Hasnain views 2012 as another year of peace in J&K

‘Because of US elections, ISI would not go for any adventurism’

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Dec 21: AFSPA or no AFSPA, Kashmir will continue to be the Paradise on Earth for second consecutive year in 2012. This is not Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s wishful thinking but, conversely, the belief of the country’s most ardent advocate of the controversial law and commander of Srinagar-based 15^th Corps Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain.

According to an illustration of Gen Hasnain’s PowerPoint presentation at the Unified Headquarters meeting at Chief Minister’s Jammu residence on November 9^th, which has been exclusively accessed by Early Times, 2012 would be a peaceful year in Jammu & Kashmir. In a professional analysis of situation in near future, which is known as ‘scenario building’ in Defence circles, Hasnain gave credit to neither armed forces nor politicians for the next year’s tranquility in Valley. He attributed the rosy picture to the US Presidential elections.

Hasnain’s classified slide presentation titled “Who Wants Revocation of AFSPA?” claimed that Directorate General of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) would not take any major decisions or risks in the year the people of the world’s biggest superpower would be electing a new head of the state. According to him, ISI would also be mute as the Nato forces would begin their withdrawal from Afghanistan and Pakistan towards the end of the same year.

Contrary to the claims of Police and political leaders of the three-year-old coalition Government, Hasnain asserted that 2011 was the “Rest Year for ISI and the separatists” as they wanted the fatigue factor to fade away from the people of Kashmir.

Gen Hasnain, however, apprehended a turning point in the year 2013. This particular year, according to the Corps Commander, would witness India’s exist from the United Nations Security Council and its immediate replacement with Pakistan and some rabidly anti-Indian Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) countries. He claimed that towards the end of Year 2013, Islamabad and her friends in the OIC would trigger off a major campaign of internationalizing Kashmir. He expected veritable turbulence and mass uprising in Kashmir in 2014 when the strife-torn state would be holding general elections for Legislative Assembly as well as Lok Sabha and the separatists, with Pakistan’s and OIC’s support, would be encouraging “mass protests and sacrifices of a couple of thousand young lives a la Arab Spring style”.

Making his averments in support of continuance of AFSPA in J&K, Gen Hasnain warned in his “scenario building” that the demand for Plebiscite would be spiraling to its highest point in the last several decades in 2015 and the following year could mark the end of Kashmir’s integration with India. According to him, this scenario would be taken to its logical conclusion by Pakistan and ISI only after creating an impression that Government of India had completely tied the hands of her security forces in Kashmir under the world pressure. Revocation of AFSPA, according to him, would serve as the watershed.

Focusing on four entities in the presentation, Hasnain claimed that after “remarkable corrections” in observing human rights by armed forces in Kashmir, revocation of AFSPA was no more a peoples’ issue. He asserted that in today’s Kashmir people wanted good “bijli, pani, sadak and governance”. While completely ignoring the sentiments of Omar Abdullah government as well as the much familiar views of the union Home Minister P Chidambaram and Dileep Padgoankar-led team of three interlocutors, Gen Hasnain claimed that only “terrorists, separatists and ISI” were dying for AFSPA’s revocation.

“Terrorists? Yes, it helps them dilute the Army's effectiveness; Separatists? Yes, because it enables their separatist activities; ISI? Yes, because it helps in weakening the Army's hold”, Gen Hasnain concluded. It was in this eventful meeting, first of its kind with the state government in J&K, that Chief Minister reportedly took umbrage on the General’s views and asked him to wind up and drop a copy of the slide so that he could “see where I fit in.”

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