Mustafa Kamaal---Ministry’s jilted lover or NC’s whistleblower?

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Nov 22: In early 1980s, Mrs Indira Gandhi’s Congress party, in close coordination with a central agency then known as the Department of Dirty Tricks, succeeded in creating first fissures in the indefatigable Sher-e-Kashmir’s National Conference (NC). Within two years of Sheikh Abdullah’s death, his successor son and Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah was dismissed and the mantle of power put on Ghulam Mohammad Shah. The mission was meticulously accomplished as the head of NC’s breakaway faction was none other than Sheikh’s daughter, Khalida.

The second attempt did not mature. Even after Farooq Abdullah was bludgeoned into surrender by Mrs Gandhi’s successor son and forced to share power with Congress, efforts of winning away yet another member of Sheikh’s dynasty vanished in the embryonic stage. This time around, all eyes were on Dr Mustafa Kamaal. His ‘naa’ sent ripples across Gupkar Road. Kamaal was then demonstrably emerging as “the most competent member of Dr Abdullah’s Council of Ministers”. This phrase in his honour came from the most unexpected corner in Legislative Assembly---Jamaat-e-Islami icon and Muslim United Front’s MLA Syed Ali Shah Geelani.

When the high profile Works Minister of NC-Congress coalition of 1987-90 cut a sorry figure as Minister incharge of Health as well as Minister of Industries in Dr Abdullah’s NC government in 1996-2002, many in the party began saying that his 1987-90 image was actually the crafty creation of his pair of aides, Farooq Shah (now Director of Tourism Kashmir) and Showkat Mir (now DC Ganderbal). In 2002, Mustafa got a dressing down at the hustings in NC’s stronghold of Tangmarg. He polled not more than 20% of the vote.

Mustafa, nonetheless, lives different from all run-of-the-mill politicians. In the thick of militancy, he was among very few of NC’s leaders who stood back in Valley and did not announce an apologetically drafted resignation through paid advertisements in the vernacular dailies. He, in fact, kept shuttling between his first home at Tangmarg and cousin Sheikh Nazir’s fortified residence at Maulana Azad Road in Srinagar. The highway had been almost completely conquered by militants within weeks of firing their first shots on a tourist bus near Chichlora in 1989.

Without singing songs in praise of militants and describing Kashmir as a “fundamentally political problem”, and also staying clear of elder brother Farooq Abdullah’s hyper-nationalism, Mustafa seemed to have inherited the skills of creating ripples. In 2007, when PDP’s pseudo-separatist jingoism on AFSPA, followed by Amarnath land row, was threatening to bring down the principal coalition partner Ghulam Nabi Azad’s government, Mustafa drove all the way to the guerrilla-infested Palhalan village, in Pattan, to extend his condolences to the two families whose sons had died in an encounter with Army. He did it before PDP and Hurriyat reached there to shed their stock of tears.

Those having lived close to late Sadiq Ali and Bashir Ahmad Kichloo must have proficiency in learning that neither the post of Cashier nor General Secretary carries an iota of significance in NC. Knowledgeable sources insist that even the President in 2002-08 lacked either initiative or mandate to raise funds for the party. These operations are believed to have been the exclusive prerogative of two particular members of the Sheikh dynasty for decades. Current sequence of drama, in which Mustafa is playing the stellar role, is potentially dangerous for NC as the unpredictable, intractable ruling family member’s single finger of suspicion over “cash-for-berth” (Haji Yousuf episode) could trigger off a major political storm.

As of now, Mustafa’s tirade is directed on selective leaders like Prof Saifuddin Soz in Congress and PDP. But, with every passing day, this foolishly straightforward political maverick is making the inward movement. His latest interviews to media have finally evoked a sharp Twitter reaction from Chief Minister Omar Abdullah. He desperately wishes to be left away from this “essentially Mustafa-Farooq conflict”.

Even as men of consequence in the coalition dismissed Mustafa’s fiery remarks against Dr Abdullah and the Chief Minister as ‘insignificant frustration”, the enfant terrible showered his explicit anger---over his disgraceful removal as NC’s Chief Spokesman and Additional General Secretary after dragging Rahul Gandhi’s name in the NC-Congress skirmishes---through Srinagar-based news agency KNS. Mustafa virulently targeted Dr Abdullah and Omar to assert that his dismissal was only to appease Sonia Gandhi and her son.

Mustafa, however, made no bones of his grouse against the brother and nephew. “Yes, I am upset over having been dropped from the Cabinet. My name had been finalized and even a Ministerial car was provided to me. But, at the eleventh hour, some outsiders as well as insiders played the trick and I was left away’, he is reported to have said. But more significant is his claim that he was ‘growing more popular than Omar”. He claimed that it was because of this “factor of insecurity” that the young Chief Minister forced father Farooq Abdullah to dismiss him on the key party positions. Is he going to halt it there or blowing more as an “approver” in the NC, amid charges of political corruption from the opposition, nobody really knows.

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