South Asia Terrorism Portal
Jammu and Kashmir: Overdue, Incoherent, Unsustainable
Yasin Malik is a murderer many times over and should have been tried, convicted and – at least – jailed for multiple lifetimes, decades ago. Among dozens of other killings, the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) under his command was responsible for the murder of four unarmed Indian Air Force personnel in January 1990. Despite its secular pretensions, JKLF, under Malik’s command, was responsible for a spate of communally targeted killings and acts of mass intimidation that terrorized Kashmiri Pandits and provoked the exodus of the entire community from the Valley. Malik and his JKLF also engineered the abduction of the then Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s daughter Rubaiya Sayeed in December 1989 – the incident that triggered mass disorders and a dramatic escalation of terrorism, which continues to this day.
Malik was ‘attracted’ to ‘peaceful political struggle’ after he was imprisoned, and also found support to the JKLF from Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence withering away, as Rawalpindi put its resources behind the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) and, later, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), formations that were more amenable to accession to Pakistan as a goal, as against the JKLF’s ‘independence’ line. Several JKLF cadres were ‘weaned away’ to join the Hizb and Harkat; others were killed by these formations. The ragged remnants of the group under Malik’s command found a ‘unilateral ceasefire’ the most effective strategy of survival.
Malik was charged with multiple offences in 1990, but the cases have gone nowhere, clearly the result of state intent. He was released on bail in 1994, and has exploited the interstices of democratic freedoms to engage in widespread disruption, including mass violence in successive ‘stone pelting campaigns’.
Finally, the Ministry of Home Affairs has chosen to proscribe JKLF as an ‘unlawful association’ under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967, “in accordance with the policy of zero tolerance against terrorism which is being followed by the Central Government”.
And yet, the Central Government negotiates or seeks to negotiate with terrorists and insurgents in every theatre of armed violence in the country. It has the most liberal ‘surrender policies’ that disproportionately reward cadres and leaders of terrorist and insurgent formations who choose to give up armed violence. And ‘zero tolerance against terrorism’ has been little in evidence over the past thirty years of Pakistan-backed proxy war in J&K, even as the Government continues to or seeks to open ‘dialogue’ with Islamabad amidst continuing, often escalating violence.
Three decades of failure cannot be laid at the door of the present regime; but inconsistencies and incoherence of its own policy certainly can, as it sits across the table to discuss the Kartarpur corridor in the wake of the most devastating incident of terrorism in Kashmir – the Pulwama VBIED suicide bombing which killed 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel – as well as the Balakot incident and the air skirmishes that followed. Significantly, Kashmir has gone through escalating cycles of organised stone pelting campaigns – with widely known participation and funding from (among others) JKLF, and personal incitement by Malik– over these past five years, with little state reaction beyond the periodic, ordinarily brief and ineffectual, detention of some of its leaders. Significantly, at no stage has the JKLF leadership diluted its separatist and anti-constitutional agenda, or demonstrated a willingness to participate in the Centre’s fitful initiatives to include ‘all stakeholders’ in J&K in a process of ‘resolution’.
It is not clear, moreover, why the many cases filed against JKLF were not actively pursued and prosecuted over the nearly five years of ‘zero tolerance’ under the present regime, and why the group’s grave offences have abruptly come to the notice of the powers that be just weeks before the impending general elections.
The ban on the JKLF, long overdue and necessary, regrettably falls under the same dubious category as the ban on the Jamaat-e-Islami J&K, another group with a long history of mischief and support to in extremism and disruption in the State. The imperatives that have dictated these moves are not rooted in security or strategic considerations of the state, but in the ruling dispensation’s partisan political calculus that, over the past nearly five years, has pursued a politics of communal polarization in the State.
What is problematic, here, is the absence of any evidence of principled policy or sustained – and sustainable – strategy. Inevitably, these moves will be withdrawn – most likely in symbolic ‘gestures’, once the election fire has consumed its necessary sacrifices.
Ajai Sahni Publisher & Editor, Second Sight
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