[Reader-list] Game-plan of Kashmir 'Protests' Exposed - M. Saleem Pandit, The Times of India

[Aditya Raj Kaul]

*A 3-IN-1 STATE? *
DESCENT INTO CHAOS When it’s Kashmir, look beyond the obvious. The swirling
street protests began not — as popular perception would have it — because of
a stone-pelter’s death this June 11. They were conceived in Srinagar Central
Jail as far back as 2008 M Saleem Pandit | TNN
*Link -
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=CAP/2010/09/16&PageLabel=15&EntityId=Ar01500&ViewMode=HTML&GZ=T

*    The three-month strife in Kashmir has its seeds not in the accidental
death of 17-year-old Tufail Mattoo — hit by a teargas canister during
stone-pelting at Rajouri Kadal on June 11. The incident, in itself, has been
the visual that appeared to have launched a thousand protests. But behind
the spiraling violence that’s killed 91 people is a script that’s still
moving to plan.

    In fact, it’s a script penned at a meeting between two radical Muslim
leaders, Masarat Alam Bhat of the Muslim League and Qasim Faktoo of
Jamait-ul-Mujahideen, in Srinagar Central Jail in 2008.

    This meeting took place in a distinct Kashmiri political context. In
search of an elusive acceptability within Kashmir’s radical political space,
mainstream state politicians, even if they did not encourage the
separatists, allowed their movements to grow uninhibited. They did not heed
intelligence reports that radical Islamist icons like Syed Ali Shah Geelani,
Asiya Andrabi and Masarat Alam were growing and propagating Talibanism in
the state by striving to bring the entire population on their side in the
name of religion.

    Masarat, arrested in 2008 for triggering, along with Geelani, the
Amarnath land row, and Qasim Faktoo, alias Ashiq Hussain Faktoo, serving
life imprisonment for killing human rights activist H N Wanchoo, together
conspired to consolidate the scattered cadres of the various militant groups
using mobile phones. Their agents outside the jail distributed propaganda
material like CDs and audio tapes of jihadi songs smuggled from Pakistan to
mosques across the Valley, to tap into the frustrations of young Kashmiri
boys, educated but largely unemployed, and without direction.

    Meticulous in their planning, Musarat and Qasim placed their trusted men
in sensitive places across the Valley to execute their brief of reviving the
azadi sentiment among people: From unlettered housewives in rural pockets to
tech-savvy youth through social networking sites.

Right after the J&K high court released Musarat in June — after quashing the
Public Safety Act pressed against him — he and his aides intensified the
process he had launched with Qasim from the jail. His first act was
announcing ‘“Quit Kashmir’’ movement with a weeklong protest calendar on
June 24.

Although Alam is now underground, he pops up to give sermons in mosques and
paints his secessionist ideology in Islamic colour by proclaiming ‘‘azadi
means Islam’’.

    So how did the Kashmiri political class fall for this trap? Between
2002-05, when PDP’s Mufti Mohammed Sayeed was the chief minister, while
trying to keep his tenure spotless on the law and order front and,
literally, purchasing peace, he provided financial support to hardliners.
His “soft” approach — perhaps the Mufti thought he could coopt them with
sops — saw his government sponsoring Geelani’s treatment for cancer in
Mumbai. While such stratagems helped Mufti marginalize his arch-enemy Farooq
Abdullah, these also eventually resulted in separatists getting a free run
across the Valley.

    In 2005, Congress’s Ghulam Nabi Azad became the CM under the rotational
arrangement with PDP, and the militants’ agenda was put on the backburner.
Azad also questioned the separatists in public meetings. However, the
Congress-PDP alliance lost the 2008 elections, which brought Omar to the
fore.

    The new chief minister, who had the option of choosing between the Mufti
and Azad line, settled for the former’s — that treated militancy with kid
gloves. He allowed the separatists to grow as long as they did not harm his
political interests.

    Giving them space to call for frequent strikes and protests across
Kashmir, Omar, too, ended up raising his voice for a “political solution” to
the Kashmir issue.

    While insisting on withdrawal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act,
Omar embarrassed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia
Gandhi by announcing in a speech in Anantnag last year that ‘‘Kashmir was a
political problem’’. He was trying to pitch the National Conference’s
‘‘greater autonomy’’ proposal against Mufti’s ‘‘self-rule’’ formula — both
tinged with separatism.

    This encouraged the separatists to stridently demand azadi. Also, both
Mufti and Omar demoralised the police by sermonizing top officers on the
need for restraint, giving radicals the much-needed political breathing
space.

    In the last three months, J&K police have been targets of both the
rowdies on the streets and the establishment led by Omar.

    Last week, Omar allowed Hurriyat’s Mirwaiz Umar Farooq to divert the Eid
congregation at Eidgah in old city to downtown Lal Chowk to raise anti-India
and pro-azadi slogans which culminated in arson and plunder. The authorities
even withdrew the police and CRPF men to allow free passage to the
5,000-strong mob that turned violent on Eid. NC’s law minister Ali Mohammed
Sagar slammed the police and CRPF for taking on the street rowdies.

    A senior police officer, who doesn’t want to be named, said Omar’s
ministers are insisting on releasing the arrested stone-pelters. A senior
cop in Budgam was told by a minister to set free a trouble-making Geelani
man in Peerbagh, Srinagar. Another senior policeman said a minister directed
him to call off the hunt for a stone-pelter in Nowhatta, Srinagar. ‘‘The
stone-pelter later threatened to harm me for daring to search for him,’’ the
officer said. **