POLITICS-INDIA: Voters Defy Kashmiri Militant Death Threats

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jan 15 2001 (IPS) - Braving death threats from Kashmiri militants and the bitter morning cold, hundreds of people came out to vote in local polls Monday, held for the first time in more than two decades in India’s Jammu and Kashmir state.

The polls took place a day after a daring grenade attack by the militants on Farooq Adbullah, the chief minister of the troubled province.

Political observers said the death threats, like the attack on Abdullah, were meant to scuttle a 50-day-old truce offered by the government to the armed separatists.

Monday’s election to village councils took place in the three districts of Kupwara, Rajouri and Poonch, which border Pakistan. This was the first phase of the local polls, which could not be held so far in the state that has been reeling under secessionist violence for over a decade.

Voters were warned by the ‘jehadist’ (radical Islamic fighter) ‘Lashkar-e-Toiba’ and the relatively moderate ‘Hizbul Mujahideen’ — both Kashmiri militant groups whose leaders are based in Pakistan — to stay away from the polls.

On Sunday, Abdullah escaped unhurt after two grenades were fired at him while he was attending a public ceremony to mark the opening of a bridge in the heart of Srinagar, the capital of Jammu and Kashmir.

“The militants have only one agenda and that is to merge Kashmir with Pakistan and that is not going to happen,” Abdullah declared after the attack.

Pakistan lays claim to India’s only Muslim-majority province. The two countries have fought two wars over the former princely state, which joined India half a century ago after the subcontinent’s partition by departing British colonial rulers.

New Delhi accuses Islamabad of arming and supporting militant groups in Kashmir in a simmering ‘proxy war’, which has killed more than 35,000 people over the last decade.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who returned from a tour of Vietnam and Indonesia Sunday, told reporters that the attack on Abdullah was a bid by the militants to sabotage New Delhi’s recent Kashmir peace initiative.

Abdullah’s National Conference party, which runs an elected government in Kashmir, is a member of Vajpayee’s coalition government. “If the terrorists keep up militancy, how can an environment be created for talks?” said Vajpayee.

A month-long cease-fire, first offered by Vajpayee to the Kashmiri militants in mid-November and then extended by another month, has drawn international praise and support even from Islamabad, which has reciprocated by pulling back some of its troops from the Kashmir border.

There is widespread expectation that these moves may lead to peace talks between New Delhi and Islamabad, which were snapped by their undeclared Kargil war in the summer of 1999. As a preliminary step, New Delhi has offered to hold talks with the militant groups themselves.

A team of leaders of separatist Kashmiri political groups, banded under the All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC), has also been allowed to travel to Pakistan to meet leaders of Kashmiri militant groups based there.

Though Abdullah supports the 50-day-old truce and Vajpayee’s offer of talks to the militants, he has repeatedly expressed skepticism over the outcome. According to senior police officials in the state, militant violence targeted at civilians in Kashmir has increased since the cease-fire was announced ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Reacting to the grenade attack on Abdullah, India’s Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani, who has hawkish views on the Kashmir dispute, said the cease-fire would be reviewed and a decision on further extension or otherwise, would be announced on Jan. 26.

Advani said the attempt on Abdullah’s life and an earlier attack by Kashmiri militants on the medieval Red Fort in the heart of the national capital, showed Pakistan’s unwillingness to “abandon cross-border terrorism” despite Vajpayee’s peace initiative.

Earlier, Advani said the government would be selective in granting travel documents to the top leaders of the Hurriyat who want to travel to Pakistan to carry forward New Delhi’s peace initiative.

Last week, the APHC announced a five-member team, which included Syed Ali Shah Geelani, chief of the pro-Pakistan ‘Jammat-e-Islami’, who has repeatedly said that Kashmir should be merged with Pakistan.

The Pakistan government itself has urged India to facilitate travel for all the five Hurriyat delegates, who include Sheikh Abdul Aziz of the People’s League, another organisation that demands Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan.

Political analysts said it was important that all Hurriyat leaders travel to Pakistan.

“At this stage it is very important that the Hurriyat must go as one voice. Geelani might be a hawk, given his belief that the issue in Jammu and Kashmir is religious, not political, but he enjoys credibility with the militants,” said the leading national daily ‘Indian Express’.

Geelani has threatened not to go to Pakistan unless all five named by the Hurriyat get passports without reservation.

“Other than a close rapport with the Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin, Geelani also perhaps speaks a language that other jehadi groups speak and might listen to,” the daily added in an editorial.