No ball: If attacks like Pulwama continue, Imran Khan can kiss “Naya Pakistan” goodbye

If Imran Khan is serious about redefining Pakistan, now is the time to show his mettle as a leader. Claiming he has more important things to do than worry about martyred soldiers in Kashmir is not a great illustration of good international relations, but committing to bring the terrorists to task would be a good next step. 

I’ve spent the last week avoiding any impulse to write about the incident at Pulwama. With the intense media coverage, condemnations from celebrities and politicians alike, and general outcry on social media, there is really very little left to say. Neither will any amount of reflection on the part of an ordinary citizen alter the fact that nothing is likely to change as far as Indo-Pak relations go. In truth, many Indians haven’t quite gotten over the horrors of 26/11, so this new attack has been greeted with a sort of numb, hapless indignation.

A guy I knew in college once compared Pakistan to an annoying child, who keeps playing sinister pranks on an older, larger child – India. What the older child should do, he reasoned, is punch the kid really hard. That’s the only way the shenanigans will stop.

This is, by and large, the attitude of most Indians to how the long-standing conflict should be resolved. We secretly harbour a lust for an all-out confrontation with our neighbours to settle things once and for all, while also wearily admitting that war and violence are never the answer. Peace, we have decided, has tried and failed.

The analogy of the child spills over in many uncomfortable directions, as we all know. For one, what about the child’s parents (*cough*… China)? Would they not get involved if their offspring was assaulted by an older child? Second, what if the young child is not so helpless after all and decides to either fight back or retaliate in an even more aggressive manner. Or (and this is where it gets uncomfortable for Indians), what if the older child has been getting back at the younger one in smaller ways and the whole dynamic is now too far played out for anyone to assume the moral high ground anymore?

Illustration: Robin Chakraborty

Peace, we have decided, has tried and failed.

Like many cricket lovers, I was excited to learn of Imran Khan’s victory in the Pakistan elections. This was a man with a worldview. He had played and lived in different countries, was once married to a Westerner, and he could still make the women of my parents’ generation swoon. Surely, he would be the one to build bridges and help resolve this never-ending saga of hate.

Yet, hearing his statement – made a cringeworthy five days after the attack – brought back memories of his speech after the World Cup Final in 1992, where he went off on a rant about a hospital he was building. The man still appears to have trouble reading the room.

For one, he confessed that his meeting with the Prince of Saudi Arabia was the reason for his delayed response on the matter, thereby underlining – somewhat tactlessly – that there were more important things on his plate than the murder of 44 soldiers. He then went on to say that pinning the blame on Pakistan was not fair, reasoning that Pakistan would have no benefit in creating problems like this, especially when they have ambitions for economic growth. Then, he distanced himself from the Pakistan-based terror outfit, Jaish-e-Mohammed, calling them enemies of the country.

Just when you thought this was going to lead to some harsh introspection, he threw down the fun suggestion that India should re-look at its strategy in Kashmir, since the current approach was breeding suicide bombers. Finally, he signed off with a zippy declaration that if India took any military actions against Pakistan, it would basically mean war and ended with what I assume was the Hindi rap version of the song “War, what is it good for?”

To look for an apology or even a note of empathy in his statement would be futile. The man approached the whole affair with the emotions of a white walker.

It was like telling someone that your dog ran out and bit, “I’m sorry I didn’t come over at the time, but we had guests over and we worked really hard to set up the party”. Then you question the victim on whether it was in fact your dog that bit him. Then you begin a philosophical debate about whether the victim is himself creating an atmosphere conducive to elevated levels of dog aggression. Finally, you threaten that any action taken by the victim will result in more dog biting.

The only possible saving grace for Imran Khan in all this is that his former wife Rehman Khan claims he’s merely a puppet of the Pakistani Army.

There appear to be no happy scenarios here. If Imran Khan is only a pawn of the ISI – as so many Pakistani premiers appear to have been – no assurance on his part can ensure that more Pulwama-type incidents won’t be around the corner. The ISI and the Indian Army have long been at each other’s throats and things are very much expected to continue as they have been.

Would they not get involved if their offspring was assaulted by an older child?

However, consider for a moment that there are some remnants of a World Cup-winning spine still nestled between Imran Khan’s broad shoulders. Leaving aside the ill-worded awkwardness of his statement, his logic on economics is not flawed. He was ushered into power on a promise of bringing in a “Naya Pakistan”, ripe with jobs, prosperity, and possibly thin on terrorism, which destabilises any hope of economic development.

In less than a week since Pulwama, we have 200 per cent tariffs on Pakistan imports into India; Pakistani actors have been flung out of Bollywood; and the US has named Pakistan as a possible perpetrator in the attack. None of these fit into Khan’s political manifesto and may perhaps explain the detached frustration with which he delivered his response. Each time something like this happens, his main job of convincing people to invest in Pakistan’s economic story, becomes that much harder.

If he is serious about redefining Pakistan, there is no better opportunity for Imran Khan to show his mettle as a leader than this. For starters, he needs to embrace the idea that his army might be working with terrorist outfits, rather than hide behind the gripe that the world keeps looking to make Pakistan its “whipping boy”. Claiming he has more important things to do than worry about martyred soldiers is not a great illustration of good international relations but committing to bring the terrorists to task would be a good next step.

Whether he has the power to influence this kind of change, we do not know. If he doesn’t there is little point in him sticking around at all. He is a wealthy man and I can’t imagine his ambition for his twilight years was to sit around and take orders from the ISI.

The Kashmir issue isn’t going to be sorted overnight. But maybe with a little help from our leaders, we can pull in the same direction to ensure that young men don’t blow themselves up to kill more young men. As a man who has enthralled the world of sport with his leadership abilities, maybe it’s time for Imran Khan to dazzle us once more.

(Source: Arre)

Pulwama attack: How educated fidayeens are making militancy glamorous in Kashmir

Back in the ’90s, those who joined the Kashmir militancy were mostly uneducated, marginalised men. But the rise of educated militants like Adil Ahmad Dar has ushered in a new phase in the militancy, and the stark contrast from the ’90s cannot be overlooked.

On April 2, 2011, a 12-year-old boy from Gundibagh, a sleepy hamlet in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district, found his hero when Mahendra Singh Dhoni won the World Cup final for India by hitting a towering six over long on. For the next seven years, the Indian team’s captain became this village boy’s idol. He cherished every helicopter shot, every rapid stumping, and every triumph. Two years ago, when Dhoni’s team lost to Pakistan in the final of the ICC Champions Trophy, he knew what his Kashmiri friends who cheered for the rival team would have in store for him. He locked himself up in his room, and didn’t step outside for a couple of days.

On February 14, this Team India fan rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into a CRPF convoy at Lethpora, Pulwama, on the Srinagar-Jammu highway, killing more than 40 Indian jawans. This Team India fan was Adil Ahmad Dar, known to the world as the teen who executed the deadliest suicide attack on security forces in Kashmir. Adil spent a year waiting to attack, which has taken the Indo-Pak relationship to a new low. But what changed in six months? Until July 18, 2017, the day of the Champions Trophy final, he was still rooting for India.

Adil’s father, Ghulam Hassan Dar, remembers his son as a diligent student who chipped in to support the family. He packed apples in boxes, worked as a painter, took up manual labour, and occasionally led prayers at the local mosque. Nothing seemed amiss and then, on March 19, 2018, just before his Class 12 exams, Adil went missing along with his cousin.

Ghulam Dar says the drawn-out Kashmir conflict is the only reason Adil could have been motivated to join the Jaish-e-Mohammed. He remembers an incident in 2016 that left his son humiliated. Adil was returning home when at the Kakapora area, he was caught in the middle of a clash between stone-pelting protesters and the police. He was detained even though he was not part of the protest. Adil kept asking his father why he was harassed when he had nothing to do with the stone-pelters. The everyday discrimination against Kashmiri youth pushed Adil’s buttons, which was enough to turn him to militancy. The family pleaded with him to return, to no avail.

Illustration: Shruti Yatam

In a final message, Adil urged Indian Muslims to stand up against “the enemy”. A week after he took his own life and that of several CRPF soldiers, his father calls for putting an end to hatred and initiating a dialogue process between New Delhi and Islamabad. “This is the only way to save human lives on either side,” Ghulam Dar says. “The loss of human lives, whether it is of my militant son or of the Indian soldier, doesn’t benefit anyone.”

In a final message, Adil urged Indian Muslims to stand up against “the enemy”.

It pains him to see so many young, educated men turn to militancy. While Adil was a school dropout, the same cannot be said about the stream of educated youth like the 27-year-old Manaan Bashir Wani, a Ph.D. scholar from Aligarh Muslim University, who joined the militant ranks after 2016’s summer uprising. Wani was killed in a gunfight with the troops in October last year, as were scores of other educated Kashmiri men who choose guns over books. Back in the ’90s, those who joined the militancy were mostly uneducated, marginalised men. Men like Nadeem Khateeb, who were foreign-educated but still returned to Kashmir to join the insurgency, were outliers.

Today, they are the norm. Zakir Moosa, the present chief of the Al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind is an engineer. The now-slain Mohammad Rafi Bhat was an assistant professor, and Junaid Ahmad, son of separatist leader Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai is an MBA.

The rise of educated militants has ushered a new phase in the Kashmir militancy, and its stark contrast from the militancy of the ’90s cannot be overlooked. In a way, educated militants have made the idea of taking to arms more aspirational, drawing more young men to it. It has also seen the lives of some brilliant students like Ishaq Ahmad, known to his friends as “Newton”, cut short. In 2015, the 19-year-old from Laribal — famous in school for his brilliant score of 98.4 per cent in his Std X exams — left home to join the Hizbul Mujahideen. A year later, he was killed in an overnight encounter in Tral.

Siddiq Wahid, the former Vice-Chancellor of the Islamic University of Science and Technology, which is based in Awantipora, just a few kilometers from the Pulwama attack site, says the nature of the dispute in the region is why educated youth are joining militancy. “It started off as a territorial dispute and the rights of people. However, the arrogance of the Indian state in the last 70 years has transformed it into a conflict over dignity and, of course, human rights. The educated are more aware of these parameters and are affected by it because they can read its implications for the future. If the dispute were about economics or class, one imagines that the demography would have been somewhat different, whereas today the armed rebels constitute a cross-section of society.”

But are educated militants a bigger threat? Javed Mir, one of the first few youths to have joined the Kashmir militancy in the late ’80s, seems to think so. Mir, who renounced violence after his organisation declared an “indefinite ceasefire”, says when he visits the villages, young people question him about the ceasefire and ask him what it has yielded for Kashmir. “The Kashmiri youth has taken a lesson from that ceasefire and understood that New Delhi and the international community has not fulfilled their promise of resolving Kashmir,” he says.

In a way, educated militants have made the idea of taking to arms more aspirational, drawing more young men to it.

Back in the ’90s, the young in Kashmir were angry, but today, they also have the ability to reason. Today, they question activists and moderate voices over why their overtures of peace are met with an iron fist. In December 2018, national vice-president of the BJP and state-in-charge Avinash Rai Khanna said that Operation All Out would continue in Kashmir until the last terrorist is killed. Since 2017, 496 militants have been killed but more than 150 civilians have also lost their lives in the action by the armed forces. That is a huge number to be brushed under the carpet as collateral damage.

For the young, educated Kashmiri, this is an everyday reality. With access to the internet and social media, young Kashmiris know what unfolds in other parts of the country. Be it the lynchings, the glamorisation of educated militancy, or simply the treatment meted out to fellow Kashmiris in other parts of the country. And in the wake of Pulwama, they are feeling the heat. Away from all conflict, those studying in universities and colleges across the country are subject to discrimination. The government might have dismissed reports of harassment, but two educational institutions in Dehradun declared that they will not admit students from the Valley. Several Kashmiri students and workers in Uttarakhand and Haryana have been forced to leave the state. In Bhopal, six Kashmiri students were expelled from a nursing college after pressure from Bajrang Dal activists and in Ambala, more than 100 students were asked to vacate their rented accommodation, The Indian Express reported.

It is this “otherness” that pushes young, educated Kashmiris to the wall. Adil Ahmad Dar was humiliated by the forces, and now, by asking Kashmiri students to leave another batch of young men is being further humiliated.

In Kashmir, every tragedy is followed by a bigger tragedy. But the cycle of violence has to stop somewhere. Adil Ahmad Dar should not become a phenomenon. The youth of Kashmir earned their degrees in hopes of finding a better life than the violence they live in. They deserve a chance to lead that life.

(Source: Arre)