Until My Freedom Has Come. Sanjay Kak
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the intelligence we get is not worth the paper it is printed on, and that’s a charitable way of putting it,’ Abdullah told India Today magazine in an interview published on 8 October. ‘Most of the reports are simply accounts of what has happened and there are no assessments of what is likely to happen. The presumption that Kashmir is simply crawling with intelligence operatives is ridiculous. You cannot create a network of credible information and analysis overnight. In the last twenty-odd years of militancy, our intelligence system has deteriorated. I am making a huge effort to overhaul the CID structure.’
As anti-India protests spiralled across the region, police and CID operatives became their first targets. Protesters began attacking paramilitary camps with stones and other missiles, as well as police stations that also housed intelligence units. The onslaught demoralized the field operatives and all but restricted them to their fortified offices. A field officer told Jane’s Intelligence Review: ‘It became impossible for us to be seen on the ground. We risked being lynched by the mobs. We started talking to media outlets even for basic information about the scale and spread of protests.’ Another intelligence official told Jane’s Intelligence Review that the state’s intelligence grid had collapsed in the face of spreading unrest. Field operatives, both officials and civilian recruits who had over the years become known to the residents as part of various intelligence networks, became virtually useless.
Officials also admitted that over the years a certain amount of complacency had set in with the arrival of sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment. The easy availability of information from tapped mobile telephone conversations ‘dampened the cultivation of human intelligence’. They said this outcome had resulted in a lot of civilian sources being abandoned.
Another intelligence official speaking to Jane’s Intelligence Review on condition of anonymity said: ‘Some of these sources were seen participating in and leading protests at many places to save themselves from public wrath.’
The intelligence apparatus, with its access to human intelligence now restricted, was also faced with activists using social media such as Facebook and YouTube to mobilize within Kashmir, and to communicate with the outside world. The CID has started a crackdown on such activity, with one student detained by police officers after they found out he had posted a list of police officials on his Facebook page, calling them ‘traitors’. As of mid-October, in Shopian alone three people, including a bank executive, had been arrested in connection with their Facebook activity.
Over the past twenty years, the intelligence apparatus had configured itself to deal with the traditional media and with well-known separatist leaders such as Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Yasin Malik and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. Now it is pitched against a diffuse leadership, many of whom are well-travelled and university-educated, and able to bypass these traditional focuses for dispersing information. These numerous neighbourhood leaders often have no past police record and no history of political mobilization. The government has found it hard to crackdown on these activists in the absence of a substantial political response from New Delhi.
By late September, New Delhi sent a thirty-nine-member delegation of parliamentarians on a two-day visit to Kashmir to help draft a political response. Most of the senior separatist leaders, who were under strict curfew, declined formal invitations to meet the group, but several members of the delegation visited the separatist leaders’ residences, appealing to them to help restore calm in the region. During one such encounter on 20 September, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who had been placed under house arrest, presented five preconditions for official dialogue, including the demand that government forces stop firing on anti-government protesters. Other demands included a formal acknowledgement by the government that Kashmir was under international dispute, the release of all political prisoners, the announcement of a demilitarization schedule and an investigation into all civilian killings by government forces since 1989. The Mirwaiz further demanded that India and Pakistan constitute parliamentary committees for negotiating a final settlement of the ‘Kashmir dispute’ and include the Kashmiri separatist leadership. Yasin Malik also reiterated his demand that separatists be made a part of the Kashmir-specific element of the more general Indo-Pakistani dialogue process.
One aspect all of them made clear was that they would not be able to influence the agitating population unless significant political concessions were formally offered. Their position signified the single biggest change the summer unrest had wrought: the separatist old guard no longer has absolute control over the Kashmiri civilian population. Much of the unrest had been orchestrated by little-known leaders who may not even fully trust the old resistance leadership any more.
Apparently aware of the new realities, the leaders appear to have refrained from public disagreements, instead urging demonstrators to remain peaceful during protests and giving clear signals that Pakistan was not in control of the Kashmiri resistance. This gave the protesters a new impetus and a sense of ownership that has led to much greater participation in the protests from students and professionals, including lawyers, doctors and teachers. Recent protests in Iran, Thailand, Tibet and Myanmar seem to have given rise to a feeling in Kashmir that public opinion in the West can be influenced by non-violent protests and the intelligent use of new media.
New Delhi has so far only fanned the smoke away but may have left the embers burning. Meanwhile, an eight-point political package presented by the government in New Delhi on 25 September was greeted with disappointment in Kashmir. Among the initiatives announced were the appointment of a group of mediators to hold ‘sustained dialogue’ with Kashmiris, the release of several hundred people detained for stone-throwing and a reduction in the number of security forces stationed in the valley. The plan also allows for the review of areas designated as ‘disturbed’, a move which could result in the rescinding of the application of the AFSPA to parts of Kashmir. Grants will also be awarded to the families of those killed during the summer’s unrest. Geelani rejected the initiative, terming it ‘eyewash’, while other separatist leaders responded to parts of the package.
The parliamentary group’s effort could therefore be seen as a lost opportunity for New Delhi to engage with the new activism in Kashmir. The armed rebellion of 1990 had similarly resulted in the central government sending a group of prominent lawmakers to Kashmir. The response then was a major military campaign, parts of which are still in place, fighting remnants of that old insurgency. Governing the restive region has since remained a function of security control achieved through militarization. This time around, such a forceful and security-driven option seems counter-productive.
The Kashmir issue has caught the attention of Western capitals once again as hesitation in attempts by India and Pakistan to make progress on Kashmir remains. In 2004, during Pervez Musharraf’s regime, Pakistan had come close to sealing a Kashmir deal with India. Statements emanating from Washington have also encouraged the Kashmir street. Ahead of a visit by United States President Barack Obama to India in November, separatists in Kashmir increased the pressure. If the past three years are any indication, this summer’s large-scale mobilization could intensify in 2011, as the stand-off continues between protesters in Kashmir and New Delhi.
The new generation of separatist leaders seems to have made a conscious decision not to take up arms again, even as they push for the same objectives as the armed rebels—a move to retain a moral supremacy over ‘Indian occupation’. This represents a major shift in tactics, and one to which political leaders both in Kashmir and in New Delhi may struggle to produce an adequate response. The government is unlikely to meet the protesters’ demands in full, not least because it may feel that such a move would hand effective power in the region to the APHC. As such, the most likely outcome in the short term, especially given Alam’s arrest and the return to a tentative peace, is an intensified attempt at dialogue, in a bid to keep the temperature low and the streets calm in the coming months.
A version of this article appeared in Jane’s Intelligence Review, December 2010.