Meeting next week to review J&K situation

By Harish Khare

NEW DELHI, AUG. 4. The Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Mr. I.D. Swamy, and the Special Secretary in the Ministry, Mr. Ashok Bhandari, will leave for Jammu tomorrow, weather permitting. The two are to get a first-hand account of the killing of 15 Hindus in the Kishtwar region of Doda district. The Jammu and Kashmir Governor and the Director-General of Police have already visited the massacre site and conveyed their preliminary impressions to the Centre.

Reacting to the massacre, the Home Minister, Mr. Advani, who is away in Mumbai, has announced that he would be calling a meeting on Wednesday to take stock of the situation in the State. The Defence Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, and the Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, Dr. Farooq Abdullah, would also attend the meeting.

Apart from the dismay at the loss of human life, officials here are not surprised that the militants should have kidnapped and then killed as many as 15 Hindus yesterday in the Kishtwar region of Doda district. Nor are they prepared to say that the Kishtwar killing would be the last of such incidents.

The latest violence is seen as part of the rejoined standoff between the militants and the security forces ever since the Centre called off its ``unilateral ceasefire'' in the last week of May. Once the ceasefire was declared over, the security agencies stepped up their operations against the militants; the idea was to send out a message to Pakistan that India was not coming to the negotiation table at Agra from a position of weakness.

In June and July the security forces claim to have killed more than 210 terrorists; the figure for July - 250, including 150 in the Valley, - is cited as the highest-ever for a month.

Consequently, various jehadi groups found themselves under pressure from the security forces, and were constrained to retaliate. After Agra, there was no need for restraint. Hence, the series of attacks on the minorities.

The security officials see a shrewd thinking behind the killing especially of the minorities. The idea, according to them, seems to be that the Centre should be forced either to beef up its military presence by sending in more troops and to risk, in the process, adverse international attention; or, to redeploy the existing forces and thereby dilute the existing concentration from the Valley where the militants have been effectively checkmated; or, to instigate the exodus of Hindus from the Doda district.

These developments ``on the ground'' are seen as part of Pakistan's preparation for the next round of the Vajpayee- Musharraf interaction, tentatively scheduled for September in New York. The renewed violence is being seen as Pakistan's way of enhancing its bargaining position at the negotiating table.

However, the officials that the `jehadi' groups can be expected to attack the minorities in the vulnerable areas. The ISI and other patrons of these groups, according to the official thinking, want to tilt the scales of debate within Kashmir in favour of the Jamat-e-Islami and its kind. A section of the separatist leadership feels that the people of Kashmir are suffering from a violence fatigue and would not be averse to any kind of honourable ``settlement''; the `jehadis' want to use violence to discredit this moderate leadership and its views.

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