Grappling with Kashmir: Pakistan plays permanent trouble-maker

Much time has elapsed since the Jammu and Kashmir government ordered the opening of schools in four of the 10 districts – Baramulla, Bandipora, Budgam and Ganderbal as well as the winter Zone of Jammu division – after the protests and closures in the wake of the gunning down of Burhan Wani by the security forces. The deceased was a 22-year-old operative of the Hizbul Mujahideen, a terrorist outfit that is banned by India, the US and the European Union but is glorified in Pakistan.

Yet, the students are not back to their classes in substantial numbers. As part of their sinister designs, sections of the Pakistan establishment and hardline Indian separatist leaders like Syed Ali Shah Gilani have been inciting them not to go. Anti-India propaganda has indeed been in overdrive in Nawaz Sharif-run Pakistan with the army watching over his actions to make sure that he does not again swerve from the anti-India path.

In Pakistan, 50 Indian children belonging to families of diplomats studying in an American school in Islamabad have been told by the Indian High Commission that they cannot continue to study in Pakistan. Evidently, the Indian government did not want to take any chances with more protests likely against India in Pakistan in the next few days.

Some of these protests, which have openly called for jihad against India, have been led by terrorists identified as such by the United Nations.

Indeed, strained relations between India and Pakistan have reached such a summit that even students on both sides are having to take a hit in their studies because the two countries are at dagger's drawn. This is disastrous news for the Indo-Pak peace process and is food for thought for those who felt that with the passage of time and a new generation of people on both sides the unpleasant memories of partition will give way to a new era of hope.

All that bonhomie that characterised the relationship when Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an unscheduled halt at Lahore on his way back from an official visit to some countries including Afghanistan last December has evaporated. There is hostility again and bitterness of old memories.

India wouldn't give up its control over Jammu and Kashmir come what may and why should it, while Pakistan wouldn't give up fomenting trouble there in the hope that the 'Paradise on earth' would someday come under its fold. In the process, opportunities to fight the economic scourge in the two neighbours India and Pakistan are squandered and the proverbial swords are unsheathed and held ready.

When Burhan Wani, a creature of Pakistani misguided training and arming, was gunned down, the Nawaz Sharif government swung into action calling him a martyr to the cause of freeing Kashmir from India and a victim of Indian 'barbarism.' Demonstrations were held in Pakistan to espouse Kashmir's 'cause' and the youth were dragged to the streets for it. The challenge to Indian sovereignty was total and all norms of international behaviour were violated with impunity.

Today, there is not even a pretence of non-interference from Pakistan in Kashmir even though the world at large is totally opposed to Islamabad's machinations, having seen that Pakistan is a hotbed of extremism and a laboratory for worldwide jihadists.

Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, normally reticent when talking of Pakistan's wrongs, was realistic and candid for once when she lashed out at the Pakistan establishment on the day Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh returned to Delhi from Srinagar and said that 'Pakistan needs to change its policy of provoking Kashmiri youth for picking up guns'.

"It (Pakistan) says that we are victims of terror; their 146 children died in school attack in a single day (in Peshawar) and people fear to go inside their mosques. And today when Kashmiri children take up guns they call them leaders and say they are doing good thing but when their own children, some from madrasas (Islamic seminaries) etc back home take up guns they attack them with drones and then hang them in military courts," she told reporters in Srinagar.

Referring to Pakistan's glorification of Burhan Wani, the Chief Minister said: "I feel that Pakistan has this time committed excesses. They need to change this policy."

It is well known that outfits like the Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Taiba have been recruiting young men, training and arming them with the ulterior motive of using them for their own nefarious ends at the behest of Pakistan. There is no mistaking the fact that Burhan Wani was working for the Pakistan government with the avowed objective of causing subversion and chaos in India.

But while Pakistan's destructive role is manifest, the fact is that there is a deep sense of alienation among Kashmiri youth which is reflected in the disturbances in many towns of Jammu and Kashmir every now and then. A sense of drift is not the solution.

Pakistan is working to a sinister strategy of putting women and children before the police in the forefront of agitations. The intent is to stall police action and in the event of the police opening fire on demonstrators if there is a youth casualty to project it as an example of atrocities by Indian security forces.

Be that as it may, there is a dire need for the Centre to win over the Kashmiri youth. The surfeit of jobs that the Modi government talked about has not materialised. Unemployment and poverty are rampant. The Mehbooba Mufti government needs to act tougher on crime while an olive branch is held out in the shape of more jobs and greater economic well-being.

Anti-India sloganeering after Friday prayers must stop and those who wear their secessionist intent on their sleeves must pay the price for it.

The author is a senior journalist and political analyst