Muhammad Yasin Malik

J&K: Breaking Silence, Mirwaiz Hurriyat Reiterates Call for ‘Peaceful Resolution’

In the backdrop of Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s resignation, some leaders of the separatist conglomerate met for the first time since the dilution of Article 370.

Srinagar: Breaking its months-long silence, the Hurriyat Conference led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq held a meeting and reiterated its call for the Kashmir problem to be resolved through dialogue between India, Pakistan and the people of J&K.

Senior executive members of the separatist group met on Wednesday to discuss the situation in Kashmir. Prof Abdul Gani Bhat and Maulana Abbas Ansari, two former chairmen of the conglomerate, and Bilal Lone were among those who met.

The meeting of the conglomerate, which lasted more than an hour, was the first since the Centre unilaterally revoked J&K’s special status on August 5 last year. “It was a normal meeting. We hadn’t met for a long time,” Lone told the Wire.

Lone said the leaders had actually met to inquire about Ansari’s health, as he has not been keeping well for some time now. “Then, we also got a chance to sit and discuss different things about Kashmir and other issues,” Lone said.

The meeting comes days after Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who headed a parallel faction of the Hurriyat, resigned from the conglomerate and expressed dismay at his colleague’s ‘inaction’.

Also Read: Who After Geelani? Questions Over Leadership Have Opened Pandora’s Box for Hurriyat

‘Will continue to pursue peaceful resolution’

Meeting away from the media glare, the Hurriyat reiterated its “basic stand that the Kashmir dispute has to be resolved peacefully as per the wishes and aspirations of people of J&K, among the three stakeholders including India, Pakistan and J&K.”

Following the deliberations, the conglomerate issued a statement, its first in more than 11 months, vowing to continue to work towards the peaceful resolution of the Kashmir conflict.

The Hurriyat faction maintained that “dialogue among the three stakeholders is the best alternative method to resolve the issue that APHC (All Party Hurriyat Conference) has consistently advocated and even participated in,” adding resolution of the Kashmir issue was the “best guarantee of real peace and prosperity” in the subcontinent.

Mirwaiz, who has been under house arrest since August last year, could not attend the meeting, said the statement.

In the months leading up to the Centre’s dilution of Article 370, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) launched a massive crackdown against the separatist camp. JKLF chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik and the second rung leadership of the Hurriyat’s parallel faction, led by Mirwaiz and Syed Ali Shah Geelani, were among those arrested.

The NIA also questioned Mirwaiz, who is the chief cleric of the Kashmir Valley and delivers Friday sermons at the historic Jamia Masjid in Srinagar.

After the Centre read down Article 370 and Article 35A and bifurcated the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories, all the separatist groups had disappeared from the scene. They also refrained from issuing any statement, even after the government began easing the lockdown in the Valley towards the beginning of this year.

‘Attempts at demographic engineering unacceptable’

The conglomerate has also opposed the new domicile rules under which several categories of people, and employees from outside J&K would be granted domicile rights in the UT.

The rules were introduced after the Centre abolished the Permanent Resident Certificate (PRC), which was issued to permanent residents of the erstwhile state of J&K under Article 35A.

“Since 1947, there have also been attempts to change the demographic character of J&K and in August 2019, a final nail in the coffin was hammered in this regard. These attempts at demographic engineering are completely unacceptable to the people of J&K who have totally rejected it,” said the separatist group.

Asking the government of India to stop issuing domicile certificates to “outsiders with the view to change demographic character of J&K,” the group said it was “causing great concern among people and could have serious consequences for the region.” “The APHC members advised people to be very vigilant,” said the statement.

Political analyst Noor M. Baba said separatist groups have been under “public scrutiny for their silence over the situation in Kashmir for almost a year now.”

“This possibly has led to rethinking within the camp. But at the same time, we need to realise that we have been through a very long and repressive spell, when common people even speaking up was seen by the state as anti-national,” said Baba, adding the meeting could be seen as the beginning of “gradual return of separatists to active politics.”

‘New situation has created new opportunities’

Baba also tried to link the latest utterances of the Hurriyat with the stand-off between India and China in Ladakh. “This new situation has created new opportunities. The priorities have changed. We also saw Farooq Abdullah raising the Kashmir issue after maintaining silence for months. They (the Hurriyat) are possibly looking for an opportunity to bring Kashmir back into focus amid the scenario that is developing within and around India,” said Baba.

According to Baba, there some within India believe that the policy of the present regime in New Delhi has “isolated” the country in the neighborhood.

“The government at the Centre has changed the country’s priorities in terms of foreign policy and relations with others in the neighbourhood. Its brand of nationalism is defined by enmity with Pakistan, separatists and Muslim bashing. They invested so much in trying to win over China but failed. This scenario presents an opportunity at a larger level on the Kashmir front,” Baba said.

Analysts have also noted that the meeting of the executive members comes barely days after senior separatist leader Geelani, who headed a parallel faction of the Hurriyat, resigned from the conglomerate which he has led since 2003.

Separatist leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik. Credit: PTI

In a detailed communication sent to the constituent groups, Geelani – who is suffering multiple ailments – accused his colleagues in J&K of having failed to respond to his repeated requests to meet and evolve a strategy to face the situation post-August 5, 2019.

The 91-year-old leader, who has been under house arrest for many years, claimed that it were his colleagues in the Hurriyat Conference who let him down, suggesting that he was not to be blamed for the “hibernation.”

Though Geelani’s move came as a surprise for many, within the amalgam it was being anticipated for a long time. “That the meeting took place in the backdrop of Geelani’s resignation is also important,” said Baba.

However, he said the latest statement of the Mirwaiz-led Hurriyat was “nothing new” but a continuation of its long stand on Kashmir. “But it is important to see how they will move forward from here,” said Baba.

Why Educated Kashmiri Youth Continue to Join Militancy

The government’s ‘offensive’ Kashmir policy and the shrinking political space, among other things, have led to ‘new-age rebels’ trading books for guns, analysts say.

Srinagar: Last week, for the first time in the three-decade militancy in Kashmir, a rebel group which is a key constituent of Syed Salah-ud-Din-led United Jehad Council (UJC) asked students in Kashmir to “stay away” from armed struggle and concentrate on studies.

The statement from Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen (TuM) chief Sheikh Jameel-ur-Rehman, who is also general secretary of UJC, came two days after scholar-turned-rebel Manan Wani was killed in a gunfight with forces in Kupwara district on October 12.

Wani, who was pursuing a PhD at the Aligarh Muslim University, left his research program in January this year to join militancy. He was, in fact, one among the many educated Kashmir youth who gave up studies to pick up the gun in the past two years.

Why the statement?

In his October 13 statement, Rehman said students were “our valuable asset,” and if they don’t concentrate on studies, then “those pro-India elements will find it easy to stretch the period of our subjugation.”

“I appeal to the students to concentrate on studies first and stay away from the armed struggle. The militant commanders should also desist from giving training to budding students,” Rehman said in a statement e-mailed to local news agencies. “The pace India has adopted to kill youth has backfired as more and more educated and qualified youth are joining militant ranks.”

A day later, there was a statement from the outfit in which its unnamed spokesperson said Rehman’s remarks have been “misunderstood.” The spokesperson, however, reiterated the suggestion made by the TuM chief that students and children should concentrate on studies “because if they join armed struggle without proper discipline, training and preparation, India and her ‘occupied forces’ will try to take advantage of it.”

The TuM, which was active during the early phase of militancy and drew its cadre mainly from Alhi Hadith school of thought, had vanished from the militancy landscape in the region. But it made a comeback in 2015 when a Srinagar youth Mugais Ahmad Mir joined the outfit. However, he, along with his group of rebels, later announced allegiance to the Islamic State. They have been killed in gunfights with forces during the past 12 to 18 months.

Also read: New Age Militancy – Kashmir Youth Need Policies Encouraging Change, Not Surrender

Today, the outfit has a few rebels in its ranks, including a teenager Faizaan Majeed and Showkat bin Yusuf, a pharmacy student, who joined the outfit on October 13, barely few days before Rehman’s statement.

Educated youth joining militancy not new

Ajai Sahani, founding member and executive director of the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management said, educated youth joining militancy in the Valley was not a new phenomenon. “If you look at the trend in the past, it is not that this (militancy) comprised of illiterates. There is an atmosphere in Kashmir, and if some educated people get influenced by it, this is n othing surprising,” Sahani said.

For Sahani, the TuM statement was “one-off” and “contradictory” from point of view of any revolutionary and anti-state organisation which would always encourage educated people to come in their ranks. “The leadership comes from the educated class,” he said while describing militancy in Kashmir as “sustained movement.”

In a paper titled “Education and armed conflict: the Kashmir insurgency in the nineties“, Anton Parlow has categorised the Kashmir insurgency in three phases: first, from 1990 to 1996 when militancy focused on urban areas; second, from the late 1990s to 2002 when it moved to rural areas and districts of Jammu; and third, the ‘low-intensity insurgency’ from 2002 onwards.

Manan Wani. Credit: YouTube screengrab

Parlow writes that violent events took place in urban areas of Kashmir in the first phase, but by the mid 1990s, security forces controlled cities and militancy moved to more rural areas. The militancy then became more violent in targeting security forces, Parlow writes, adding that it was the period when Hizbul-Muhajideen became the driving force behind the insurgency.

During the second phase, foreign groups with ‘own agendas’ like Lashkar-e-Taiba entered the Kashmir militancy, and it became a ‘jihad’ against India and moved beyond Kashmir to Jammu, states Parlow.

During all these phases, there was a “slow but consistent” trickle of “highly educated to educated” youth in militant ranks, said a Kashmiri scholar who wishes to remain anonymous. But, he said, since the number of youth picking up the gun was in thousands, particularly throughout the 1990s, the “highly qualified category” of rebels remained invisible.

He pointed to case of a militant, Nadeem Khatib, who was killed in the late 1990s. Son of a chief engineer, Nadeem studied at a well-known missionary school in Srinagar before realising his dream of completing pilot training in America. Then, in 1999, his family received a message that he had been killed in a gunfight with forces in Jammu’s Udhampur district. “They had no idea about it. He had left his luxurious life, gone to Pakistan and joined the Al Badr militant organisation,” the scholar said. Khatib was in early 30s.

“Then there are cases of militants like Ghulam Mohammad Mir, Masood Ahmad Tantray and Maqbool Ilahi, among many others, who were postgraduates. There are many such instances,” the scholar said.

According to him, at one point prior to the 1990s, when the valley was about to erupt, there were several student wings actively propagating separatist politics. And when the armed rebellion broke out, the rebel groups drew their cadre from these students’ unions like the Islamic Students league and the Muslim Students Federation.

“Some known militants like Ashfaq Majeed Wani, Muhammad Yasin Malik and Javaid Mir, who were among the first to pick up guns, were part of the Islamic Students’ League,” said the scholar. “It is the mind – not anything else – that prompts educated youth to embrace this world where you know the end can come anytime. These youth fall in love with the chosen path, adapt it and die for it,” he said.

New-age rebels

Addressing the media in Kupwara on October 6, Indian Army’s 15 Corps lieutenant general AK Bhatt said over 300 militants were active in Kashmir. This is for the first time in more than a decade that the number of rebels including foreign militants active in Kashmir has gone past the 300 mark. Out of these, a majority 181 militants are operating in south Kashmir, as per a report compiled by the J&K police.

Assistant professor-turned-militant Muhammad Rafi, who was killed in encounter on Sunday morning in a Shopian village less than 40 hours after he had gone missing.

These new-age militants are young and well educated. A senior police official posted in south Kashmir said a number of these militants have engineering background while some others are graduates. There are scholars in their ranks as well. While Muhammad Rafi Bhat, an assistant professor from Ganderbal, was killed in an encounter in Pulwama just 40 hours after joining militancy, scholar-turned-rebel Manan Wani was killed in gunfight with forces last week.

“Three more scholars from south Kashmir are active at present, including one from Sangam area and another from an area adjoining Anantnag town. There are school dropouts as well, and their number is also quite good,” said the police official.

The present operational chief of Hizb Riyaz Naikoo is a non-medical graduate; Zakir Moosa, chief of Al-Qaeda cell Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, was studying engineering, so were Eisa Fazili from Srinagar, Syed Owais Shafi from Kokernang and Aabid Nazir from Shopian.

Both Eisa and Shafi, who owed allegiance to the IS, were killed in a gunfight in March this year. Another militant, 25-year-old Muzamil Manzoor from Kulgam, a B. Tech pass out from the Banras Hindu University (BHU), was killed in a gun battle with forces in November last year. In March this year, top separatist Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai’s son, Junaid Ahmad, joined Hizbul Mujahideen. Junaid was an MBA from the University of Kashmir.

Another reality of today’s militancy is that the rebels do not come from ordinary households but well-to-do families as well. Moosa’s father is a senior engineer with the government while the father of Hizb militant Basit Rasool (an engineering student), who was killed last December, is a bank manager.

The militancy has even seen some teenagers and bright students leaving their studies to pick up guns. One among them was Ishaq from Laribal village of Tral. He had scored 98.4 percent in class X and 85 percent in class XII and was preparing to be a doctor. He was known among his friends as ‘Newton’ for his sheer brilliance. In March 2016, he disappeared from his home and joined Hizb. A year later, he was killed in a gunfight in his hometown.

Also read: The Kashmir Professor Who Turned Militant and Was Killed, All Within 40 Hours

Likewise, 15-year-old Faizan Ahmad Bhat, also from Tral, the youngest Kashmiri militant, died in gunfight in May 2017, three months after he had picked up gun. He was a class X student. Similarly, Fardeen Ahmad Khanday, another class X student, was part of a fidayeen squad of Jaish-e-Mohammad, which launched a pre-dawn attack on CRPF’s training-cum-induction centre at Lethpora in December last year. He and his two associates were killed in that attack. Fardeen survived as a militant for just three months.

According to the Kashmiri scholar, there were two varying discourses about the Kashmir militancy: one in the virtual world and other one on the ground. To elaborate his point, the scholar mentioned the May 7 gunfight in Badigam Shopian in which five militants were killed. Those five rebels included top Hizb commander Saddam Hussain Paddar, Bilal Ahmad Mohand, Adil Ahmad Malik, Tauseef Ahmad Sheikh and assistant professor Rafi.

“Both Padder and Tauseef had joined militancy more than four years ago while the assistant professor was just two days into militancy. The killing of the assistant professor dominated the discourse on social media. But if you go deep into south Kashmir’s villages, Saddam and Tasueef are household names,” said the scholar. “I am not comparing the two, but these are varying discourses.”

‘Pushed to the wall’

Most of these militants, however, get rudimentary training and end up dying in gunfights without giving a tough fight. “The social media has glamorised the militancy and a narrative has been created wherein these rebels are hero-worshipped. When a militant is killed, he gets a hero’s welcome, and others while trying to give vent to their anger, tread the same path,” said another police official.

Analysts, however, see the Indian government’s ‘offensive’ Kashmir policy as reason for the ‘growing appetite’ for gun among the Kashmiri youth. “Today, CASO (cordon and search operations) is the order of day in the valley. Any kind of dissent is crushed with force. And then the shrinking political space has left the valley’s youth with no choice,” said Noor A. Baba, a political analyst.

He said the events taking place across India were also shaping the situation in Kashmir. “You go on justifying lynching of Muslims in the mainland and then also presume it will have no impact on the only Muslim-majority state of India,” he argued.

In this “boiling atmosphere,” he said, one can’t expect these educated youth to escape “ground realities.” “They are part of our society and feel choked and humiliated in the prevailing atmosphere and hence the results are for everyone to see,” Baba added.

Kashmir Separatists Released, But Still Unconvinced on Dialogue With Government

Experts see the release as an admission from New Delhi that the ‘iron fist’ approach isn’t working in Kashmir.

Srinagar: On a sunny Friday afternoon, a familiar face in Kashmir politics emerged on the busy Humhama airport road, escorted by supporters. Within minutes, the crowd swelled. The area erupted in ‘azadi‘ sloganeering.

“Yei chu Geelani soab (He is Geelani sahab),” a young man in his 30s said out loud.

The 88-year-old separatist, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, has been kept under house arrest for the past five years. The last time he was allowed to attend Friday prayers was in 2010, the year more than 100 civilians were killed in summer unrest.

But on March 30, the frail and ailing separatist walked free to offer congregational prayers a day after, in an unexpected move, director general of police S.P. Vaid told a local newspaper that the separatist trio of Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik were free to carry out their political and social activities.

This freedom, however, came with a rider: none of them should create law and order problems or make “anti-national” speeches.

For many in Kashmir, this sudden change of heart from the Mehbooba Mufti-led government came as a big surprise. Ever since the People’s Democratic Party-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance took over the reins of the state in 2015, it has stuck to the policy of previous Omar Abdullah-led regime – to tighten curbs on separatists’ movement. Under pressure from New Delhi and his alliance partner BJP, the Mufti Muhammad Sayeed-headed government had even sent separatist Masarat Alam back to jail barely a month after his release in March 2015.

The Centre has, in the past, repeatedly invoked the Atal Bihari Vajpayee doctrine of ‘insaaniyat, Kashmiriyat and jamhooriyat‘. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi has talked about the need to “find a permanent and lasting solution to the problem within the framework of the constitution”, while emphasising that the Kashmir issue can’t be resolved by “bullets or abuses, but by embracing all Kashmiris”.

On the ground, however, the iron fist policy has been the first line of response, be it when crushing the five-month-long protests in 2016 with brute force or when launching a massive crackdown on separatists, militants’ families and sympathisers during the latter part of last year.

Since 2016, Malik, who played a major role in the unification of the separatists, has frequently been in jail, while Mirwaiz too has been confined to his Nigeen house in the summer capital Srinagar.

Given all of this, the sudden U-turn by the government is creating a large amount of skepticism.

“They (the Centre) thought they will kill 200 militants and everything will be over, but today there are more militants and the resistance is much stronger. The government doesn’t seem to know how to deal with this situation and, in a sinister way, they have thrown the ball into the separatists’ court,” argued political analyst and professor Siddiq Wahid.

Post the 2016 unrest, the joint forces of the army, Jammu and Kashmir police and CRPF launched ‘Operation All Out’ in south Kashmir, gunning down 218 militants in 2017 alone, the highest number since 2010.

But the Valley continues to be embroiled in militancy and civil unrest. Today, the number of local militants is more or less the same as it was at the start of 2017, and support for them hasn’t thinned out.

In the past ten days, at least eight youth, including three cousins from Tahab village in Pulwama, have gone missing and are believed to have joined the militants.

“New Delhi doesn’t have much credibility in Kashmir today…for them, perhaps, the only way out now is to release separatists and see if they can quell what they are anticipating – further deterioration of the situation,” continued Wahid.

The primary political outreach that has come from the Centre thus far was the appointment of former Intelligence Bureau chief Dineshwar Sharma as Jammu and Kashmir interlocutor, with the mandate of carrying out a sustained dialogue with “all stakeholders”. But this has failed to leave much of an impression with the public, given that such initiatives have been received a silent burial in the past.

Also, in absence of a clear-cut mandate, Sharma has failed to break the ice with the separatist camp.

This inconsistency in the government’s approach could perhaps explain why the separatist camp hasn’t responded to the concession offered to them yet. “We won’t act prematurely,” Geelani said in his uncharacteristically brief speech to the gathering at Hyderpora mosque. “I will consult them (Mirwaiz and Malik) and our response will come before the public. We will not be impatient on this thing.”

He had a few words for the people as well – stay united and follow the Hurriyat programme.

The trinity of Geelani, MIrwaiz and Malik has formed a conglomerate, ‘Joint Resistance Leadership’, which has been issuing separatist programmes for the past two years.

Renuka Choudhary, who teaches political science at Jammu University, sees the concession by the Centre as a “shift” in its Kashmir policy, but believes it is more driven by the interlocutor, whom she described as a “linkage” that New Delhi has with the situation on the ground.

Since his appointment, Sharma has made seven visits to Kashmir – last week he flew in a chopper to Tral, the native town of Burhan Wani and a hotbed of militancy in Kashmir.

“He (Sharma) is consistently visiting Kashmir despite the fact that he hasn’t been taken seriously by Kashmiris, the hard people (separatists) and even by some in the government. He has met BJP people in the Valley, traders and others, and must have got the feedback from them,” Choudhary told The Wire.

Another argument that is being thrown up is that there are radical trends emerging in Kashmir in the form of support for global jihadist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda. In such a scenario, restrictions on the separatists, who have a impact on people, particularly the youth, and have been against linking Kashmir to these ideologies, has proven counterproductive.

Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz said there was a complete understating in New Delhi about dealing with the situation in Kashmir “militarily”.

“That is the path they have been pursuing. In this atmosphere, the youth are feeling suffocated and that is why we are seeing very disturbing trends emerging on the militancy front today,” argued Mirwaiz. “Had they not choked our political space and pushed the youth to the wall, things could have been different.”

Political scientist Noor M. Baba corroborated Mirwaiz’s remarks. “The youth getting radicalised is a more dangerous situation for both the state government and New Delhi. Hurriyat has always stood against it, but they are being denied the space,” he commented.

According to him, the decision to release separatists was an admission by the Centre that its “iron fist policy” has proven counterproductive in the restive region, which hasn’t seen any thaw in protests or pro-militant rallies in recent years.

Also, the ruling PDP has been consistently calling for dialogue on both internal and external fronts.

It was the first party to welcome the release of separatists and made an fervent appeal to Geelani to join the dialogue process.

“Democracy is battle of ideas, and the government decision to free separatists is a welcome measure. I appeal to him (Geelani) to play a vital role and become a part of the dialogue process…” said the party’s general secretary, Peerzada Mansoor.

But the separatists aren’t in a hurry to weigh their options. “Today, the situation in Kashmir is the outcome of New Delhi’s muscular policy, particularly since 2016. We will meet at the right time to decide how to take our programmes forward,” Mirwiaz told The Wire.

Mudasir Ahmad is a Srinagar-based reporter.

Kashmiri Separatists Rule Out Talks With Interlocutor, Call His Appointment a ‘Time-Buying Tactic’

The separatist leaders said that for any meaningful dialogue to take place, the government must first acknowledge that there is a dispute that has to be resolved.

Union home minister Rajnath Singh with Kashmir interloctur Dineshwar Sharma. Credit: PTI

Union home minister Rajnath Singh with Kashmir interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma. Credit: PTI

Srinagar: Hardening their stance, separatists in the Valley on Tuesday ruled out talks with the Centre’s interlocutor for Jammu and Kashmir, Dineshwar Sharma, calling the offer an “exercise in futility” and describing the initiative as “nothing more than a time-buying tactic” due to “international pressure and regional compulsions”.

In their first formal response to the announcement made by Union home minister Rajnath Singh on October 23 that Sharma, a former Intelligence Bureau director, would hold sustained dialogue with all stakeholders in the state, separatist leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik questioned how New Delhi would address or engage with Kashmiri people’s “political will and aspiration of self-determination” when it even rejected the autonomy guaranteed under the constitution.

‘Ploy to strike hard bargain’

While the Hurriyat leaders had all this while preferred not to speak to the media on any decision over engagement with the interlocutor, a source said they had been in touch with each other and “discussed the issue” before making their stance public on October 31.

“In principle, the pro-freedom leadership has always advocated and supported sincere and productive dialogue as a means of conflict resolution over Jammu and Kashmir. It entails all participants to acknowledge that there is a dispute that has to be resolved. But the GoI continuously refuses to accept this basic premise,” the separatists said in a joint statement.

The Hurriyat leaders opposed engagement by any other group with Sharma, who is expected to arrive in Srinagar later this week. They said that for any Kashmiri to be part of this “futile exercise” would only “undermine our internationally acknowledged legitimate and just struggle, nourished by the blood of our martyrs and great sacrifices and hardships rendered daily by the masses”.

The day Sharma’s appointment was announced, Islamabad had dismissed it as “insincere and unrealistic” while reiterating that for any dialogue process to be meaningful and result-oriented, it has to include the three main parties – India, Pakistan and the Kashmiris. Even United Jihad Council chief Syed Salahuddin had maintained that for talks to happen, India should accept Kashmir as a dispute and the dialogue should be “trilateral in the light of UN resolutions on Kashmir”.

Watch: ‘I Am Emotionally Attached to Kashmir’, says Interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma

Sharma, however, said that he has the government of India’s “full mandate” and “complete independence” in deciding whom to talk with. In one of his statements to the media last week, he remarked that the way youth of Kashmir were moving, “which is radicalisation”, it would ultimately “finish the Kashmir society itself” and that if all this picked up, the situation will be like Yemen, Syria and Libya.

Taking exception to the statement, the separatists said “comparing the internationally-recognised 70-year-old political and humanitarian issue of Kashmir to that of the sectarian war and power struggle in Syria is deception and propaganda”.

“His (Sharma’s) assertion that he was coming to Kashmir with the directive from government of India to restore peace rather than addressing the dispute or its resolution limits the scope of any engagement,” the separatists said, adding that unless the Kashmir dispute was understood and addressed in its historical context and in the background of international commitments made over it, lasting peace can neither be achieved in the region.

“To talk of peace and dialogue was also a ploy by the Centre to strike a hard bargain, to which the people of Kashmir and leadership will never succumb to.”

‘Taking Pakistan on board a must’

At his Muslim Conference office in Wazir Bagh, separatist leader Abdul Gani Bhat argued that the announcement of talks at an internal level was “provisional and lopsided effort”, which according to him won’t yield any result unless Pakistan was taken on board.

“This initiative will never get us anywhere. It has never happened in the past, it will never happen in the future either. You are probably ploughing a field with seeds which never will grow into plants… It [appointment of Sharma] is a repetition of yesterday. We want to move forward,” Bhat said.

Wearing a pheran, 82-year-old Bhat, who has served as chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, insisted that talking to Islamabad was more important than talking internally. “I have no misgiving about it,” Bhat said.

After a long pause, he continued: “I call a spade a spade. Kashmir is not a sovereign state but a disputed territory between India and Pakistan. I can’t fight India and I can’t fight Pakistan but India can fight Pakistan and Pakistan can fight India. I can at the best raise slogans and in a fit of anger throw stones. That is what I can do.”

Separatist leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik. Credit: PTI

Referring to past initiatives by the Centre, from the appointment of K.C. Pant to N.N. Vohra as interlocutors to the constitution of a Kashmir committee and the 2010 appointment of three interlocutors, Bhat said nothing had come of such exercises.

“You (the Centre) have been talking on Kashmir but what did you get out of it. Kashmir is an issue between India and Pakistan; they fought wars on Kashmir; they signed agreements; their armies met in battle fields and then their leaders met in Tashkent, in Shimla, in Lahore, in Islamabad. Why? The government of India went to United Nations. Kashmir is a dispute no doubt about it but the solution to it lies in New Delhi and Islamabad and not in the streets of Srinagar, Jammu or Ladakh. Any engagement between the two nuclear countries is extremely likely to give the results,” said Bhat, quickly adding that Kashmiris have had to make sacrifices because of the India-Pakistan rivalry and they should be taken into confidence in the way that Pervez Musharaff and Atal Bihari Vajpayee did.

Bhat, who was the first separatist leader to speak against the prolonged strike called by the Hurriyat leadership, had a word of caution as well. Kashmir as a dispute, he said, has today assumed a much bigger dimension and is directly linked to the future of the entire South Asian region.

Watch: ‘Dineshwar Sharma Is the Best Man for the Job,’ Says Former RAW Chief A.S. Dulat

“Look at China and Pakistan, look at America and Afghanistan and then look at Indian and Afghanistan. It is a huge problem. Kashmir issue is not just about Kashmir, it is about entire South Asia…the entire world has just shrunk to South Asia as far as disputes are concerned and the mother of the disputes is in Kashmir,” said Bhat, adding if New Delhi and Islamabad decide to talk tomorrow there would be healthy change in the Valley.

‘More militarily than political’

There has been no clarity on Sharma’s mandate and the contradicting statements from several Union ministers during the last week over the nature of his job have only added to the pessimism in the Valley.

“Doesn’t New Delhi know about the Kashmir problem? How does the appointment of new interlocutor change the ground realities in Kashmir? Their intent seems to be to reduce us to one of the hundreds of stakeholders in Kashmir?” said a senior separatist leader who wished not to be named.

Referring to the arrest of several Hurriyat leaders by the NIA, he said: “You jail our leader and workers on the flimsy grounds without coming up with a single proof and then want us to talk. Is this the way talks are held?”

Political analyst Noor M. Baba said the appointment of Sharma seems more to be “supplementing” the ongoing “military action” in Kashmir rather than a political initiative. “Didn’t they [the separatists] talk to the government of India earlier? What did they gain out of it that time? Even a single prisoner wasn’t released that time,” he said referring to talks held between Hurriyat and government of India earlier. In fact, years later, Fazl Haq Qureshi, the founder of the Hurriyat Conference, who had engaged in talks with the government of India, was shot dead outside his home.

According to Baba, the unity among the Hurriyat leaders this time and the bitter experience of the past would have also contributed to the decision making.

“Hurriyat’s dismissal of talks was just a formality as new Kashmir interlocutor, unfortunately, from day one, was more interested in Syria than Kashmir,” senior journalist Naseer A. Ganai wrote.

While there are those who say that the success of any interlocution in Kashmir would largely have depended on engagement with the separatists, it remains to be seen how the Centre’s interlocutor will begin his mission Kashmir later this week.

“Appointment of former spymaster Mr D. Sharma as Delhi’s special representative has killed all hopes and sent a wrong signal to Kashmir. And Mr Sharma is talking about the ISIS, online radicalisation, Syria, Egypt, auto-rickshaws and rickshaw pulling. A wrong man for the job from a dialogue point of view. A right man for the BJP’s game plan in Kashmir as yet another intelligence operation,” commented another journalist, Gowhar Geelani.

Mudasir Ahmad is a Srinagar-based reporter.

With Call For ‘Islamic Rule’, Zakir Musa May Have Signalled Ideological Split in Kashmir Militancy

The Hizbul Mujahideen has distanced itself from Musa’s threat to behead Hurriyat leaders for terming the Kashmir struggle political and not religious, but some militant outfits have come out in support of him.

The Hizbul Mujahideen has distanced itself from Musa’s threat to behead Hurriyat leaders for terming the Kashmir struggle political and not religious, but some militant outfits have come out in support of him.

Zakir Musa was denounced by the Hizbul Mujahideen for threatening to behead Hurriyat leaders. Credit: Twitter

Srinagar: Zakir Musa, who rose to become the Hizbul Mujahideen’s top commander in the Valley, has threatened Hurriyat leaders that he will chop off their heads if they continue terming the Kashmir freedom struggle as a political one instead of a religious one to establish Islamic rule.

In a video that runs just over five minutes, Musa, who on May 13 parted ways with the Hizbul following differences over the rebellion against Hurriyat leaders, can be heard warning Hurriyat leaders against becoming “thorns” in the struggle for the imposition of Shariah.

“Our struggle is for implementation of Shariah. It is an Islamic struggle,” says Musa, who had taken over as the chief of Hizbul – the largest indigenous militant outfit – after the killing of Burhan Wani by security forces in July last year.

“I am warning them (Hurriyat leaders) not to play their politics. If they again try to become thorns in our path, the first thing we will do is behead you and hang you in Lal Chowk. We will leave the infidels and kill you first,” Musa warns in the video, in an open rebellion against Hurriyat leaders.

“If this is a political struggle then why you people have been using mosques for politics, why have you been using the pulpits of the mosques for a political struggle? If this a political struggle then why are you coming to the funeral of the Mujahids? We don’t have to be with hypocrites. We have to recognise what is right…,”

Inflexible Musa quits Hizbul

A day after Musa’s threatening message caused a flutter in Kashmir, the Hizbul Mujahideen dissociated itself from it terming the statement as “unacceptable” and “personal opinion”.

“The statement (of Musa) isn’t acceptable…This is the personal opinion Zakir Musa,” said Hizbul spokesperson Saleem Hashmi, in a statement issued from Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Stating that Hizbul Mujahideen was examining the statement and that they wouldn’t hesitate to take “any step in favour of Kashmir struggle,” Hashmi emphasises: “In these circumstances, any provocative statement or step could prove deadly for the movement.”

But in a dramatic turn of events, barely few hours after the Hizbul statement, Musa announced he will part ways with the militant outfit, this time through another video.

“If we are fighting for aazadi to establish secular state, then we are not martyrs…then my blood will not be spilled for it. If Hizbul Mujahideen does not represent me, I also do not represent Hizbul Mujahideen now onwards,” he states in over the new video, pressing further his position that his fight was not for a secular state but aazidi for Islam. “I stand by what I said and I do not care if anybody is with me or not as long as Allah is with me.”

He, however, made clear that his threat was only for those who were talking about a secular state. “I have not said anything against a particular person or Geelani sahab. My talk about hanging people has nothing to do with Hurriyat as I had talked about those moderates who support a secular state,” Zakir says. “If we get freedom for secularism, we will have to start another battle against them so telling this thing was very important.”

Who is Musa?

A former engineering student from a Chandigarh college, Musa hails from the Tral area of Pulwama. He was visiting his home on a summer break in 2013 when he disappeared to join the militancy. He was elevated to the group’s top role following Wani’s killing.

This is not for the first time that Musa has talked of aazadi for Islam. In a series of videos released by him last August, the militant commander described himself as “soldier of Allah”.

“Whether we are fighting with gun or throwing rocks, this should not be for nationalism but for Islam,” he said in one of the videos. In another video message in March this year, Musa was more direct with his call for establishing “supremacy of Islam”.

“I ask my stone-pelter brothers not to fall for war of nationalism. I see that many people in Kashmir are engaged in war of nationalism, which is forbidden in Islam…the fight should not be for the sake of Kashmir (rather) it should be for Islam for Shariat,” he reiterated in the video message.

Director general of police S.P. Vaid said Musa’s recorded message indicates a fight within the militant ranks in south Kashmir. “We don’t take such things seriously,” Vaid told The Wire, while confirming that the voice in the audio was Musa’s.

What does the threat signify?

For the first time in the 28-year history of militancy in the Valley has a top militant commander openly threatened to kill Hurriyat leaders. This indicates an apparent ideological split in Kashmir’s decades-old militancy.

As the threat became a talking point in Kashmir, former chief minister Omar Abdullah talked about the “damage” that the video has done. “The damage is done. Those looking to paint everything happening in Kashmir as a one big Islamic uprising are latching on to Zakir’s video,” Omar tweeted.

In another tweet he wrote: “1000s of us talk about the political issue of J&K &no one takes us seriously. 1 man with a gun posts a video &now he’s the voice of Kashmir?”

1000s of us talk about the political issue of J&K &no one takes us seriously. 1 man with a gun posts a video &now he's the voice of Kashmir?

— Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) May 13, 2017

On his part, Musa, after quitting the Hizbul, has vowed to continue to “fight for supremacy of Islam”. “Let me see, how many come with me,” he asserted in the second audio message. But his rebellion is now threatening to split different militant outfits operating in the Valley. One of the militant outfits, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, came out in support of Musa on Saturday (May 13).

“Zakir Musa Bhai has spoken truth. We stand by him. Our support is always with him,” Harkat-ul-Mujahideen spokesperson Hasan Askari told local news agency CNS in a telephonic statement.

War of words

Musa’s threat-to-kill message came after Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik said on May 9 that the Kashmir issue is political and the ongoing movement is indigenous and has nothing to do with organisations like ISIS and Al-Qaeda. They blamed “Indian agencies maligning the movement under a well-thought-out plan”.

“The groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda are nonexistent in the State and that there is no role for these groups within our movement. The agencies are hiring some sick-minded and Ikhwan-type goons who have been assigned the task of creating chaos in the state. They have decided to go for mysterious killings, burglary, loot, plunder and vandalism under the garb of these groups, to defame the freedom struggle and to influence the international viewpoint,” the trio said in a statement.

The statement was seen as coming in response to a speech made by a masked militant on the grave of a slain colleague in Kareemabad in Pulwama on April 7, where he had said militancy in Kashmir was a fight for the implementation of Islamic rule and not for any group or Pakistan.

“We want Islamic system in Kashmir. We have stood up for not any organisation or Pakistan but Islam,” the militant said while addressing the gathering at the funeral, asking people not to wave “un-Islamic” Pakistani flag.

The militant had also praised Taliban, arguing that it fights in Pakistan for the implementation of Islam. “Why I asked you to shout slogan of Taliban is because Taliban wants Islamic system in Pakistan. We should love Taliban,” he said.

The statement was, however, discarded by United Jihad Council, a conglomerate of several militant organisations, including the Hizbul. “Those opposing the Pakistani nation and flag and supporting Taliban tells about the intentions of the gunmen masquerading as Mujahideen. These people are out to create confusion,” spokesman of the council Syed Sadaqat Hussain said in a statement.

Political analyst Noor A. Baba said the “situation” that has unfolded for past four days was very “unfortunate and harmful” to the political cause that people in Kashmir were associated with.

“This doesn’t serve our cause,” said Baba.

Hurriyat breaks silence

Breaking their silence over the death threat issued by Musa, the separatist leaders on Sunday evening cautioned that any disunity in the “freedom camp would give Indian government a chance to sabotage the movement”.

Although the joint statement by Geelani, Mirwaiz and Malik did not name Musa, it asked all political and militant organisations to “fight for freedom with vision and wisdom”.

“The freedom movement is in a crucial stage. We need to be careful because our enemy may gain an advantage from prevailing crises,” the statement said without naming anybody. “All political and militant factions have decided to remain united against them. We won’t allow India to create a rift in the resistance camp.”

The trio said the separatists have succeeded in shrugging off their “hardline and moderate” tags, uniting on a one-point programme of attaining “freedom from forced occupation”. “India stands frustrated by this unity,” the joint statement said. “We ought to remain cautious, and refrain from taking any step that would help its forces play foul with the freedom movement.”

Kashmir Separatists Oppose Pakistani Plans to Grant Gilgit-Baltistan Provincial Status

In a joint statement, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin said Pakistan’s proposal amounts to changing Kashmir’s disputed nature.

File photo of Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Credit: PTI

Srinagar: Riled by the Pakistani government’s plans to declare Gilgit-Baltistan a fifth province of the country, separatists in the Kashmir Valley have warned Islamabad to desist from embarking on any “adventure” that could impact Kashmir’s “disputed status”.

Although Gilgit-Baltistan – formerly known as the Northern Areas and a part of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir – has been under Pakistan’s control since 1947, the country’s government has always treated the region as part of the disputed area of J&K.

“Any proposal to declare Gilgit-Baltistan as the fifth province of Pakistan is unacceptable as it tantamount to changing the disputed nature of Kashmir,” the powerful separatist leaders, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik, cautioned Islamabad in a joint statement on March 17.

The trio – who led last year’s five-month long pro-freedom uprising – have argued that since Jammu and Kashmir’s political destiny remains undecided in accordance with the UN resolution on the matter, any proposal which deviates from Pakistan’s “original stance” on Kashmir and its geographical entity is “improper and would prove detrimental for [the] Kashmir cause”. “We hail the role of Pakistan regarding the Kashmir issue in international fora but no deviation, alternation and changes were acceptable unless people of erstwhile J&K get an opportunity to decide the future course of the state through a referendum. Neither India nor Pakistan have any authority or right to alter geographical status of the state,” the separatist leaders said.

On the same day that the separatists cautioned Pakistan, United Jihad Council chief and Hizbul Mujahideen supremo Syed Salahuddin also warned Islamabad. “Pakistan should stop the process of making Gilgit-Baltistan its fifth province. Such an act will have serious ramifications on the Kashmir issue as well as Kashmir-centric UN resolutions,” Salahuddin said in a statement to a Srinagar-based local news agency.

In 2014, a similar proposal by the country’s federal ministry of Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan affairs was criticised by residents of divided Kashmir across the Line of Control. On that occasion, in addition to the separatists’ opposition, the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) assembly also passed a resolution opposing the granting of provincial status to Gilgit-Baltistan. “Making Gilgit-Baltistan a fifth province will weaken Pakistan’s national stand on Jammu and Kashmir at the international level,” said the resolution. And added, “Whenever a plebiscite is conducted the people of G-B will also have the right to decide their future with the people of other parts of the State of Jammu and Kashmir”.

The history

According to political analyst Ashiq Hussain, Gilgit-Baltistan was incorporated into Jammu and Kashmir by the Dogras – whose rule lasted a century – in 1846. In 1949, after the Kashmir issue went to the United Nations, Pakistan inked the Karachi agreement under which it was agreed that the affairs of the region would be run by the government of Pakistan under a separate federal ministry of Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas, said Hussain. Islamabad, however, continued to treat the region as part of disputed Kashmir and a separate geographical entity.

In 2009, while the name Northern Areas was replaced with Gilgit-Baltistan, Islamabad allowed the region to elect its own government with a chief minister as its executive head and the federally-appointed governor as the constitutional head. Though the region has its own regional assembly, the ministry of Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas continues to be the real power centre in the region.

The plan and the cause

On March 15, Pakistan’s minister for inter-provincial coordination, Riaz Hussain Pirzada, told Geo TV that a committee headed by Pakistan’s foreign affairs advisor Sartaj Aziz had proposed giving provincial status to Gilgit-Baltistan. He said that a constitutional amendment would be made to change the region’s status. Gilgit-Baltistan is the entry-point to the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and recent media reports have implied that Beijing’s concerns about the region’s disputed status have prompted Islamabad to make the move and provide legal cover to the CPEC.

“Beijing, in its search for securitising China’s western territories, has invested hugely in Gilgit-Baltistan. It wants to protect that investment and so has pressured Islamabad to declare Gilgit-Baltistan a province in order to weaken Delhi’s objections to its claims over the disputed state,” political analyst Siddiq Wahid told The Wire.

But the separatists are not alone in their opposition to the change in the status. New Delhi was, in fact, the first to criticise Pakistan. Although it took an entirely different stand. “…The entire state of Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India in 1947. It has been, is and will always be an integral part of India. A part of J&K has been under illegal occupation of Pakistan. Any unilateral step by Pakistan to alter the status of that part will have no basis in law and will be completely unacceptable,” said Gopal Baglay, spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs.

Wahid argued that while the sincerity of New Delhi’s objections would be determined by what it was willing to do to protect its claims to that territory, the proposed provincial status to the region would “considerably weaken” Islamabad’s claims vis-à-vis the disputed status of J&K. In the long run, the confrontation that this development could bring about could cost South Asia and the world dearly, said Wahid. “Either that, or there is an unspoken understanding between Delhi and Islamabad to compromise and further complicate the dispute over our state. And as for J&K, our helplessness in articulating objections that matter is proof of how alone we are in making a difference in the ideological and territorial holy wars that real or pretentious powers fight,” he said.

“For decades we have been reiterating the disputed status of Kashmir. If Pakistan goes ahead with its plans, it will justify India’s position on this part of Kashmir,” said a senior separatist from the Mirwaiz group.