Mufti Sayeed Rides A Tiger

By ceding space to separatists, his government is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

April 21, 2015

THE TIIMES OF INDIA | Editorial Page
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/mufti-sayeed-rides-a-tiger/

 

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

For good reason, namely that they have been competitively apologetic to Kashmir’s Pakistan-supported separatists and neither of them has politically contested the secessionist ideology after Farooq Abdullah’s exit as chief minister, Mufti Sayeed’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Omar Abdullah’s National Conference (NC) are suffering a credibility deficit in their pleading for ‘some space’ for hardliners like Masarat Alam and Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Not once but umpteen times, their political ambitions have lit fires that took months and years to subside.

Ironically, even after assembly elections that recorded the highest turnouts, it is the boycott fringe that is setting the agenda for an elected government.

Until becoming chief minister with 16 PDP MLAs in a House of 87 in 2002, Mufti had never succeeded in entering the assembly after his Congress party withdrew support from Sheikh Abdullah’s government in 1976. Even in its best performance, PDP got 28 seats last year.

It has a clear purpose in being ‘soft’ to separatists as that helps the party sweep polls in south Kashmir’s Jamaat-e-Islami dominated Pulwama and Shopian districts. NC’s copycat tactics is attributed to the junior Abdullah’s lack of self-confidence and disconnect with Kashmiris.

Notwithstanding Mufti’s history of being India’s home minister when security forces committed the worst human rights abuse in 1990, Mufti in 2002 and thereafter succeeded in getting a chunk of the separatists’ vote. This has helped him become chief minister twice.

He brilliantly demonised Farooq and his NC for excesses perpetrated by armed forces and the Special Operations Group (SOG) of the J&K Police. What helped him don the mantle of messiah for a section of the pro-Pakistan population was that Mufti promised revocation of AFSPA, disbanding SOG, punishment to delinquent police officials and involvement of separatists and Pakistan in a dialogue process.

He just had to touch on the scars of the 1979 ‘persecution’ when Sheikh Abdullah’s followers trooped into Jamaat villages, torched properties, devastated orchards and molested women over Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s execution by Zia-ul-Haq’s military regime in Pakistan.

Sheikh’s party and progeny being for them “the first and last evil”, Jamaat in the two districts boycotts elections but lends some support to PDP to beat NC. So it was not for nothing that Mufti publicly acknowledged the separatists’ “help” after taking over as CM.

But his predicament is that there are other separatist constituencies – Geelani’s Sopore and Palhalan, Masarat Alam’s uptown Srinagar, Mirwaiz Umar’s Shehr-e-Khas and Yasin Malik’s Lalchowk – which have not been under his influence or control.

This time around, Mufti’s ambition of extending PDP’s base to the capital’s ultra-radical swathes in exchange for Masarat’s release has boomeranged. Followers of Geelani and Alam spoiled the gameplan with a strong pro-Pakistan show in front of J&K police headquarters, unprecedented in the last several years.

It embarrassed BJP and forced the home ministry to ensure Masarat’s detention and an end to “all anti-national demonstrations”.

With the first civilian fatality in a protest in the last four years, Mufti’s government is now caught between a rock and a hard place. Questions are being raised in New Delhi over the long rope Mufti has retained in buttressing the secessionist constituency since his daughter Rubaiya Sayeed’s abduction in 1989.

Release of five hardcore militants brought a sense of victory to insignificant guerrilla groups who soon after involved entire Kashmir in their “Crush India” campaign. That laid the foundation for endless spells of armed insurgency and separatism.

Again, in 2008, two PDP ministers put the state on fire over allotment of land to a Hindu shrine board, followed by Mufti’s pressure on Ghulam Nabi Azad’s government to rescind the order. It brought down Azad’s government and triggered the state’s worst communal and regional strife at a time when separatists and militants had been rendered virtually irrelevant. Both got a fresh lease of life.

Masarat’s release and the turbulence thereafter came ironically at a time when the Kashmiris had completely marginalised the secessionists with their massive and enthusiastic participation in arguably the state’s fairest assembly elections. The valley was awaiting the much promised flood relief and even a promising tourist season. Even the death of two young students in unprovoked army firing at Chhatergam did not lead to a mass uprising.

Few in Srinagar have been able to comprehend the logic of expanding space for separatists without seeking an assurance that it does not lead to a situation where the government itself would be begging for space from them.

Rather than a seemingly clandestine arrangement, the PDP-BJP coalition could have initiated a transparent dialogue process with the separatists while making it clear that nobody would be permitted to vitiate the atmosphere of peace and tranquility. Perhaps more confidence building could have been done with the symbolism of granting permission to prosecution of scores of the armed forces’ personnel involved in violation of human rights and fake encounters which have been pending with the Centre for years.

Instead the situation has been brought back to square one, creating conditions for a fresh round of pro-Pakistan euphoria in Kashmir.

[The writer is a senior journalist]

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