Mehbooba wants India to talk to Pakistan, separatists in Kashmir

Indian officials have repeatedly ruled out talks with Pakistan unless it acts against militant groups based there

Current Affairs: India should talk to Pakistan and separatists in Kashmir to defuse tension arising from a suicide attack on a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) convoy that was claimed by Pakistan-based militants, a former chief minister of the state said. Mehbooba Mufti, who was chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir from early 2014 to June last year when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party withdrew support for her regional party, said an ongoing crackdown on militants and those supporting secession could further alienate the people.

India has vowed to kill all the militants in the country’s only Muslim-majority state if they do not give up arms, after a 20-year-old local man killed 40 paramilitary troopers in a suicide attack last month. Indian security forces have killed 18 militants in Kashmir since then, the army said on Monday. The attack nearly led to another war between arch-rival India and Pakistan, both of which claim the Himalayan region in full but rule in part.

“I strongly feel that there has to be a dialogue process internally as well as externally, with Pakistan,” Mufti said in an interview on Friday. “The situation is going to get worse if some kind of political process is not initiated on the ground now.” Indian officials have repeatedly ruled out talks with Pakistan unless it acts against militant groups based there. India says its warplanes late last month bombed a militant camp in Pakistan, which responded with an aerial attack the next day….

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How to tackle Kashmir militancy? Youth need change, not surrender policies

This time, the youth has to be wooed and the realities of mass media mean that the government needs to 'market' its product efficiently

 

It is called the ‘New Age Militancy’. Youth who are younger than 20 years of age, indifferent to their parents’ pleas, are joining militant groups, only to be killed a few weeks later. Like Faizan Bhat of Tral who was all of 15, and remained a militant for two months before becoming a casualty statistic. More recently, it was Faid Mushtaq Waza of Khanyar who was 18 and was last seen on social media posing with a gun. This shift in militancy patterns has disastrous consequences for everyone, barring the militants’ leadership and their backers.

For Kashmiris, it’s yet another indication of the failure of the state. To the security forces, it means a compounded threat, since the youth are so much more willing to die for a cause they barely understand. For the jihadis, the death of a young militant is a cause for celebration. That means that a brother, father or a group of friends are likely to join before they too are killed. For the government, however, it can be both a problem and an opportunity. A problem, because tired old rehabilitation policies being regurgitated by police officials have little meaning to idealistic youth; opportunity, because imaginative measures have the potential to significantly change the situation, provided there is a willingness to learn lessons from the past.

Overview of surrender policies

The very first surrender policy announced on Independence Day in 1995 was under the Governor, General (retd) K.V. Krishna Rao’s administration. This virtually replicated the policies introduced earlier for Naxalites, with a one-time fixed deposit of Rs 1.5 lakh, a monthly stipend of Rs 1,800, and some vocational training. Some 2,229 militants surrendered under this first policy indicating a desire to change. However, accounts of that period indicate that promised incentives remained undelivered. For instance, banks refused to back a plan to provide loans to finance small businesses. Promised training suffered due to poor facilities and lackadaisical funding. A rehabilitation council provided minimal funds for widows or children of militants, not the ex-militants themselves.

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