POLITICS-INDIA: Attacks Threaten Peace Moves by Kashmir Gov’t

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Nov 25 2002 (IPS) - As a 24-hour siege by armed militants of two temples in Jammu town in India’s disputed Kashmir state ended Monday, authorities feared for the future of a ‘peace with dignity’ plan unrolled by the newly elected government there.

Authorities counted 13 dead from the siege. These included a ‘jihadist’ militants who was shot dead Sunday, and another who was cornered in a residence close to the temples and shot dead by security forces Monday.

The incident, the latest in a series which has brought India close to war with neighbouring Pakistan, was hotly debated in the Kashmir state assembly and in Indian Parliament.

Blame fell easily on a policy of reconciliation in Kashmir announced by Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, who leads a coalition government of his People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the national opposition Congress Party.

The two had joined forces to form a government after state assembly elections were held in September and October in Kashmir.

In recent weeks, the new government has undertaken a policy of releasing militants of genuine Kashmir origin from jail and disbanding the dreaded the special operations group (SOG) within the Kashmir police.

Referring to this new approach that the Kashmir government says will ease tensions, the opposition leader in the state assembly, Omar Abdullah, said: ” There is a signal that has gone across India that the Mufti government is soft.”

Abdullah leads the powerful, pro-India, National Conference party, which was defeated in the elections by a combine of the pro-independence PDP and the Congress.

Both parties had declared that they would talks to militant groups in efforts to bring about a political settlement in Kashmir. The National Conference has always pursued a tough line against Pakistan, and has even supported the idea of a war to settle the issue.

Sayeed denied that there has been any let-up in vigilance against ”’foreign” militants and said the two dead men after the siege ended Monday belonged to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (Soldiers of God) group.

The group is banned in Pakistan and in the United States and Britain after the devastating Sep. 11 aerial strikes in New York and Washington.

”The Lashkar-e-Toiba have claimed responsibility for the incident and both militants are reported to be foreigners,” Sayeed added.

Sayeed blamed Pakistan for the attack, commenting that if there was a brief lull in ”cross-border terrorism” it was because the neighbouring country, which claims Kashmir, was busy with its own elections and government formation in October and November.

In Parliament, Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani accused the Sayeed government of not consulting the central government before releasing militants from jail and ignoring advice that there should be no haste in making the releases.

Advani also linked the sudden spurt in ‘jihadist’ strikes to the release from a Pakistani jail last week of Hafiz Mohammed Sayeed, leader of the Lashkar-e-Toiba.

He demanded that the international community recognise that Pakistan’s shadowy Inter Services Intellligence (ISI) is ”one of the biggest sources of terrorism and that the ISI is a part of the Pakistani establishment”.

However, Islamabad has disassociated itself from the incident. Foreign ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said his country has ”always condemned acts of terrorism against civilians.”

A Pakistan foreign ministry statement condemned the ”terrorist attacks on temples in Jammu leading to many casualties” and said the ”motivation behind the attacks seems to be to enhance tension in the region”. At least 40 people have died in attacks by the Lashkar-e-Toiba since Friday.

On Friday, a grenade attack in Srinagar, capital of the Kashmir, left six soldiers dead while another attack on an army convoy on the Srinagar-Jammu highway on Saturday resulted in the deaths of nine people, including five soldiers.

Anti-terrorist expert K P S Gill said the government needed to pursue a tougher line against militants crossing over the border from Pakistan into Kashmir, starting with increasing troop strength in Kashmir.

The Sayeed government, however, is opposed to more troop deployment.

Gill, credited with quelling separatist militancy in western Punjab state in the early nineties, said ”foreign mercenaries” seemed to be taking advantage of relaxed vigil on the border by the army and the new, more dialogue-oriented policy of the state government.

But Gill conceded that it was important that the political process in Kashmir succeeds and that a dialogue began with genuine Kashmiri militants and militant groups.

These include the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Force (JKLF), which has over 13 years of militancy in Kashmir been marginalised by groups based in Pakistan.

India is now pulling back some 700,000 troops it deployed along the border in December last year, following a daring attack on Parliament by a four-man squad that tried to blow up the historic building using a car laden with explosives.

Pakistan responded by deploying some 30,000 troops on its side of the border.

The two nuclear armed neighbours had to be restrained from going to war by top-level international diplomacy led by the U.S. and British officials.

Advani said the attacks on the temples in Jammu were part of a ”deliberate design” to create a communal divide in Kashmir, which is India’s sole Muslim-majority state and the subject of a dispute with Pakistan for more than a half a century.

”But the people of the state are sure to defeat this design,” he added.

The attack provided grist to Hindu fundamentalist mills that are working to see that the pro-Hindu ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), retains power in western Gujarat state.

The state was the scene of a pogrom against the minority Muslim community earlier this year and is due to go to polls in December.

POLITICS-INDIA: Attacks Threaten Peace Moves by Kashmir Gov’t

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Nov 25 2002 (IPS) - As a 24-hour siege by armed militants of two temples in Jammu town in India’s disputed Kashmir state ended Monday, authorities feared for the future of a ‘peace with dignity’ plan unrolled by the newly elected government there.
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