Interlocution ends up as a failed intelligence operation

Abbas Ansari suspended from Hurriyat after meeting with Padgaonkar team

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Apr 20: Having failed to meet any of the separatist leaders in the last six months, Dileep Padgaonkar-led team of New Delhi’s interlocutors today succeeded in arranging its maiden interaction with the senior Hurriyat leader Maulvi Abbas Ansari. However, Ansari realized soon that he had only burned his fingers as, within minutes of the meeting, Chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq declared him as a delinquent and suspended his membership in the Hurriyat Conference.

The team of celebrated interlocutors, including academician Radha Kumar and retired bureaucrat M M Ansari, called on the cleric-politician Abbas Ansari at his Khankah-e-Sokhta residence in Safakadal area of downtown Srinagar at around 1100 hours. Informed sources revealed to Early Times that during his hour-long interaction with the interlocutors, Abbas Ansari made it clear that no solution to the vexed Kashmir problem was possible as long as the hardliners were calling the shots in Valley and Pakistan was not associated with the political process.

Ansari complained that the pro-India politicians had developed a huge vested interest in the turmoil and the successive governments, in New Delhi as well as in Srinagar, had left no stone unturned to strengthen the hardliners---an obvious reference to people like Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Massarat Alam and Asiya Andrabi. He complained that New Delhi had been repeatedly making Hurriyat a laughing stock and reducing its credibility by calling it for “dialogue” without any sincerity of purpose and a roadmap. Both, NDA as well as UPA governments, according to Ansari, had only humiliated Hurriyat by defaulting on the promises made before every meeting.

Sources said that the interlocutors listened to Ansari with rapt attention while enjoying his hospitality. They sought to emphasize that current process of finding a political solution to the Kashmir problem was “different from all previous initiatives” and assured their host that the separatists’ viewpoint would be “duly accommodated” in their report to the Centre. They argued that Hurriyat’s meeting with them would be “mutually beneficial” and thus in the best interests of the Kashmiris.

Within hours, however, Hurriyat Chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq took a serious notice of his colleague’s meeting with the interlocutors. He declared that Ansari as well as his Anjuman-e-Ittihad-ul-Muslimeen had been immediately suspended in the Hurriyat on account of the politician’s meeting with the interlocutors “in violation of the Hurriyat executive committee’s decision”. Mirwaiz said that Hurriyat’s top decision making body had decided that there would be no individual or group meetings with the Padgaonkar team.

Mirwaiz told media that the team from New Delhi had neither any mandate nor any role in deliberating on Kashmir’s political resolution. According to him, this team’s objective was “nothing but dividing the separatist leaders and breaking the Hurriyat”. He asserted that Hurriyat’s meeting with the interlocutors would be just an exercise in futility. He said that Ansari’s membership had been suspended with immediate effect, though the Hurriyat executive committee would meet soon to discuss the violation in detail and accordingly take the final decision.

In a quick reaction, spokesman of Ansari’s Ittihad-ul-Muslimeen issued a statement to clarify that the interlocutors had called on the separatist leader “without any appointment”. According to him, it was only for upholding the Muslim tradition of respecting a guest that Ansari had allowed his uninvited guests in and served them a tea. He claimed that the conversation lasted for just 20 minutes during which Ansari emphasized that there was no role for interlocution after Hurriyat’s meetings with the Prime Minister in the past. He said that Ansari made it clear to the team that Kashmir’s solution lay in nothing but “tripartite talks between Islamabad, New Delhi and the Kashmiris”.

In a related development, later in the afternoon, Padgoankar claimed at a news conference that it was Ansari who had called the interlocutors for a meeting with him at latter’s residence. He called it a “positive development” and wished all other separatist leaders to follow Ansari in resolving the Kashmiri crisis. Radha Kumar made a prompt intervention to clarify that “a number of colleagues” had played role in arranging her team’s meeting with Ansari. The interlocutors were addressing media at the conclusion of their seventh visit to Kashmir in the last six months.

Padgaonkar said that Ansari desired action from New Delhi over Hurriyat’s 4-point formula that includes releasing of all political detainees, withdrawal of bunkers and draconian laws like PSA and AFSPA and reduction of troops. According to him, Ansari was in favour of “sincere, serious and meaningful dialogue” between New Delhi and the separatist leadership.

Facing credibility crisis due to its unclear mandate, Padgaonkar-led team of interlocutors has not been able to take the Valley’s separatist leadership on board in the last six months. Its imposing company with a number of discredited political activists and pseudo-intellectuals has, in fact, reduced the team to just another failed intelligence operation in Kashmir.

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