Interlocutors get lukewarm response in Valley

Gen Moosa, Sehrai refuse to meet; Scribes, KU teachers oblige Delhi team

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Oct 24: Even as most of the separatist leaders, including the prisoners at Srinagar Central Jail, today refused to interact with the Government of India’s interlocutors on Jammu & Kashmir, some mediapersons and teachers of the University of Kashmir obliged the three-member team from New Delhi with separate meetings.

Not a single separatist leader has so far mustered courage to go in defiance of the hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s diktat of boycott to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s three interlocutors on Jammu & Kashmir---journalist Dileep Padgoankar, academician Radha Kumar and former Central Information Commissioner M M Ansari. On its day two of the maiden visit to Kashmir valley, Padgoankar’s team made two unsuccessful attempts to meet Geelani’s detained confidantes, Abdul Aziz Dar alias Gen Moosa and Ashraf Sehrai, at Central Jail Srinagar.

Jail authorities revealed to Early Times that Padgoankar’s team desired arrangement of separate meetings with some prominent militants leaders, like Nisar Ahmed alias Gazi Misbah-ud-din, a former “Chief Operational Commander” of Hizbul Mujahideen, his ace colleague, Muzaffar Ahmed Dar, as also a number of the young detainees involved in stone pelting and attacks on Police and public properties in the last four months of the turbulence. They were particularly keen to meet senior Jamaat-e-Islami ideologue and now General Secretary of Hurriyat (G), Ashraf Sehrai, as also Geelani’s confidante, Gen Moosa, who happened to be Hizbul Mujahideen’s “District Commander” for Srinagar in 1990-92.

None of them chose to oblige the interlocutors who made two visits to Central Jail Srinagar today after their first interaction with some prisoners last evening. Sources said that most of the prisoners made it clear to Padgoankar, Kumar and Ansari that they would never interact with them in defiance of Geelani’s call of boycott. The jail authorities, nevertheless, succeeded in arranging the visitors’ meeting with less than a dozen of insignificant detenues, who included two youths from Kreeri and two more from Anantnag.

 Situation was no different outside. Everybody in the Valley’s separatist camp, from Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Bilal Gani Lone to Zamrooda Habib and Yasmin Raja conveyed to the interlocutors in unambiguous terms that none of them could be taken for a ride to satisfy Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s and Home Minister P Chidambarm’s ego. Most of them, according to sources, pointed out that Government of India had always strengthened and encouraged the hardliners at the graves of the moderates and “saner elements”. Informed sources said that even the ‘independent’ activists, like Hashim Qureshi and Hilal War, had not shown any enthusiasm to the interlocutors’ open invitation.

One-odd significant meeting of the interlocutors so far has been with the former Deputy Chief Minister and senior PDP leader, Muzaffar Hussain Baig. They called on Governor N N Vohra this evening and had a detailed meeting with him on the two turbulences of 2008 and 2010. Sources said that Vohra shared with his guests his personal experiences when he himself used to be New Delhi’s interlocutor and pointman with the agenda of interacting with the Kashmiri separatists and arranging their meetings with the Central government nearly a decade ago.

After an hour-long meeting with a Gujjar delegation, the interlocutors today interacted with two prominent journalists---editor of a leading English daily in Srinagar and Bureau Chief of a major south Indian English daily---who briefed the New Delhi team on the Kashmir issue and current political scenario. After their meeting with the two journalists at a government guest house, the interlocutors drove all the way to Hotel Dar-us-Salam on the banks of Nigeen Lake where they had a threadbare discussion on the Kashmir problem and current political upheaval with Nasir Mirza, who teaches journalism and mass communication at the University of Kashmir, and Prof Gul Mohammad Wani of the University’s Department of Political Science.

In its meeting with the interlocutors earlier, the Gujjar and Bakerwal delegation demanded a separate Pir Panchal Region or area and a Tribal Hill Council in Jammu and Kashmir for the Gujjars and Bakerwals Scheduled Tribe community. It urged for strong recommendations for an irreversible provision along with constitutional guaranties to reserve categories and pressed hard for grant of social, cultural, economic and political empowerment of the community residing in for-flung and difficult areas of the state.

The delegation led by an official of J&K Academy of Art, Culture and Languages and Secretary of Tribal Research and Cultural Foundation, Javed Rahi, told the interlocutors that the Gujjars constituted 20% population of the State but their presence in the State affairs was minimal. It emphasized that on account of their unique identity, culture and ideology, the Gujjars had been aspiring for a separate region with tribal council for them within the state on the pattern of the Hill Development Councils in Leh and Kargil.  

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