The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Caught in a trap of its own making

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Friday, Apr 28, 2006

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Caught in a trap of its own making

Praveen Swami

Facing bitter electoral competition in three Assembly by-elections in the Kashmir Valley, the PDP flew Islamist colours, borrowing from tactics used by Sheikh Abdullah in 1977. This time around, the trick hasn't worked.

— PHOTO: NISSAR AHMAD

GETTING IT WRONG? Mehbooba Mufti and Mufti Mohammad Sayeed of the People's Democratic Party.

"DAAM-E-HAMRANG zameen, [this is a trap camouflaged in the colours of the earth]" — a Hizb-ul-Mujahideen spokesperson had warned the terror group's cadre earlier this month, cautioning them against being seduced by People's Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti's pro-jihad campaign for the by-elections to three Assembly seats in the Kashmir Valley.

With results now in, it is evident that the PDP is ensnared in the trap it laid for its opponents. Despite Ms. Mehbooba's aggressive campaign polemic, the party has succeeded in winning just one seat — Rafiabad. A party rebel succeeded in dethroning its official candidate in Sangrama, while the National Conference triumphed in Pattan. The message is clear: administrative performance and alliance-building acumen are more important to Jammu and Kashmir's voters than questions of ethnic-religious identity.

On April 7, Ms. Mehbooba unfurled her party's Islamist colours by waving a green handkerchief to the audience at a rally. Her gesture drew on one of the most famous events in the State's political history. In the fraught election of 1977, Chief Minister Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah's lieutenant, Mirza Afzal Beg, used to display a green handkerchief containing Pakistani rock salt — as opposed to Indian sea salt. Sheikh Abdullah, Mr. Beg thus silently signalled, intended to secede after winning power.

Unlike Mr. Beg's gesture, though, Ms. Mehbooba's campaign left little to the imagination. She described terrorists fighting in Jammu and Kashmir as mujahideen or holy warriors, and those killed by the security forces her party helps command as martyrs. On more than one occasion, she proudly pointed out that the PDP symbol, a pen and inkpot, was the very same logo used by the Hizb's Pakistan-based supreme commander, Mohammad Yusuf Shah, when he contested elections in 1987.

Why did Ms. Mehbooba act as she did? Plain desperation, history suggests. Heading into the 1977 elections, Sheikh Abdullah was faced with a serious challenge from the Jamaat-e-Islami, which had allied itself with the Janata Party. Both wore the halo of their anti-Emergency martyrdom. Sheikh Abdullah responded with appeals to the communal anxieties of Muslims in the Kashmir Valley. A vote for the Jamaat, he said, would be a vote for the Jana Sangh, whose "hands were still red with the blood of Muslims."

National Conference cadre administered oaths on the Quran to potential voters, through which they pledged their commitment to the party. Clerics were imported from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to campaign in the Muslim-majority areas of Jammu. Sheikh Abdullah, wary of the consequences of pushing New Delhi too hard, was careful to assert that "Kashmir was a part of India and Kashmiris were Indians," but added that "if we are not assured of a place of honour and dignity in India, we shall not hesitate to secede."

Sheikh Abdullah's incendiary 1977 campaign paid enormous dividends. The National Conference won 47 of 75 seats in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly, and 46 per cent of the popular vote. By contrast, the Jamaat-e-Islami could secure just one of the 19 seats it contested, and received only 3.59 per cent of the Statewide vote. It was precisely this kind of outcome Ms. Mehbooba and her political advisers hoped to replicate. History, they have now learned at some expense, rarely repeats itself in facsimile form.

Competition and communalism

As the National Conference had in 1977, the PDP faced intense political competition. In the seats of Rafiabad and Pattan, the party had put up the former National Conference Ministers, Dilawar Ahmad Mir and Iftikhar Husain Ansari. Both had jumped ship after their party's defeat in the 2002 Assembly elections. However, the tactic of giving seats to the defectors provoked resistance within local party units, and the fight turned out to be sharper than PDP strategists anticipated.

Mr. Ansari's efforts to corral his mainly-Shia constituency behind the PDP were hit hard by a welter of corruption allegations. PDP cadre attempted to contain the damage by claiming to have the support of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, thus hoping to win over some numbers of Pattan's Sunni voters. As the results show, the tactic failed. For his part, Mr. Mir was helped by the fact that he faced a National Conference lightweight, Maqbool Mir, rather than the Congress' formidable local leader, Abdul Gani Vakil.

In Sangrama, which the National Conference won, PDP rebels led by the former Tourism Minister, Ghulam Hasan Mir, and even elements of the local Congress threw their weight behind independent candidate Shoaib Lone, the son of the former Minister of State for Education, Ghulam Nabi Lone. Ghulam Nabi Lone was killed in a Lashkar-e-Taiba terror strike on October 18, 2005, in Srinagar, but the PDP chose to nominate a relative of Deputy Chief Minister Muzaffar Beig as its candidate instead of his son.

More important than factional struggles was the fact that the PDP's alliance with terrorist groups had run its course. On April 17, the State Police arrested Shabbir Ahmad, a terrorist-turned-political activist who had taken a Rs.150,000 contract to arrange the assassination of four politicians including Mr. Mir and the PDP's zonal president for Baramulla, Javed Dar. The arrest came just three months after another north Kashmir PDP worker was held on charges of helping terrorists kill his party colleagues.

Such attacks on the PDP demonstrated, as nothing else could have, that its entente cordiale with the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen has broken down. In the build-up to the 2002 elections, PDP leaders had reached out to the Hizb's then-second in command for military operations in Jammu and Kashmir, Abdul Rashid Pir. While the PDP sought political support, Pir hoped to use its influence to compensate for diminishing support from the ranks of the Hizb's traditional political patron, the Jamaat-e-Islami.

However, the relationship soured when it became clear the PDP could not deliver on promises to ease security force pressure on the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. In March, 2003, security forces tracked down Pir's superior, Ghulam Hassan Khan, in an intelligence-led operation that targeted his communications infrastructure. Khan, the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen believed, was killed in custody several hours after he was captured — and that the PDP leadership could, had it chosen, have intervened to save his life.

Hizb-ul-Mujahideen leaders responded to Khan's death by initiating a full-scale assault on the PDP. Pir is believed to have ordered the assassination of several PDP cadre, including a relative of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, in April 2003, as well as the bombing of the Parimpora fruit market in Srinagar two months later. Pir later acceded to requests by a top PDP leader for a peace meeting. However, the terror commander was killed in 2004, and the PDP-Hizb-ul-Mujahideen dialogue died with him.

Terror groups had, as in past elections in Jammu and Kashmir, worked hard to coerce voters in the build-up to voting day. An April 17 attack almost claimed the life of senior National Conference leader Ali Mohammad Naik, while grenade attacks in Srinagar claimed five lives and injured 40 people just two days earlier. A similar grenade attack in the north Kashmir town of Sopore took place on April 18, while a sarpanch was beheaded in the village of Sil Dhar, in the Gool region in the Pir Panjal mountains.

Unlike in 2002, though, terrorist coercion this time targeted all parties, not just the PDP's opponents. Moreover, National Conference leaders proved adept in responding to Ms. Mehbooba's use of Islamist themes with pro-jihad polemic of their own. National Conference president Omar Abdullah, for example, demanded that Hizb-ul-Mujahideen terrorists in training camps in Pakistan be allowed to return to India without facing criminal charges, and that large parts of Jammu and Kashmir be demilitarised.

What lessons ought the PDP learn from the election results — and the record voter turnout that underpinned them? Its leaders will, for one, have to understand that the PDP's growth within Kashmir is contingent on a functional relationship with the Congress. Congress cadre were incensed at the PDP's refusal to allow them to contest even one of the three seats, although it had come in second in two of these in 2002. As a consequence, they offered tacit support to the National Conference in several areas.

The PDP strategists will also have to consider the fact that communalism is not a one-player game. Both the party and its opponents would do well to introspect on what consequences the competitive use of Islamist themes and issues could have for their long-term future. Most important, they need to hear what their constituents are telling them: that they wish to see their representatives spending their time ensuring good governance, not waving green handkerchiefs.

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