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| Omar, Remove all bunkers, withdraw CRPF from Kashmir, release all unruly elements | | STARK REALITY-II | | RUSTAM
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Oct 3: The September 29 Unified Headquarters (UH) meeting was a golden opportunity for Chief Minister Omar Abdullah to ask the Army to quit all the civilian areas in the Kashmir Valley and go to borders. It was also an opportunity for him to order the paramilitary CRPF to quit Kashmir and go back from where this paramilitary force had come. But he didn't do so. He only disappointed the alienated people of Kashmir, separatists like Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Yasin Malik and the so-called mainstream People's Democratic Party, which has decided to boycott the assembly session to register its protest against the failure of the Omar Abdullah-led government to take action against the security forces allegedly responsible for the 109 deaths of "innocent and unarmed civilians" or freedom fighters. The UH simply decided after a two-hour-long meeting to set up two committees to review the situation in the "Disturbed" areas in the Valley and Jammu province under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). These committees would complete the job as early as possible and submit reports to the apex committee (read Chief Minister.)
There was no need for the Chief Minister to adopt such a methodology because it could be construed by the "freedom fighters" like Geelani as a delaying tactic. There is consensus among the Kashmir-based "mainstream" leaders and their supporters in New Delhi and elsewhere that the situation in Kashmir is more than normal. During the past about 45 days, almost all the Kashmir-based "mainstream" political leaders and the Delhi-based sympathizers of the Kashmiri "freedom fighters" have repeatedly asserted that those in Kashmir who have been demanding "freedom from India on humanitarian grounds" have abjured violence and turned Gandhis and Mandelas and that they have been simply pelting stones on the security forces. In other words, according to them, the Kashmiri "freedom fighters" have replaced the gun with stone or sharp-edged boulder and, hence, there is no need for the state government to deploy the Army or paramilitary CRPF in the civilian areas of Kashmir. The upshot of their whole argument has been that stone could not be compared with gun. The argument appears to be valid. What stones in Kashmir could achieve in such a short of span of time, the gun could not achieve in more than 16 years of its existence in the Valley.
Significantly, even some of the National Conference leaders and ideologues like Member of Parliament Dr Mehboob Beg have also expressed almost similar views and asserted that the situation in the Kashmir Valley has become more than normal and that what the "freedom fighters" used to do between 1990 and 2006 had become a story of the past. As a matter of fact, Beg has publicly described the 8-point package as "too little, too late." Beg would have been a happy man had the Union Government accepted what the likes of Geelani had suggested during their meeting with some members of the all-party parliamentary delegation, including Sitaram Yachuri of the CPI-M. In fact, everyone in Kashmir and Delhi-based votaries of independence/self-rule for Kashmir would have hailed the Chief Minister, had New Accepted what Geelani demanded. Credit would have gone to the Chief Minister because an impression had gained ground that he had been urging the Government of India to accept the Geelani's five-point charter of demands; an impression had gained ground that the Chief Minister was promoting the Geelani agenda on the ruins of the National Conference.
Anyway, everything is not lost in Kashmir. The Chief Minister can even now retrieve the situation. He can do so. He simply has to ask the CRPF to go back; he simply has to repeal the Public Safety Act (PSA); he simply has to release all the detained stone-throwers and those detained under the draconian PSA; he simply has to ask the Army and the CRPF to remove all the bunkers from the Kashmir Valley; he simply has to lift all the restrictions; he simply has to lift the curfew; and he simply has to handover everything to the state police.
The Chief Minister would do well to take these steps. Let the "freedom fighters" in Kashmir do whatever they want to do and let the state police discharge the duties it is supposed to discharge. The state police are quite competent. At the same time, however, the Chief Minister has to see to it that his security staff consists of none other than those from the state police. It is a must because it will send a right message across the Kashmir Valley. Not to do so or to continue to demand withdrawal of the security forces from the Kashmir Valley and, at the same time, avail of their services for personal security would be to give an opportunity to his critics and the "freedom fighters" to accuse him of resorting to a double-speak. In other words, if the Chief Minister wishes to win over the alienated people of Kashmir and mollify the "freedom fighters", he has no other option but to remove all bunkers, ask New Delhi to withdraw from Kashmir the CRPF and release all those whom Geelani, the Mirwaiz, Mehbooba Mufti, to mention only a few, call "political prisoners." (Concluded) |
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