The Hindu : Terror in J&K

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Friday, Dec 06, 2002

Opinion

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Terror in J&K

By Balraj Puri

There is universal realisation in Kashmir, including in the separatist camp, that the role of the gun is over. If this is properly articulated, militancy will lose ground.

THE SECOND terror attack on the Raghunath temple on November 24 is a continuation of the recent pattern of militancy in the Jammu region to provoke the Hindu community. The official reaction was an unedifying blame-game between the PDP-Congress coalition Government in the State and the BJP ruling the Centre. The public debate on whether and when the letter sent by the Union Home Ministry reached the State Government and whether the latter consulted a Joint Director of the Intelligence Bureau on the subject of release of secessionist politicians and militants exposes the failure of communication channels between the Centre and the State. This is a more serious matter than the issue of who is right and who is wrong.

The usual chorus of condemnation by all and sundry does not add up to a coherent anti-terror policy. Did we exhaust the entire armour in the arsenal of our coercive diplomacy too early? Would a calibrated response to every provocation have been a better strategy? The Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, admitted in the Lok Sabha, the day following the terrorist strike in Jammu that "there was some plans and objectives behind the heavy deployment of troops on the border". But India did not execute those plans because of some reasons, he said. As he did not spell out the reasons, one cannot discuss inadequacies in the coercive diplomacy that we tried to check cross border terrorism.

What are the alternatives to coercive diplomacy? Mobilise international opinion, including among the Muslim nations? The U.S., European countries and Russia have strongly condemned the terrorist strike on the Jammu temple. The last time a diplomatic initiative was directed at the Muslim nations was when an all-party Parliamentary delegation was sent to mobilise support for India's position after the attack on Parliament. But this happened after the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf's famous speech on January 12 had neutralised much of the outrage over the December 13 attack.

But why do we write off the liberal opinion in Pakistan? If air and land traffic between the two countries had not been stopped, the issue of attacks on innocents and religious places could have been raised during exchange of visits of liberal intellectuals from both sides to India's advantage.

Another way of mobilisation of liberal world opinion would be to relax the ban on organisations such as Amnesty International visiting the State, especially after attacks on innocents. Also, why not include on the agenda of the back-channel talks with separatist leaders, which have been going on for long, an agreement on ending killing of innocents and attack on religious places as a first concrete step towards a final solution of the Kashmir problem? Which separatist leaders dare oppose such an agreement? In fact, there is universal realisation in Kashmir, including in the separatist camp, that the role of the gun is over. If this realisation is properly articulated, militancy will lose ground.

Already, militancy in the Kashmir Valley is not attracting fresh recruits. And the major Kashmiri-speaking militant outfits are getting divided and demoralised. But it is not so in Jammu. A fatal flaw in the anti-terror strategy is the equating of the militant threat in the two regions; it is different in many aspects.

Kashmiri youth, for various reasons, decided to go across the LoC and after getting training and arms returned to start militant movement with the aim of getting azadi. Later on, they were joined by non-Kashmiri militants who instead of azadi wanted merger of the state with Pakistan. Even though one of the main routes of infiltration to the Kashmir region passed through Poonch district of Jammu, militant activity did not pick up a momentum in the region for about five years.

The causes and effects of militancy in the Jammu region are somewhat different. It started after the Kashmiri struggle has turned into a Muslim movement and non-Kashmiri speaking youth joined its ranks. They were mostly from PoK and Punjab province of Pakistan and ethnically closer to Jammu and could, hence, strike a rapport with the local population.

Not only was the composition of militants in Jammu different from that in Kashmir, their character and objectives too varied. In the Valley, they mostly targeted security forces and their installations and Muslims belonging to national parties, besides Pandits in Wandhama and Sikhs in Chhattisinghpura. The bulk of the Pandits had migrated from Kashmir in 1990. But attacks on these minorities met with strong resentment from local Muslims; though some bungling by the Government in the inquiry into the tragedy of Chhattisingpura cast some doubts on the identity of the killers.

In Jammu, mass killings of the Hindus was the general practice of the militants. It put some strain on communal relations in the region which further facilitated the militants objectives. Unlike the topography of the Kashmir Valley, the disturbed parts of Jammu are hilly with scattered and isolated pockets of people, where neither the civil administration nor political parties have an effective presence. The security forces on their own cannot distinguish between friends and foes. Unlike the Kashmir Calley, where every human rights violation is reported in the national and international media, the Jammu hills were beyond the reach of the media. With the resultant communal polarisation, the Hindus tended to bank on the security forces and Muslims on the militants.

Having struck some base in Muslim-majority areas, the militants indulged in more desperate acts in Hindu areas; which climaxed in the attacks on temples. Fidayeen from across the border, which is about 30 km from Jammu city, also joined in these acts.

An anti-terror strategy in Jammu requires a multi-pronged approach. A month-long visit of peace workers to Doda district, sent by the Gandhian leader, Nirmala Deshpande, on my request, for instance, made an effective contribution in reversing the trend towards communal polarisation and in bringing down the level of militancy.

More than the physical loss inflicted by the terrorists, it is a sense of helplessness and non-involvement in the anti-terror efforts that cause greater humiliation to the people. Absence of any institution for their participation at any level creates a vacuum that tends to be filled by communal and militant forces.

It is true that the best of efforts — at all levels — cannot prevent a single desperate fanatic, willing to die, entering any public place and indiscriminately killing people around him. It is also true that the war against terror is essentially fought by armed forces with the help of various security and intelligence agencies. But it is no less true that an effective administration, institutional arrangements for popular participation and communal harmony, promoted by political and peace activists, also help in reducing terrorist acts and in minimising physical and psychological damage to the community.

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