The Center Falls Out of Kashmir

The assassination last week of Kashmiri leader Abdul Ghani Lone ended a political generation in South Asia. Among the last old-fashioned nationalists who believed that Kashmiris should decide their political fate without instruction from India or Pakistan, Lone risked his life for an idea of tolerance that has nearly disappeared from the subcontinent’s political life. As New Delhi and Islamabad prepare for war, Lone’s death, an inevitable consequence of sectarianism and militancy gone mad, has dealt a body blow to political civility.

It is easy to wax romantic about Kashmir. “In the lake the arms of temples and mosques are locked in each other’s reflections,” wrote Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali, and, until the 1980s, this was how most Kashmiris understood their home. But war overcame Kashmir long ago, scarring its valleys, displacing its people and poisoning its politics. Battles among local insurgents, foreign-backed militant groups and hundred of thousands of Indian security forces have punctuated the stillness of the countryside since insurgency began in 1989--and Kashmiris have gained nothing.

Some things have changed during these 13 years, however. No one paid attention to the early insurgency. Kashmir was just another, occasionally explosive addendum to South Asia’s poverty-stricken, hyperbolic politics. India claimed that the fate of its union rested on Kashmir’s shoulders, Pakistan that its political identity was tied to Kashmir’s, and both demanded that their mutual hostility be solved in, or by, Kashmir. Insurgents insisted that only armed struggle would rescue Kashmir from New Delhi’s political corruption, and Islamic militants demanded that Kashmir should become Asia’s advertisement for ideological purity.

Perched among these competing visions are Kashmir’s political rebels. They are mostly old men and the sons of their dead compatriots, men, like Lone, who passionately seek a way for Kashmir to survive. They have lived for decades at the edge of failure: Since India and Pakistan became independent in 1947, Kashmiris have pressed their case for special constitutional rules for their special place, convinced that only special care will save them from fragmentation and their neighbors from war. Lone and his colleagues were optimists and democrats of a sort, certain that conflicts about Kashmir could be settled in Kashmir, among Kashmir’s diverse communities.

Three wars and one long insurgency have tested their ideas, commitments and durability. With Lone’s death, hardly anyone is left to uphold the mantle of ordinary politics. Violence has marred the crossroads culture of the Srinagar Valley, endangered border areas where Kashmiris, Pakistanis and Indians used to meet and marry, and disfigured the political landscape almost beyond recognition. Ironically, low-intensity war in Kashmir has given Indian security forces and militants common cause: With no leaders left who value moderation, outright war begins to sound like a solution to South Asia’s violence.

Kashmir’s travails, like Afghanistan’s, have now merged into the terrain of terrorism that plagues all its neighbors. Some Kashmiris thought the global anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan might solve their problems--after all, strategic bargains among militants boosted the insurgency at critical moments. But Kashmir seems lost once again lost to deal-making and deal-breaking among bigger, stronger powers.

India claims the time is ripe to settle the problem of cross-border terrorism by force. Pakistan may appear tethered to the goals of the global anti-terrorism campaign, but it is unlikely to countenance Indian aggression, whether on its soil or Kashmir’s. Kashmir may not be the cause for war between the two countries, but it is an available excuse and, certainly, an easy venue in which to wage it.

Worse still, militancy may increase, at least in the short term. Two years ago, Kashmiri leader Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, at whose father’s grave Lone was killed, said that “militancy is taking a new shape which will be beyond any control.” He was correct. Both India and Pakistan remain captive to right-wing extremists. In recent weeks, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has watched from the sidelines as communal riots have torn apart India’s Gujarat state, while Pakistan’s Gen. Pervez Musharraf is busy arresting protesters who object to repressive Islamic laws. Neither seems to recognize the contradictions in policies that join their states to those who want to destroy them.

The day Lone was killed, Vajpayee visited Kashmir, India and Pakistan massed troops along their shared border, the British defense chief traveled to India and the U.S. deputy secretary of State announced plans to visit, too. The world now worries about South Asia. With war on the horizon, however, entreaties to act peaceably are no substitute for clear policies based on principled politics.

Lone will be missed. Indignant and persistent, he spoke his version of truth to all power-holders. He consistently rejected the incursions of Pakistan-based militants and objected strenuously to Pakistan’s policy supporting them. Keen to keep Kashmir alive as a unique opportunity for regional resolution, he bristled at any attempts to equate its problem with Afghanistan’s. Lone was willing to treat both Vajpayee and Musharraf not only as obstacles but also as instruments for future political reconciliation, and lately, he was contemplating participating in Jammu and Kashmir state assembly elections, due in September. He was not always right, but he was always there.