POLITICS-INDIA: Kashmir Attacks Leaves Minister, 15 Others Dead

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Sep 11 2002 (IPS) - As the world remembered the Sep. 11 tragedy Wednesday, militant attacks in Kashmir left a key state official and 15 other people dead in violence aimed at disrupting the state assembly election that begins in the disturbed territory next Monday.

Mushtaq Ahmed Lone, law minister in the ruling National Conference party that leads the state government, five of his bodyguards and a bystander were shot dead by heavily armed militants at an election rally in Kupwara district.

The district lies on the Line of Control (LoC) that runs through the disputed territory and separates it from its Pakistan controlled half.

Officials in New Delhi laid the blame on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (Soldiers of God), a group that is committed to achieving the merger of the whole of Muslim-majority Kashmir into Pakistan.

The group has sworn to kill candidates standing for state assembly elections set to begin on Sep 16, saying this would legitimise Indian rule in the state.

Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf has publicly declared the election “illegal”, but is under pressure from Washington, its post-Sep. 11 ally in the military action in Afghanistan, to ensure that they are carried out undisturbed.

The Lashkar-e-Toiba is one of several groups banned by the United States following last year’s terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, and is known to have close links with the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.

News reports from the state’s capital of Srinagar, 100 km south of Kupwara, said the grenade and firearms attack was led by a man who had covered himself with a ‘burqa’, a long garment for women that covers the entire body, with only a grid through which to see, and was sitting in an enclosure meant for women at the rally.

A second attack took place in Poonch district, 75 km south-west of Srinagar, and also close to the Line of Control. This resulted in the deaths of five soldiers of the paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF), two policemen and two children.

Television channels said the attack took place at a crowded bus stand close to an election rally organised by the Congress party and attended, among others, by Amarinder Singh, chief minister of Punjab state and the party’s general secretary Ambika Soni.

Soon after the attacks, Kashmir’s chief minister, Farooq Abdullah, told television interviewers in Kashmir that the state’s National Conference party would not be “cowed down” by Wednesday’s killings.

The elections, staggered into four phases for security reasons, would go on as scheduled, he said.

“They want to show that they (‘jihadist’ militants) have the power to stop the elections,” said Abdullah, a charismatic leader in Kashmir who has survived several assassination attempts.

An attack on India’s Parliament in December, which India blamed on militant groups linked to Pakistan, prompted New Delhi to move some 700,000 troops to the Line of Control and the international border drawn up in 1947, when Pakistan was created as a homeland for the sub-continent’s Muslims out of the former British India.

However, the partition did not cover the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, and the two new countries went to war in October 1947 until the United Nations intervened and produced the Line of Control.

Two more full-fledged wars in 1965 and in 1971 appeared to reinforce the Line of Control as the common border. But in 1999, armed incursions by ‘jihadists’ backed by the Pakistan army over the Line of Control at Kargil brought the neighbouring countries, which had declared themselves nuclear powers in the previous year, into serious armed conflict short of declared war.

Under intense international pressure, India pulled back its fleet of fighter planes and ships to peacetime locations in June. But it has refused to withdraw its troops from the Line of Control on the grounds that they are needed to ensure smooth conduct of the coming elections in Kashmir.

In fact, India has warned Pakistan that it views the smooth conduct of the elections as the “acid test” of a solemn pledge made by Musharraf to U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and Assistant Defence Secretary Richard Armitage, that he would ensure the stoppage of “cross-border terrorism” across the Line of Control.

According to India, Musharraf has not kept his promise. It holds him responsible for continuing attacks in Kashmir aimed at disrupting the election and ensuring a low voter turnout, so as to deny it legitimacy.

Mushtaq Lone is the third candidate to have fallen to ‘jihadist’ bullets so far.

The elections have been rejected by the All-Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC), an umbrella for some 24 separatist organisations. But the rejection came after one of its top leaders, Abdul Ghani Lone, was shot dead at a public rally by suspected members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba in May for expressing support for the elections.

Abdul Ghani Lone was the first member of the Hurriyat who declared that after the Sep. 11 events, the days of ‘jihadist’ militancy were finished and that the Kashmir issue could only be settled politically.

Since 1989, Kashmir has seen an independence movement that has been complicated by Pakistan’s older claim to the territory and its policy of training and arming militants to fight what India calls a “proxy war”.

India and Pakistan agreed under the 1999 Lahore Declaration between Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to address all outstanding issues, including Kashmir, through peaceful dialogue.

But the Pakistan army under Musharraf was opposed to the Lahore Declaration and masterminded the Kargil incursions, which failed as a result of fierce military resistance by India and the intervention of former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who prevailed on Islamabad to stop the incursions.

By October 1999, Sharif was ousted in a bloodless coup by Musharraf , who was initially under international pressure to restore democracy but found it easier to stay in power after he and his regime became indispensable to Washington as a frontline state in the ‘war against terror’ in Afghanistan.

“President Musharraf is still tight with us in the war against terror and that’s what I appreciate,” U.S. President George W Bush said on Aug. 22, reacting to constitutional changes made by Musharraf that enhanced his powers to dismiss an elected government after Pakistan’s general elections in October.

Bush is scheduled to meet Musharraf on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Thursday, when India’s concerns are expected to come up, according to officials here.