POLITICS: Indian Suspicions Signal New Tensions in Kashmir

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Apr 2 2003 (IPS) - Claiming a build-up of death squads in Pakistan across the border from disputed Kashmir, India said Wednesday that it is considering a massive beefing up of troops on its side of the Muslim-majority state, a move that may well portend a new round of tensions between the rival nations.

India’s Defence Minister George Fernandes said Wednesday that intelligence reports, which officials said were corroborated by the U.S. Department of State, suggest that a huge number of some 200,000 trained suicide fighters are gathering on the border ”ready for any kind of action ” in Kashmir.

Fernandes said the fighters, which he said are backed by Pakistan, which has fought several unsuccessful wars with India over the possession of Kashmir over the last 50 years, are taking advantage of the fact that world attention is now focused on the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Top Indian officials say their fears of renewed violence in Kashmir as a fallout of the war on Iraq appear well-founded following the gruesome killing of 24 Hindus at Nadimarg village on Mar. 23.

Indian officials suspect that attack was carried out by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (Soldiers of God) group, which has its headquarters in Pakistan and which has been banned by several countries.

Pakistan also condemned the killings. But India’s Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal lost no time in accusing Pakistan of ordering the Nadimarg massacre to deflect domestic pressure over its perceived weak policy toward the war on Iraq. This has been rejected by the Pakistan foreign ministry as an ”absurd assertion”.

The Nadimarg massacre was the worst in a series of violent attacks that have occurred ever since a popularly elected government, led by Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, came to power following an election last year certified as free and fair by independent international observers.

It also coincided with the assassination of Abdul Majeed Dar, a leader of the Hizbul Mujahideen group who had negotiated a ceasefire with the Indian army that worked briefly but was called off by its Pakistan-based ‘supreme commander’ Syed Salahuddin.

Fernandes’ plan to beef up troop strength is as much a response to the Mar. 23 killings as also to the fact that the advent of summer in the months after March facilitates infiltration into the Indian part of Kashmir, as the snows melt in the high passes that lead into the Kashmir valley from Pakistan.

The mass-circulation ‘Hindustan Times’ newspaper on Tuesday quoted military intelligence sources as saying that Indian spy satellites had picked up activity in militant ‘launch pads’ along the Line of Control (LoC), which divides the Indian state of Kashmir from what India calls Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Islamabad calls Azad (Free) Kashmir.

”Pakistan wants to make most of the international community’s preoccupation with Iraq,” the ‘Hindustan Times’ quoted an unnamed top military officer as saying.

In its annual report for 2002 released on Monday, the U.S. State Department said: ”The concerted campaign of execution-style killings of civilians by Kashmir and foreign-based militant groups continued and included killings of political leaders and party workers.”

But the U.S. report also accused Indian security forces of resorting to ”excessive use of force” while tackling insurgencies in Kashmir as well as in the its north-east.

The report also criticised the judicial system in Kashmir, which it said tolerated ”the government’s heavy-handed counter-insurgency tactics, the refusal of forces to obey court orders and terrorist threats”.

Since the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) government of Chief Minister Sayeed took power, it has kept an election promise of releasing political prisoners and disbanding the Special Operations Group (SOG) of the state police, which has been accused of excesses and human rights abuses while carrying of its task of quelling militancy. After the Nadimarg killings, Sayeed came under severe criticism from his political opponents, including the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that leads the central government, for his ”healing touch” policy which many said was too soft in a state like Kashmir, beset by hardened militant groups.

On Tuesday, Fernandes said that India’s central government still supported Sayeed’s policy. ”I don’t think we should give up the policy. On the contrary, we need to put our best foot forward in that direction.”

Fernandes reflected the mood of Indian leaders such as Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha, who say that the United States and Britain have not been doing enough to hold Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf to commitments he made last year to rein in cross-border militancy in Kashmir.

Commenting on a statement made by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to the ‘New York Times’ that Washington planned to address the ”Indo-Pakistan and the whole subcontinent problem” as soon as the war on Iraq was over, Sinha insisted that ”cross border terrorism remained the central issue”.

”The U.S. can decide how it wishes to ensure compliance by Pakistan with its promise of putting a stop to the active role in training and sending militants across the border,” Sinha said. Musharraf’s commitments were the product of frenetic shuttle diplomacy by Powell and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw last year, aimed at defusing a military standoff between the nuclear-armed neighbours who had, between them, massed more than million troops along their common border.

India’s disillusionment with the inability of U.S.-British alliance to hold Musharraf to his promise was apparent in Sinha’s assertion that Kashmir was India’s own concern – and that it was for the Indian government and people to find a solution.

”It is the people of India who have been paying the price of terrorism,” he said.

Fernandes said he found the U.S.-British alliance’s offer of a major role for India in post-war Iraq ”sickening”.

”This smacks of cynicism of the worst type. You go and blow up the whole place and kill hundreds of people. And then start talking of reconstruction and rebuilding,” the outspoken Fernandes said.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee admitted that India had muted its criticism of the war on Iraq, only because it needed the support of the U.S.-British alliance in the Kashmir issue.

Ironically, Iraq – particularly under President Saddam Hussein – have consistently supported India rather than Pakistan on the 55-year-old Kashmir dispute.