peoples’ Democratic Party, one of the leading pro India parties and the main partner in power with the Congress in Kashmir, has more than once said that the human rights violations by government forces have alarmingly increased in the new chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad’s regime. Azad took over from Mahbooba’s father Mufti Mohammad Sayed under a power-sharing agreement on November 2, 2005 after the former completed his term of three years as chief minister of the state.

Azad is a leader and member of the Congress, which is the ruling party in New Delhi. His elevation to the seat of chief minister was directly sponsored by his senior bosses in New Delhi. So when he took over as the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, many people had expected him to perform better, for the support and sympathy, he enjoyed in the corridors of power in New Delhi. The assurance had come from none other than Azad himself that there was no room for custodial deaths in his government. He, soon after taking oath as the chief minister, virtually put his security forces and police on notice to be prepared for punishment should anyone be found involved in harassing, humiliating or killing innocent people, which has remained a perpetual business for Indian paramilitary  forces in Jammu and Kashmir in the past two decades.

The warning seemed to have some positive impact in the initial days. Even as there was no let up in the harassment of common people by the paramilitary forces, however, the custodial killings saw a total stop off in the first two months of Azad’s rule. This buoyed Azad so much that he came public on January 9, 2006 and boasted that not a single custodial murder had taken place in the first two months of his rule.

Was it a mere coincidence or a premeditated act, one is not sure, but Azad’s claim flung on his face when quite around the same time (when he made the claim during a function at north Kashmir’s Gulmarg tourist-spot centre), his security forces picked up a 25-year old youth Mushtaq Ahmad Ganai at Adlach village in south Kashmir, Pahalgam area. Mushtaq’s stated “crime” was that a commander of Hizbul Mujahideen, Fareed Khan, a resident of another other village called Akad was a relative of his in-laws.

“We pleaded his (Mushtaq’s) innocence before the army officer but he (army officer) told us to get Mushtaq back only after we provide him information on Hizbul Mujahideen commander”, said Mushtaq’s father Mohammad Ibrahim Ganai. The army handed over Mushtaq’s body to his father, three days later, on January 12, 2006.

The killing of the youth in custody provoked uproar in political and public circles with thousands of people holding protest demonstrations. The death came as a reverse to the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), as it took place in Pahalgam assembly segment, which is represented by Mufti Mohammad Sayed in the state assembly. The PDP leaders flocked to the village to distance from the official machinery and identify themselves with the local residents.

The furore caused major embarrassment to the chief minister, who ordered magisterial probe into the killing, and promised action against the erring soldiers. But nobody knows whether that probe was held, and if held what were conclusions drawn in the probe, and what action was taken against the soldiers. This seemed to have set the wheel of custodial deaths in motion, and the killings began to take place without any full-stop. As the embers of anger were still smouldering in south Kashmir, another death in custody took place in north Kashmir. On January 13, 2006, the Indian troops picked up a youth Nisar Ahmad Rather from his house in Sumbal, and returned him dead to his parents within a span of three hours. 

What, however, came even more embarrassing for Ghulam Nabi Azad was the killing of two students and a teacher of a religious school in Shopian quarter of south Kashmir. The two students and their teacher of Darul Uloom Shangus village in Anantnag district were picked up by the Indian troops at Hepora on January 16, when they were on fund-raising mission for their school in the area. The Indian troops dubbed them as cadres of Lashkar-e-Taiyyaba militants group, and claimed that they were gunned down in an encounter.

But the army’s claim had few takers. Not only the local residents of the area flayed the army’s claim as “blatant lie” but the local MLA (Member of Legislative Assembly) and former PDP Minister Ghulam Hassan Khan (of Shopian) also joined the peoples’ voice. Syed Mohammad Hussain, another PDP MLA of Shangus, also demanded a probe into the killings. Azad was pushed to back foot as his own men (security forces) were out to disprove him.

He summoned a meeting of Unified Headquarters - a joint platform of all the security agencies of India, engaged in combating militants - at Jammu on January 19, 2006. Azad once again sought to assert his position in the all the heads of police and security agencies. To rein in the killing minds in the security agencies, chief minister ordered the army and other paramilitary troops to involve local police in the interrogation of the people picked up on suspicion.  This brought some calm in the security situation. It could have been a mere chance but few missed the timing.

Just a month later (on February 22, 2006) Jammu and Kashmir chief minister was addressing a public meeting at northern district headquarters of Kupwara. The dominant part of his address was to assure people of the safety and security measures, the chief minister had taken to infuse sense of security and dignity among common people, and came out again with his popular warning against security forces on wanton and custodial killings.

But just 15 minutes after he left the venue, soldiers of Indian army’s 33RR battalion shot dead four boys (in the age group of 7-22 years) at Dudhipora (4kms away from where Azad had addressed the public meeting). The boys fell to the bullets of Indian troops when they (boys) were playing cricket in the local ground. The soldiers came out with their popular version, most often stated after wanton killings - that they (army) were chasing militants, who fired on the troops, and the boys were killed in exchange of firing. The cold-blooded killings inflamed feelings that were already running high all across Kashmir, and there were widespread anti government demonstrations. A highly embarrassed chief minister had no alternative but to order the magisterial enquiry into the dastardly act. But its fate too was not different from past enquiries.

Since it took over the office in November 2002, the present coalition government of the PDP and the Congress has ordered probe into 115 incidents of killings at the hands of security and police forces. But none of the enquiry has been completed so far, and not a single soldier or cop involved in the murderous acts has been punished or reprimanded. 

The killings and harassment of civilian population continues perpetually, and the people in the corridors of the Civil Secretariat (the highest seat of power in Kashmir, which houses the offices of the Chief Minister, his cabinet colleagues and senior bureaucrats) seem either helpless to control the reckless happenings or have compromised to get along with the situation as it exists.

What is more disturbing is that the habit-forming-killing by the paramilitary forces has had an exceptional influence on the psyche of the ministers. Chief Minister seems to have made corrections into his earlier chorus of disapproval into acquiescence. That was all the more evident when Azad justified the firing on civilian protestors by Indian army at Watlab on June 2, 2006. The residents of Watlab and other adjoining villages were driven by the tragedy that had struck the area when 23 school children were drowned in the Wullar Lake on June 1, 2006. Watlub is a quiet and beautiful village in north Kashmir. Situated on the banks of Wullar Lake, Asia’s largest fresh water body, it offers a major attraction for local people, and is the most favoured picnic destination for students. The Wullar Lake, however, is occupied by Indian naval force. They have been deployed in the lake to prevent militant movement in the area. The water body is also out of bounds for civilians as well.
The Naval guards, however, unusually offered boat-ride to students. The boat carrying 35-40 students drowned in the middle of the lake, causing death of 23 students. Even as some people attributed motives to the boat-ride offer of navy guards, many however believed that it was an accident. But there seemed unanimity of thought among one and all as why did the navy guards allowed 35-40 children to board the boat when it had the capacity of between 10-12 persons. Questions were also raised as why life-saving jackets were not provided to the students, and why the consent of parents of the students was not sought before offering them the boat-ride?

The situation turned even uglier when the army fired indiscriminately on a crowd of civilians, who were enraged by the tragic deaths. Two persons including a student of 11th grade were killed in the shootout and four others sustained injuries. The Indian army claimed that one of the slain persons was a militant, a claim ridiculed by local residents, human rights and politicians of all shades. Chief Minister Azad seemed all alone on army’s side justifying the firing saying “people should not take law into their own hands”.

Ironically, the Wullar tragedy took place within a week of holding second roundtable conference by the Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh in Srinagar on May 25, 2006. If one goes by the intentions of New Delhi, the conference was held in Srinagar to ensure participation of all the meaningful people including Mirwaiz Umer Farooq-led faction of All Parties Hurriyat Conference. The Hurriyat faction had, earlier, held four rounds of talks with New Delhi in the past two years. But the Srinagar roundtable conference failed to woo Mirwaiz and his men to New Delhi’s fold. They described the roundtable conference as a “mere gimmick” and conditioned their participation in any dialogue or conference, managed and arranged by New Delhi with the improvement in human rights situation in Kashmir. 

The Indian Prime Minister exhibited the accurate sense of his understanding and he rightfully tried to address the overall psyche of people and politicians in Kashmir when he declared, during the conference, a zero tolerance on human rights violation front. But he was put to shame again when on June 4, some army troopers attempted to rape an 8th class girl student at Singhpora in Pattan. The girl was saved by local people when they heard her cries for help. The girl student was on her way home from her school during lunch break. She was waylaid by the members of a road opening party (RoP) of Indian army in an orchard outside the village. The girls screamed for help, which invited the attention of the labourers and agriculture workers in the surrounding. Raising slogans they ran towards the spot, forcing the soldiers to spare the girl and run away from the scene.

The humiliation and torture of women has all along remained a phenomenon with Indian security forces as a counter-insurgent weapon in Kashmir. Dozens of cases of rape and molestation stand documented against Indian army and paramilitary officers in Kashmir. On May 1, 2006 Kashmir woke up to a shocking disclosure of a sex scandal in which underage and young women were forced into prostitution by top politicians, ministers, bureaucrats, police and security officials. The case is being investigated by India’s premier probing agency Central Bureau of Intelligence (CBI) under the direct supervision of a Division Bench of Jammu and Kashmir High Court. Two ministers, two police officers, one Deputy Inspector General of India’s border guards known as Border Security Force (BSF), former additional advocate general of the state and several other persons have already been taken into custody. Reports are that several other ministers, Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs), senior civil and police officers are also involved the scandal.

The DIG of BSF, K C Padhi, who stands accused in the scandal, is reported to have told his interrogators that he did not lure girls and women to rape for some personal lust or greed but in the “supreme national interest”. He told them that he got many militant commanders through these girls and women, who have charged the BSF officer of exploiting them sexually.

A pattern was followed to bring women into sex business. Police and paramilitary forces used to arrest people indiscriminately on suspicion of being militants or supporters of militants. An officer in the Jammu and Kashmir Police’s intelligence wing, would lay a trap. A mother, sister, wife or daughter of an arrested person, who would approach the intelligence officer, for meeting with their kin under custody, would work out a deal with them. He would send them to the senior officers, politicians and ministers where they were forced into submission in exchange for the meeting. The intelligence officer has since been arrested and is facing a trial in the court for the offence.

A senior leader of the ruling Congress and former minister is reported to have raped a woman several times in lieu for helping her to get husband released. An Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, who is facing the trial, used to ask for virgins, every time, he was taken over by the lust for sex. A 15-year old girl, whose nude picture, circulated through mobile phones, led to the disclosure of the scandal, was raped dozens of time by several politicians and officers on the promise of providing her a government job.

The scam can well be described as an organized crime committed by the state on its people. The scam surfaced first in October, 2004 but then chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayed had reportedly ordered not to “harass his ministers in the garb of their involvement in the scandal”. Mufti government incarcerated Asiya Andrabi, chief of Dakhtaran-e-Millat, (daughters of faith), a women’s reformist organization under the Public Safety Act in 2005 when she launched a campaign against obscenity and immorality in Kashmiri society.

The latest reports says the Indian government has signalled the CBI to go slow in the sex scandal, and not to dig deep further. It is just a small part of an ominous picture of Kashmir. Only naïve could have expected a people living and reeling under such a shameful milieu, mourning the death of Indo-Pak dialogue process.

Editor: Murtaza Shibli