714041371

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Kashmir: the past ten yearsAlexander EvansPublished online: 18 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Alexander Evans (1999) Kashmir: the past ten years, AsianAffairs, 30:1, 21-34, DOI: 10.1080/714041371

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KASHMIR: THE PAST TEN YEARSALEXANDER EVANS

Alexander Evans is researching a PhD at the University of Bristol on thecurrent political violence in Jammu and Kashmir. He has published widelyon Kashmir, his most recent contribution being a book chapter in Warlords(forthcoming, Macmillan 1999). This article is based on a lecture he gaveto the Society on 7 October 1998 and draws heavily from fieldwork he con-ducted in Kashmir during 1997.

It has been said that only chemists have solutions. This article has notailor-made answers to the Kashmir problem as a whole, nor to the viol-ence of the last ten years in particular. It seems much more useful to offersome observations as to the nature of the problem. As with all conflicts,Kashmir suffers from a surfeit of myths, created and sustained by interestedparties to the violence to bolster their particular interpretation of events. Ifthis piece has an aim it is to break down some of those easy myths and leaveyou with a sense of how complex the problem has become. It will alsoemphasise that the problem of political violence in Kashmir is mainlyaValley problem, not a state-wide phenomenon. And finally, it will attachsome of the blame for the current situation to Kashmiri leaders themselves.

Jammu and KashmirJammu and Kashmir (henceforth Kashmir) is today divided between Indiaand Pakistan, with India controlling most of the people and Pakistan mostof the territory. This division came about in 1947-8, as India and Pakistanfought over the future of Kashmir, which had been up to then a Princelystate.' Three wars have been fought between India and Pakistan involvingKashmir; in 1947-8, 1965 and 1971. Fighting continues on the so-calledcease-fire line today, with small arms and artillery exchanges duringSeptember 1998 in four major sectors of that line.

Politically, the Kashmir Valley is the dominant unit in the state (seeFigure 1 overleaf) with a population of some 3.5 million. 95 per cent ofwhich is Sunni Muslim. The Jammu region plays less of a role. despitehosting the state government for six months of every year. It has a popu-lation of about 3 million (65 per cent Hindus, 30 per cent Muslim. 5per cent other); while Ladakh, the third region, has a mere 150,000inhabitants, roughly 50:50 Buddhist and (mainly Shia) Muslim.

The Indian section has seen an erosion of the autonomy it once had inthe 1950s, and has suffered a series of corrupt administrations. Therehas always been a strong strand of self-determination in Kashmiri politics,balanced by Kashmiri leaders who have come to agreement with New

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KASHMIR: THE PAST TEN YEARS

Fig. 1. The Kashmir Valley (central and northern sector) 1998

Delhi.2 One particular leader, Sheikh Abdullah, who ruled in the 1950s andlate 1970s, managed to pacify both segments of Kashmiri society (but wasimprisoned for a long period inbetween when he angered New Delhi).His son and successor, Dr Farooq Abdullah, in power for much of the1980s and now again since 1996, has not been so successful. The 1980ssaw an increased level of central intervention by New Delhi in Kashmiraffairs. Authoritarian governor's rule was declared several times (in 1984and 1986) as elected state governments were removed on central authority.This reflected a wider pattern of central government intervention in Indiaas a whole, as Congress (I) sought to retain political control of individualstates, but it left many Kashmiris doubting the ability of democracy toproduce representative administrations that would be respected by NewDelhi.

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The Kashmiri diaspora was also becoming more politically visible, andfrom the 1960s onwards, groups emerged that campaigned for Kashmiriindependence from both India and Pakistan. Occasionally this growingpolitical activism turned violent. In February 1984, for example, RavindraMahtre, an Indian diplomat stationed in the UK, was kidnapped and sub-sequently murdered by an organisation called the Kashmir LiberationArmy.

Within India, the legacy of secularism had begun to unwind, with dis-turbances in the Punjab and the 1984 Delhi riots. In Kashmir, the 1980shad seen a strong growth in the number of madrassahs (religiousschools) and the writings of Islamists such as Syed Mawdudi and SayyidQutb were widely circulated in pamphlet form. On a wider plane, theapparently unshakeable Soviet Empire was getting bogged down in theAfghan War. Wide media coverage of both prompted Kashmiris to con-sider their position, and encouraged radical action. It did not take a per-ceptive Kashmiri mind to perceive that now was the time for potentialchange.

The 1987, State Assembly elections held in the Indian-controlled sectorwere widely regarded as fraudulent, as a coalition of opposition parties, theMuslim United Front (MUF), was cheated of many seats. Although it isunlikely that the MUF would have won an absolute majority, they wouldhave become a major political force, pushing state politics in a more plural-ist direction. Former MUF activists would later form the nucleus of thearmed insurgency. Fed up with electoral politics, they would seek alterna-tive means to translate political demands into Indian government con-cessions. With a better educated, more politically mobilised elite alongwith greater Islamist influences from Pakistan and Iran, political violencewas on the horizon. The current insurgency still came as somewhat ofa surprise: a surprise to the Indian and Pakistani governments, andindeed, to some Kashmiris themselves. Just before the 1965 war, thePakistani government had infiltrated forces into the Indian zone to pro-mote insurgency; the response from locals was both direct andnegative-no uprising took place. This time the violence was initiatedby Kashmiris themselves, though not without external assistance fromPakistan.

The current violence 3

In late July 1988, the pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Force(JKLF) bombed the Central Telegraph Office in Srinagar. The very nextday the Srinagar Club was also bombed. These attacks, though not lethal,marked the beginning of the current militancy in the Kashmir Valley, amere 84 miles long and 25 miles deep. Sporadic shootings, bombingsand kidnappings continued thereafter. While the insurgents were in themain young and ill-trained and had a profoundly short-term perspective(there was a wide belief that liberation could be gained in a matter of

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months), the symbolic significance of the violence was immense. For SumitGanguly, 1988 saw a real change in how political violence manifested itselfin the state. "The violence went from being spasmodic to orchestratedand deliberate", he writes.4

In 1989, dramatic changes were taking place, not only in Kashmir butacross the world. Empires were falling and various nationalities blinkedin disbelief as statehood was theirs for the taking. Two particular instancesinfluenced Kashmir: Romania and Afghanistan. Romania was importantbecause televised images of the people-power that seemed to toppleCeaucescu were beamed into many a Kashmiri home. Afghanistanmattered because the impression in Kashmir was that the mujahadeenhad defeated the massed forces of the Soviet Union. (As it would lateremerge, neither interpretation was strictly accurate.)

Domestic factors were just as crucial. Farooq Abdullah faced mountingcriticism for perceived high levels of corruption, and grumbles continuedabout the erratic supply and high prices of electricity in the Valley. Militantactions were growing, only now senior officials were being murdered. Oneparticular JKLF action carried a great symbolic force. This was the kidnapon 8 December 1989 of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of the Union HomeMinister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. As a leading Islamist Shakeel Bakshitold me, "people loved it!" The Union government caved in to thekidnappers' demands, released five militants, and in the process uncagedthe constraints that had so far kept the militancy small-scale. As TavleenSingh noted,5 it sent a message that militancy could succeed in politicalterms-another misconception that would cost Kashmir dear in the yearsto come.

Yet almost as soon as the insurgency had begun, one of its centralweaknesses was underlined: division. In 1989, the JKLF split into AlUmer and the JKLF, while a new militant group called HizbulMujahadeen (HM) began a campaign. HM was the military wing ofJamaat-i-Islami in the Valley, and gained powerful backing from Pakistanbecause it was unambiguously for the complete union of Kashmir withPakistan. It soon displaced the JKLF in military terms, and remainsa dominant player even today. A plethora of smaller groups also cameinto being. A strong cultural component of the militancy also developedas groups like AllahTigers forced cinemas, beauty shops and liquor storesto close down.

On 22 November 1989, an attempt was made to hold elections inKashmir for the Indian parliament, the Lok Sabha. These electionssaw a negligible turnout of around 5 per cent in the Valley (with a mere2 per cent in some constituencies). It underlined the collapse of Indianauthority and of democratic politics in the state, which partly followed fromthe flawed nature of the 1987 state assembly election.

Following these dramatic events at home and abroad, there was amassive popular mobilisation in favour of self-determination during early1990, accompanied by continuing violent attacks. At the end of Februaryof that year, an estimated crowd of 400,000 converged on the Srinagar

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office of the United Nations Military Observer Group in India andPakistan to demand the implementation of UN resolutions on Kashmir.Years of frustration with a series of inept and corrupt state governmentsalong with highly interventionist administrations in New Delhi explodedon to the streets. Many young Kashmiri Muslims, enthused by this popularmovement, swelled the numbers of those slipping across the line of controlto seek training and weapons in Azad ('Free') Kashmir, thePakistani-controlled western part of Jammu and Kashmir, or in Pakistan.Azad Kashmir, while populated by many who cannot speak Kashmiri,is full of people who morally (and sometimes materially) support theinsurgency in the Indian-controlled part of the state.

The reaction of the National Conference state government wasineffective, no obvious policy emerged, and Farooq Abdullah soon threwin the towel, resigning as New Delhi appointed Malhotra Jagmohan oncemore as the governor of Jammu and Kashmir on 19 January 1990. Electoralpolitics would now vanish from the state for six long years. Jagmohan, whohad made his name as an able administrator during a previous period asgovernor in the mid-1980s, insisted on a firm hand in "asserting vigorouslythe authority of the state". State authority was indeed asserted on the nightof his appointment as a massive cordon and search operation led to thearrest of 300 people. Crowds gathered the next day in Srinagar to protestabout the search and were fired upon by paramilitary troops. This charac-terised the next few months, which saw crackdowns by the security forcestranslate into violence against demonstrators, many of whom were alsoviolent. Jagmohan's forceful rhetoric led to human rights abuses as securityforces liberally interpreted his speeches, and these excesses in turn onlyencouraged more Kashmiris to support the militancy. His tenure in generalwas one of repression; in the words of Ajit Bhattarcharjea, "he treated theentire valley as hostile".6 Jagmohan was finally dismissed on 25 May 1990,shortly after security force shooting during the funeral of a popularreligious leader, Maulvi Farooq. For one security official, incidents likethe shooting at Maulvi's funeral summed up the military response tomilitancy when "operations were mounted without consideration of thepolitical cost."

Further, crucial mistakes were also made. Jagmohan did not trust thestate police force, comprised as it was of Kashmiris, many of whom wereMuslim. He removed the Jammu and Kashmir Police from thecounter-insurgency, and in 1990 confined them to the task of collectingdead bodies. This developed the impression, easily exploited by militantsympathisers, that the Indian state could not trust a Kashmiri even ifhe was a member of the security forces. It is perhaps worth wonderingwhether the alarming police revolt in April 1993 would have taken placehad local security forces been more involved. It also deprived Kashmiricivilians of the prime organisation that could mediate between securityneeds and individual rights, thereby allowing many abuses to take place.Although Jagmohan's 1990 tenure was brief the damage he did ensuredthat the violence developed deeper roots than it otherwise would have

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done. That spring thousands of Kashmiri Pandits, the small Hindu min-ority within the Valley, fled to Jammu or India proper. Although notdirectly targeted by the militants, the murders of prominent Pandits inthe state administration left the Pandit community in a state of fear. Onlya few thousand from a community of some 140,000 remain today.

The violence gathered pace from 1990 as militant numbers grew toaround 5,000, and my brief visit in 1992, my first visit to Kashmir, leftme with the powerful impression of a state under siege. I resolved to returnthe following summer to explore what was going on in more detail.

A summer investigating: 1993In June 1993, I returned to the Valley. I spent nearly three monthspottering around. Starting off in a houseboat, I soon moved to the Uni-versity campus at the invitation of some students I met. I also travelledaround the Valley, and agreed with Arthur Neve's advice that one shouldspend a good period exploring outside Srinagar. The situation in 1993was not good. Almost every night there would be shooting and distantexplosions. Frequent demonstrations and strikes would paralyse thetowns, and the high levels of tension were evident on the faces of troopsand civilians alike.

In 1993, I was young, naive and rather taken in by what I saw as the'Kashmiri side' to the story. My lack of good sense soon became apparentas I was going to the town of Sopore by bus to attend a wedding. Asthe bus drew near Sopore, the town looked deserted. Only the odd soldiercould be seen on the streets, and all the shutters were down, indicatinga strike. The bus growled its way across the bridge over the Jhelum,and suddenly all hell broke loose. There was gunfire at close range andthe bus passengers began screaming. I was sitting by the window and couldsee soldiers pointing their guns in our direction and shooting away. At thispoint, I thought that screaming wasn't a bad option at all, selected a suit-able four-letter word and began repeating it. I flung up my sleepingbag against the window to deflect, or so I foolishly hoped, any bullets thatmight come my way. The bus sped up and we tore along the road untilfinally the shooting grew more distant.

There were several times when the Indian security forces seemed some-what surprised to see me. While trying to see as much of the Valley aspossible, I was detained several times, in Sopore, Handwara and Kupwara,and denied access to various northern parts of the Valley. While alwaystreated politely, I felt such restrictions reflected the unease Indianpolicymakers felt about the situation. Full access was the offical line; con-siderable limitations on movement remained the reality.

Some detentions were more comical. Travelling by bus around WularLake, I was stopped from continuing by a Border Security Force patrolwhile the bus was sent on its way. The officer in charge provided sometea, and I sat uneasily with him as he inspected my police-issued pass.

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He then asked if I read the Bible. I responded in a warm butnon-committed fashion and before I knew it he was reading me a passageof St.Luke's Gospel. He told me he was a born-again Christian and thathe had converted two of his men. His men, stretched out along theroadside, seemed more preoccupied with scanning the countryside. Hesoon allowed me to proceed by flagging down another bus, but not withoutexchanging addresses and getting me to promise that I would take anotherlook at the New Testament.

Such patrols had earned a bad reputation. There were many humanrights abuses by Indian forces, although probably motivated as muchby the parallel pressures of boredom and stress as by direct intent. Indiantroops served long periods in Kashmir, rarely accompanied by theirfamilies. But abuses remain unforgivable.7 For example, in August 1993I witnessed a crackdown in a village near Handwara where men werebeing savagely beaten by troops as they sat separated from the womenand children. On another occasion, a good friend at the Universitywas arrested during a demonstration in Srinagar one day. The nextday he returned to campus having been released from a detention centre,and showed me marks on his fingers and genitals where he claimed elec-tric wires had been attached and current applied during questioning.Finally, and most sad of all, was the case of the fellow student whowas arrested by the police in Anantnag. Turned over to the Army, hethen vanished from official records. His body however, reappeared,dumped nearby the following day.

At the same time, militants were by no means good liberals. Militantgroups extorted money from local businesses. They murdered stateofficials. Most of the indiscriminate bombings or grenade attacks claimedKashmiri lives. And as even pro-militant newspapers like Greater Kashmirsometimes noted, press freedom in the Valley meant the freedom to printmilitant statements-or else.

Militants also displayed that particular Kashmiri aptitude for business.While interviewing the leader of Jehad Force in a safehouse in 1993, we gotonto the subject of kidnapping. He had heard of hijacking insurance,and enquired as to whether it was possible to get kidnapping insurance.Quite possible, I murmured. Well, he replied, you and I could do a deal.Next time I could keep you here, and you could eventually collect themoney and we can split it 50:50. I chuckled, all the while rememberingI had to stay the night with this group before returning to Srinagar. Suchhumour was still possible at that time, for the serious kidnaps ofWesterners would begin in 1994.

A painful awareness emerged in militant ranks that their early ama-teurism was costing them dear. As one senior militant stated when inter-viewed in September 1993, the move to 'cell structure' and 'goodsecurity' was already in hand. By that time many of the first generationof leaders had been killed or arrested. The initial belief that militancywould lead to tangible political results in months had been replaced bya greater political realism; one that acknowledged that military force alone

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would not dislodge India. Arms and tactics grew more sophisticated. Themilitancy expanded geographically, first to Doda/Kishtwar andPoonch/Rajouri (south of the Valley) and then in urban bombings inNew Delhi. At the same time, the Hurriyat Conference, a political umbrellagroup representing different militant and political groups, began to developa coherence of its own.

Growing changeAll this was taking place as India was also changing tack. By 1993-4, theIndian security forces were adopting a more political approach to thecounter-insurgency, with a certain amount of hearts-and-minds work (freemedical services from army camps, free film-shows, human rightstraining). Intelligence began to improve, in marked contrast with the early1990s when sources told me huge bribes were required to extract morselsof information. Some former Kashmiri militant leaders were releasedin 1994. But not all was well, for while the army was cleaning up its act,the Indian paramilitaries were dumbing down theirs.

The raising of local militias to combat insurgents is an establishedcounter-insurgency tactic, developed mainly by the British in theircolonial wars. In Kashmir, it began in early 1994 and consisted of eitherformer militants or new recruits working on behalf of the Indian state.They often openly operated with the security forces, engaging in a rangeof activities from intelligence gathering to extortion, as well as somefighting. The impact of these groups was huge: their terror sweptmilitancy from certain towns but it did not endear them to the localpopulation.

The insurgents had allies too. The first reports of 'guest militants' (a.k.a.mercenaries) in the Valley local press began to appear in 1993. Many wereand are Islamists, operating in groups like Harkat-ul-Ansar andLashkar-e-Toiba. Better trained and better equipped, they have improvedthe military capacity of the insurgents. A summary of foreign militantskilled 1991-7 from the Indian Army indicates a steady rise from two in1991 to 215 in 1997. Apart from Pakistanis and Kashmiris, there wereAfghans followed by small numbers from Sudan, Bahrain, Iran, Turkey,Chechenya and Egypt. Although numbers of guest militants continueto increase, it remains true that most militants have been Kashmiris fromthe Valley itself (even if some had been trained in Pakistani territory).But the militancy is increasingly not a Kashmiri war, and in the longerterm this may be the beginning of the end of armed Kashmiri resistanceto India.

Terrorism increased in the early 1990s as bombings spread into Indiantowns, and as militant groups operating in Kashmir kidnapped Westerners(two incidents occurred in 1994, one in 1995, which ended in murder). Muchof this can be connected to the rise of 'guest militants'. Such eventsattracted considerable international attention, not least because one of

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the 1994 cases involved a British kidnapper (an ex-LSE student, no less).According to Indian sources, a rapid improvement in Indo-Western secur-ity co-operation followed. In August 1998, various militants were arrestedin New Delhi, and in September, another foreign tourist was shot by mili-tants in Kashmir, again reflecting the increasingly non-Kashmiri elementto the militancy. None of the kidnappers in the 1994 cases, for example,could even speak Kashmiri.

1996 elections and their consequencesIn 1996, electoral politics returned to the state after a long absence. In May,elections took place for Lok Sabha seats, while elections to the StateAssembly were held in September. The May elections were a farce. Withconsiderable evidence of voter intimidation and ballot-stuffing, along witha boycott by both National Conference (NC) and the Hurriyat Conference,the results were based on a low turnout and were ultimately irrelevant. TheSeptember elections, however, marked a departure from the past. Despite acontinuing Hurriyat boycott, the National Conference agreed to partici-pate and campaigned on a 'maximum autonomy' ticket. These electionswere more like elections, and a National Conference state governmentwas elected with Farooq Abdullah as Chief Minister. This is not to suggestthat these elections were without problems. There was considerableviolence, and Hurriyat figures were harassed and beaten as they triedto take their boycott call to the people. Turnout remained low in the Valley(although curiously official figures rose dramatically as the polling cameto a close).

So 1996 saw a civilian administration, a Kashmiri government. But itsoon became agonisingly clear that Farooq Abdullah's state governmentcould not deliver the goods.'Maximum autonomy', a persuasive electionslogan, was a non-starter given opposition from New Delhi. Even the morerealistic aim of reorganising the regional relationship between Jammu,Kashmir and Ladakh has petered out in endless committee meetings.Nor was the state government going to have a significant say in mattersof internal security. Ali Mohd Sagar (the NC Minister initially responsiblefor law and order) effectively had a non-existent brief. It was also soonpainfully apparent that the NC government would not be able to deliveron a range of subsidiary issues. Economic development plans along withthe promise of new jobs foundered due to a lack of central governmentsubsidy. And according to one critic writing in the Kashmir Times on 2October 1998, newly created government posts have been distributed ina very familiar National Conference fashion, sometimes better knownas nepotism.

The two high-profile development projects that have been initiated,the Uri hydro-electric project and the Jammu-Udhampur railwayextension, are longer-term infrastructure projects and also have Indianstrategic interests involved (power for the National Grid, and a furthereasing of access to Kashmir). Neither has gone down well in the Valley.

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Once more to the Valley: 1997In 1997, I returned to Kashmir after nearly four years. This time Iapproached slowly, lingering first in Delhi and then in Jammu beforetaking the plunge into theValley once more. I flew in on a cold, dull Marchafternoon and at once was struck by how some things had changed. Heli-copters now decorated Srinagar airport. While being driven at high speedinto Srinagar itself, the reduction in tension was visible. Fewer soldiersappeared to be on the streets, but where they were in evidence they seemedpermanently dug in. Returning to Dal Lake, I sought out the houseboatwhere I had stayed for part of my 1993 visit. Houseboat New Moonhad seen few visitors during my absence. I soon settled down for my firstnight back in the Valley, but was unnerved by the silence. A while laterit occurred to me: no shooting. Evidently things had changed, if onlyin Srinagar itself.

Over the next few days, I sought out familiar faces at the University andelsewhere. Most were subdued, and even the firebrand Jamaat-supportingstudents I had known during 1993 were more pensive about the future.A great deal of anger at India still remained. Most echoed the HurriyatConference line: continuing defiance in the face of massive Indianoccupation. Yet some were less convinced that the militant violence itselfshould continue, arguing that the militancy was increasingly corruptand/or led by foreigners, and that it was time to consider new ways offighting for freedom.

Everywhere I went round Srinagar the situation was calmer: althoughthe security forces were in evidence people were going about their everydaybusiness. I was told that in rural areas higher levels of violence continued,but was dissuaded from paying a visit to one of the villages I had visitedin 1993 on the grounds that it might not be safe.

While on a shikara out to a houseboat one afternoon I heard shootingand dived for the floor. My shikara wallah cackled at this unseemly dis-play of Western courage, and pointing to his right explained that the armyhad set up a shooting range just by this stretch of water. I had good reasonto be cautious, however, as events later that week would prove. Strikes stillclosed down the Valley and newspapers indicated that fighting continuedaround the edges of the Valley. I had planned to leave by road, takingthe bus back to Jammu so as to see a little more. But conditions werepoor, and mudslides had closed down the main road. I opted to fly, for-saking the bus that I was promised would run that morning. I got backto Jammu and was changing in my hotel room when I heard an almightybang. After a decent interval I walked out to investigate, and found alarge bomb had ripped through the bus terminal near the hotel, leavingit unrecognisable.

The next morning I picked up some local papers before leaving forDelhi. The headline in the Daily Excelsior was "14 Killed: 70 Injured".It was only then that I realised my decision to fly had been an importantone, for the bomb had gone off around the time when the bus from

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Srinagar would have arrived in Jammu. It was a sobering end to my visitto the Indian sector of Jammu and Kashmir, and a timely reminder thatthe situation on the ground is still insecure, whatever the spin-doctorsclaim.

Information warThe information war over Kashmir continued apace in 1998. TheKashmiri conflict is proliferating on-line, as Pandit groups, militantsand security forces all vie for international customers. Only a matterof weeks ago, the Indian Army launched an Internet website which pro-vides daily situation reports and various statistics.9 It also has an on-lineguestbook, and one of the entries aptly demonstrates the way the Kashmirconflict is going. Shakeel Bakshi, a Hurriyat Conference leader, has left amessage contesting the military version of events and providing a moreradical summary of his own. Various militant groups also have websitesof their own.

A glance at the more traditional world of the press gives a clearpicture of continuing attempts by India-friendly commentators to assertthat normalisation has arrived in Kashmir. In August 1998, the IndianHome Minister L.K. Advani said that Kashmir was "rapidly" movingtowards normalcy; and on 26 September, Elisa Patnaik described inthe Asian Age how "no longer under the shadow of militancy, Kashmiris once again a favourite tourist spot." Such claims are not new; indeed'normalcy' was the constant refrain of state government officials Ispoke to in 1997. Yet militant actions continue on a daily basis, asthe Kashmir Times (now also on the Internet) headlines show.'0 Evenarmy figures indicate that during one week in September 1998 alone,18 militants were killed in army operations across the Valley. Of coursethe Pakistanis 'spin' too, as they try to promote Kashmir as a victim ofIndian aggression. But successive Pakistani governments havemanipulated the Kashmir issue for their own ends, not least insecuring Pakistani nationalism. And continuing covert Pakistanifinancial and military support for militancy is a considerable partof the problem.

ConclusionsWhat have the events of the last ten years demonstrated? In a word, dis-appointment.

Political violence in Kashmir has not delivered a single concession ofsubstance from New Delhi, has left some 35,000 dead, and has rippedapart economy and society in Kashmir. Indian governments have madea number of errors, both deliberate and accidental, which have furtheralienated much of the local population. Pakistani governments have used

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Kashmir for domestic ends, to bolster Pakistani nationalism and to getback at India. 'Guest militants', like those of Harkat-ul-Ansar, have fre-quently proven more preoccupied with a transnational agenda than dedi-cated to a Kashmiri cause. And many of the deeply divided Kashmirileaders have endorsed a continuation of armed struggle against India,despite the increasingly futile nature of such violence. At the bottomof the heap come Kashmiri civilians of all types, from the Hindu Panditswho fled the Valley in 1990 to the Muslim villagers who continue to bearthe brunt of security force actions, all of whom have been betrayed bymany of those who claim to represent them.

I paint a bleak picture. But there is something deeply troubling aboutKashmir. Kashmiris have always had a soft spot for stories. Theinsurgency has brought this out in interesting ways. To begin with, con-sidered estimates are never allowed to get in the way of excitingexaggerations. Or as one over-eager Hurriyat Conference spokespersonput it, the Valley is occupied by 700,000 security forces. The Indian equiv-alent is the assertion in October 1993 by the head of the Border SecurityForce that there were over 2,300 foreign mercenaries in Kashmir.Another favourite, and a story I found particularly unconvincing, wasthe claim that not only was the US CIA funding the militancy but thatthey had hired an IRA terrorist to provide training. Of course, the pointabout all these stories is not whether they are actually true or not,but what people believe. The real truths, as Karl Kraus pointed out,are those that can be invented.

Kashmiri naivete is a core factor in understanding the current violence.Political and militant leaders have exploited Kashmiris for their own ends,with the habitual refrain being a simple story of Kashmiri betrayed byIndian. This leaves out a vital part of the Kashmir story, the story ofKashmiri leaders themselves. Kashmiris, not only Indians, have riggedelections since 1953. It was the Kashmiri National Conference, not theIndians, who allowed corruption to take root in the Valley. And it wasin large part Kashmiris, not Pakistanis, who began fighting India in 1988.Part of the buck must stop here, at the feet of those leaders who misledtheir people.

Some points about the next few years can be made without breachingmy moratorium on predictions.

Firstly, the insurgency is likely to lessen over time; but it willbecome less of a Kashmiri war and more of an Islamist conflict foughtby proxy. The sensationalist coverage in the papers on 4 October 1998claiming Osama Bin Laden is training men for Kashmir is basedon fact; the August US missile strikes on Afghanistan did kill militantstraining for Kashmir. (It also led two militant groups operating inKashmir to make direct threats against Westerners.) Already the levelsof violence have fallen (although the comparative lethality of that viol-ence has risen). Many Valley Kashmiris are tiring of the violence; thiswas reflected in my fieldwork last year and can also be seen in theway the separatist Hurriyat leadership is increasingly divided and is

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losing credibility in Kashmir itself. This must not be mistaken for pol-itical 'normalisation', a phrase that often comes from New Delhispokesmen. Ten years of state repression and fifty-one years of misrulehave taken their toll. Alienation runs deep in the Valley, and evenif the guns fall silent, political agitation against Indian rule is likelyto continue for some time to come.

Secondly, nothing will change in Kashmir without the consent ofNew Delhi. The Indian government, unless the Indian state itself col-lapses, has enough political will and coercive power to maintain thestatus quo for years to come. All this might sound like a pro-Indianposition to take; after all, the status quo favours India. But I thinkit is a realistic appraisal of what is increasingly an unwinnable war froma Kashmiri or Pakistani point of view. I do believe that Kashmirisshould have the right to select their own political future free of violentcoercion. It is difficult to see how this can happen unless India widensthe possible options.

But as I suggested at the beginning of this article, the problem inKashmir is really a problem of the Kashmir Valley, along with variousMuslim-majority districts of Jammu. This is where the violence has been.This is where the population have mobilised around the slogan of 'Azadi'(freedom). Only here does one find tension as security forces in bunkersregulate a hostile if sullen civilian population. I think that much of theproblem remains the same as it was in the 1980s, although solutionsmay now be even more difficult. It is still a problem of many parts; ofpolitical participation, the ability of young Kashmiris to have a voiceand have it heard; one of developing institutions that are representativeof the population. And perhaps it is also a symptom of irreconcilablenationalisms: Indian nationalism cannot survive without Kashmir, whileKashmiri nationalism demands separation.

The prognosis in Kashmir remains pessimistic, and my third obser-vation concerns the mood in the Valley. A fading slogan greets you atthe entrance to Id-Gargh, the 'martyrs cemetery'of the militant movementin Kashmir, which reads as follows: "Lest you forget: we have given ourtoday for tomorrow of yours." I remember the words of a young friendas we spoke last March in a shady spot near Srinagar. I asked him if thisslogan of martyrdom perhaps missed the point, that the emphasis shouldbe on a different tomorrow.

He considered my question for a moment, remaining silent. When Ipressed him with "has militancy then failed?" he answered with this. "Inmy mind," he said, "I know the cost is already too high, and little seemsto have been achieved. But in my heart, I support the movement. The fightmust go on."

Although saddened by this, I would argue that it perhaps reinforcesthe message that needs to be heeded in New Delhi, Islamabad and inKashmir itself. Even if militancy declines and withers away, the problemsof identity, governance, and self-determination that Kashmir poses areunlikely to vanish along with the bombs. Political problems ultimately

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demand political solutions; applied violence on its own merely makeseventual attempts at resolution more difficult to broker. To date, forcehas not successfully resolved the situation in the Valley, instead it has madeit much, much worse.NOTES

1. For the best account of the Indian position, see Prem Shankar Jha, 1996: Kashmir 1947:Rival Versions of History (OUP Delhi). The Pakistani perspective is best put in Alastair Lamb,1994: Kashmir: Birth of a Tragedy (Roxford Books, Hertingfordbury). Both of these books arefavoured by the relevant lobbyists, who give away free copies to advance their claims.

2. One explanation of the current violence focuses rather uncritically on self-determination, but remains an interesting account. See Sumantra Bose, 1997: The Challengein Kashmir (Sage, New Delhi).

3. The best accounts of recent events in Kashmir are the history by Victoria Schofield,1996: Kashmir in the Crossfire (I.B. Tauris, London) and the analysis by Sumit Ganguly,1997: The Crisis in Kashmir: Portends of War, Hopes of Peace (Cambridge University Press,New York). An excellent Kashmiri account is Balraj Puri, 1993: Towards Insurgency (SangamBooks, New Delhi).

4. Ganguly op cit:102.5. Singh, Tavleen, 1996. Kashmir: A Tragedy of Errors. Penguin Viking, New Delhi:120.6. Bhattarcharjea, Ajit. 1994 Kashmir: The Wounded Valley. UBSPD, Delhi:262.7. See Amnesty International, 1993:An Unnatural Fate' 'Disappearances'and Impunity in

the India States of Jammu &Kashmirand Punjab; Asiawatch, 1993: Rape in Kashmir: A Crimeof War; Zahir-ud-Din,1995: Did They Vanish in Thin Air?(Sabha Publications, Srinigar). Thereis also the Response of the Government of India to Report of Amnesty International (c.1994).

8. Since being declared a terrorist organisation by the US government in late 1997, it hasrenamed itself, and Harkat-ul-Ansar now calls itself Harkat-ul-Mujahadeen.

9. See http: / /wwwarmyinkashmir.com10. See http://www.kashmirtimes.com

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