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Hurriyat's frustration in Kashmir

Go back to the last Lok Sabha election in the valley of Kashmir or the one before. It is the same old story. The All-Parties Hurriyat Conference leaders go around Srinagar and such other cities and ask the voters to boycott the election. And as usual the militants from across the border kill a candidate here and a security man there to create a scare. They succeed in keeping people indoors, allowing the ruling party to indulge in gerrymandering.

Is low-polling a criterion of success? Had it been so, the action of the Hurriyat leaders would have made sense. But it is the same exercise they go over every time elections are held. Probably they too have come to the end of the road. They have no other alternative. New Delhi does not care to talk to them. And they find that people are gradually moving away from them because they have not brought the Kashmir problem anywhere near to solution.

There is hardly any local mujahideen fighting for independence or the right for self-determination. The battle has come to be confined to the Pakistanis, the Afghans, the Sudanese and some other mercenaries on one side and Indian security forces on the other. How does it help the situation? It only brings more misery to the already afflicted population. More and more innocents are killed in the valley and in other parts of the state.

The frustration of the Hurriyat leaders is clear from the 32-page pamphlet they have issued to criticise Pakistan having concluded the Tashkent and Simla Agreements with India. They believe that ''in doing so, Pakistan has done irreparable damage to Kashmir's cause during the last 50 years.'' If they were to analyse, they would find that Pakistan was helping them by trying to settle the Kashmir problem through force. But it could not succeed.

By blaming Pakistan, they do not wash away their own mistakes. Apart from pursuing negative politics or encouraging fundamentalism, what else have they done? Islamabad's case is that for Kashmir it is has fought two wars with India in 1965 and 1971 and has conducted two ''adventures,'' the first in 1948 through tribal people and the second in 1999 through its armed forces in Kargil.

It is another matter that Pakistan was defeated. What Islamabad forgets is that it can have an initial advantage, as it had in 1985 and then in Kargil this year, through intrusions or secret placement of forces. But India will always undo it however long it takes. With the size it has and resources it commands, there cannot be any other outcome. Most Pakistanis, like the Hurriyat leaders, operate under a wrong assumption. To put it in the words of a seasoned Pakistani commentator, ''there is a general belief that the Indians are too cowardly and ill-organised to offer any effective military response which could pose a threat to Pakistan.''

General Ayub Khan went a step further. He genuinely believed that ''as a general rule, Hindu morale would not stand more than a couple of hard blows at the right time and place,'' former information secretary Atlaf Gauhar, Ayub's confidant, has quoted him in his book, Ayub Khan: Pakistan's First Military Ruler.

After the 1971 war, which resulted in the liberation of Bangladesh, Ayub was so demoralised that when I met him at Islamabad in early 1972, before the Simla Conference, the first thing he asked me was ''when are you going to conquer this part of Pakistan?'' I told him that even the lunatic fringe in India did not demand it.

What surprises me is that every government at Islamabad has propagated that India has not accepted Pakistan. Many people there believe it to be true. Although Islamabad has lost in wars and misadventures against India, the information disseminated is that Pakistan won them initially but lost them later because of ''circumstances beyond its control.''

Take Kargil. It is being claimed that Pakistan had won the war there but Nawaz Sharief chickened out and conceded defeat. That is not true. That Pakistan's intrusion surprised India is correct. It is also correct that New Delhi's intelligence failed and there was no timely action. So much so, the Indian army prepared ''the war blueprint'' only in early July when it was all over.

True, Pakistan took advantage of India's negligence. But once New Delhi sent its forces and heavy equipment to Kargil and threatened Bawalpur in Sind by moving troops to the desert border, Islamabad's advantage fizzled out. It was bound to happen. The defence of the Line of Control, as Brigadier Surinder Singh had warned in mid-August, 1998, nearly one year earlier, had gaps. But they were filled when the counter-action operation began to roll. A substantial contribution was made by the air force, which hit the Pakistani force sitting on the hills of Kargil. India did not have to even cross the LoC, a step which the army vigorously advocated.

It is an open secret that the Kargil operation was sought to be initiated by the Pakistan army in 1987 during the martial law rule of General Zia-ul Haq. But then the foreign minister, Shahibzada Yaqub Khan, once a serving army officer, stalled it. His argument was that the posts sought to be occupied were covered by snow most of the year and that the Pakistani soldiers had already died trying to stay there.

Sharief appears to have agreed to the old plan ''some time after the Lahore Declaration was signed in February, 1999.'' (There are also allegations that Sharief gave the go ahead before signing the Lahore Declaration). A group of senior intelligence and army officers, including Chief of Army Staff General Parvez Musharraf, is said to have persuaded the Pakistan prime minister to say yes. The argument reportedly used was that the occupation of Kargil was necessary because India was sniping through artillery into the Neelum valley on the Pakistan side of the LoC. Sharief was assured military success and he did think that he would be the first Pakistan ruler to defeat India. Things turned out to be different and he had to fly to Washington to save his face.

Whether the Kashmir problem has been internationalised it is for all to see. No country's interested in it. Instead, the LoC has become the international border. It is obvious that the international community will put pressure against either of the two countries if it violates it. Once again Islamabad's step to solve it through force or subterfuge has failed. Pakistan should have learnt from its earlier mistakes.

Similarly, the Hurriyat leaders have not learnt anything from the past. Now they want to cross the LoC. How does it help? That the security forces have indulged in human rights violations in the valley is known. Indian activists have themselves prepared reports, which Pakistan has quoted in world fora. What the whole thing emphasises is that the Pakistan-aided militancy in Kashmir should end so that there is proper atmosphere for negotiations. New Delhi has already made it clear that there can be no talks so long as there is cross-border terrorism.

Do the Hurriyat leaders -- youthful leaders like Yasin Malik and Shabir Shah -- really believe that any meaningful dialogue between India and Pakistan or between them and New Delhi is possible in the atmosphere of violence? They have only damaged their stock by welcoming the mujahideen, who comprise mercenaries. Desperation will not bring any results. It will only harden New Delhi's stand.

The Hurriyat leaders have lost another opportunity to enter Parliament which they could have probably had if they had not boycotted the election. Parliament could have given them an opportunity and the stage to present their point of view.

Kuldip Nayar