The Battle for Kashmir

The Battle for Kashmir

Prabha Chandran
Journalist
Jakarta

The test firing of three nuclear missiles by Pakistan in the
last week and the killing of leading Kashmiri separatist leader
Abdul Ghani Khan Lone have sent two messages to India.

The first is from Islamic fundamentalist forces that there is
no place for moderates like Lone in the Valley. The second
message is from Islamabad, that India risks nuclear war by
pursuing jihadi militants across the border.

A more charitable interpretation -- which India hopes is the
case -- is that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is flexing
his muscles domestically before clamping down on these militants
under severe international pressure. But how far can he go
without losing the support of his Army and the public who have
made Kashmir their raison d'etre? The question has become
critical with the routing of Islamic jihadi militias in
Afghanistan.

India has long warned that flushing out the al-Qaeda and
other terrorists from Afghanistan would have a bloody fallout in
Kashmir and so it has come to pass. Being forced out of
Afghanistan, they are now active in the North Eastern Frontier
Province of Pakistan. Bin Laden was reportedly filmed here six
weeks ago -- and in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK), from where
they have unleashed a wave of unprecedented terrorist attacks in
Kashmir in the last three years.

The fact that POK is the staging ground for some of the
bloodiest suicide bombings, hijackings and other attacks on
Indian military and civilian targets is too well documented to
lend credence to Pakistan's claim that it is only providing
diplomatic and moral support to freedom fighters.

This support has in the last two years alone, facilitated the
hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar, the bombing of
the Kashmir State Assembly and the Indian Parliament in New Delhi
not to mention an armed insurgency in Kargil where the two armies
fought a bloody battle for months.

Comparisons are odious but the scale of death and destruction
in the once idyllic Valley of Kashmir is clearly the most
pressing challenge before the international community today. For
the truth is, the people's movement in Kashmir has been
completely hijacked by Islamic terrorist organizations like the
Hizbul Mujahiddin, who work closely with al-Qaeda.

These people care little for the welfare of the Kashmiris and
less for the enormous suffering they have unleashed in the sub-
continent, their one point agenda is to find a new base from
which to operate now that Kabul is gone.

A victory for fundamentalist forces here would set the world
back to where it was before Sept. 11, 2001. After all, the
ordinary Afghan did not want to be 'liberated' by the
compassionate bin Laden any more than does the ordinary Kashmiri,
which is why the moderate Lone had to go. His possible victory
in the forthcoming Kashmiri elections may have paved the way
eventually for greater autonomy for Kashmir within the Indian
union.

As for Pakistan, it enjoys less sympathy and credibility among
Kashmiris than at any time since independence. It has betrayed
its own creation, the Taliban, for a fist full of dollars. It has
managed to alienate the extremists and its own economic and
political bankruptcy is highlighted by a series of military coups
which have alienated the vast majority of Kashmiri moderates.

On the eve of what could still result in Indian military
action against terrorist camps in POK, it is time to ask some
basic questions: Can Pakistan continue to support the same
terrorist militias in Kashmir that it is turning in to the
Americans in Afghanistan? Can India show the statesmanship
required to accommodate the autonomous aspirations of the
Kashmiris? And can the world allow two nuclear powers to continue
this 50-year war of attrition without taking a moral position on
terrorism and its consequences as it did on Sept. 11?

General Musharraf says these terrorist forces are beyond his
control -- well, then, why not team up with India and root them
out, because, after all Pakistan is bound to do just that
according to Security Council Resolution 1373, which it signed on
terrorism? It is time for the newly-elected leader to prove his
democratic credentials and his sincerity that his nation is not
an exporter of terrorism.