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| Prospects of Ramadan ceasefire | | Editorial | | | The reports coming from various quarters, as appearing in the media, have created confusion worse than confounded about the prospects of ceasefire between the security forces and some terrorists outfits during the month of Ramadan, approaching shortly. While coming into force of ceasefire of hostilities, even for the limited period of the holy month of Ramadan, which can be hoped to get extended beyond that, will be welcomed by all the right thinking people, the reports of Hizbul Muzahideen's willingness to reciprocate any initiative by the government of India in this direction, with unreasonable conditions that government of India accepts the disputed status of J&K, stops human rights violations and pulls out the troops from the state, reducing their deployment to pre 1989 stage mar any possibility of the ceasefire taking place. Obviously government of India will not be able to accept these conditions, which tantamount to abject surrender before the militants. The Defence Minister, Pranab Mukherjee has already categorically ruled out the possibility of withdrawal of troops, linking the level of their deployment with the level of militancy in J&K. Any unilateral declaration of ceasefire by the government of India without the assurance from the militant outfits to positively reciprocate the same will be futile and not serve the desired purpose to spare bloodshed during the holy fasting month of Muslims. Further positive reciprocation by a single militant group operating in J&K, even if implementing by that group sincerely, will be of no avail, unless other militants groups also follow the suit. No doubt United Jehad Council, whose Supermo is Salhudin, is the umbrella organization of some local militant outfit. But still a large number of outfits, mainly the Lashkare-Toiba and Jaishe Mohammad and innumerable other small and big groups of ultras are outside the control of UJC and act independently, although on directions and assistance from the same source. For any ceasefire to be affective, it is imperative that all the militant outfits accept the same. The past experience has shown that neither the ceasefire announced in 2000 by a section of the Hizbul Mujahideen and reciprocated positively by government of India nor the one announced unilaterally by government of India in 2001 produced any positive results. While the HM has publicly laid some such conditions, which can not be acceptable to the government of India, for accepting the bilateral ceasefire, the reports that some back channel diplomacy is going on, with some emissaries of government of India in touch with some top leaders of various militant out groups, persuading them to effect the ceasefire during the Muslim holy month, without placing any conditions, create some hopes in the matter. In case these traditional negotiators with the militants succeed in their efforts, there is every hope of ceasefire taking place, with the two sides announcing it simultaneously or GoI announcing it first and the militant outfit welcoming and positively reciprocating the same. |
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