As someone who finds it hard to trust military dictators I am always a little wary about our friendly, neighbourhood General and pay close attention to what he says. So, I listened carefully to what he said at the United Nations last week and did not like what I heard. Not only did I detect traces of that bad, old pre-9/11 Musharraf but I detected a new wiliness that I fear will end up outwitting our genteel bureaucrat of a Prime Minister just as it has George W Bush. The American President and senior members of his administration constantly remind the world that General Musharraf has been a valuable ally in the war on terrorism so what do they make of the General’s assertion that all terrorism has ‘‘political motives’’ and so the answer is ‘‘political solutions’’. Do they not think this amounts to saying that all murder, rape, robbery and theft is based on social motives and so we must find social solutions to these crimes? The General also said terrorism must be ‘‘eliminated’’ from the face of the planet but how can it be eliminated if we take such an understanding, compassionate view of the ‘‘political motives’’ of those who kill unarmed civilians? General Musharraf clarified in his speech that in his view two places where political solutions had to be found in order to end terrorism were Palestine and Kashmir. If you read the Pakistani newspapers the day after his speech, you would have seen that when the General met President Bush in New York last week he urged him to induce India to withdraw troops from Kashmir. Specifically from Baramulla and Kupwara. Why these two towns in particular? Could it be because they have been famous for being hideouts for the General’s politically motivated terrorists? Maybe I am paranoid but I find this kind of talk scary. I do not believe that General Musharraf has a right to decide Indian troop deployments and I do not believe he can be sincere about the ‘‘peace process’’ or about the war against terrorism if this is his approach. The General has already got the better of our government by inserting into the peace process the Kashmiris he believes are the true representatives of the Kashmiri people. It is far from established that the individuals who constitute the All Parties Hurriyat Conference are Kashmir’s true representatives, yet the Prime Minister appears to have accepted that they are or he would not have been discussing political solutions with them on the eve of his meeting with General Musharraf. Especially not after Yasin Malik admitted on Pakistani soil that one of the heroes of Kashmir’s ‘‘freedom movement’’ was General Musharraf’s Information Minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed. Far from being chastened by Yasin Malik’s inadvertent revelation Sheikh Rashid is as belligerent as ever. Pakistan’s Daily Times (September 5, 2005) quotes an interview he recently gave in which he describes the Indian Army chief’s accusation that he runs terrorist training camps as ‘‘a concerted propaganda effort from India designed to malign the image of Pakistan’’. In the same interview he says, ‘‘The Kashmir movement is indigenous and being carried out by locals whose rights India has usurped. Pakistan will continue its moral, diplomatic and political support to the Kashmiris’ just cause against Indian subjugation.’’ Phew! What kind of ‘‘peace process’’ is this? What is going on? Why is there nobody from our side pointing out, at the very least, that the movement was ‘‘indigenous’’ when Yasin Malik’s Jammu-Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) started it by kidnapping Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s daughter in 1989. But, within months Pakistan bequeathed Kashmir the Hizbul Mujahideen and changed ‘‘political motives’’ to religious ones. The struggle for ‘‘azaadi’’ was subsumed early on by Islamism and as we can see from the activities of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat it continues to be Islamism that dominates. Dukhtaran-in-Chief, Aasiya Andrabi, was arrested recently for forcing Islamic morality down the throats of the ladies of Srinagar. Already, the last cinema has been closed because according to the Islamists who have now taken charge of the ‘‘freedom movement’’ the Prophet disapproved of cinema and television. I have always wondered how he knew of their existence 1400 years ago but I digress. Before the movement against cinemas there was the movement against video libraries and beauty parlours and on an evening when I was staying in Srinagar’s Broadway Hotel a group of young men stormed in and forced the bar to close. Then, there was a campaign that involved breaking liquor bottles in the streets so for days Srinagar’s air reeked of cheap whiskey. As someone with the loveliest memories of glorious summer holidays in Kashmir I weep for what it has become. India and indigenous problems certainly started the rot but there is no question that where Islamisation and jehad are concerned all credit must go to General Musharraf and his military cohorts. He is a strange sort of ally to have in the war against terrorism but then strange are often the ways of American foreign policy. We have enough problems of our own to worry about, of which in terms of the ‘‘peace process’’ the biggest one is the General himself. At what price is this peace going to come? Is the price Kashmir? Is this the ‘‘out of the box’’ solution he was talking about when he came to India with ‘‘a new heart’’. Where is that ‘‘new heart’’ now? Did he leave it behind when he went to New York? Write to tavleensingh@expressindia.com
