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| Despite threats, Delhi, Srinagar firm on ground carry on ‘quiet diplomacy’ | | |
ABID SHAH
NEW DELHI, DEC 5: A call for a bandh, reaffirmation to efforts for peace, and demands for punishing the guilty and defeating the designs of those who hold the strings of the culprits from behind are the usual outcomes of an assassination attempts whether successful or not. Yesterday’s attack on senior Hurriyat leader Fazal Haq Qureshi at Srinagar is no exception to this general rule that has inevitably been followed in the wake of similar incidents in the past.
The main problem with such a predictable course in the aftermath of nonetheless a ghastly incident is that the peace process gets defined vis-à-vis violence where buying little peace can well turn out to be a big consolation.
The reactions of both the Union Home Minister P Chidambaram and Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq to last evening’s attack on Qureshi suffer once again from this tragic trap.
Both swore today to save the peace initiative through their quiet diplomacy from being hijacked by barbaric enemies of peace. At the face of it this may sound too noble to be questioned. But the task is not just to save a crawling process but to not sound like stuck up characters of a tragic episode of history before the people of a State that has for two decades been on to the edge.
Any peace of any credible degree needs a breakthrough not just on the part of the Hurriyat leaders but those of India and Pakistan. In fact, the last two have been unduly shy of making a breakthrough and thus prefer to call their efforts either as quiet or backchannel diplomacy. The sheer diminutiveness of these terms tells how scared both parties are to step out firmly in their search for peace.
The first instinct of the External Affairs Minister SM Krishna in this regard deserves more attention than most other things. When he was told by his Pakistani counterpart in September this year in New York about the need for backchannel talks, Krishna quipped that those could well be open.
Being discreet may be prudent but the task vis-à-vis resolution of the J&K tangle is to open up despite fully knowing that this may be fraught with risk. It is otherwise is also so as proven by the attack on Qureshi. As one would remember that he was not attacked when he was parleying with the Centre in the regime of Atal Behari Vajpayee. He became a target only when a quiet process became the preferred way.
Obviously, the need of the hour is to take courage and come out into the open about the peace process. It has been aborted umpteen times in the past and hiding it from the media glare as per the wont of Chidambaram and Mirwaiz has indeed complicated things where support for the process may come from a few leaders and not the people as such. The only deterrence against its getting aborted can be fear of a public outcry among the desperados in case they try to make a dent against it, not to say derail it.
It is not that there has been no public outrage in the wake of such incidents in the past. But sadly this has been an incident to incident phenomenon. Even today Srinagar observed a Bandh to express indignation over brutal attack on Qureshi. And this would be variously interpreted in the days to come. But the question is that how far the real message of use of force against someone who had preferred a pursuit of peace and dialogue is allowed to travel. To be precise the task is to make it break the confines of politics in order to break the cycle of a vicious history.
Thus, the people must have listened to Chidambaram and Mirwaiz more attentiviely had they told the public in last 24 hours what do they have in their minds about the fate of the embattled State rather than merely affirming their high sounding efforts for peace which in the public mind appear to be mere longings. And that too at a time when violence is once again appear to be setting the agenda.
Thus, not only the people but most observers of the J&K politics too have been giving up hope since the State standing between two formidable rivals, India and Pakistan, has come to serve as a theatre of absurd where muscle flexing is valued far more than other manoeuvres. This often leads to crippling or turning lethal the writ issued by the top brass whether from this or that capital, claim the Kashmir watchers.
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