Indian-Administered Kashmir | No 1 | February to March 2007

Indian-administered Kashmir | No 1 | February to March 2007

INDIAN-ADMINISTERED KASHMIR | Trends in Conflict and Cooperation

Generally, the situation in Indian-administered Kashmir can be described as slightly improving. In December 2006, Pakistan’s President Musharraf forwarded a four-point formula for peace, involving phased demilitarization on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC), self-government and joint control of the disputed territory in Kashmir by India and Pakistan. This proposal marks a huge shift in Pakistan’s traditional stand on Kashmir because it relinquishes the idea of a plebiscite and territorial claims on Kashmir. India responded cautiously, ruling out “joint management” of Kashmir or the redrawing of the borders, and making demilitarization dependent on an end to “acts of terrorism”. At the same time, India signaled openness to the issue of increased autonomy. Since the September 2006 Cuba Summit, a series of India-Pakistan peace talks were held at different levels of which the opaque back-channel talks appear to be the most promising. In spite of an arson attack on the Delhi- Lahore friendship train in India on 18 February, which killed numerous Pakistani nationals, Pakistan and India held composite talks in New Delhi on 20-21 February, which resulted in the adoption of a deal to reduce the risk of nuclear arms accidents. The two countries also agreed to hold talks between their director generals of military operations to discuss the withdrawal of troops from the Siachen Glacier in disputed Kashmir, and to liberalize their visa regimes. While visiting India, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister met with representatives of both factions of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) and the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). They failed to overcome their differences and he was unable to rally them behind the Pakistan-India peace process. On 6 March, the India- Pakistan anti-terror panel, which was formally established in November 2006, held the first meeting revolving around the recent attack on the friendship train. On 13 March, the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan met for the fourth round of the “composite dialogue”. The meeting did not yield any concrete results, although a few confidence-building measures were agreed upon. Even though these various talks show some level of engagement from both sides, India has yet to make major concessions to move the peace process forward. The peace talks also remain confined to high-level officials and out of reach of Kashmiri leaders. Usual muscle-flexing between the two countries has continued unabated, as illustrated by the mutual test-firing of short and long-range missiles in the months of February and March. Indo-Pakistani relationships were also temporarily overshadowed by Indian allegations of illegal cross-fire along the LoC in Kashmir on 17 January – the first such incident since the 2003 cease-fire. While pro-independence JKLF and the moderate wing of the APHC, headed by Mirwaiz Farooq, expressed their support to the four-point formula, the hardline APHC faction, led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, and militant organizations unanimously rejected the plan. Appeals by the moderate APHC chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on 2 February for a ceasefire by Kashmiri militants thus fell on deaf ears. Earlier, during his Pakistan visit in January 2007, Mirwaiz alienated hardliner groups by questioning the relevance of the armed militancy, saying it had only brought misery to Kashmiris. Mirwaiz, who is perceived as a consensus figure by both India and Pakistan, faces increasing hostility at home, as the January attack on his house and office in Srinagar by separatist militants illustrates. On 3 March, Mirwaiz experienced another setback when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh dismissed his earlier statement that India and Pakistan had agreed to withdraw their forces from their respective parts of Kashmir. The pro-India groups, particularly the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a major ally of the Kashmir's coalition government, dominated the headlines because of its stand on the issue of demilitarization. Led by Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, the state’s former Chief Minister, the PDP believes that since there is no 1990-like situation in Kashmir, the Indian government should withdraw its troops and revoke the special laws that provide de facto impunity to the troops. The PDP demands – and its decision to boycott cabinet meetings – nearly brought the coalition government to an end as Kashmir's Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad of the Congress party rejected PDP’s demands as mere vote bank politics (elections are expected in the state next year). In his letter to Sayeed on 15 March, even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rejected the demilitarization demand, saying the security situation was not ripe enough for such a step. But when the PDP threatened to leave the government, Singh invited Sayeed to New Delhi during the last week of March. The situation was finally diffused when Singh promised to set up a panel of committees to look into the issue of demilitarization. It is yet to be seen how much these committees will be able to achieve. The demand for demilitarization is not new, and is a concern shared by most Kashmiris facing heavy troop presence in their daily lives. In another major development, Lt Gen VG Patankar, a retired Indian army general, appeared in a Karachi television program and had a telephone conversation with Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, founder of the Lashker-e- FAST Update | Indian-administered Kashmir | No 1 | February to March 2007

Toiba outfit. Lt Gen VG Patankar invited Saeed to visit him in India. Moreover, after many years, India issued Syed Ali Shah Geelani, leader of the radical faction of APHC, with a passport so he could undergo surgery in the US. Geelani, who suffers from kidney malignancy, ultimately underwent surgery in a hospital in India. Meanwhile, the National Conference (NC), Kashmir's main opposition party, decided in March to join the six Working Groups formed by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2006 on Kashmir. The NC had earlier boycotted the Working Groups’ meetings in protest against continued human rights abuses by the state. On 24 March, The Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament adopted the amended Kashmir report drafted by Baroness Emma Nicholson after incorporating some of the objections raised by Pakistan and Kashmiri leaders.

Sudden snowfall and incessant rain in March claimed the lives of over two dozen in the Doda district of Jammu region and some areas of the Kashmir Valley and destroyed numerous houses. Moreover, bad weather led to the temporary closure of the Srinagar-Jammu highway, Kashmir's only road link to the outside world, which curbed economic activity and tourism from India. Last year, international agencies like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank signed MoUs with the Kashmir government to rebuild the war-torn infrastructure, particularly roads in Srinagar.

In February, thousands of people took to the streets in Srinagar for several consecutive days, staging anti-India and pro-freedom demonstrations. The people were particularly protesting against disappearances and custodial killings of civilians captured by security forces from the streets of the Kashmir Valley and shot dead in fake encounters as alleged Pakistani militants. At least five men had been killed in this fashion last year and their fate has been known since February. These protests were frequently met by excessive use of force by law enforcement agencies. Only after continued protests and JKLF-staged hunger strikes in Srinagar and New Delhi, the authorities arrested nearly two dozen policemen, including two top officials, and ordered the exhumation of the bodies and forensic tests. The tests revealed that the dead men were not foreigners. The protesting groups, amongst others, wanted to remind Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of his promise of zero tolerance of human rights abuses in Kashmir made in Srinagar in May 2006. Although the arrests of police officers have given hope to family members of the 5-10,000 missing persons, it has yet to be seen whether these newly arrested policemen will actually be charged and punished. It is notable that the police forces – as opposed to the Indian security forces – are made up of Kashmiris. The incidents of militant violence and violence as a whole appear to be on a steady Forceful domestic events by year decline (see graph). Unverified figures provided by the Indian authorities show that it is the first time since 1990 that killings have decreased, with 2003 being the bloodiest year of the conflict. The Indian Army has also conceded that the infiltration of militants from across the LoC in Pakistan has dropped to “zero”. However, the lull, according to analysts, should not be construed as an end of armed struggle in the state. The militant groups operating in Kashmir from Pakistan, according to reports, are under a tremendous pressure from the Musharraf government to keep their guns silent for some time. Moreover, militant activity is traditionally lower during the winter months. Some analysts believe that by his unilateral concessions to New Delhi, President Musharraf intends to expose India's inflexibility before the international community, and particularly before Source: FAST event data the US, which opposes infiltration of militants into the Kashmir Valley from Pakistani soil. .

Future developments will largely depend on the outcome of the India-Pakistan peace talks. There are signs among the Kashmiri groups of running out of patience, such as in the case of the pro-independence JKLF, which has so far supported the peace process. The JKLF, which renounced armed violence in 1994, has time and again warned of a Palestinian-type political Intifada – without resorting to violence – if the wishes and aspirations of Kashmiris are ignored by India and Pakistan. The delay in the breakthrough would certainly push the moderate groups like the APHC, led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, and the JKLF to corner and vindicate the position of hardliners like Syed Ali Geelani. For India, the dragging out of the peace process ensures the status quo in Kashmir. But for Pakistan and its President Musharraf, it will strengthen growing hostility at home.

Contact FAST International is the early warning program of swisspeace, FAST International covering 25 countries/regions in Africa, Asia and Europe. Based in Country Team: Indian-administered Kashmir Bern, Switzerland, the program is funded and utilized by an Sonnenbergstrasse 17 international consortium of development agencies, including the 3000 Bern 7 Austrian Development Agency (ADA), the Canadian International Switzerland Development Agency (CIDA), the Swedish International Development [email protected] Cooperation Agency (Sida) and the Swiss Agency for Development and www.swisspeace.org Cooperation (SDC).