Why Modi's government's Kashmir policy is deeply flawed
The cessation of counter-terror operations by Indian security forces in Jammu and Kashmir during the holy month of Ramzan was an unqualified failure. Now that the hiatus is behind us, it is time to count the cost of an ill-conceived decision and consider the way forward post-Eid.
Between May 17, when the "ceasefire" came into operation, and June 17, when it was withdrawn, Pakistani Rangers and Pakistan-sponsored terrorists killed over 40 Indian soldiers and civilians and injured many more.
Over 1,00,000 people were displaced from border areas in Jammu, Samba and Kathua. The Pakistani army violated the ceasefire along the Line of Control during Ramzan at will.
The abduction and murder of rifleman Aurangzeb and the assassination of journalist Shujaat Bukhari point to critical gaps in security in the Valley. Terror outfits like the LeT, JeM and Hizbul Mujahideen used the Ramzan break to regroup just when the security forces had them on the run.
On two occasions in the last few weeks, the Pakistani DGMO raised a white flag, appealed for a meeting with the Indian DGMO and pledged to honour the 2003 ceasefire agreement. Honour though is an attribute the Pakistani army is unfamiliar with: within days following each flag meeting, Pakistani Rangers violated the ceasefire, killing BSF personnel, including an assistant commandant, Jitendra Singh.
The Indian government's response to Pakistan's longstanding cross-border venality has been muddle-headed. Pakistan has been waging an undeclared war on India through proxy terrorists since 1989. India has lost countless lives and been hyphenated with a rogue nation with 11 per cent of India's GDP and 2.5 per cent of its foreign exchange reserves among other disparities.
Inexplicably, the Indian government retains Pakistan's most favoured nation (MFN) status, giving Pakistan a measure of legitimacy. It maintains cross-LoC trade, which allows Pakistan and Indian smugglers free rein. It continues to host a full-fledged Pakistani embassy in New Delhi teeming with ISI agents who subvert and co-opt Indian journalists, bureaucrats, retired armed forces officers and activists.
The Pakistani strategy pays rich dividends. Global NGOs routinely excoriate India for human rights violations without contextualising Pakistan's malign role of sponsoring terror in the Valley which compels the Indian Army to use force when attacked by terrorists or mobs of stone pelters.
Post-Eid, what strategy does the Indian government have in J&K? There appears to be none.
On the one hand, interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma represents the government's dovish line. He has spent the better part of the year pleading to be heard by anyone who will listen. The Hurriyat leaders, who are Pakistan's overground terrorist handlers and fund conduits, treat him with disdain. Pakistan looks upon him with barely restrained glee as one more sign that India is a soft state which, even under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will never bite the bullet on Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in Kashmir.
The problem is aggravated by the BJP's alliance with the PDP. Chief minister Mehbooba Mufti has a voter base comprising hardliners. They resent their party's alliance with what they consider a "Hindu nationalist" party.
They have a soft corner for the Hurriyat. They want more, not less, autonomy. They make a political issue of opposing the abrogation of Article 370, despite knowing perfectly well that abrogation is impossible in practice for two reasons.
First, it needs the approval of the J&K Assembly, which will never give it. Second, the BJP set aside specifically for J&K its national manifesto (which pledges to abrogate Article 370) when endorsing the alliance of government document with the PDP in 2015.
To preserve her vote share in a future Assembly election (polls are due in December 2020 at the latest but, if the alliance with the BJP crumbles, they could be held sooner), Mehbooba sits on an uncomfortable fence. In Delhi, she hews to the BJP's relatively hawkish line. In Srinagar, she courts the Hurriyat and Pakistan.
What should the BJP now do? First, recognise that a hybrid policy of appeasing separatists along with stop-start counter-terror operations won't work. Appeasement never works with a venal enemy. Former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain learnt that lesson at the infamous Munich Conference with Adolf Hitler in 1938. Britain wanted to avoid war at all costs. It continued to appease Hitler even when the Nazis occupied parts of German-speaking Czechoslovakia. Only when Poland was attacked — with whom Britain had a mutual defence treaty — did Britain declare war on Germany on September 1, 1939. Appeasement had failed.
Second, the BJP must come to terms with the prospect of abandoning its alliance with the PDP. The alliance has run its course. It has cost the BJP goodwill in Jammu. In the next election, the party will encounter the anger of Jammu's electorate, deeply upset with the Valley's growing Wahhabism. Walk out now, impose governor's rule and hope that you can recoup some of your lost credibility in Jammu before the next J&K Assembly election. The Valley in any case is a lost cause for the BJP.
Third, the central government must focus on investing in J&K's infrastructure. The Kishanganga hydroelectric power plant, which will generate 330MW of electricity, the tunnel-cum-highway connecting Jammu and Srinagar and new-economy jobs for youth are what J&K needs. It does not need an interlocutor who nobody talks to but whose presence allows Pakistan to thumb its nose at India's position that talks and terror can't go together.
What Pakistan especially covets are Track-2 talks between Indian and Pakistan do-gooders — mostly retired men with little else to occupy themselves besides swapping nostalgic tales over kebabs in Bangkok or Istanbul.
India's Pakistan policy is neither muscular not conciliatory. It falls between two stools much to Pakistan's delight which profits from such hyphenated ambivalence. But Pakistan's own time is running out. A messy general election looms next month while the Financial Action Task Force will meet in Paris on June 24 to consider blacklisting Islamabad, leading to global financial sanctions on Pakistan.
Despite India's meandering policy on Kashmir and Pakistan-abetted terrorism, external circumstances may yet rescue it from failure.