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The Hurriyat's last
hurrah?
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE
- After months, if not years, of bickering
and infighting, the Hurriyat Conference has split
down the middle, and the division has deep implications
for the ongoing strife in Indian-administered
Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) state. A
couple of months ago, it appeared that the balance in
the Hurriyat had tilted in favor of the centrists. Now
the hardliners have struck back to reassert themselves
with a vengeance.
The Hurriyat Conference, an
umbrella grouping of 25 secessionist groups, has been a
divided house at the best of times. Its constituents
include those that are pro-Azadi (freedom),
pro-Pakistan, Islamists, centrists, hawks and doves,
groups that are open to dialogue with India, and outfits
that are not.
On September 7, the Hurriyat
suffered its biggest blow in its decade-long existence
when hardliners ousted its recently-elected centrist
chairman, Maulana Mohammad Abbas Ansari, and replaced
him with the Islamist hardliner Massarat Alam. The
decision to depose Ansari and suspend the seven-member
executive committee (the highest decision-making forum
in the Hurriyat) is said to have the endorsement of at
least 12 of the Hurriyat's constituents.
While the executive committee dismissed
the deposing as unconstitutional and the split
as "indiscipline", the development is far more serious for it
is not just members of the general council that
revolted, but the seven-member executive committee has also now
split. The pro-Azadi Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front
(JKLF) and the pro-Pakistan People's League, too, have
turned their backs on the moderates. While the JKLF has
quit the Hurriyat, the People's League has thrown in its
lot behind Alam.
Ansari's undoing appears to be
a statement he made on August 10 in which he said that
he wished to travel to Pakistan to persuade armed
Islamist groups to "lay down the gun". "A solution to
the Kashmir problem can be found only through dialogue,"
Ansari said. Only a few days earlier, Hizbul Mujahideen
chief Syed Salahuddin had declared from his base in
Pakistan that his organization would be stepping up
terror attacks in J&K.
The brain behind the
ouster appears to be the pro-Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami
leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who was expelled from the
Hurriyat in May this year. Subsequently, the Jamaat
removed Geelani from the Hurriyat executive. While his
poor health was cited for his "retiring" from politics,
it was his extremist views that even the Jamaat had
grown tired of. Whether the Jamaat will now go back to
endorsing Geelani's coup remains to be seen. Reports
indicate that Geelani is likely to replace Alam as the
Hurriyat's chief.
Geelani has been campaigning
for the expulsion of the centrist People's Conference
from the Hurriyat on the grounds that it apparently
fielded proxy candidates in the assembly elections last
year, despite the Hurriyat call for a poll boycott.
Sajjad Lone, leader of the People's Conference and son
of the slain Abdul Gani Lone, maintains that Geelani was
responsible for his father's killing in May last year.
While the Geelani-Sajjad war of words provides the
immediate context for the hawk-dove battle in the
Hurriyat, the issues of contention go much deeper.
The Hurriyat hawks are Islamist in outlook and
continue to justify militancy and the use of violence
against the Indian security forces. Their proximity to
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is well
known and they are in favor of J&K acceding to
Pakistan. While the centrists cannot be described as
pro-India, they are open to dialogue with Delhi and have
come around to feeling that militancy is heading
nowhere. Another issue that divides the Hurriyat is that
of the role of foreign militants - some moderates have
spoken out against the Pakistan-based militant groups.
They feel that the jihadis must leave. Furthermore, the
centrists see the Kashmir conflict as a political one.
The Islamists see it as a religious conflict.
The Hurriyat has projected itself as the sole
representative of the Kashmiri people. Its status today
is very different from what it was when it was founded
in 1993. In the early days, it was hugely popular among
the people. Its leaders were courted and given far more
importance than they deserved by Western diplomats based
in Delhi. But by 1995-96, popular disenchantment with
the Hurriyat had set in. Increasingly, the Hurriyat
leaders were seen as corrupt and as using the "cause" to
feather their own nests.
But what contributed
most to the Hurriyat's decline has been the failure of
its leaders to read accurately and respond suitably to
the changing mood in the Valley. Although the Kashmiri
people had turned their backs on the militancy and were
anxious to get on with education and work, the Hurriyat
continued to cling to a strategy including strikes and
boycotts, with its hardline section continuing to
endorse armed violence. Its boycott of last year's
elections proved to be a big mistake for it ended up
being reduced to irrelevance in Kashmiri politics. So
much so, that even its friends among the Western
diplomats started ignoring the conglomerate.
Over the past year, Delhi has been trying to
open dialogue with "all sections of Kashmiris who are
opposed to militancy". The Hurriyat has been sending
mixed signals on the issue of dialogue, indicating that
some sections within it at least were looking for an
opening that would ease their shift in position
vis-a-vis Delhi.
It is widely felt in the Valley
that the split in the Hurriyat is good news for Delhi.
After all, this was what Delhi was trying to achieve
over the past decade. While the split itself might be
good news, the subsequent assertion of the hawks is just
not what Delhi was hoping for. Violence in J&K has
witnessed a sharp spurt over the past fortnight and the
ascendance of the Islamists at a time like this has
upset Delhi's plans.
The return of Geelani or
his Islamist supporters to the separatist center-stage
is not surprising. After all, Geelani has powerful
backers - the militant and jihadi groups and the ISI -
who were hardly likely to back down simply because
moderates seemed to have taken control of the Hurriyat.
Far from breaking their resolve, the assertion of Ansari
and other pro-dialogue elements in the Hurriyat, served
to fuel the determination of the hardliners to strike
back and pull the rug from beneath the centrists' feet.
Unwittingly, Delhi might have weakened the hand
of the centrists in the battle for supremacy. A
fortnight ago, when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee
was in Srinagar, he said that negotiations would be held
only with groups that renounced violence. Subsequently,
Deputy Prime Minister Lal Advani added that the Hurriyat
would have to talk to Delhi's interlocutor, N N Vohra.
That came as a slap in the face of Ansari, who has been
asking to speak directly to the premier.
The
centrists had been hoping for more generous terms that
would enable them to enter the talks. That never came.
Under pressure from the Islamist hardliners for having
"betrayed the separatist cause" and apparently forsaken
by Delhi, the centrists found themselves in a corner.
The split in the Hurriyat and the assertion of
the hardliners is thus in fact a huge setback to Delhi's
ongoing effort to draw Kashmiris into dialogue. The
hawks will not talk to Delhi unless Pakistan is involved
in the negotiations. And the moderates will find it
harder now to enter into talks with Delhi.
At
the international level, the split in the Hurriyat is a
blow to the separatist movement. With all its warts and
weaknesses, the Hurriyat was the political face of the
militancy, commanding some respect - however excessive
that might have been - as representing the voice of a
section of Kashmiris. Now, it stands clearly exposed as
a grouping that does not represent the Kashmiri people
as such, and not just speaks in different voices, but
worse, acts at cross-purposes.
(Copyright 2003
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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