Persevering with peace

IN PERSEVERING WITH the ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir, operative since the beginning of Ramzan (November 27, 2000), the Centre has displayed remarkable sagacity and the fact that such a course has had the approval of national parties across the political spectrum is highly significant. Particularly noteworthy is that the Government has by going in for a three-month-plus extension straightway - a break from the one-month-at-a-time mode - sought virtually to delink the sustainability of the unilateral peace initiative from the negative impact which every act of massacre or bomb attack perpetrated by the `jehadi' groups tended to have on the security milieu. The earlier practice of review-after-a- month contributed in its own way to the vulnerability of the ceasefire to such pressures, resulting in the process itself being constantly dogged by uncertainty and the Government getting needlessly preoccupied with the question whether the cessation of anti-insurgency combat operations should be continued or not. Given this context, the latest extension, which in a sense places the ceasefire in a longer-term perspective, is clearly a welcome move.

The Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, has, in his statement in Parliament announcing the Government's decision, projected a sort of `carrot and stick' line while delineating his administration's somewhat nuanced approach to ceasefire. The peace process, he stressed, is only for those who ``wished to benefit from it'' and the Government would not let it be ``derailed, diluted or misused''. On the other hand, those organisations that are out to disrupt it or commit acts of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir or elsewhere would be countered effectively by the security forces; he has chosen not to name the outfits, unlike the last occasion (in January) when he specifically mentioned the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed as the chief perpetrators of cross-border terrorism and wanted them to be ``curbed and controlled'' by Pakistan. If the message is that the security forces would hereafter be selective in their adherence to ceasefire, being proactive in their operations against the likes of the Laskhar, it is going to be a difficult proposition from the operational standpoint. But the point is that most of the killings and other acts of violence the `jehadi' groups had carried out over the past three months had to do not so much with the ceasefire being in operation as with the lowering of guard by the security personnel and the inefficiency and slackness of the intelligence network. Only over time and through attrition can the `jehadi'-linked violence decline appreciably and there has to be the will to combat those elements and isolate them, even while enlarging the constituency for peace in the State.

For all its apparent persistence with the ceasefire line, the Vajpayee regime has given the unmistakable impression of looking at the move as no more than a strategy to `expose' and pin down Pakistan on the cross-border terrorism front, with the piecemeal one-month extensions coming in a rather mechanical manner. If the objective is to find a political solution to the vexed Kashmir problem - as it ought to be and as is indeed claimed by the NDA Government - the ceasefire has necessarily to be part of a broader and well-crafted package of political and diplomatic initiatives. Regrettably, there have been no discernible signals, so far, of the Centre having formulated any such clear policy, one that seeks to coopt the various political and regional interests in its search for an enduring solution to the multi- dimensional long-festering problem of the State. The few signals as are available only point to a lack of direction; a notable example is the way the Government has handled the issue of the Hurriyat's offer to visit Pakistan in an effort to make the ceasefire a two-way street. Unless the Government comes up with a political initiative without any further loss of time, it will run the risk of losing the advantage of a national consensus of the kind in evidence on Wednesday.

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