Guest militants

If the current Pakistani establishment indeed wants to use violence to force India to make concessions, it appears to be having the opposite effect
David Devadas Srinagar

“General sahib, yeh kya hai? Jo aapke liye haraam, woh hamare liye halaal? (What is this, general? What is prohibited for you is sanctioned for us?)”

That, according to a senior secessionist figure, is a question that one of the leaders of the Hurriyat Conference asked Pakistan President, General Parvez Musharraf, during a meeting in Pakistan. The questioner went on to point to the fact that Musharraf has tried to root out fundamentalist jihad-oriented militant groups such as Sipah-e-Sahiba in Pakistan but groups from Pakistan continue to cause violence in Kashmir.

Ever since they first met him, Kashmir’s independence movement leaders have made known to Musharraf their reservations about what they diplomatically refer to as “guest militants”.

Their first meeting was on the eve of the Agra summit five years ago, at the Pakistan High Commissioner’s residence in New Delhi. Abdul Ghani Lone, who led the minority faction within the then united Hurriyat, made the point. Indeed, Lone had even added that the Kashmiri people were tired of violence, whether perpetrated by outsiders or by their own. At that meeting, Ali Shah Geelani, the mentor of Hizb-ul Mujahideen, had immediately bridled, saying to Musharraf that some people might be tired but he certainly was not. Lone was assassinated in Srinagar 10 months after that interaction with Musharraf.

No wonder the Hurriyat Conference feels frustrated as violence reaches a new peak this summer. For the first time since militancy erupted in Kashmir 17 years ago, tourists have been deliberately targeted in a series of attacks.

Theories abound regarding the extent to which the Pakistani establishment is involved in organising these attacks and those in Mumbai. There is no evidence yet of links between the perpetrators of the terror attacks in the two places but there is an unsettling parallel in the involvement of local boys in the execution of the attacks.

According to police officers and some well-informed Kashmiris, the trend this year appears to be that foreign militants pay large amounts of money to teenaged Kashmiri boys to hurl grenades at targets. These boys are not necessarily intimately involved in militancy and are unlikely to have a police record.

Ordinary Kashmiris do not seem to approve of these tactics. Bystanders chased and caught one of those who threw a grenade on July 11 and handed him to the police. This is a contrast with the trends of much of the past decade-and-a-half, during which the large majority of Kashmiris preferred not to get involved, either out of empathy or fear.

Although there is clearly discernible dissatisfaction with the current state government, led by Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, that does not appear to have dovetailed into anti-India sentiment. This disgruntlement manifests in comparisons with former chief minister, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s stint.

Random conversations with Kashmiris indicate that they generally attribute this violence to foreign militants – who even Hurriyat leaders have told Musharraf they do not want around, whatever their public positions may be.

Indeed, whichever hand may finally throw a grenade, there is little doubt that the nerve centres of these operations are in Pakistan. And it would appear that the target is the perception across India that normalcy has returned to Kashmir.