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Another setback in
Kashmir
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW
DELHI - As the world remembered September 11, militant
attacks in Kashmir left a key state official and 15
other people dead in violence aimed at disrupting the
state assembly election that begins in the disturbed
territory next Monday.
Mushtaq Ahmed Lone, law
minister in the ruling National Conference party that
leads the state government, five of his bodyguards and a
bystander were shot dead by heavily armed militants at
an election rally in Kupwara district.
The
district lies on the Line of Control (LoC) that runs
through the disputed territory and separates it from its
Pakistan controlled half. Officials in New Delhi laid
the blame on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba
(Soldiers of God), a group that is committed to
achieving the merger of the whole of Muslim-majority
Kashmir into Pakistan.
The group has sworn to
kill candidates standing for state assembly elections
set to begin on September 16, saying that this would
legitimize Indian rule in the state.
Pakistan
President General Pervez Musharraf has publicly declared
the election "illegal", but is under pressure from
Washington, its post-September 11 ally in the military
action in Afghanistan, to ensure that they are carried
out undisturbed.
The Lashkar-e-Toiba is one of
several groups banned by the United States following
last year's terrorist attacks in New York and
Washington, and is known to have close links with the
al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.
News
reports from the state's capital of Srinagar, 100
kilometers south of Kupwara, said that the grenade and
firearms attack was led by a man who had covered himself
with a burqa, a long garment for women that
covers the entire body, with only a grid through which
to see, and was sitting in an enclosure meant for women
at the rally.
A second attack took place in
Poonch district, 75 kilometers southwest of Srinagar,
and also close to the LoC. This resulted in the deaths
of five soldiers of the paramilitary Border Security
Force (BSF), two policemen and two children. Television
channels said the attack took place at a crowded bus
stand close to an election rally organized by the
Congress party and attended, among others, by Amarinder
Singh, chief minister of Punjab state and the party's
general secretary Ambika Soni.
Soon after the
attacks, Kashmir's chief minister, Farooq Abdullah, told
television interviewers in Kashmir that the state's
National Conference party would not be "cowed down" by
Wednesday's killings. The elections, staggered into four
phases for security reasons, would go on as scheduled,
he said.
"They want to show that they [jihadi
militants] have the power to stop the elections," said
Abdullah, a charismatic leader in Kashmir who has
survived several assassination attempts.
An
attack on India's parliament in December, which India
blamed on militant groups linked to Pakistan, prompted
New Delhi to move some 700,000 troops to the LoC and the
international border drawn up in 1947, when Pakistan was
created as a homeland for the sub-continent's Muslims
out of the former British India. However, the partition
did not cover the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir,
and the two new countries went to war in October 1947
until the United Nations intervened and produced the
LoC.
Two more full-fledged wars in 1965 and in
1971 appeared to reinforce the LoC as the common border.
But in 1999, armed incursions by jihadi backed by the
Pakistan army over the LoC at Kargil brought the
neighboring countries, which had declared themselves
nuclear powers in the previous year, into serious armed
conflict short of declared war. Under intense
international pressure, India pulled back its fleet of
fighter planes and ships to peacetime locations in June.
But it has refused to withdraw its troops from the LoC
on the grounds that they are needed to ensure smooth
conduct of the coming elections in Kashmir.
In
fact, India has warned Pakistan that it views the smooth
conduct of the elections as the "acid test" of a solemn
pledge made by Musharraf to US officials, including
Secretary of State Colin Powell and Assistant Defense
Secretary Richard Armitage, that he would ensure the
stoppage of "cross-border terrorism" across the LoC.
According to India, Musharraf has not kept his promise.
It holds him responsible for continuing attacks in
Kashmir aimed at disrupting the election and ensuring a
low voter turnout, so as to deny it legitimacy.
Mushtaq Lone is the third candidate to have
fallen to jihadi bullets so far. The elections have been
rejected by the All-Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC), an
umbrella for some 24 separatist organizations. But the
rejection came after one of its top leaders, Abdul Ghani
Lone, was shot dead at a public rally by suspected
members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba in May for expressing
support for the elections.
Abdul Ghani Lone was
the first member of the Hurriyat who declared that after
September 11, the days of jihadi militancy were finished
and that the Kashmir issue could only be settled
politically.
Since 1989, Kashmir has seen an
independence movement that has been complicated by
Pakistan's older claim to the territory and its policy
of training and arming militants to fight what India
calls a "proxy war". India and Pakistan agreed under the
1999 Lahore Declaration between Indian Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee and former Pakistan premier Nawaz
Sharif to address all outstanding issues, including
Kashmir, through peaceful dialogue.
But the
Pakistan army under Musharraf was opposed to the Lahore
Declaration and masterminded the Kargil incursions,
which failed as a result of fierce military resistance
by India and the intervention of former US president
Bill Clinton, who prevailed on Islamabad to stop the
incursions.
By October 1999, Sharif was ousted
in a bloodless coup by Musharraf, who was initially
under international pressure to restore democracy but
found it easier to stay in power after he and his regime
became indispensable to Washington as a frontline state
in the war against terror in Afghanistan.
"President Musharraf is still tight with us in
the war against terror and that's what I appreciate," US
President George W Bush said on August 22, reacting to
constitutional changes made by Musharraf that enhanced
his powers to dismiss an elected government after
Pakistan's general elections in October.
Bush
was scheduled to meet Musharraf on the sidelines of the
UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, when
India's concerns were expected to come up, according to
officials.
(Inter Press Service)
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