The unexpected twist in the Kashmir tale-Monday, 29 August 2016 | Balbir Punj

The unexpected twist in the Kashmir tale Monday, 29 August 2016 | Balbir Punj The unexpected twist in the Kashmir tale Daily Pioneer.com The Burhan Wani saga was following a predictable script until the Government shot back with pellet guns which hurt the Islamists. Now, the latter must stick with its strategy and steer clear of the restraint-and-dialogue trap The more things change, more they remain same. This old adage comes to mind in the context of the ongoing drama in Kashmir. The actors are new but the script and characters, however, are old. The storyline is predictable, but the end is uncertain. For the present, the macabre show seems to be heading for an intermission. The 70-odd-years old play, no doubt, will start all over again, after the actors get over their fatigue and recoup to fight yet another round. Obviously buckling under mounting pressure from those who have kept the pot boiling in the Valley during the last seven decades, the Union Home Ministry has set up a committee to look for substitutes to replace pellet guns. The rethink on the issue indicates that it’s business as usual. Once again we are in the mood to give much-needed respite to the beleaguered trouble-makers in the Valley. But why this decision to drop pellet guns? Because pellet guns served their purpose and put the fear of the God in those who want to turn the Valley into a clone of either Pakistan or the Islamic State, or both. Poke-marked faces and bodies are bad advertisement for those trying to motivate the faithfuls to joinjihad. The repulsive sight obviously frightens potential mischief-makers. So no new recruits. No wonder the jihadis hate pellet guns. The current phase of unrest in the Valley has a familiar beginning: Burhan Wani, an AK47-wielding terrorist, is killed in an encounter. His death becomes a catalyst; re-kindling the fire of jihad which was lying dormant for a while; mobs take to the streets, setting public property on fire, vandalising police stations and stone-pelting security forces; Slogans for azadi are heard and so are slogans wishing death to India; there is the waving of the Pakistani and now the Islamic State flags. The true agenda is revealed. All this talk about rule of law, democracy and human rights is a smokescreen. The aim is to establish a regime dictated by sharia’h in which there is no place forkafirs or pre-Islamic mofits. To this end, the script has played out on predicable lines. Now comes the proverbial twist in the tale that has stumped thejihadisand stunned their supporters inside and outside the Valley, and forced them to seek a truce. Earlier, when faced with violent stone-pelting mobs, the heavily out-numbered security forces would just run for cover or get lynched. After such encounters, the jawans are angry, humiliated and demoralised. The jihadis, on the other hand, are elated with a sense of victory. But this time has been different. The frenzied mobs had to face pellets and pay for their sins. It was no longer a one way affair. The bewildered jihadis and their support base, masquerading as human right activists, ‘secular’ politicians and ‘journalists’, are now asking for a ban on pellet guns. The Government seems to be walking into their trap. Why is it re-thinking a strategy that is working well and is effective? Will the trouble-makers decide how and with what weapon they should be dealt with? Can we find a ‘political solution’ by engaging all the stake-holders in dialogue? If a ‘dialogue’ or a series of dialogues were good enough to work out a ‘political solution’, why have we had no luck till date? All such suggestions are a old ploy to buy time to help the mischief-makers re-group and to demoralise the security forces. Have politicians Omar Abdullah, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Sitaram Yechury and Digvijaya Singh who talk in terms of ‘dialogue’ and call for ‘restrain’ on the part the Government ever tell the mischief-makers in the Valley to disassociate themselves from Pakistan, the Islamic State and jihad, not attack security forces, and instead work for the rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits? Can any one of them dare to go to the Valley and live among those they speak for, without security? News reports from the Valley indicate that an effort is being made to identify the agent provocateurs who want to keep the pot boiling there. These political viruses are from across the Line of Control and directly linked to Pakistan, where the elected civil Government plays second fiddle to the military-mullah combine. It is instructive to recall that Burhan Wani had declared that his movement was aiming beyond Jammu & Kashmir, to eventually fly the flag of Islam on the Red Fort. Now you know why no ‘dialogue’ has worked till date and will not in the future. Shorn off rhetoric, the jihadis are not asking for more autonomy or development — they want the Valley to secede from India, and to turn it into a cultural extension of the Islamic State and Pakistan, which are terror factories of the world. Can India and the rest of the world opt out of this war? The agitation in the Valley is not one launched by civil society but it is a combination of militants and radical Islamists. There should be no doubt that the Pakistan Army with the support of groups such as the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba want to push India out of Kashmir and install an Islamic regime instead. Fortunately not only for India but for the world, there is now an overwhelming recognition in international capitals including in many Muslim majority countries, of this truth behind the well orchestrated unrest in Jammu & Kashmir. Hopefully the BJP-led Government in New Delhi will not be fooled into cozying upto separatist elements while seeking to resurrect political dialogue with “all stakeholders”. Recognising that these separatist elements, themselves a coalition of leaders with varying, even contradictory agendas, are playing the Pakistani-Islamist game to revive their attenuated clout in the Valley, both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister for Home Affairs Rajnath Singh have not invited the separatist Hurriyat coalition leaders a political dialogue among “all the stakeholders”. There is suspicion that the Pakistan Army and its proxies had set up Wani on the firing line to spark this well-planned stir in Kashmir. While the Pakistan lobby and Islamist radicals in the West have been urging Western media to condemn Indian security forces action in Kashmir as “brutal”, notably the international media has taken care to avoid any such description. The answer to such Islamisation and radicalisation is to continue with a relentless war against the merchants of terror while keeping the door open in New Delhi for talks with those who want peace within the framework of the Constitution. The war is just not to rescue the people and the Valley from the stranglehold of jihadis from across the border, but to prevent this divine land from emerging as a new terror hub.