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| Has Kamal upset Omar's applecart? | | Terror Attacks & Army | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, Oct 27: On October 25, terrorists struck at two places in the heart of Srinagar city, Maisum and Batmaloo. They exploded a grenade in the CRPF bunker at Maisum and left at least three security personnel injured, one of them seriously. Almost at the same time, they attacked the police post at Batmaloo. There was no casualty. Kashmir witnessed on the same day witnessed two more terrorist-related incidents, one at Shopian and another at Anantnag. Four terrorist-related incidents on the same day laid bare the disparities between the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah's stand on the Kashmir's situation and Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and the realities as they existed in the Valley and established that the Chief Minister's assessment was based more on political considerations than on the ground situation prevailing in the Valley.
However, it was the Chief Minister's uncle and the newly-appointed additional general secretary and chief spokesperson of the NC Mustafa Kamal who, instead of taking on the subversives and enemies of peace, practically accused the armed forces of engineering these attacks with a view to scuttling the Chief Minister's move on the AFSPA. Omar Abdullah wants the AFSPA to be removed from certain areas he considers "peaceful".
What did Kamal say while reacting to the four terrorist-related incidents in Kashmir in one day? He, inter-alia, said: "The hand of black sheep in Army, who have developed a vested interest in continuation of AFSPA, cannot be ruled out. These very elements were involved in incidents like Pathribal and Chattisinghpora massacres, Machil fake encounter and killing of four innocent boys, playing cricket at Handwara…This is not happening today but it has been happening since 1996 when I was a cabinet minister. I have seen this myself…The people want revocation of AFSPA as there is no need for such a law under whose garb worst kind of human rights violations had occurred…By opposing AFSPA, army is trying to show that it is not apolitical. They have started interfering into political matters…" Kamal's attack on the Army unambiguous.
Mustafa Kamal's refrain was that since the Armed forces did not want the AFSPA to be removed, they engineered these attacks to defeat the Chief Minister's pious move. Reacting to the Kamal's statement, Army described as "bizarre and foolish" the allegations levelled by him against it. An Army spokesperson told some media persons in Srinagar the same day that "Army would never indulge 'in this kind of politics' (to engineer grenade attacks). His allegations are bizarre and foolish". One Army General posted in Kashmir contemptuously said what Mustafa Kamal said deserved no comment. This was the response of the Army to what Mustafa Kamal said. As for the Army chief, General B K Singh, he today told Times Now that "the matter is under the purview of the Home Ministry. They have been debating it. We have given our inputs. I will not say more than this". The meaning what General Singh said was very clear.
Remember, what Kamal said what he was expected to say. He is one person in the Abdullah family who seldom minces words. He speaks what he believes in. In fact, he could be described as Omar Abdullah's political guru. Both know how to arouse passions in Kashmir.
This time, however, Kamal has landed himself and the Omar Abdullah government into a very serious trouble. He has directly taken on the Army and accused them of engineering attacks in Kashmir to ensure the continuation of the AFSPA. It is difficult to say that Omar Abdullah would be able to extricate himself from the situation he and his uncle have created. Convinced that the Kamal's statement had damaged the Omar Abdullah's government itself, party president and Union Minister for Renewable Energy Farooq Abdullah intervened the same day to control the damage. It was under his direction that Kamal retracted hate to eat a humble pie and say he never meant what media portrayed. Farooq Abdullah himself, in fact, on Tuesday itself denied reports of his brother Kamal accusing the Army of engineering grenade attacks in the Valley. He had said: "An impression and a perception that was spread is this Mustafa Saheb has accused the Army. He (Kamal) has cleared before the media that there is nothing like this". "Since the incident has happened so recently, how can we point fingers at anybody," the on-the-defensive Abdullah also put a counter question.
Feeling the heat, Omar Abdullah also came forward yesterday to clear his position. He not only dissociated himself and his government from what Kamal had said but also tried to bridge the gulf between him and the Army saying that he was not for undermining the role of the Army and that his government and the Army worked in unison during the past couple of years to restore peace and normality in the state. "Removal of AFSPA is in no way an effort to undermine the role of the Army which essentially is playing a major role in the anti-militancy operations in Jammu and Kashmir," Omar Abdullah said, obviously, to mollify the outraged Army.
Neither the NC president not the Chief Minister can fool the nation and the Army by saying what they have saying in the aftermath of the Kamal's outrageous accusations against the Army in their desperate bid to salvage the situation. The entire nation has seen Kamal speaking against the Army. Print media reported what Kamal told media persons and a number of leading news channels showed live Kamal holding the armed forces responsible for what happened in Srinagar, Shopian and Anantnag on Tuesday. Nobody in the country is going to believe any of the Abdullahs.
The truth, in short, is that Kamal has given pro-Pakistani elements in Kashmir like Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq an additional opportunity to beat India from all sides. Geelani and others of his ilk today said that "they agree with what Kamal said two days ago". They also demanded an inquiry by an "international agency charged with the responsibility of finding who engineered grenade blasts directed at security establishments". Kashmir today observed shutdown at the behest of Geelani and similar others in the Valley. It was a shutdown of its own kind in the sense that it was observed to show solidarity with Kamal as well. In other words, while Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah distanced themselves from what Kamal said to save their position, the Geelanis in Kashmir swung solidly behind Kamal. The loser, in any case, is India. What more could one expect from the Congress and the UPA. |
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