[Reader-list] Pankaj Mishra on Kashmir in the New York Times

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

A Jihad Grows in Kashmir

by Pankaj Mishra,

The New York Times, 27th August, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/opinion/27mishra.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


FOR more than a week now, hundreds of thousands of Muslims have  
filled the streets of Srinagar, the capital of Indian-ruled Kashmir,  
shouting "azadi" (freedom) and raising the green flag of Islam. These  
demonstrations, the largest in nearly two decades, remind many of us  
why in 2000 President Bill Clinton described Kashmir, the Himalayan  
region claimed by both India and Pakistan, as "the most dangerous  
place on earth."

Mr. Clinton sounded a bit hyperbolic back then. Dangerous, you wanted  
to ask, to whom? Though more than a decade old, the anti-Indian  
insurgency in Kashmir, which Pakistan's rogue intelligence agency had  
infiltrated with jihadi terrorists, was not much known outside South  
Asia. But then the Clinton administration had found itself compelled  
to intervene in 1999 when India and Pakistan fought a limited but  
brutal war near the so-called line of control that divides Indian  
Kashmir from the Pakistani-held portion of the formerly independent  
state. Pakistan's withdrawal of its soldiers from high peaks in  
Indian Kashmir set off the series of destabilizing events that  
culminated in Pervez Musharraf assuming power in a military coup.

After 9/11, Mr. Musharraf quickly became the Bush administration's  
ally. Seen through the fog of the "war on terror" and the Indian  
government's own cynical propaganda, the problem in Kashmir seemed  
entirely to do with jihadist terrorists. President Musharraf could  
even claim credit for fighting extremism by reducing his intelligence  
service's commitment to jihad in Kashmir — indeed, he did help bring  
down the level of violence, which has claimed an estimated 80,000 lives.

Since then Pakistan has developed its own troubles with Muslim  
extremists. Conventional wisdom now has Pakistan down as the most  
dangerous place on earth. Meanwhile, India is usually tagged as a  
"rising superpower" or "capitalist success story" — clichés so  
pervasive that they persuaded even so shrewd an observer as Fareed  
Zakaria to claim in his new book "The Post-American World" that India  
since 1997 has been "stable, peaceful and prosperous."

It is true that India's relations with Pakistan have improved lately.  
But more than half a million Indian soldiers still pursue a few  
thousand insurgents in Kashmir. While periodically holding bilateral  
talks with Pakistan, India has taken for granted those most affected  
by the so-called Kashmir dispute: the four million Kashmiri Muslims  
who suffer every day the misery and degradation of a full-fledged  
military occupation.

The Indian government's insistence that peace is spreading in Kashmir  
is at odds with a report by Human Rights Watch in 2006 that described  
a steady pattern of arbitrary arrest, torture and extrajudicial  
execution by Indian security forces — excesses that make the events  
at Abu Ghraib seem like a case of high spirits. A survey by Doctors  
Without Borders in 2005 found that Muslim women in Kashmir, prey to  
the Indian troops and paramilitaries, suffered some of the most  
pervasive sexual violence in the world.

Over the last two decades, most ordinary Kashmiri Muslims have  
wavered between active insurrection and sullen rage. They fear,  
justifiably or not, the possibility of Israeli-style settlements by  
Hindus; reports two months ago of a government move to grant 92 acres  
of Kashmiri land to a Hindu religious group are what provoked the  
younger generation into the public defiance expressed of late.

As always, the turmoil in Kashmir heartens extremists in both India  
and Pakistan. India has recently suffered a series of terrorist  
bombings, allegedly by radicals among its Muslim minority. Hindu  
nationalists have already formed an economic blockade of the Kashmir  
Valley — an attempt to punish seditious Muslims and to gin up votes  
in next year's general elections. In Pakistan, where weak civilian  
governments in the past sought to score populist points by stirring  
up the emotional issue of Kashmir, the intelligence service can only  
be gratified by another opportunity to synergize its jihads in  
Kashmir and Afghanistan.

What of the Kashmiris themselves, who have repeatedly found  
themselves reduced to pawns in the geopolitical games and domestic  
politics of their neighbors? In 1989 and '90, when few Kashmiris had  
heard of Osama bin Laden, hundreds of thousands of Muslims buoyed by  
popular revolutions in Eastern Europe regularly petitioned the United  
Nations office in Srinagar, hoping to raise the world's sympathy for  
their cause. Indian troops responded by firing into many of these  
largely peaceful demonstrations, killing hundreds of people and  
provoking many young Kashmiris to take to arms and embrace radical  
Islam.

A new generation of politicized Kashmiris has now risen; the world is  
again likely to ignore them — until some of them turn into terrorists  
with Qaeda links. It is up to the Indian government to reckon  
honestly with Kashmiri aspirations for a life without constant fear  
and humiliation. Some first steps are obvious: to severely cut the  
numbers of troops in Kashmir; to lift the economic blockade on the  
Kashmir Valley; and to allow Kashmiris to trade freely across the  
line of control with Pakistan.

India's record of pitiless intransigence does not inspire much hope  
that it will take these necessary steps toward the final and  
comprehensive resolution of Kashmir's long-disputed status. In fact,  
an indefinite curfew has already been imposed and Indian troops have  
again killed dozens of demonstrators. But a brutal suppression of the  
nonviolent protests will continue to radicalize a new generation of  
Muslims and engender a fresh cycle of violence, rendering Kashmir  
even more dangerous — and not just to South Asia this time.

Pankaj Mishra is the author, most recently, of "Temptations of the  
West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond."


Shuddhabrata Sengupta
shuddha at gmail.com