By Air Cmde TK Chatterjee(retd)
It is a well-established fact that a riot or violent civil disorder cannot last for more than 24 hours if the state does not want it to last. The state has immense powers, which if unleashed with intentions of controlling the disorder can bring such events to an end within the day. But if the state looks the other way when mayhem and arson take place, these events last longer. The riots against Sikhs in 1984, the Godhra massacre, and the recent problems in Manipur are cases in point. In all these cases, the state permitted violence to happen.
Similarly, insurgency in any country, or any region within a country, cannot last unless the local population wants it to last. The miscreants in these cases are part of the local population or are outsiders sheltered by the locals and are known to the locality as such. They thrive because the locality allows them to. Hamas survives despite the ruthless Israeli onslaught because Palestinians want them to. And Hamas will continue to survive because today’s children who are seeing their homes and families getting destroyed by Israeli bombs are the Hamas cadres of tomorrow. Afghans could not have fought out the British, the Russians, and the Americans unless the Afghan society in general did not support the fighters. Similarly, even if Ukraine falls to the Russians, their resistance to the Russian occupation will continue sine die because Ukrainian society will not accept the Russians.
A basic difference between sporadic riots and sustained insurgency is that in the former the will of the people does not matter and in the latter case, the will of the state does not matter.
That brings me to the insurgency in J&K, the purpose of this article.
The recent spate of attacks on civilians and armed forces in Jammu and Kashmir has drawn the attention of the nation towards insurgency after a pretty long hiatus. The MHA is holding a review of the situation, the CDS is visiting the region, more forces are being inducted, and the PM has ordered to unleash the “full spectrum of anti-insurgency capabilities” of the country. A fact overlooked is that this is not a riot, this is an insurgency.
And where will all this hullabaloo take us? A brief lull and then history will repeat itself.
A well-accepted reason for any insurgency in any region is unemployment, poverty, and a perceived feeling of marginalisation of a region or a section of the larger society. J&K had chosen to be different from the rest of India and hence has not really been an equal participant in the economic revolution that the country has seen since the opening up of the Indian economy in the nineties. Even then the Gross State Domestic Product ranked 21st out of 33 states and UTs in the year 2021-22, and 27th in GSDP per capita, as per Wikipedia, which quotes data released by the Planning Commission of India. The growth rate of GSDP was 9.61% between 2012-22 as per the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, GOI. The per capita GSDP increased steadily from INR 21 734/- in 2004-05 to INR 101 645/- in 2020-21. Some states fared worse than J&K in this period, but that did not give rise to insurgency in those regions. So, poverty per se is not the cause of insurgency.
Abrogation of Article 370 has brought about changes to the region and hopefully, the coming years will see the state integrate fully with the country and benefit from the economic progress of India. But there has to be a sustained effort by the state for decades to come.
The geopolitical factor influences the insurgency in the region more than what the local population can churn up. The periodic rhetoric on both sides of the LOC that those parts of Kashmir which are not under their control will be won back by force, does not help the situation. All three nuclear-armed neighbours who surround Kashmir know very well that they are merely playing up to their respective galleries. But Pakistan keeps the fire burning by sending infiltrators regularly to foment trouble in the valley. That they do so to keep the valley from becoming totally peaceful is understandable, because if that happens, Pakistan becomes irrelevant to the Kashmir cause. But what is not quite understandable is how they find sympathisers so easily in the valley. Without the help of the local population, such activities can never succeed.
Sometimes some events cause the unification or fragmentation of the sympathisers. The killing of Burhan Wani unified the protesters and the rioters.
Politics had failed long back to bring peace to the valley. The local politicians played for both sides of the LOC and received incentives from both. One to create trouble and the other to control trouble. It had therefore become a good business for few in the valley, the unsuspecting local youth served as only fodder for the canons. India has had no choice but to use the armed forces for decades in the region to control infiltration and terrorism. But once the military comes in, the game changes. However much one tries to avoid, it does become a police state. Also, the army does not use tear gas and rubber bullets and they do not hide their steel fist under velvet gloves. So, they make ideal targets for human rights activists whenever there are collateral damages during their operations. A recent case of some suspects dying while in custody of the army is a case in point.
As long as this game is played with guns, attacks, and counter-attacks will continue and blood will spill. It is the local society that must decide whether they want peace and prosperity or conflict and chaos. With a literacy level of 67.16%, there should be enough mature minds in the region to realise what is good for them in the long run. It falls on the GOI to provide tangible incentives for the society to accept that supporting insurgency is not the way to go. If that happens, the community will police itself and provide humint to law enforcement agencies, which then can take preventive actions. The army’s successful operations are mostly due to actionable humint and not due to the numerous eyes in the sky. While targeted operations, network detection and destruction, cybersecurity, travel security, etc can all run in the background, the societal commitment to end violence must remain at the forefront.
That being said, to unify the Kashmiris towards a common path of peace and prosperity along with the rest of India, and detoxify the society from the Pakistani influence, will take great leadership. Alas, such a leader, a Nelson Mandela kind, is nowhere on the Kashmiri horizon. That will certainly make the government’s job more difficult, but then we do have a government that brought J&K fully within the Indian fold legally. The rest should also be possible. As they say………..mumkin hai.
The author is an Indian Air Force Veteran.
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