SOUTH ASIA: ‘Self-determination’ for Kashmir Still Far Away

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, May 30 2001 (IPS) - As India and Pakistan wrangle over whether or how the dispute over Kashmir would figure in their first summit since Feb 1999, there is little hope of self- determination for the people of the violence-blighted valley.

Neither of the South Asian neighbours is prepared for what is known as the “third option” — the simple handing over to the Kashmiris of the halves of the former princely state they have controlled for more than half a century now.

Formally accepting on Tuesday Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s surprise invitation for talks, Pakistan’s military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf was emphatic that the summit must deal with Kashmir.

He has suggested the summit take place end June or early July.

Musharraf said in the letter to Vayjpayee that the root cause of tension between the two countries was the “unresolved Jammu and Kashmir dispute,” and that he looked forward to “sincere and candid discussions” that would lead to a resolution “in accordance with the wishes of the Kashmiri people.”

But what India is prepared to discuss is not the status of Kashmir, but the armed insurgency it accuses Pakistan of supporting from its portion of Kashmir or Azad (free) Kashmir, as it is known on the other side of the Line of Control (LoC).

In an interview with BBC television soon after accepting the invitation, Musharraf refused to appeal to the militants to halt activities in the valley. “The dialogue process is being started and the time has not yet come to make such an appeal,” he said.

Any chance of a change in the status of Jammu and Kashmir as an Indian state was ruled out at a press conference given Monday by India’s Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, who also holds the defence portfolio.

The thinking in India is that Musharraf has little going for him except the threat of militancy which it has newly resolved to put down. Indeed, New Delhi’s offer of talks was laced with the withdrawal of a six-month-old ceasefire extended to the militants by the government.

“India wants a reduction in the violence and the only trump card that Pakistan has is militancy,” said Omar Abdullah, India’s junior minister for commerce and the son of Jammu and Kashmir’s chief minister Farooq Abdullah.

The National Conference party, to which the father and son belong, has been demanding greater autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir within the Indian Union and has supported the withdrawal of the ceasefire against the militants.

“The violence will be put down in one or two months,” said a belligerent Jana Krishnamurthy, spokesman for Vajpayee’s nationalist, right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), reacting to Musharraf’s refusal to make any appeal to the militants.

India’s sudden reversal of a policy of not resuming dialogue with Pakistan — a process that broke down after a brief war on the Line of Control in 1999 — was prompted by the fact that it made little headway in engaging separatist political leaders from Kashmir.

“We have lost 60,000 people in the last 12 years. Our honour, dignity and our homes are gone,” said Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, leader of the All Party Hurriyet Committee (APHC), an umbrella organisation for separatist political organisations in Kashmir.

India regards the Hurriyet as having elements which are too close to Pakistan for comfort, and has denied its members permission to travel to the neighbouring country to hold talks with militant groups based in that country.

According to G Parthasarathy, until recently India’s former high commissioner in Pakistan, Hurriyet members fall into two categories — one advocates the merger of Kashmir with Pakistan and the other is too afraid of the militant groups and their guns.

The Hurriyet, which has refused to participate in an election in Jammu and Kashmir unless it is internationally supervised, is now seeking a role for itself in the Indo-Pakistan talks — a proposition that Jaswant Singh has ruled out.

Mirwaiz Omar Farooq holds the view that the real issue before the Kashmiri people is “democratic self-determination”, but that anyone who holds such views are automatically branded “pro- Pakistani” by the Indian government.

The sole Kashmiri political leader who has cared to accept the offer of talks with the Indian government, Shabir Ahmad Shah, chief of the Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party (JKDFP), has also demanded a “tripartite” solution.

But Shah has welcomed the summit. “Now that a seemingly serious step has been taken by New Delhi in this direction (peaceful resolution of the issue), what else can the people of Jammu and Kashmir hope and pray for but a result-oriented dialogue,” Shah said.