Pakistan: Now or Never?

from India Insight:

Did pro-India militias kill Western tourists in Kashmir?

A government human rights commission in Kashmir on Tuesday evening said it will review records from the 1995 abduction of Western tourists after a new book claimed that four of six foreign tourists were murdered by a pro-India militia to discredit India’s arch-rival Pakistan.

On July 4, 1995, Americans Donald Hutchings and John Childs, as well as Britons Paul Wells and Keith Mangan were kidnapped by the little known Al-Faran militant group while trekking in the Himalayas near Pahalgam, 97 km (60 miles) southeast of Srinagar.

Four days later, Childs escaped. On the same day, the captors abducted German Dirk Hasert and Norwegian Hans Christian Ostroe. Ostroe was found beheaded in August 1995. The others were never found.

Journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, whose book "The Meadow: Kashmir 1995 - Where the Terror Began" is about the abduction, claim that the four Westerners were murdered by a pro-government militia group who worked for Indian security forces.

After Ostroe was beheaded, Al-Faran was ready to strike a monetary deal to free the hostages and might have released them for £250,000, the authors claim. They say the deal was deliberately sabotaged.

"It appeared that there were some in the Indian establishment who did not want this never-ending bad news story of Pakistani cruelty and Kashmiri inhumanity to end, even when the perpetrators themselves were finished," the book says.

India and Pakistan: practising peace

Given the history of India and Pakistan, it is easy to be sceptical about the chances of their latest peace initiative. So let’s start with the positives.

Unlike past peace efforts which have veered between ill-prepared personal initiatives by political leaders and technical talks between bureaucrats which foundered for lack of direction from the top, the current phase combines the two.  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s impromptu  invitation to his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani to watch last week’s India-Pakistan cricket semi-final coincided with the resumption of the first structured dialogue between the two countries since the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai.  The foreign secretaries, or top diplomats, of India and Pakistan met in Thimphu, Bhutan in February.  In talks last week, the home secretaries of the two countries made progress in coordinating their investigations into the Mumbai attacks; the trade secretaries are expected to meet soon, as are the defence secretaries.

Moreover, the Indian prime minister is personally committed to pursuing peace in the time he has left before a national election due by 2014.  And while last year he was isolated even within his own party in his enthusiasm for peace - an idea that still lingers in some quarters - his  initiative  appears to enjoy the support of powerful Congress party president Sonia Gandhi. Outlook magazine, writing about his cricket diplomacy, noted that Singh was flanked by Gandhi and her son and prime-minister- in-waiting, Rahul Gandhi, when he welcomed Gilani on his first official visit to India.

The Pakistan Army, which dominates foreign and security policy in Pakistan, has also been slowly reassessing its approach to Islamist militants it once nurtured for use against India as they slip increasingly out of its control. How far that reassessment goes is open to debate;  but few doubt that Gilani would have accepted Singh’s invitation to India to explore peace talks had this not been endorsed by the army.

All that said, sceptics have history on their side when they argue that the latest attempt at peace-making will fail.  Militants, including those allied with al Qaeda, have an interest in disrupting peace talks, using an attack on India to stir up fears of war on Pakistan’s eastern border and take pressure off them on its western border with Afghanistan.  If talks are not to be sabotaged – particularly at a time when militant groups in Pakistan are fragmenting and some of their cadres  sucked into the orbit of al Qaeda – both countries would need to overcome distrust enough to share intelligence to prevent another big attack.

Singh’s peace initiative also has powerful opponents within the Indian establishment, who are well placed to whip up an already jingoistic media if they think he is going too far.  Bharat Karnad, from the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, wrote that the Pakistan Army appeared to have decided to favour talks with India for now. ”The question is can India capitalise on what seems to be rethinking underway in the Pakistan Army?  Alas, there is surprisingly less give here than is generally assumed,” he wrote. “This is because India’s Pakistan policy is hostage to the petty calculations of the political class in the country and powerful ministries within the Indian government with vested interest in portraying Pakistan as menace.”

Keeping Raymond Davis and Lashkar-e-Taiba in perspective

According to the New York Times, Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor arrested in Pakistan for shooting dead two Pakistanis in what he says was an act of self-defence, was working with a CIA team monitoring the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group.

The article, by Washington-based Mark Mazzetti, was not the first to make this assertion. The NYT itself had already raised it, while Christine Fair made a similar point in her piece for The AfPak Channel last week (with the intriguing detail that “though the ISI knew of the operation, the agency certainly would not have approved of it.”)

But it was the first article I’ve seen which focused almost exclusively on U.S. anxieties about the Lashkar-e-Taiba — blamed for the 2008 attack on Mumbai — while also linking these explicitly to the furore over the Raymond Davis case:

“The CIA team Mr. Davis worked with, according to American officials, had among its assignments the task of secretly gathering intelligence about Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant ‘Army of the Pure’. Pakistan’s security establishment has nurtured Lashkar for years as a proxy force to attack targets and enemies in India and in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir. These and other American officials, all of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity, are now convinced that Lashkar is no longer satisfied being the shadowy foot soldiers in Pakistan’s simmering border conflict with India. It goals have broadened, these officials say, and Lashkar is committed to a campaign of jihad against the United States and Europe, and against American troops in Afghanistan.”

My first reaction to this was that it was not particularly new – we already knew the Americans were worried about the Lashkar-e-Taiba. My follow-up comment is that there is a danger of conflating the very specific row over Raymond Davis with longer-term arguments over the militant group. The two are not one and the same, even though they may overlap. And while rationally everyone knows this, politically such conflation is important, since it feeds all too often into a “pundit consensus” made up of emotion and impression.

 So here is a summary of my understanding of the history of the U.S. view of the Lashkar-e-Taiba based on conversations with officials and analysts (and on which, for fear of falling into pundit consensus traps myself, I am happy to be challenged.)

The United States, much to India’s annoyance, was initially reluctant to take on all militant groups in Pakistan, focusing primarily on seeking Islamabad/Rawalpindi’s help on tackling al Qaeda following the Sept. 11 attacks.  Yet, according to counter-terrorism experts, in adopting this stance Washington had failed to understand the way in which militant groups had changed in the 1990s from those with vertical hierarchies and clear agendas into a much more polymorphous, overlapping and horizontal movement. Among those who stressed this new development was former French investigating magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere, who complained that even after 9/11.  the Pakistan Army was still running training camps for the Lashkar-e-Taiba with the full knowledge of the CIA.

from India Insight:

Will Indian army’s charm offensive work in Kashmir?

When thousands gathered in an Indian army camp in Kashmir recently, people started asking questions: Is this another protest against New Delhi's rule?

The answer came as a surprise to many and as a shock to some.

Nearly 10,000 youth had gathered to try their luck in a recruitment drive by the Indian army in the disputed region and not to protest against alleged excesses by security forces.

A BBC report said that by taking part in the Indian army's recruitment rally, Kashmiri youth have disregarded the region's "struggle for independence which has been ongoing for the last 20 years."

Tens of thousands have died since 1989 in Kashmir, which is claimed both by India and Pakistan.

"The week-long rally is being held barely a few months after last year's widespread public unrest during which more than 100 people were killed," the BBC report said.

Last year, the death of a teenage boy by a police teargas shell triggered massive protests, the biggest since a separatist revolt against Indian rule broke out.

from India Insight:

Kashmir seeks return of hanged separatist leader’s remains

Mohammad Maqbool Bhat, the pioneer of Kashmir's separatist struggle, was hanged in New Delhi's Tihar jail on February 11, 1984.

Bhat, also the founder of Kashmir's influential separatist group Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), was executed on the charge of killing an Indian intelligence officer. His body was buried in the jail.

Five years after Bhat’s hanging, Kashmiri militants including JKLF launched an insurgency against Indian rule in the Muslim-majority region and the bloodshed has continued ever since.

Each year on February 11, Kashmir goes on strike to mark the anniversary of the hanging of its leader, widely respected in the disputed region.

Life across the Kashmir valley was affected on Friday by a separatist shutdown called to observe the death anniversary of Bhat.

But JKLF, which declared a ceasefire with Indian forces in 1994 and is fighting politically for the independence of Kashmir from both India and Pakistan, says it will intensify its protests and demand the return of Bhat’s mortal remains.

"The denial of mortal remains of leader to his people is a grave human rights violation," the JKLF said. "Bhat is the identity of Kashmiris and symbol of our unity."

Musharraf’s Kashmir deal, mirage or oasis?

The foreign secretaries, or top diplomats,  of India and Pakistan are expected to meet on the sidelines of a South Asian summit in Thimpu, Bhutan on Feb 6/7 to try to find a way back into talks which have been stalled since the attack on Mumbai in November 2008. Progress is expected to be limited, perhaps paving the way to a meeting of the foreign ministers, or to deciding how future talks should be structured.

Expectations are running low, all the more so after a meeting between the foreign ministers descended into acrimony last July. And leaders in neither country have the political space to take the kind of risks needed for real peace talks right now. Pakistan is struggling with the fall-out of the assassination of Punjab governor Salman Taseer  among many other things, while Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been weakened by a corruption scandal at home.

However, in the interests of establishing a baseline, I asked former president Pervez Musharraf in an interview earlier this week about a roadmap for peace he had agreed with Prime Minister Singh in 2007 before political turmoil forced him out of office. The roadmap brought the two countries to their nearest in years to a peace deal, and during Barack Obama’s presidential election campaign, there was a great deal of hope it  could be revived in order to ease tensions between India and Pakistan  in turn helping to stabilise Afghanistan. Even after the Mumbai attacks ended chances of an early “Kashmir to Kabul” peace settlement, the idea has lingered on as one of the more promising models. Yet since the agreement was reached in secret, its details have never been officially released.

Diplomats say the agreement hinged on an acceptance by India and Pakistan that there would be no exchange of territory in disputed Kashmir but they would work to make irrelevant the Line of Control which divides the region. There was also supposed to be a “joint mechanism” under which Indians, Pakistanis and Kashmiris would oversee areas of common interest.  No one can agree, however, on far advanced the talks were. Some say the deal was ready for signing; others that there was still a long way to go.  In particular, the two countries had yet to agree the nature of the “joint mechanism”, and bring on board their own people and domestic constituencies in accepting the agreement. Here is what Musharraf had to say when I asked him about the sceptics’ view of the draft agreement:

“You are probably concentrating only on Kashmir. But there were two other issues, Sir Creek and Siachen. On Sir Creek and Siachen we reached a stage that they can be signed yesterday. There is no doubt in my mind.”  The disputed territory in Sir Creek had been surveyed and was just awaiting a leadership decision, he said. ”Then Siachen, we had decided on the relocation of troops beyond certain lines, so everything is done.”

“Yes, Kashmir is not that easy. We had found basic parameters; it was my idea actually … the parameters were first of all demilitarising, which meant really demilitarising on the Line of Control; graduated demilitarisation from the Line of Control and also from the cities in the Indian part of Kashmir; that is what is bothering and troubling the civilians there; so therefore in first case leave the cities and go into the outskirts and then further getting to garrisons. The second element was maximum self-governance, and the third was an overwatch of those areas not given for self-governance, and also (to) see how the self-governance is functioning. This body we had proposed, I had proposed, (was to) be of Kashmiris, Pakistanis and Indians.

 ”So these were the parameters and then the issue was of the Line of Control, making the Line of Control irrelevant … The Indians thought we should make this as a permanent border. My view was that this has been the cause of wars. How can we have the cause of conflict as the permanent solution? So my idea was that we could look into making the Line of Control irrelevant.

from India Insight:

Kashmir calms down, but peace still distant

Winter has come to Kashmir, a scenic valley deep in the Himalayas, cooling tensions in the disputed region after months of violent anti-India demonstrations.

At least 110 people have been killed since June. Dozens were wounded, mostly by police bullets, during the protests -- the biggest since a revolt against Indian rule broke out in 1989.

A separatist strike, curfew and security lock-down, that dragged on for over four months and closed much of the region, have ebbed away and the streets across Kashmir are abuzz with activity again.

Authorities say the arrest of some "hard-core" protest organisers and the onset of winter helped to calm the protests.

But there is no optimism across Kashmir valley that peace has returned.

Nayeem Akhtar, chief spokesman of the state's main opposition People's Democratic Party says the weakening of anti-India protests should not be mistaken for an end to the problem.

"You cannot expect Kashmiris to be in permanent agitation mode. People are exhausted, they have suffered deaths, injuries, financial losses," Akhtar told The Hindu newspaper.

Will Obama refer to Kashmir in public in India?

Will President Barack Obama make some public remarks on Kashmir during his trip to India next month?

At a White House press briefing, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes refused to be pinned down on specifics,  beyond saying that the United States would continue to express support for India and Pakistan to pursue talks.

“I wouldn’t — I don’t want to get into prefacing with precision what his comments are, in part because he’ll be answering a lot of questions there in the town hall and press conference and we haven’t — we’re still working through his remarks on certain things,” he said.

Yet it is a question that cannot — and will not — be left to chance.

Indian is deeply sensitive about foreign visitors talking about Kashmir — as British foreign ministers have learned to their cost on earlier trips. It regards Kashmir as an integral part of India and refuses even to recognise the territory at the heart of more than 60 years of enmity with Pakistan as disputed. Moreover, it has consistently rejected outside interference, saying that its disputes with Pakistan must be settled bilaterally.

Obama, who raised hackles in India during his presidential election campaign by suggesting the Washington should try to help resolve the Kashmir dispute, is hoping to use the trip to help U.S. business tap into India’s growing economy. With a flagging economy at home, he cannot afford to offend his hosts.

But at the same time, the biggest foreign policy challenge of his administration is over how to deal with Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The war in Afghanistan cannot be ended without Pakistan’s help. And Pakistan itself faces serious instability — potentially a much bigger worry than Afghanistan with its 180 million people and nuclear bombs. Pakistan’s identity in turn is intimately bound up with India – its past support for Islamist militants was driven by its belief that this was the only way to neutralise the influence of its much bigger neighbour both in Kashmir and in Afghanistan.  Depending on who you listen to, it either will not, or can not, tackle Islamist militants based in Pakistan without a peace settlement with India, including on Kashmir.

from India Insight:

Is Kashmir’s protest leader gaining popularity?

Separatist militancy has waned over the years in Kashmir, but now a radicalised young generation which has grown up in over two decades of violence and strife is driving the massive anti-India demonstrations across the disputed region.

Who is leading months of freedom demonstrations in Kashmir, a fresh unarmed uprising that is proving a huge political challenge for the Indian government?

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the 80-year-old hardline Kashmiri politician who is hated by India and backed by Pakistan, has emerged as the leading face of the present separatist campaign in the region.

Since the crisis started on June 11 when a 17-year-old student died after being hit by a tear gas shell during a protest, Geelani weekly issues a protest calendar that calls for protest marches, strikes and sit-ins.

More than 100 people have now been killed in more than 100 days of protests, the biggest since an armed revolt against New Delhi’s rule broke out in 1989.

The death toll so far includes children, women and teenagers, nearly all killed by police bullets.

Many Kashmiris are not happy with Geelani's protest plans because the continuing cycle of strikes and government curfews has shut down schools, colleges and offices, made food and medicine scarce and has brought untold misery to the people.

from India Insight:

India offers fresh peace talks to Kashmir

New Delhi has expressed its willingness to hold talks with "any group" from Kashmir where protests against Indian rule have mounted in recent weeks and government forces have killed at least 65 people, mostly stone-throwing protesters.

The civilian deaths have fuelled anger in the disputed Himalayan region where anti-India sentiments run deep though militant violence has gone down.

"We hope to restart the dialogue process. We will talk to any group, any political party which is willing to talk to us," Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said.

According to Hindustan Times, the government will soon come out with specific meaures to address some issues which may bring relief to the people of Kashmir.

A nearly three-month-long separatist strike, curfew and security lockdown has kept the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley on the boil, shutting down much of the scenic region.

"Few days means few days...government hopes that it will be able to re-start the process of dialogue in the near future," Chidambaram said.

After several failed rounds of peace talks between moderate separatists and New Delhi in the past decade, locals say India is only buying time and is not serious about resolution of the dispute.