The Pakistani Spectator

The roaring sounds of the Indian Army’s armoured vehicles and thumping military boots of the Indian soldiers equipped with a complete battle outfit are no more dreadful sights for Kashmiris. The surging death toll in the fresh spate of violence sequel to the re-deployment of the Indian Army in the Kashmir valley is a grim warning of a fresh storm that is gathering yet again over the restive valley. The current volatile situation in Kashmir is a replication of the violent events of late 80s and early 90s that saw the casualties rise to more than 500000 people most of whom have been the civilians.

The events that have led to the current violence this time are also no different from the earlier ones that also bore the hall marks of brutal repression at the hands of Indian security forces. The death of a 17 year old Tufail Mattoo who was brutally killed by a gas canister that fatally struck his head during a protest in Srinagar in June against the Machhil fake encounter of April 30 this year, has triggered this fresh violence. Tufail embraced shahadat at the hands of Indian security forces in the Machhil encounter. Though the army arrested the soldiers responsible for the fake encounter the only reason they had the nerve to commit such a heinous crime was because they also know that they would get away with like their many predecessors involved in such events. The confidence of the rogue soldiers in getting away with the crime is rooted in the notorious Pathribal fake encounter of 2000. The Army officers involved in the kidnapping and murder of 5 kashmiri civilians then are freely moving around despite having been charge sheeted by the CBI. The Indian Army did not arrest them and even refused to hand them over to the CBI. The Army filed a petition in the Supreme Court of India against the charge sheet to ensure that their accused officers do not face a trial.

The Chief Minister of the disputed state of Indian held Kashmir has publicly acknowledged that the recent spate of violent events that have jolted the security of the Kashmir Valley have not been instigated by any political leader. He termed the events as natural and ‘leaderless’ and not the product of any manipulation by some hidden individual or group. In other words he just painted the reality that due to the nature of this up-rising, it cannot be controlled even if their leaders are arrested. There is another dilemma since there is no leader of this fresh violence whom the authorities should invite to a dialogue to arrest the spiraling down of the security situation in IHK.

It is not the IHK Chief Minister but the Indian Army Chief also that are convinced of the genuineness of the current leaderless on-going protests and violence by going on record as having said that no so called infiltration is taking place from across the line of control.

Ever since the violence commenced in the IHK, the Indian authorities have started attributing their inability to control the fresh genuine up-rising of the Kashmiris to their easy and favourite outlet i.e. to implicate the banned LeJ and LeT and even the ISI as fomenting the events. Their diversion tactics have somehow always proved to be very successful. Through exploitation of state crafting techniques outlined in one of their religious books Chanakya, they successfully extracted remarks on Pakistan terrorism export from British Prime Minister David Cameron who unluckily happened to be there in India on official visit looking for Indian financial investment. He only managed around 1.2 billion Pounds but earned the wrath of better informed public on diplomacy at home and of-course the Pakistanis. Former British foreign secretary David Miliband termed the diplomatic faux pas as due to the incumbent Prime Minister’s loud mouth and in-experience. No wonder, he had also termed his own country as a junior partner of America in latter’s endeavours around the globe. The irresponsible remarks on terrorism about Pakistan while being in India also highlighted David Cameron’s shallow knowledge over of sub-continental affairs and history of human rights violations in Kashmir that are even acknowledged today by the international forums including the united nations. But he naively forgot to mention anything on Kashmir.

India may not be utterly interested immediately to redress the current wave of violence in Kashmir and probably would probably take it till President Obama’s visit to India in November. This way, India may utilize Obama’s visit to hoodwink the realities on ground in Kashmir and on the way draw huge benefits with respect to volatile Kashmir through manipulative statements against Pakistan besides winning his sympathies and support for India on the same.  Wait a minute! Would India show another David Cameron in Obama? The analysis may be termed as bizarre at this point of time but may not be totally out of context.

India continues to will fully ignore the root causes of the Kashmir problem. The frequent rate of violence and rising death tolls resulting from persistent Kashmiri struggle only goes to shake world’s conscience on human right abuses in the Kashmir Valley. It is an established fact t hat the Kashmir dispute cannot be solved bilaterally between India and Pakistan given the history of mistrust and accumulating issues. Only India successfully gains the precious time through the process of bilateralism to water down the Kashmir dispute till demography changes and the world forgets about it. The clocks do not turn back.