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Friday, May 28, 2004

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A WAKE-UP CALL

EVEN BY THE standards set during the fifteen-year long war in Jammu and Kashmir, there was something exceptionally barbaric about the deaths on the Srinagar-Jammu highway on Sunday. Most of those killed were women and children, the families of troops returning home on vacation; one of the personal effects recovered at the site included a greeting card addressed by a child to his father. Whoever triggered the improvised explosive device would, more likely than not, have seen some of his victims peering through the windows at the snow-clad Pir Panjal. There is never any sense in tragedy, but it perhaps provides an opportunity for all concerned — India, Pakistan, and the Jihadi groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir — to engage in some introspection. Much of Indian policy, including the current dialogue with the Maulvi Abbas Ansari-led faction of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, is predicated on the assumption that time will help resolve contentious issues. While this might be true, it always needs to be borne in mind that large-scale acts of terrorism can wreck dialogue. After all, a terrorist attack on soldiers' family quarters almost sparked off an India-Pakistan conflict in 2002.

Despite the tangible gains made in the last round of India-Pakistan dialogue, people in the State of Jammu and Kashmir — soldiers, civilians, terrorists — live much as they did before it began. December 2003, when the ceasefire came into force along the Line of Control, can be deemed the baseline for Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's most recent and widely applauded bid for rapprochement with Pakistan. What has actually happened since then? According to the Ministry of Home Affairs' internal data, 106 Indian soldiers, policemen, and militia members were killed in combat between January and April 2004, up from 94 in the same months of last year. The number of civilians killed in these months fell to 232 this year from 246 last year, it is true, but so did the number of terrorists killed, from 430 to 320. During the recent Lok Sabha elections, terrorists — not politicians — called the shots in some areas, particularly parts of southern Kashmir. Put simply, security personnel and civilians in Jammu and Kashmir are not significantly safer than they were before Mr. Vajpayee's last round of dialogue began.

None of this, of course, is an argument against détente — quite the converse. It does, however, underline the need to address problems before they get out of hand. As India-Pakistan dialogue proceeds and, with some luck, deepens in months to come, there has to be forward momentum on ending violence. One way of doing this might be for the United Progressive Alliance's negotiators to draw some red lines — a term strategic analysts use to describe thresholds that cannot be crossed without causing harm to the détente process itself. One red line, obviously, must relate to the continued killing of non-combatants. The Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, which carried out the Lower Munda bombing, is based in Pakistan. As such, Islamabad cannot evade responsibility for acts of terrorism executed by that organisation. Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf, has committed his country to ending cross-border terrorism. Infiltration has indeed come down significantly but Pakistan's military has not taken the next, crucial step — dismantling the infrastructure of terror. Groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad have again been given freedom to raise funds and recruit cadre. Some in Pakistan's strategic establishment may see this as a means to bring military pressure on India — and thus press their claims to Jammu and Kashmir. In fact, continued killings undermine those claims and only serve to make the dispute ever more intractable.

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