What went wrong with Omar’s Kashmir?

Part 3


Omar fumbled and faltered from day one in office
Hate-India sentiment became a craze with mainstream politicians

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Aug 14: New Delhi’s policy of having no Kashmir policy proved to be disastrous in the current turbulence. Even as Congress became NC’s coalition partner both at the Central as well as the state level, Kashmir continued to be handled by intelligence and security agencies. Perhaps this would not have been the position with men like Rajesh Pilot in Sonia Gandhi’s Congress and UPA. Left to bureaucracy and the intelligence and security agencies, Kashmir was turned into a political laboratory. In the last several years, Farooq Abdullah’s politics of jingoism—that was perceived to be turning dangerous with NC’s insistence on autonomy---was replaced by Mufi Sayeed’s politics of appeasement.

Enjoying a riding on the tiger for several years, New Delhi found itself in a whirlpool in 2008 when it realized that the Valley’s radical sections were the real beneficiaries of Mufti’s healing touch policy. That they had regrouped and expanded their base substantially became clear when Geelani emerged as the hero of Amarnath land row turmoil and Mufti’s PDP became completely irrelevant. Assembly elections turned the tables soon and an anti-incumbency factor favoured Dr Abdullah’s party. All but one of Mufti’s Cabinet Ministers were defeated by the NC candidates.

Hate-India sentiment was publicly promoted by Mufti and his party to the extent that nobody questioned one of Mufti’s senior Cabinet Ministers as to how Lashkar-e-Toiba militants had stayed at his residence for several weeks before setting out for Ahmedabad in Gujarat to launch a Fidayeen attack on Akshardhaam temple. The Minister resigned when the story appeared in media but Mufti advised him not to quit on “such small matters”.

One of the PDP Ministers lately revealed in a television interview that New Delhi had sent a lot of money to J&K, which Mufti filled in envelops and sent it to the families of the militants dying in encounters with the Special Operations Group and the Indian

security forces. None of the civilian killings, suspected to be done by militants, was ever condemned by then Chief Minister or any of his Ministerial colleagues.

Dangers of leaving the hardline politics uncontested politically became evident in the worst form in the middle of current year when New Delhi failed to get a single politician, with the exception of J&K PCC President, Saif-ud-din Soz, to say a word in entire J&K state against the separatist hardliners grabbing entire space in the Valley. Everybody seemed to be talking of the need to reach out to 500-odd stone pelters and nobody even consoled hundreds of thousands of the shopkeepers, a substantial chunk of the population associated with tourism and equal number of students losing their months due to continued shutdown and clashes.

Congress leader and Minister of Medical Education, R S Chib, visited SKIMS but not to call on the people injured in different incidents of violence. He enquired about a single patient---Syed Ali Shah Geelani---and directed Director of the hospital to provide best possible treatment to the separatist leader. On occasion of the assassination anniversary of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s father in May, another Congress leader and Minister of Health, Sham Lal Sharma, organized a blood donation camp at SKIMS and marked attendance of all of his senior and junior officials at the separatist show.

Without bearing in mind that NC could never take PDP’s position in the Valley’s separatist camp, Omar Abdullah picked up the threads of his job where these had been left by Mufti in November 2005. Even after becoming Chief Minister, he did little to enquire about the condition of the families of nearly 3,000 NC workers and leaders killed by militants for their association with Sheikh Abdullah’s party they held responsible for J&K’s accession to India.

During the first test of his confidence, Omar blindly toed the “popular” line in Shopian in June-September 2009. He and his Ministers attempted to outsmart everybody from PDP to Hurriyat in presenting themselves as “anti-Police”. On one fine morning, Government’s Advocate General, senior separatist advocates and a specially engaged Supreme Court lawyer were seen drafting charges and evidences against four Police officials on a shared table. Even as the CBI investigation later came as an embarrassment for the government, the NC politicians’ public trial of the accused officials demoralized middle and lower rungs of J&K Police.

While demonstrating lack of self confidence, Chief Minister also seemed to be living under serious inferiority complexes. Finding himself at the receiving end of his detractors’ canard, Omar began presenting himself as a Kashmiri Muslim, no inferior to Mufti and Mehbooba. He was shown on official media occasionally performing his prayers in the lead row at Hazratbal. Many here believe that the Khatam-e-Sharief at his residence has become a bolder feature than Cabinet meetings. Analysts insist that religious affiliation of some members of his family has grown as a complex for the young Chief Minister.

(To be continued….)