ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Why Kashmir's Armed Insurgency Is Not a Variant of Terrorism MEHMOOD UR RASHID Mehmood ur Rashid ([email protected]) is the Opinions Editor and Columnist at Greater Kashmir. Vol. 53, Issue No. 19, 12 May, 2018 Viewing Kashmir’s armed insurgency as a variant of terrorism fails to explain Rafi Bhat’s case. It is hard to blame a mix of poverty, unemployment and lumpen elements as the cause for armed militancy. Bhat’s militancy, like that of many who lost their lives before him, challenges the statist narrative that is carved out in the national imagination by news outlets and rightwing political networks. Is Kashmir destined to writhe in extended bouts of violence? A new norm of mourning is inaugurated where a schoolboy, just nine years old, shot dead by the armed forces at a good distance from an encounter site, is buried in his school uniform. This sense of interminable mourning prevails in the Valley as the mother of a slain militant commander, Saddam Padder, gives a gun salute at the funeral of her son. A young boy trapped in a military cordon calls up his father to inform him that the time has come; the father consoles him by saying, “I hand you over to the Lord.” Perhaps, these stories seem unreal, almost mythical, but they are proof that Kashmir is turning into a cavernous void, gulping down lives, young and fresh. The first Sunday in the month (6 May 2018) was drenched in the blood of almost a dozen people who were killed. But, what caught the attention of Kashmir watchers was the death of a university teacher, Rafi Bhat, who had a doctorate in sociology. ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Bhat’s death has raised some disturbing questions about the new turn of events in Kashmir. He was not a teenager susceptible to a single dose of some high-voltage speech from a radicalised doctrinaire. He was not a school dropout trying to add value to his life. Married for three years and already teaching at a university, Bhat was on his way to a good career in academics. He had every reason to want to live and possessed the necessary skills to secure a comfortable life for himself and his family. Why then did he choose otherwise? Bhat’s alleged militancy cannot be explained away easily. Viewing Kashmir’s armed insurgency as a variant of terrorism fails to explain Bhat’s case and it is hard to blame a mix of poverty, unemployment and lumpen elements as the cause for armed militancy. Bhat’s militancy, like that of many who lost their lives before him, challenges the statist narrative that is carved out in the national imagination—fanatically and faithfully—by news outlets and rightwing political networks. Recently, Junaid Sehrai—son of the newly elected chairman of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, M Ashraf Sehrai—with a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) and belonging to an affluent family slipped into this world of armed rebellion (Greater Kashmir 2018). In early 2018, Mannan Wani, a PhD scholar from Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) joined the Hizb-ul- Mujahideen forgoing a future in academics (Jameel et al 2018). In his 20s, Esa Fazili, a third-year engineering student, left the BGSB University in Rajouri to join the militants. His funeral witnessed a display of ISIS flags (Sood 2017). Fazili also belonged to a financially stable family and had a good educational background. Album of Violence What made these men join the armed groups instead of continuing to live a life of comfort? Kashmir’s relationship with violence spans many decades. Burhan Wani had epitomised the deep cultivation of violence in the Valley for many years. Barely 15, Wani joined a militant group at a time when the armed militancy was terminally lying on a cot. A few years down the line, Wani’s image had laid the foundation to a new genre of militancy. While it was minimal on the ground, it had swept the social media (Dasgupta 2016). Wani, with surprising speed, became the face of a new phase of militancy in Kashmir. When he was killed in 2016, Kashmir burst out like never before and with that emerged a new phase of violence as fresh blood streamed into militant groups in a steady trickle. Every now and then, there is a story in the news media about some boy who has been missing, his image then appears on social media holding a gun; weeks later, another coffin is draped in green and carried on a million shoulders. Each death invites more lives to this extremely short-lived experience. But, all of this did not happen overnight. Wani’s death and the subsequent public mobilisation was a telling statement on the failure of the political process in Kashmir. It also showed how deep ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 structures of violence, put firmly in place, by the state defeat any political initiative, eliciting violent responses from people. Even now, some “military strategists” emphasise that this unrestrained use of military force—a security driven mindset calls it operation clean out—against any traces of armed militancy is the sole way to make Kashmir violence-free. However, what they fail to understand is that armed militancy in Kashmir is a manifestation of a deeper contradiction that has been thrust on the “political-self” of Kashmir. Whenever this contradiction comes to a head, there is a surge in violence. From the 1930s, Kashmir's politics evolved with a strong sense of individuality. Even as the stated “joined” the Union of India, Kashmir’s sense of selfhood was not eroded and it resisted all attempts at subordination from, and merger with, the politics manufactured in Delhi. This separateness informs even the electoral politics of Kashmir that is otherwise considered pro-India. Whenever this separateness, or call it political self of Kashmir, was assaulted, Kashmir went up in flames. It began with the arrest of Sheikh M Abdullah in 1953, and the first phase of resistance from this “political-self” against Delhi lasted for more than 20 years, until 1975. It was dotted with some violent patches, such as al-Fateh, the armed underground rebellion of 1965. Later, when New Delhi again thrust itself on Kashmir as Rajiv Gandhi's Congress, and Farooq Abdullah's National Conference joined hands in 1987, popularly known as the Rajiv–Farooq Accord, the contradiction again turned active. That was the period when armed resistance began its journey. Similarly when the J&K Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made an alliance, it was a direct assault on the political self of Kashmir, hence this renewed phase of violent upheaval. This pattern is quite graspable in Kashmir's recent political history. Any attempts to forcibly, or mischievously, bring Kashmir's politics closer to that of New Delhi activates the primordial contradiction. All the proposals by the pro-India parties like the NC's Autonomy Resolution, or the PDP's Self Rule Document, are attempts to make that contradiction less frightening for the political self of Kashmir. When Kashmir reverberates with slogans like “We Want Freedom,” or “Go India Go Back,” that is a plain and undiluted expression of recovering the Kashmir's political self from the grip of that contradiction. A long term, uninterruptible, political initiative based on an unhindered acceptance of the political realities of Kashmir is the only way violence can be contained in Kashmir. Rhetorical lines such as: “Kashmiri youth are alienated,”, “Sky is the limit,”, “Economic packages,”, “Democracy and secularism”– are expired coinage in Kashmir. Towards the end of 1990s when armed militancy was decisively exhausted of its core energy, no one thought it would one day return in this manner. Though armed militancy in Kashmir was never completely absent, it had its highs and lows. From the mid-1990s, it ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 underwent multiple changes. Prominent militant leaders were killed, and entire organisations were wiped out in military operations. Effectively, it no longer posed a challenge to the state. Kashmiris have faced severe repression all these years because of the militarised atmosphere. The total reliance on the military, meant to control a dissenting population, has engendered serious anxieties in the Kashmiri society (Greater Kashmir 2016). However, some silent changes have also happened over the years; Kashmir, as a society, started recovering and the political energies coalesced. However, this transformation still carried the memories of the 1990s. Major events of violence where people were killed in large numbers, such as those in Handwara, Maisuma, Zakura, and Bijbehara, served as annual reminders of what Kashmir has been through. An entire crop of politically informed activists, most of whom had turned into militant commanders, became idols for the next generation (Greater Kashmir 2016). The core content from the “politics of resistance” either from the political history of conflict in Kashmir or the prevalent religious narrative in the Muslim societies was transmitted to the next generation without any loss. What happened in the 1990s was bound to re-emerge in newer forms. What those forms could be depended on Kashmir's own internal political dynamic, the international atmosphere, changes in the Muslim world, and of course the relationship between India and Pakistan. Failed Peace Process In the subsequent years, Kashmir witnessed an unfolding of a kind of peace process. This process did not deliver and significantly contributed to the return of violence to Kashmir. Though this new phase of violence cannot be explained solely in the backdrop of a failed peace process, a keen analysis of what went wrong with that process can yield some useful insights into understanding the pattern of present violence in Kashmir.