Geelani’s Sopore shuts over NC leader’s killing
Valley’s 1st non-Hurriyat, non-militant shutdown in 20 years

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, May 24: Kashmir valley’s first major shutdown against the killing of a mainstream political leader today happened in the hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s hometown of Sopore. Ironically, none other than the octogenarian Islamist leader has enjoyed monopoly in calling, supporting and enforcing over 1400 shutdowns since the eruption of armed insurgency and separatist movement in the Valley in 1989. Even as Traders Federation of Sopore had restricted its call to the apple town in Baramulla district, Kupwara and Handwara townships too observed total shutdown to register their protest against the assassination of senior National Conference (NC) leader, Ghulam Nabi Khan.

Transport operated as usual and educational institutions functioned without disruption even as almost all shops and business establishments remained closed today in Sopore, Handwara and Kupwara over the call of Traders Federation of Sopore. Traders’ body had called for shutdown of businesses over the killing of its President and senior NC leader, Ghulam Nabi Khan. Fifty-five-year-old Khan, who had never accepted for himself any Police protection, had been gunned down by unidentified gunmen, widely believed to be militants, at a main market in Sopore township on Sunday.

Khan’s killing has sent shockwaves in entire north Kashmir and it is for the first time in the last 20 years of armed insurgency in Jammu & Kashmir that the people at large have registered a strong protest on the elimination of a mainstream political leader in the Valley by closing their businesses. Shutdown, otherwise, has been the mark of identification of separatist leaders and militants---invariably observed against the state government, security forces and Government of India. While over 3,000 residents of Sopore had participated in Khan’s funeral procession, Namaaz-e-Janazaah and condolence meetings at his New Colony residence yesterday, equal number of people are estimated to have visited the bereaved family with condolences and condemnation of the assassination.

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s Advisor and senior NC leader, Mubarak Gul, and senior Congress leader and MLC, Abdul Gani Vakil, were among hundreds of mainstream political activists who called on the Khan family today to deliver their sympathies and condolences. Senior separatist leader and former Chairman of undivided Hurriyat Conference, Prof Abdul Gani Bhat, and another senior separatist activist, Mussadiq Adil, were among scores of separatist activists who visited Khan’s family, paid rich tributes to the slain trader-politician and described his killing as an inhuman act.

However, one of the separatist visitors, namely Abu Hamza, asserted at the condolence meeting that Mr Khan had been eliminated by “Indian agents”. With leaders of both factions of the separatist Hurriyat Conference condemning the mainstream political leader’s assassination, hardliner Geelani had on Sunday itself asserted that it could be the “handiwork of a neo-Ikhwani group of gunmen”. In 1995-2002, militants-turned-counterinsurgents had operated under the banner of Ikhwanul Muslimoon and eliminated hundreds of pro-Azadi and pro-Pakistan militants, besides their overground functionaries and civilian sympathizers, with the overt and covert support of security forces, government agencies and counter-insurgent outfits of J&K Police.

At a meeting at their party headquarters today, NC leaders dismissed the separatist leaders’ claim as “absurd” and asked why the pro-Government gunmen would have shot dead a senior leader of the ruling party. Their asserted that there was no existence of Ikhwanul Muslimoon or any other counter-insurgent guerrilla group in Kashmir for the last 10 years. They demanded identification, arrest and prosecution of Mr Khan’s killers as quickly as possible. Otherwise, they apprehended, fear of the gun would rule the roost again and the NC cadres would suffer fresh demoralization.

Khan’s assassination has, in fact, come with more than one irony. Shutdown over the mainstream leader’s killing, allegedly by militants, occurred in Sopore that has been the hometown and Assembly constituency of the Hurriyat hardliner, Geelani, for the last several decades. Geelani had represented Sopore for three consecutive terms in J&K Legislative Assembly before outbreak of the secessionist uprising in Kashmir in 1989. Though he has been living in Hyderpora area of Srinagar continuously since 1987, Jamaat-e-Islami dominated Sopore is still considered to be Gelani’s stronghold.

Geelani has been strongly against shutdown calls sometimes issued by non-Hurriyat, non-militant groups. He had bitterly confronted Majlis-e-Mashawart Shopian when the localized social organization had called for a shutdown without taking Hurriyat into confidence in connection with CBI investigation into the alleged rape-cum-murder of two young women last year.

For yet another irony, slain NC leader’s residence happens to be located at a few yards from that of the dreaded militant, Basharat Saleem, who disappeared in mysterious circumstances last month and is widely believed to have been killed by his militant colleagues in Janwari forest area of Sopore. Very few people were seen visiting his home when the news of his death spread in Sopore. Even Geelani was conspicuously absent. For a change, the conventional beeline of the Valley’s political mourners today seemed to have shifted to a mainstream leader’s residence.

END