By MANOJ JOSH
The Modi government has declared that
virtually everyone who opposes its policies in Jammu and Kashmir is a
terrorist. This makes it difficult to find a way out of the Kashmir miasma.
It is election season,
so it is not surprising that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has suddenly
rediscovered the virtues of fighting what he calls “terrorism”. The point of
departure, he says, was the new neeti (policy) and reeti (tradition) of
tackling terrorism first outlined in what the government terms as the “surgical
strikes” of September 2016.
First questions,
first. What did the government do when militants struck just two months later
in November at Nagrota killing two officers and five jawans? Nothing.
This was a far more
important target than Uri, whose attack had triggered the so-called surgical
strikes. It is the headquarters of the Indian Army’s 16 Corps. In 2017 and
2018, there were several high-profile cross-border attacks, including the
February 2018 strike on the Sunjuwan camp outside Jammu city, leading to the
killing of 11 jawans. Yet we have not seen any “traditional” surgical strike.
Policies that don’t
work
So just what is this
“neeti” and “reeti” that Modi is boasting
about?
Essentially, it is a
hodge-podge of failed policies, bombast and false claims. The Modi government
has, after all, had nearly five years in authority, not just in New Delhi, but
in Srinagar as well. So, if “terrorism” continues to plague the state, surely
some of the blame must be acknowledged by him and his party. But that is not
the Modi “reeti”.
The so-called “new”
policy began in the wake of the Pathankot attack. This in turn was an outcome
of Modi’s naïveté in believing that by embracing then Pakistan Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif, he could push Islamabad to abandon its support for the Kashmir
militancy.
Obviously, his
high-powered security team led by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval was not
able to convince him that Sharif counted for little when it came to Pakistan’s
support for terrorism and militancy in India; these operations are run by the
Pakistan Army’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. By his possibly
premature move aimed at boosting Sharif’s stature to checkmate the Pakistan
Army, Modi actually triggered a blow-back that led to the eventual eclipse of
Sharif and any possibility of an India-Pakistan détente.
But instead of sitting
back to reflect on what he had wrought, the prime minister began to move on a
new tack, the one in which he sought to have Pakistan identified as a state
sponsor of terrorism (never mind that he would not commit India to do so), and
call for the passage of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism
(CCIT).
A definitional problem
The problem begins
from the very definition of terrorism. The most commonly acknowledged
description would categories it as an attack on civilians for political effect.
There are other categories of violence targeting states and their instruments
which fall in the broad category of “militancy”. Included among these are
militants in Jammu and Kashmir and the Maoists.
The key difference is,
of course, one of perception. One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s
terrorist or militant, but by and large, states do get into negotiated
settlements with “militants”, but rarely with “terrorists”.
The difference is
important because the Modi government has, in its wisdom, declared that
virtually everyone who opposes its policies in Jammu and Kashmir is a
terrorist. Which makes it somewhat difficult to find a way out of the Kashmir
miasma.
If there is no one to
negotiate with, the only option is the use of military force – and that is what
has been happening in the state, leading to a steady rise of violence in the
last five years. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, the number of
civilians killed has tripled since 2014, and the number of security forces and
militants killed has more or less doubled.
Indeed, what the Modi
government’s handling of the situation has done is to give a second life to the
homegrown Kashmiri militancy. For nearly two decades after the Jammu Kashmir
Liberation Front and the Hizbul Mujahideen were put out of business after the
security forces cracked down on them, we are witnessing a resurgence of local
recruitment.
These young men are
nowhere as capable as the Pakistanis who have kept the militancy afloat,
neither do they possess the kind of weapons they have. They do not last too
long in their militant avatar, but their very emergence is a rebuke to New
Delhi’s policies.
As for terrorism, in
its basic definition as an attack on civilians for political purposes, India
has actually witnessed a steadfast decline. Indeed, there have been no
significant incidents since the three bomb explosions in various parts of
Mumbai in July 2011, that took the lives of 21 persons and injured 141 others.
That was the year that New Delhi also saw blasts at the Delhi high court
complex, killing 11 people and injuring 75. There have been isolated blasts and
attacks across the country, some of them clearly with a criminal rather than
terrorist intent.
No Resolution in sight
By conflating
terrorism and militancy, the Modi government has only complicated its own
ability to deal with both issues. The problem is not ignorance, but a desire to
use the issue of terrorism for political purposes. The result is that
strategies that minimised violence in Kashmir between 2004 and 2014 have been
given short shrift.
As for real terrorism,
there is nothing to indicate that the state has developed any special capacity
to counter it. Fortunately, after they were caught out in the Mumbai attack of
2008, the Pakistanis, who were responsible for most acts of terrorism in the
country, have changed their tactics. Their jihadis largely confine their
attacks to army and police targets, and that too in J&K so that they can
claim that they are struggling for Kashmir’s freedom.
The periodic arrests
the authorities make of alleged Islamic State militants seem more designed to
win headlines than to tackle any putative problem. The raising of the Islamic
State bogey in recent months is similar to the use of the Al Qaeda in past
years and the Students Islamic Movement of India.
The Al Qaeda didn’t
quite show up, and the IS seems to be a bunch of confused and misled radicals
who have not quite lived up to the ferocious reputation of their namesakes. Many
get convicted for relatively minor crimes by lower courts, and let off when the
evidence is examined with some rigour in the higher ones.
