Dost Khan
JAMMU: It must be sheer coincidence that a day after the Pakistan Army Chief General Raheel Sharif described Kashmir as “an unfinished agenda of partition”, Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed expressed desire to enhance people-to-people contact beyond divided families across Line of Control. In fact, he should have seized the opportunity of visiting the Trade Facilitation Centre at the forward post of Salamabad in Uri to send a clear and terse message to hawkish General for his ‘unwarranted and highly provocative’ statement. He and his accompanying senior BJP Minister had more than one reason to react, being the direct stakeholders, and constitutionally mandated representatives to call the bluff of Islamabad.
Jammu and Kashmir is uniquely placed as far as governance is concerned. The reins of the State Administration are in the hands of ‘super-patriots’-PDP, headed by the former Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and the BJP, stewarded by 56 inch chest man, who used to send chilling messages beyond the Kashmir borders before being the Prime Minister. However, they did not do so; neither the Mufti nor Nirmal Singh. Instead, the Chief Minister parroted same old beaten track of ‘greater and hassle-free to-and-fro movement of cultural troupes, students, pilgrims and tourists apart from trading goods across the Line of Control. He is dreaming about these luxuries with a country that believes in sending guns and gun-powder, terror and terrorists, drugs and drug addicted lunatics to shake the foundations of Indian nation. Nobody has never ever told him that trade and terror cannot go together.
The PDP has been a strong votary of forging Confidence Building Measures with Pakistan occupied Kashmir, trade being predominant, knowing well that it has just been a symbolism to keep the engagement with Islamabad going on. That part of Kashmir has nothing to offer which India does not possess. The trade has not been a success story that could have motivated the two nations to broad base the initiative. Like the passenger service-Karwan-e-Aman- (which has limited takers) the trade routes have not revolutionized the economies of the two parts of Jammu and Kashmir. Perhaps more people, with shady antecedents, keep travelling to Kashmir via Nepal or through infiltration routes than using the legal course of travelling in a designated bus. Confidence Building Measures is also a term for political sustenance of some people in trade and politics. They are playing it up to further their political interests, the same way separatists have been playing politics on graves of the unfortunate victims of terror. Both have a linkage, which serves the interests of Pakistan alone.
The competitive politics on letting India and its agencies down has been the subject matter of entire political discourses in the Valley. One wishes the so-called mainstream leaders having expressed a single word in solidarity towards the victims of border violence over the years. There was virtually lame duck response to repeated incidents of border skirmishes on International Border in Kathua and Samba sectors that left thousands of families rootless. There has been no condemnation on attempts to infiltrate terrorists to destabilise India. And, when Pakistan committed the blunder of smuggling huge consignment of narcotics over a year ago, the so-called Kashmir mainstream opened up their mouths, not to condemn but to find out alibis. This was the occasion for those in maddening race for power to expose Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir internationally for detaining Indian trucks and drivers in lieu of the huge consignment of brown sugar. Remember how Pakistan reacted and halted the failed bus-service in protest against ‘detaining drug smugglers’.
Pakistan shall continue to call shots till the time its lackeys in the Valley remain agile and receptive. Now it has all the more reason to get emboldened because the ‘super patriots like BJP’ have finding cosy comfort in the lap of those seizing every opportunity to promote Paki cause in Kashmir.