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The troubled road to trans-LoC trade

Praveen Swami
Will Kashmir shrine crisis open the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road for business?
India will be pushing Pakistan to deliver on its promise to open up the LoC

Pakistan has yet to complete construction of a customs station and parking
bays on its side

NEW DELHI: Since August residents of the village of Salamabad have been
waiting for the arrival of hundreds of smoke-belching cargo trucks, the
unlikely harbingers of a better future.

Like hundreds of thousands across Jammu and Kashmir, Salamabad residents
hope that the scheduled opening of trade across the Line of Control will
transform what the former United States President Bill Clinton described as
the ³world¹s most dangerous place² into a zone of peace and prosperity.

Cross-border trade, it is starting to appear, could also hold the key to
defusing the murderous shrine-land crisis that has claimed dozens of lives
across the State in recent weeks.

In an effort to assuage Muslim anger in Kashmir, ahead of a deal with Hindu
protesters in Jammu, India will be pushing Pakistan to deliver on its
promise to open up the LoC.

Earlier this month, protesters initiated a march towards the LoC, responding
to a call by the hardline Tehreek-i-Hurriyat patriarch Syed Ali Shah Geelani
to force the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road open for trade.

Mr. Geelani, speaking for a coalition of secessionist groups and
orchard-owners¹ bodies, said the march was necessary to break an economic
blockade of the Kashmir Valley by Hindutva groups. Five people, including
All Parties Hurriyat Conference leader Sheikh Abdul Aziz, were shot dead
when police opened fire to stop the march. More than 30 people died in
subsequent fighting.

Bureaucratic stalling
Had it not been for bureaucratic stalling by Pakistan, though, the LoC would
have opened weeks before the march even began.

India and Pakistan agreed to open the route for limited trade at a July 21
meeting of their Foreign Secretaries.

Pakistan said it would allow just nine commodities including fruit, across
the LoC ‹ well short of India¹s more expansive plans.

Even this modest beginning, though, marked progress. Pakistan had
stonewalled forward movement, even refusing permits to a delegation of
Kashmir-based businessman, who wished to meet their counterparts in
Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Less than a week after the Foreign Secretaries met, a team of top Indian
officials, led by Ministry of Home Affairs Joint Secretary R. Shakandan met
on July 25 at Uri. Orders were given to initiate construction of parking
bays, warehouses and a customs office at Salamabad, just short of the LoC. A
follow-up meeting on security issues, involving customs, police and military
officials, was held on July 27.

Backed down
However, Pakistan backed down on its commitment to open the road on August
21, citing logistic constraints. Both sides agreed to postpone opening the
LoC until October 1.

Army sources told The Hindu that Pakistan had yet to complete construction
of a customs station and parking bays on its side ‹ raising fears that
cross-border movement of cargo could be delayed even further. India will be
pushing Pakistan hard to make sure that does not happen.

Volte face
Ironically, the Islamist leadership India will be seeking to placate was,
not too long ago, bitterly opposed to opening up the LoC. In 2005, after
India and Pakistan announced that bus links across the LoC were to be
resumed, Mr. Geelani lashed out at the plan as ³a diversion from the core
issue.²

³People have not given their blood for the reopening of a road,² he said,
³but for self-determination.² On another occasion, he described the issue as
³an irrelevant drama.²

Several civil society organisations now involved in the shrine board
movement shared this perception. In April 2005, the Kashmir Bar Association,
the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, the Association of Parents
of Disappeared Persons and the Jammu and Kashmir Trade Union Front issued a
joint statement calling the opening of the road ³untimely and
inconsequential.²

Jihadist groups supportive of Mr. Geelani were more blunt in their approach.
In a March 30, 2005, press release, the Save Kashmir Movement, al-Nasireen,
the Farzandan-e-Millat and al-Arifeen warned potential bus travellers that
³they will find their names in the list of traitors.²

Jihadists later attacked and destroyed the Tourism Reception Centre in
Srinagar. It was to have served as the terminus for the bus service.

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