Will it take Valley back to square one or Hurriyat Conference and National Conference to Dineshwar Sharma’s rendezvous?

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz
Srinagar: In an attempt to create conducive atmosphere for reaching out to the unorganised constituency of stone pelting youths and their families, Narendra Modi Government’s Kashmir interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma has made the PDP-BJP coalition play a gamble. On Sharma’s request, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Wednesday ordered withdrawal of 744 FIRs against 4,327 Kashmiri youths booked in incidents of stone pelting on the Jammu and Kashmir Police, security forces, government and private properties and thousands of vehicles.
With addition of the previous 104 FIRs against 634 stone pelters, total number of such cases has reached 848, benefitting 4,957 youths.
Apprehensions of political analysts began coming true in less than 24 hours of the much-hyped announcement of ‘healing touch’. After a number of peaceful operations and encounters in the last over two months, hundreds of youths on Thursday gathered around the site of gunfight near Pakharpora, bordering the calm Budgam district and the turbulent Pulwama district, and subjected the Police and security forces to intense stone pelting.
Even as the security forces refused to withdraw and they succeeded in eliminating three of the holed up militants, several protesters sustained injuries out of pellets and bullets. Agitated crowd shouting anti-India and pro-Pakistan slogans set a vehicle, hired by the Army, on fire.
Resistance this autumn had been remarkably subdued after the security forces intensified counterinsurgency operations, killing 195 militants, for the first time in 11 months in over a decade.
Raids and arrests by National Investigation Agency (NIA), coupled with detention of scores of ‘arsonists’ and ‘stone pelters’ by the J&K Police added to the pressure. It was after a long time that Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti visited parts of the turbulent South Kashmir that had remained out-of-bounds for anybody associated with the Government after Burhan Wani’s killing in an encounter in 2016.
Notably in April 2015, chief driver of the 2010 street turbulence, Masarat Alam Bhat, had rejuvenated the separatist sentiment in the Valley’s young generation with just two pro-Pakistan and anti-India demonstrations.
Then Chief Minister Mufti Sayeed had ordered Bhat’s release from five-year-long detention in days of taking over as head of the PDP-BJP coalition. The turmoil created by Bhat reversed the peace, tranquility and enthusiasm of voters witnessed across the Valley for months of Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in 2014. It created an embarrassing situation for the BJP and Mufti was forced to re-arrest Bhat. Nobody has spoken of Bhat’s release thereafter.
“This is why we call it a gamble”, said the editor of a vernacular weekly while referring to Thursday’s clashes near Pakharpora.
“At a time when few people would respond to the separatists’ Bandh calls and there were prospects of a flourishing tourist season in 2018, Government itself has put a spanner in the spoke of this vehicle. It’s good if the youths are being released on the undertaking of their parents and neighbours but everything can go awry if it is blindly aimed at appeasing a political constituency. Both the ruling parties may have to pay a heavy price for such decisions”, said the senior journalist.
He, nonetheless, maintained that “only a meaningful, structured dialogue with the real key-holders” could lead to peace and resolution. “It’s all incomprehensible as there’s no consistency. Until yesterday, they on TV demonised the Kashmiris and stressed on repressive action against the stone pelters. Now suddenly they have begun to release them en bloc”, said the political analyst.
“It has every potential to confuse and demoralise the Police and security forces. It can also wash away the impact generated by NIA’s raids and arrests and reduce the NIA to a joke. We fail to understand why someone of us would now arrest a stone pelter at the risk of his own life. This is clearly an advantage terrorist, advantage separatist decision”, said an officer of the rank of Senior Superintendent of Police who is not authorised to speak to media on record.
“Unfortunately our politicians leave everything to Police and security forces. They want us to die and save the stone pelters”, said another SSP.
“Until our politicians stop showing generation after generation Pakistan’s road, salt, green handkerchiefs and (Hizbul Mujahideen chief) Salahuddin’s symbols and colours, until our political leaders and clergymen contest the separatist and the neo-terrorist narratives, this terrorism and conflict will never end”, said the Police officer, complaining both, the mainstream politicians and the religious leaders, had abdicated their responsibilities and discovered comfort and convenience in simply singing paeans for Pakistan, terrorists and separatists. He claimed that Sharma’s fate would be no different from that of his predecessor interlocutors as New Delhi, according to him, had “no roadmap to peace”.
While addressing a passing-out parade of Police recruits on Wednesday, Chief Minister Mehbooba asserted that militancy in the State would not be wiped out by only killing the terrorists. She asked the recruits to adopt “humane approach” in dealing with people and remain “soft” towards agitating youths in Kashmir.
“I have heard about your training and skills. It is not just about firing SLRs and AK-47s. It is about how you behave when you face a nine-year-old and eighty-year-old (on streets). The real test awaits you outside”, she said in Kathua.
“The real test begins once you have to deal with youth on streets. You need to do the parenting of these youths who are barely 12 to 14 years old. They need to be counselled, educated and guided for which you people have to act as their guides and mentors,” she told the recruits. “Instead of stones and bricks, children should carry laptops, computers and books in their hands. You have to sensibly handle situations once you move out from this academy”.
Kashmir’s Inspector General of Police, Munir Khan, however, does not subscribe to the apprehensions expressed by some middle-rung officials. “This opportunity (of revoking criminal cases) is strictly for teenagers and the first time stone-pelters. Many of them send me SMS and WhatsApp messages. They repent their mistake of having given company to some urchins. We will set them free but we will go tougher against the hardcore stone-pelters like those who created trouble at Pakharpora today”, IGP Munir Khan told STATE TIMES.
IGP further clarified that nearly 5,000 youths getting benefit of the first phase were those involved in stone pelting from 2008 to 2014. He revealed that another batch of hundreds of FIRs, involving thousands of stone pelters of 2015 -2017 period, was being compiled. It would soon go to the Home Department through J&K Police Headquarters.
Interestingly, it is for the first time that the mainstream political parties across the board – with exception to some Jammu-based political outfits – are on one page over the populist initiative.
“We have welcomed this initiative of reconciliation. There’s no way to oppose it”, National Conference spokesman Junaid Azeem Mattu asserted. “Let’s see how they carry it to a logical conclusion. Solution to the political problem will come through a multi-pronged initiative. Let’s believe they have something concrete in their mind. The proof of the pudding lies in its eating”, Mattu said with a note of optimism.
During his two five-day-long visits to Jammu and Kashmir, Sharma has interacted with over a hundred delegations but mostly those comprising non-entities. Neither the largest mainstream opposition party National Conference nor any separatist group has obliged him with an appointment. Days to come may indicate fate of Sharma’s Mission Kashmir.