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Monday, May 29, 2006

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Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Through the looking glass in J&K

Praveen Swami

New Delhi's dialogue with the All Parties Hurriyat Conference has reached an impasse. What could now lie ahead?

"NOW here, you see," said the Queen in Lewis Carroll's masterpiece, Through the Looking Glass, "it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that."

Less than two years after the National Democratic Alliance initiated what was marketed as a historic engagement with the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, the dialogue process in Jammu and Kashmir has reached an impasse. New Delhi has let it be known that it no longer intends to continue separate high-level dialogue with the APHC, after the secessionist grouping refused to participate in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's second round table conference on Jammu and Kashmir.

Just how did this breakdown come about? APHC chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq had said his organisation did not wish to waste its time in what he characterised as "a seminar," and asserted that it saw no purpose in any bilateral process. Mirwaiz Farooq's assertions are mystifying, given the fact that he has participated in bilateral dialogue with both President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Singh in the recent past — not to mention several international seminars on the conflict.

Nor are APHC claims that New Delhi is intransigent plausible. Prior to the second round table, the secessionist coalition had laid down three conditions. It asked that the process include only major parties; that it be preceded by separate negotiations with the Prime Minister; and that formal invitations be delivered by the government itself, rather than the covert services. Each of these demands was met. Notably, just 27 participants were invited to the round-table, down from 75 at the first round held in February.

In March, when General Musharraf acknowledged the diversity of political forces in Jammu and Kashmir by meeting National Conference president Omar Abdullah, the road to the second round table seemed open. At a seminar in Karachi, the Mirwaiz accepted that "all traditional slogans" had become redundant. Soon afterwards, he proclaimed his willingness to discuss "concepts like self-governance and self-rule." "We need to carry others along," he said, adding that the "state structure has to be kept in mind."

What changed in the days before the second round table? For one, pressure from Islamist terror groups became intense. Soon after General Musharraf's meeting with Mr. Abdullah, the apex organisation of Pakistan-based terrorist groups, the United Jihad Council, staged a protest against what it saw as a betrayal. "The sacrifices offered by the Kashmiris," a UJC statement asserted, "demand that common people and Mujahideen should get united and take the struggle to its logical conclusion."

By mid-May, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen emissaries had made clear to Mirwaiz Farooq that an APHC decision to participate in the second round table — and thus deny their jihad legitimacy — would make its leaders targets for attack. A statement issued by the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen's chief, Mohammad Yusuf Shah, publicly attacked the "pointless moderation" of the secessionist leadership. Mirwaiz Farooq buckled, and called for the "political, diplomatic and military fronts" of the "Kashmiri resistance" to work "in unison."

As things stand, the APHC has retreated into the realm of cliché. At one recent rally, Mirwaiz Farooq characterised its objective as "freedom and freedom alone," not "jobs, subsidies or power." It isn't hard to see the contradictions between the cleric's position and the vision he articulated in Karachi, or to dismiss his recent actions it as fear-driven hypocrisy. However, hard-headed political considerations underpin the APHC's decision to go along with the jihadi fiat, which need careful examination.

Principal amongst these is the realisation that the APHC simply cannot afford to share the table with political competitors. Should the organisation be called on to put its representational claims to the test prior to the resolution of the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir, there is little doubt that it would be obliterated by better organised mass parties like the National Conference and the People's Democratic Party. With no real bases of support outside of Srinagar, the APHC would be fortunate to pick up half-a-dozen Assembly seats.

In 2004, the APHC agreed to talks hoping to position itself as the sole arbiter of the State's political future: as a medium between New Delhi, Islamabad, and the mujahideen, which would be handed power in a deal of the kind that returned Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah to office in 1973. "If," Mirwaiz Farooq argued in defence of his decision not to join the round table, "at some point of time we feel that others should also be involved in the process we shall devise the mechanism. Let Delhi not bother about that. Leave that to us."

Prime Minister Vajpayee's regime might have been comfortable with this kind of arrangement — witness its refusal to discuss State autonomy with Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah. Others were not. Prime Minister Singh's National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan came to believe the keys to peace lie in Islamabad, not Srinagar. N.N. Vohra, the Government's official interlocutor on Jammu and Kashmir, for his part, argued for an broad-based dialogue, rather than one over which the APHC commanded a veto.

New Delhi's hardening position was driven, in no small part, by the APHC's inability to deliver on its claims that it could influence terrorist groups. Indeed, it even failed to condemn continued violence as the dialogue proceeded ahead. Mirwaiz Farooq, notably, condemned the recent killing of four tourists only on the grounds that it would hurt the State's economy; the murder of three Congress activists in an earlier terrorist attack in Srinagar failed to move his conscience enough to even merit a mention in his speeches.

As Omar Abdullah recently pointed out, this silence is of a piece with the APHC's past practice: "Ask him," he told journalists, "to name the people who killed his father or [the APHC leader] Abdul Gani Lone." Answers to that question are evident in the fact that the APHC chairman, as well as other major secessionist leaders, are protected by Jammu and Kashmir Police and travels in a government-provided bullet-proof vehicle. Now, it is clear, the APHC will have to choose which team it wishes to play for.

Challenges ahead

How might things go from here? One thing is certain: movement will not be rapid. Once the five committees Prime Minister Singh hopes will take the round table process forward are founded, discussions will begin on several complex ideas. These include the National Conference's calls for greater constitutional autonomy, the PDP's demand for an elected Governor, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader's proposals for the creation of district and province-level elected bodies intended to meet regional aspirations.

To make this dialogue credible, New Delhi will have to find means to compel Pakistan to deliver on its promises to end cross-border support for terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. Despite General Musharraf's public support for the round table, the fact is that he has so far shown no sign of acting against the terrorist groups seeking to sabotage it. Indeed, terrorism serves Pakistan's interests well: continued violence in Jammu and Kashmir, after all, is the sole leverage it has to secure concessions at the negotiating table.

New Delhi might also do well to direct its attention inwards. Introspection is, in particular, needed on the United Progressive Alliance Government's failure to arrive at a coherent vision of what it would like Jammu and Kashmir's political future to look like. Prime Minister Singh has reached out to an extraordinary range of scholars, retired administrators, activists, and even the odd eccentric in his search for new ideas. So far, though, official policy on Jammu and Kashmir is yet to acquire a clear voice.

As a consequence, India's search for peace remains mired in indecision. Prime Minister Singh, unlike his predecessors, is without the services of leaders like former Union Minister Rajesh Pilot, who had the authority and influence to execute hard decisions. Congress president Sonia Gandhi, for her part, has also relied on proxies, notably the PDP, often to the detriment of her own party's interests in Jammu and Kashmir. Both, therefore, remain directly vulnerable to the political costs that peacemaking entails.

Is there an easy way out? Imagining solutions for the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir is not difficult. Dozens of plans, drawing on everything from territorial disputes in Europe to the ideas underpinning the Partition of India, have proliferated in recent years. What the second round table has made clear, though, is that Jammu and Kashmir is not just a problem: it is, instead, a place inhabited by people; people with conflicting concerns for which there is no tidy solution.

"I don't want to belong," said Alice in Through the Looking Glass, "to someone else's dream." Somehow, those concerned with Jammu and Kashmir's future are going to have to work to imagine a future they are all willing to wake up to.

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