The recent Kulgam terror attack and the chilling killings of two SPOs in Kishtwar have once more exposed the persistence of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. More troubling has been the ruling Abdullah family’s equivocations that betray an unsettling reluctance to confront the terror at its principal source.
Terrorists first opened fire on a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) post near Mir Bazar in Kulgam, injuring three personnel. A day later, the bullet-riddled bodies of two missing Special Police Officers (SPOs), Rashpal Kumar and Babi Chand, were recovered from a forested stretch in Kishtwar. The incidents are deeply troubling indicators that the security challenge in Kashmir remains very much alive.
Against this backdrop, the pronouncements of National Conference president Farooq Abdullah are difficult to ignore. At a party gathering in Baramulla, he recently suggested that Pakistan’s international campaign to keep the Kashmir issue alive might ultimately be what saves Kashmiris. Coming from a former chief minister and the head of the ruling party, this was an astonishing inversion of cause and consequence. Pakistan, whose record of exporting terrorism into the Valley is written in blood, is hardly Kashmir’s prospective saviour.
In damage control mode, Abdullah subsequently sought to qualify his remarks, invoking the atrocities of the 1947 tribal invasion and reiterating that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India. One cannot portray Islamabad’s international campaign as Kashmir’s potential salvation one day and condemn its conduct the next without inviting questions about one’s political consistency.
For a party that routinely lectures New Delhi on Kashmir’s dignity and political rights, its reluctance to name and shame Islamabad with equal conviction is a rather revealing exercise in selective indignation.
The larger embarrassment is the studied ambiguity of the National Conference government. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah cannot indefinitely claim the authority of office when demanding cooperation from New Delhi and the helplessness of a son when his father makes politically damaging pronouncements. His government cannot demand political accommodation from the Centre while remaining conspicuously circumspect about the external forces that threaten the security of the very people it governs. Statehood and autonomy may be legitimate political demands; they are no substitute for an unequivocal position on terrorism.
New Delhi, too, would be unwise to mistake electoral participation and relative calm for the definitive defeat of militancy. The Kulgam attack and the Kishtwar killings demand sharper intelligence, sustained counterterrorism operations and protection for vulnerable local personnel.
Kashmiris have paid too heavy a price for terrorism to become an instrument of political one-upmanship. The Abdullahs cannot claim to speak for their aspirations while equivocating over the source of their insecurity. In Kashmir, doublespeak is not statesmanship. It is a dangerous luxury.
