Jamal Kidwai on Kashmir today - Look Within

There have been five attacks by militants in the Kashmir valley since February, killing at least 23 security men. These attacks and the 24 June killings of eight unarmed army men by militants have once again raised the bogey of the return of insurgency to the Kashmir valley. This has resulted in a widespread conclusion  that in no time at all militancy will be back in the valley; the situation has even been compared to the situation in the mid 1990s.
This is based mostly on wild speculation, such as the withdrawal of Americans troops in March 2014 from Afghanistan, which, it is claimed by hawks and defence analysts alike, will give a free hand to the ISI-Pakistani military establishment to pursue its anti-India and jehadi agenda.

A disproportionate amount of significance is also given to the random anti-India statements made by leaders of jehadi organisations like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Al-Qaeda. Such an approach is far removed from domestic political reality in Kashmir, and does not want to acknowledge that it is political initiatives, and not military solutions, that will address issues that concern the people most.

The attack on army jawans came a day before the Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi visit to the valley, where, amongst other things on the agenda, they had gone to inaugurate the Banihal-Qazigund rail link. The attack was clearly aimed at not only sabotaging the visit but also at sending out a signal that the militants do not approve of any initiative that has even a vague element of political engagement between the Kashmir Valley and New Delhi. 

Contrary to the theories being propagated by military and strategic analysts, what needs to be acknowledged is that every time the government tries to take political initiatives, the militants will strike, and they will target not just jawans but also civilians. This is not the first time that militants have shown their disdain for political action. They have consistently opposed elections in the valley, asked for the boycott of panchayat elections, forced elected sarpanches to resign and even killed many elected representatives. The militants and their front organisations, it will be remembered, had opposed the Srinagar-Muzzafarabad bus service that was welcomed by even those who had otherwise taken an anti-India position.

Therefore, one does not have to be a rocket scientist, as the popular phrase goes, to see that the jehadis and their backers in Pakistan and Afghanistan loathe the politics of dialogue, democracy and secularism and they will act to extract vengeance each time there is any such initiative taken. By conducting such acts of terror, the militants and the jehadists are egging on and inviting the Indian government to respond militarily, increase the already large number of security troops and conduct search operations. This, in turn, will result in more encounter killings and further acts of human rights violations, giving legitimacy to the argument that the Indian government is against the people of Kashmir and wants to keep them subjugated at any cost. But what is more troubling is that it’s not just the jehadis who seek such a response, there is a large section of the Indian military establishment, security experts and sections of media which believes that the Kashmir problem is essentially a security issue and the only way it can be resolved is through military intervention. They term human rights violations, fake encounters and disappearances as ' collateral damage' and see them as minor aberrations that happen during a `war on terror.’ 

However, the people of the Kashmir valley have given enough indication that they want normalcy to return, despite several acts of provocation by both the central and the state security agencies. The latest being the killing of two innocent young men allegedly army on the 29 June in Sumbal area of Bandipora district.  Since the days of stone pelting, there have been almost no incidents of mass protests. What took everyone by surprise were the relatively muted protests and the lack of street agitations after the hanging of Afzal Guru. That was one incident that had, paradoxically, excited both the separatists and the hawks in Delhi and Srinagar. But the people of Kashmir disappointed both of them!

This lack of agitation has, in turn, however, given strength to the misplaced perception in the establishment in New Delhi and Srinagar that all is well in the valley and that there is no simmering discontent. An unprecedented rise in the number of tourists, the opening of new restaurants and bars in Srinagar and an overall decrease in militant violence is being cited as a corroboration of this view... read more:
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?286578

See also:

BHARAT BHUSHAN - ‘Progress’ is no balm for the Kashmiri’s daily humiliations