The lost opportunity

A SIGNIFICANT INITIATIVE, widely seen as opening up a rare opportunity to push for peace in Jammu and Kashmir, stands aborted even before it could get off the ground, with the Hizbul Mujahideen calling off the ceasefire it had declared unilaterally on July 24. The Pakistan- based militant outfit, which had been insisting on the talks being ``unconditional'' - witness its harping on the Government of India coming out unambiguously on the `within the constitutional framework' aspect - sprang a surprise by demanding a ``tripartite'' format (with participation by Pakistan also) and making continuation of the ceasefire beyond an unrealistic deadline of August 8 contingent upon the Centre agreeing to it. It was obviously a ploy by the Hizbul Mujahideen to pull out of the `peace' process. Given the complexity of the pulls and pressures at work in Kashmir-related issues, it would be rather simplistic to attribute the revocation of ceasefire by the Hizbul Mujahideen to any one causative factor, as Government spokesmen have sought to do. Apart from the wrath it had invited from the other Pakistan-based militant groups, the Hizbul Mujahideen leadership itself would seem to be sharply divided on the ceasefire initiative, which has found favour mainly with the Srinagar segment.

On a different level, what stands out is the near total lack of ground work for the `peace' initiative. If experience the world over is anything to go by, strategies for bringing the insurgent groups to the negotiating table and finding a political solution to the problems in question require an enormous amount of preparatory work to be carried out if they are to pay off even partially. But if the Government of India wanted to show some `result' before Mr. Vajpayee's upcoming visit to the United States and the United Nations for the special millennium summit of its General Assembly, it went into the post-ceasefire talks with hardly any cohesive policy framework. The fact that the Hizbul Mujahideen is the most indigenous of the militant groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir perhaps prompted the Centre to work upon the Srinagar-based segment of its leadership through subtle ways and do business with it in the post-ceasefire context. In the process, it seems to have got exaggerated notions of the HM's strength vis-a-vis the other militant outfits and its ability to deliver on the `peace' front. If by doing business with the Hizbul Mujahideen, the Centre had believed it could play upon the indigenous-foreign divide in the militant movement, it has not quite turned out that way. After all, the Hizbul Mujahideen is as much from the stable of the Jamaat-e-Islami as almost every other militant outfit is, although some of them may be manned mostly by non-Kashmiri mercenaries from Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In a way, the ceasefire `fiasco' can be traced to the failure of the Vajpayee Government to put in place a cohesive Kashmir policy, and this of course has to do substantially with the contradictions inherent in the coalition, as for instance on Article 370. The bottomline that needs to be recognised is that the multi-dimensional Kashmir problem warrants a suitably dovetailed multi-track approach - engaging the National Conference and other mainstream political parties in Jammu and Kashmir, the separatist groups under the Hurriyat umbrella and, above all, Pakistan at the diplomatic level. The record of the NDA regime in this area is anything but creditable. Consider the facts: the Centre sets free the Hurriyat leaders and sends out feelers for talks; as Dr. Farooq Abdullah, fearing marginalisation, gets the State Legislature to adopt the autonomy resolution, it peremptorily rejects it and subsequently, under pressure, settles for a national debate; and the latest of course is its brush with the Hizbul Mujahideen's `peace' initiative. While all these do answer the requirement of a multi-track approach in the nominal sense, the critical element of a cohesive policy line is woefully missing, which is compounded by the Government's unrealistic rejection of a meaningful engagement with Pakistan.

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Section  : Opinion
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