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| Time not appropriate for withdrawal of AFSPA from J&K | | 'Parameters of normalcy' | | Neha
Jammu, Aug 7: Just a day after Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju informed Rajya Sabha that the time was "not appropriate" for the withdrawal of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), Chief Minister and working president of the National Conference (NC) Omar Abdullah asked the Central Government to explain what exactly it meant by "appropriate time". Rijiju a few days ago rejected the demand seeking withdrawal of the AFSPA. He, among other things, said: "Various stakeholders, particularly the security agencies, have expressed their apprehension…that the revocation of the Act from the State of J&K will jeopardise their efforts in maintaining security and law and order in the State. Hence, it has been decided that the time is not appropriate at the moment for withdrawal of the AFSPA from the State of J&K".
The AFSPA was invoked in the terrorist and separatist-infested Kashmir valley and the 20-km radius of the troubled-LoC in the Jammu's Rajouri and Poonch districts in July 1990, when Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was the country's Home Minister. In August 2001, this legislation was extended to the whole of the Jammu province, as the secessionists tried to extend their tentacles beyond the Valley to target the minorities and create more trouble for the nation. Significantly, NC president Farooq Abdullah was the Chief Minister between October 1996 and October 2002. Under the AFSPA, the Army and paramilitaries involved in the anti-insurgency operations enjoy some degree of legal immunity.
Omar Abdullah is not just the Chief Minister of the sensitive J&K state; he also holds the vital Home portfolio. Besides, he as Chief Minister heads the Unified Command (UC) that regularly monitors the security situation, supervises the security grid in J&K and takes appropriate steps to maintain internal and external security. The UC, which was formed way back in 1993 to give a coordinated, planned and appropriate response to the threat of insurgency in Kashmir and other terror-affected areas of the State, is also termed Unified Headquarters (UHQ). It consists of the Army, Border Security Force (BSF), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the State Police. The State Chief Minister is the Chairman of the UC and his security advisors are none other than the General Officer Commanding (GOC) of 15 and 16 Corps. In other words, Omar Abdullah is the most informed person as far as the security-related issues in the State are concerned.
Abdullah would have done well had he endorsed the Union Home Ministry's view that was based on definite inputs given to it by various spy and security agencies as well as the UC, which he himself heads. But, sadly, he sought to make the stand of the Union Home Ministry on the AFSPA an issue to arouse passions in the Valley for political gains. "If they (in this case Army, paramilitary forces and Central Government) tell us what the appropriate time for the AFSPA revocation, we will try to determine the parameters of this appropriate time," Abdullah, inter-alia, said while rejecting the Union Home Ministry's stand.
He also insisted on the AFSPA revocation and reiterated that the NC-led coalition Government is committed to getting the State out of the ambit of this legislation, as its application by the Central Government has only added to the woes of Kashmiri people and denied them the required breathing space. Significantly, his attack on the Union Government was followed by the brutal killing of two policemen-on-duty at Sopore in Baramulla district and Bijbehara in Anantnag district (Kashmir), thus betraying the claim of the Chief Minister and others of his ilk that the situation in the Valley is normal.
It was not the first occasion when Omar Abdullah questioned the AFSPA. He had been consistently doing so since 2010, when the troubled-Valley witnessed the emergence of stone-throwers, who created havoc in Kashmir on an unprecedented scale. In fact, when Kashmir was burning during the summer of 2010, he was camping in New Delhi to persuade the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Defence Minister AK Antony, Home Minister P Chidambaram and even General V K Singh to withdraw the AFSPA, at least partially, if not completely, so that he could tell his constituency in Kashmir that his writ prevailed in Delhi and that he was the genuine representative of the Kashmiri cause. It is a different story that the Prime Minister and Defence Minister asked him to pack up and go back to Kashmir to tackle the fast-deteriorating situation there and the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) censured him and held him responsible for what it called "trust-deficit" and "governance-deficit". He would then have been sacked, had the then AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi not intervened on his behalf. The claim of Omar Abdullah that the security environment in the State is quite conducive for the revocation of the AFSPA is as intriguing as it is utterly unacceptable. He knows that the situation in the Valley is highly volatile and anything can happen anytime. He knows that he and other Ministers are so insecure that they cannot venture out of their houses without foolproof security cover. He knows that gun-totting militants have been roaming about freely both in urban areas and hinterland in Kashmir and causing death and destruction at will. He knows that deadly terrorists have been targeting the Army convoys and attacking CRPF and BSP camps and police stations at regular intervals. He knows many Pakistani jihadis are active in different parts of the Valley and some of them were liquidated only recently by our brave security forces. He knows that Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin has been working overtime to motivate Al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives to join the "jihadi" cadres in Kashmir to convulse and bloody the J&K's scene. He also knows that radical Islamists in Afghanistan are likely to move over to Kashmir after the US forces move out of the war-torn Afghanistan. But more than that, over three lakh internally displaced and persecuted Kashmiri Hindus have rejected the call for their return to the Valley saying that the situation there has further worsened and the process of radicalisation in the Valley is in full swing.
But Omar Abdullah will not appreciate these and several other similar realities and instead go on asking New Delhi to explain what it means by appropriate time or parameters of normalcy. It is disturbing that the Chief Minister, instead of discharging his obligations towards the State, is arousing passions in the Valley by misinterpreting the Central Government's right stand on the AFSPA. And he has been muddying Indian waters at a time when the Pakistani Government is enforcing the July 2, 2014 Protection of Pakistan Bill that empowers security forces to shoot suspects on sight with permission of a grade-15 official. |
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