Centre seems to have lost its way on J&K

Kashmir is going badly, both in security terms and in terms of the absence of an enabling political environment. The worry is that the Centre has so far given little room for optimism that any meaningful steps are being considered to check the slide. Last week six policemen were killed and the faces of the deceased disfigured, after a group of three local operatives of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT), including its regional leader, were shot dead in an encounter with the security forces. Days before that a succession of attacks took place on the CRPF in locations spread across the Valley, that were suggestive of the scale of planning, coordination and communications precision that terrorist groups have managed to summon since last year. This says something for the inability of the government to track and halt the disruptive elements. In the past year, regular militant attacks on Army encampments have also increased.

In a fragile situation, the security grid typically fails to get the desired results when the political grid is inactive, or shows no results. This appears to be the case since the present government took office. Last week, chief minister Mehbooba Mufti yet again urged on the floor of the state Assembly that Kashmir was an “issue” and that the matter could not be set right without dialogue. In the past year, her urgings have fallen on deaf years in New Delhi. Since her party — the PDP — runs a coalition government with the BJP in Kashmir, the manifest inability of the CM to cut any ice with the leadership of the saffron party, with Union home minister Rajnath Singh or Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has boosted the morale of the violent extremists. Pakistan has also been palpably encouraged to take advantage of the situation. This it does by creating incidents on the Line of Control on a routine basis and infiltrating armed terrorists, who boost local extremists.

The violent extremists in the Valley and their well-wishers across the LoC are now confident that the state government and the PDP, the Kashmiri party that has aligned itself with the BJP to form a government for the first time in the state’s history, carry little credibility with the people, and even less sympathy. This helps to portray the daily killings done by the militants in heroic light and the response of the security forces as the actions of an occupier. Hundreds gathered for the funeral of the three LeT men taken out by the security forces last week, shots were fired, and the Pakistani flag displayed. In contrast, the six policemen who were ambushed and killed as reprisal had strictly family funerals No politician took the risk of paying a visit. Has the government completely lost its way?