Obama visit strikes fear in Kashmir
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - In a week's time, President Barack Obama will begin his five-day
visit to India. He is keenly awaited in cities like Delhi and Bangalore, where
people are looking to see whether Obama will endorse India's permanent
membership in the United Nations Security Council or what he will say about
outsourcing of business.
To those in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, however, the visit of an American
president ignites fear and foreboding.
During the trip to India 10 years ago of another US president, Bill Clinton,
Kashmir witnessed one of its worst massacres and
among its most controversial. There is concern that a similar tragedy will mark
Obama's visit.
"The visit of the US president to India is ... from the publicity point of
view, large enough [for terrorists] to try and create something, even if it is
not in any place near where President Obama would be," Home Secretary G K
Pillai told CNN-IBN news channel. "We fear that innocent civilians will be
killed and then the blame would be put, like the last time, on the Indian army.
All indications are that the propaganda machinery would be out to do the same.
Therefore, we are being careful," he added.
"The last time" that Pillai is referring to is the horrific killing of Sikhs in
Kashmir on March 20, 2000. Hours before Clinton's arrival in Delhi,
"unidentified gunmen" sneaked into the village of Chittisinghpura in Kashmir's
Anantnag district and shot dead 36 men. The assailants were reportedly dressed
in army fatigues. While some media reports claimed that the assailants spoke in
Urdu, thus hinting they were Muslims, others noted that they had raised Hindu
slogans after the massacre.
India blamed the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba. It claimed that the killings
were aimed at drawing international attention to the Kashmir issue to get the
Americans to mediate between India and Pakistan. Early that month, Clinton had
described Kashmir as "the most dangerous place on Earth", in the context of the
long-standing dispute of the two nuclear armed neighbors over Kashmir. The
Chittisinghpura massacre was aimed at "underscoring that perception of
Kashmir", Indian officials said then.
Pakistan and the Kashmiri separatist groups accused Indian security forces of
carrying out the attack in order to "malign the Kashmiris' struggle for
independence from Indian occupation" in the eyes of the world. The "mujahideen
have nothing against the Sikh community, which sympathizes with our struggle",
Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin clarified.
Indeed, Sikhs had not been targeted ever by the militants in the decade-long
insurgency.
Kashmiris themselves have been bitterly divided on the matter with some blaming
Indian authorities and others pointing in Pakistan's direction. Some accused
the Ikhwanis ie, surrendered militants, for the killings.
On a visit to Chittisinghpura a few months after the killings, this writer
found that its residents were unsure of the identity of their assailants and
lived in mortal fear of "them" returning to take revenge if the villagers said
too much. Adding fuel to the fire was the discovery some years later that the
five youths killed by Indian security forces a few days after the
Chittisinghpura incident on suspicion of being involved in the killings were in
fact innocent.
Further muddying the waters was Clinton's observations. While his immediate
response to the massacre was cautious - he was careful to attribute it to
"unknown groups" - that changed in his introduction to former US secretary of
state Madeleine Albright's book The Mighty and the Almighty, where he
wrote that "Hindu militants" had murdered the Sikhs in cold blood. The
publisher Harper Collins subsequently removed the reference to Hindu militants,
describing it as an "error ... due to a failure in the fact-checking process".
Some months ago, it was reported that David Headley, the Pakistani-American
Lashkar operative linked to the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, had admitted to
Indian and American officials that the Chittisinghpura massacre was the work of
the Lashkar, vindicating India's position.
Allegations and counter-allegations, rumors and conspiracy theories have
swirled around discussions of the Chittisinghpura incident, keeping this
massacre a mystery for the past decade. Whoever carried it out and whatever
their message, the impact of the killings remains alive to date.
"One visit of a US President brought misery in the form of the killings," Nanak
Singh, a survivor of the massacre told The Tribune. Karamjeet Singh, another
survivor said that in the run-up to Obama's visit "there are similar fears of
militant attacks".
"We fear they [Indian agencies] can do something similar [to the
Chittisinghpura killings]" during the Obama visit," pro-Pakistan Kashmiri
separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani said a few days ago in Srinagar.
Echoing that view from his home in Pakistan controlled Kashmir, Salahuddin
warned that "minority communities can be massacred, another drama like Mumbai
attacks can be staged, an attack on parliament or important government offices
or a foreign mission may be carried out" during the US president's visit and
"Hurriyat [an umbrella group of separatist organizations] leaders will be
blamed".
Indian officials say the separatists are planning attacks, hence these
statements to prepare the ground to deflect blame from themselves. The Indian
government is not taking any chances and has stepped up security, especially in
Kashmir.
But meanwhile, a "threat" far less horrific but more damaging to India's image
is troubling the Indian government.
Booker prize winning novelist and activist Arundhati Roy's said at a conference
in Delhi that "Kashmir has never been an integral part of India". The statement
has triggered angry calls for her arrest on charges of sedition. The government
is under pressure from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to arrest
her. But Obama is coming next week and Roy's arrest would sully Delhi's
democratic image in the eyes of the international media.
What Roy has said has been said by many before her. This is a position of many
in the Kashmir Valley and some in India have articulated before. But Roy, while
a lightning rod for criticism in India, has many supporters in the West. Her
arrest on the eve of Obama's visit would keep international attention riveted
on Kashmir and India's many failings there.
That is a prospect that India would like to avoid.
Officials in the Home Ministry told Asia Times Online that Roy's arrest on
charges of sedition was ruled out, "at least for now".
India has been opposed to "external meddling in the Kashmir problem". It does
not want to give reason "for Obama to refer to the 'K word' in any context
other than that of Pakistan's continuing support to terrorism there," the
official said.
Indeed, Obama will have to tread carefully if he does not want to annoy his
Indian hosts.
The British learnt their lessons the hard way. During Queen Elizabeth's visit
to India and Pakistan in 1997, foreign secretary Robin Cook told a group of
journalists in Pakistan that “he would take up the Kashmir issue with India".
"We realize it is our responsibility to resolve this dispute in view of its
historical perspective. The Labour Party wishes to solve this problem according
to the aspirations of the people of Kashmir, and, therefore, the two parties
should accept her role in this regard," Pakistan's Urdu-language Jang quoted
Cook as saying.
India's response was swift. Prime minister Inder Kumar Gujral shot back by
describing Britain as "a third-rate power nursing illusions of grandeur of its
colonial past". "It created Kashmir when it divided India [in 1947]. Now it
wants to give us a solution," he said.
The damage was done. The queen's visit to India was declared a disaster even
before she set foot in India.
Ahead of his visit to India in 2009, foreign secretary David Miliband wrote an
article in The Guardian linking the terror attacks in Mumbai with Kashmir.
Although he did not say so explicitly, he suggested that the Mumbai attacks
would not have happened if India settled the Kashmir dispute. India's Foreign
Office responded by dismissing Miliband's views as "unsolicited advice".
Ahead of British Prime Minster David Cameron's visit this year, columnist Alex
Barker wrote in his blog that Cameron should refrain from mentioning "Kashmir"
or "poverty" while in India, avoid a "patronizing tone" or "coming over too
fresh" (The 43-year-old Miliband repeatedly addressed the 73-year-old Pranab
Mukherjee, India's then foreign minister, by his first name). "It's time to
learn some manners. Indian politicians are, as a rule, double his age and four
times as grand," Barker wrote.
Cameron seemed to have heeded that advice and avoided the "elephant traps". His
trip to India went off well. Not so the Pakistan leg.
Wisely, Obama is visiting only India this time. He will have to tread carefully
to avoid tripping over India's red-line issues.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
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