The readmission of Syed Ali Shah Geelani into the Jamaat-e-Islami signifies the ascendancy of the hawks in the organisation and the fragility of the peace process in Jammu and Kashmir.
SUDDEN tragedy, high drama, narrative twists, miracles and farce: it is almost as if the peace process in Jammu and Kashmir is being authored by someone who has a day job scripting television soap opera.
On the edge of talks with Pakistan on the future of Jammu and Kashmir, Indian strategists have found that their ace - direct negotiations with moderate secessionists - has been stolen from the pack. Pakistan, for its part, seems to have demonstrated its ability to call the political shots in the State. The moderates on whose political ascendancy New Delhi predicated its peace efforts are in disarray, battered into submission by terrorist assault. And now, the keystone of the dialogue process seems to have cracked, with Islamist hawks taking control of the Jamaat-e-Islami. It is hard to say, of course, whether the peace process is actually dead - it might just be comatose, or even just lying with its eyes closed, waiting for an opportunity to spring to life and surprise the villain - but signs are that the next few episodes will be filled with bloodshed.
On August 1, the Jamaat readmitted hardline Islamist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani to its ranks, and announced its intention to revive its Political Affairs Committee (PAC), a body it had shut down last year as part of a long-running moderate initiative to extricate the organisation from secessionist politics. The decision was announced at the end of a two-day meeting of the Markazi Majlis-e-Shoora, the Jamaat's 25-member executive. A Jamaat spokesperson announced that Geelani would be free both to hold membership of the organisation and start a new political party dedicated to the liberation of Jammu and Kashmir. Most important of all, the Jamaat said that it would nominate a representative from the PAC to the Geelani faction of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), thus decisively breaking ranks with the centrist faction until recently led by the Shia cleric Maulvi Abbas Ansari.
Put simply, the moderates in the Jamaat had given up the fight. Days earlier, Geelani had announced that he planned to hold a meeting of the Arakeen Ijtimaa, a convention of empanelled members, at the Jamaat's offices on August 8. Nasir Ahmad Kashani, the amir or chief of the Jamaat, had claimed that the move violated the Jamaat constitution, arguing that the amir calling such a convention was his exclusive prerogative. An electoral college of about 2,000 empanelled members had elected Kashani as amir for a three-year term in 2003, along with the 25 delegates to the Markazi Majlis-e-Shoora, or central executive council. Kashani had, at the time, beaten off a tough challenge from Geelani's political protege, Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai. He then refused to help Geelani's campaign against the centrists in the Hurriyat, and secured the hardliner's removal from the frontlines of the Jamaat - braving direct threats to his life from the Hizbul Mujahideen leadership.
What explains the turnaround in the Jamaat? Kashani is not talking, but one explanation is that the Jamaat amir feared a vertical split in the organisation. Five of its six district presidents in the Kashmir valley threw their weight behind Geelani, support perhaps linked to none-to-discreet lobbying by the Pakistan-based leadership of the Hizbul Mujahideen. Although Geelani did not have the backing of the bulk of the Jamaat's basic membership, he did appear to command a majority in the district of Baramulla, and a solid following in Srinagar and Kupwara. By contrast, the moderates in the Jamaat were unable to carry the fight to their rank-and-file, afraid of terrorist attack. Kashani was unable to travel safely even in the moderate strongholds of Pulwama and Kulgam. He could also have been concerned about the chaos among the Hurriyat moderates, and fearful of being caught, so to speak, on the wrong end of a rotting bough.
OUTSIDE Jammu and Kashmir, the full import of these events has been little understood - most notably the enormous significance of the reversal within the Jamaat. In 1997, G.M. Bhat, the then amir of the Jamaat, came out of jail, gave an interview calling for an end to "gun culture", and set about distancing the organisation from the Hizbul Mujahideen. Geelani was incensed, but the tide was against him. In the spring of 1999, former Hurriyat chairman Abdul Gani Bhat called for a dialogue between mainstream political parties and secessionists, a marked departure from the organisation's demand for a three-way dialogue between itself, India and Pakistan. Both the leaders' initiatives laid the ground for dissident Hizbul Mujahideen commander Abdul Majid Dar declaring a unilateral ceasefire in July 2000 - which Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee promptly reciprocated.
Dar's ceasefire fell apart six months later: Islamist groups simply had no interest in participating in a dialogue that would lead to their marginalisation, and Pakistan was, predictably, uninterested in a peace process, the structure of which was not shaped by it. Terror, then as now, was the instrument chosen to silence the doves. Bhat's enthusiasm for dialogue dulled considerably after a near-successful attempt on his life on February 22, 2001. The general council of the Hurriyat, in turn, rejected the centrists' calls for direct dialogue after a grenade went off during the meeting called to discuss the issue. Dar, too, was shot dead by his one-time Hizb comrades. At a 2001 remembrance of the assassination of Mirwaiz Farooq's father, Mirwaiz Mohammad Farooq, armed men gathered around the rostrum shouted Bhat down. Exactly a year later to the day, key moderate leader Abdul Gani Lone was assassinated, making clear the costs of pursuing peace.
Lone's assassination - for which his son and political heir Sajjad Lone publicly held Geelani responsible - constituted a setback, but did not put an end to the peace process. Behind the scenes, Jamaat amir Bhat also worked quietly to strengthen the Hizbul Mujahideen dissidents. Shortly before his arrest in the build-up to the 2002 Assembly elections, Geelani found himself increasingly forced to turn to fringe extreme-right organisations outside the Jamaat-e-Islami, like Nayeem Khan's Kashmir Front and Shakeel Bakshi's Islamic Students' League. Matters came to a head soon after, with Geelani refusing to attend Hurriyat executive meetings unless Sajjad Lone was expelled for having put up proxy candidates. In May last year, the Jamaat moderates hit back, retiring Geelani as their political representative in the Hurriyat and refusing to back his Islamist faction of the secessionist coalition.
From early this year, with the coming to power of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in New Delhi, the Islamists prepared to hit back. Desultory efforts to make peace between the APHC's two factions, went nowhere. A string of terror attacks on individuals close to Farooq were used to drive home to the moderates the consequences of bucking Islamist fiat. Farooq's efforts to buy peace with a section of the Islamists, by attending the last rites of slain terrorist Rafiq Ahmad Dar, provoked Sajjad Lone to leave the ranks of the moderates. Ansari finally responded to the deteriorating security situation with panic, and abandoned his post at the bridge of the moderate APHC. The UPA's somewhat poorly thought-through efforts to rope Geelani into the dialogue process may have played a role in the decision, since it fuelled fears among the centrists of being left out in the cold.
WHERE might events go from here? It seems unlikely that Farooq, the most visible moderate Hurriyat leader, will be willing to assume a vanguard role in the near future. Apart from his political and security concerns, sources told Frontline, personal considerations have imposed considerable pressures on the religious leader. Command of his religious organisation, the Anjuman-e-Nusrat-ul-Islam, passes from father to son, and Farooq, who married three years ago, is yet to sire an heir. The family is deeply concerned about the risk of assassination, and wishes him to stay distant from controversy until a heir is born. Farooq has bucked this pressure in the past, but is now likely to focus his attentions on bringing about some kind of rapprochement between the factions in the Hurriyat.
Even as the moderates consider their next course of action, further conflict is possible within the Jamaat itself. Kashani and his fellow moderates will closely watch the course of events in Geelani's new party. If he is unable to attract a significant number of Jamaat rukuns, or rank-and-file members, the moderates could once again move to contain his authority. In this battle, the amount of coercive pressure Indian forces are able to mount on the Jamaat cadre will be critical. Should Jamaat cadre feel there is a significant deterrent against collaborating with Geelani and Hizbul Mujahideen, most would choose to stay affiliated with Kashani. Geelani, for his part, is likely to use energetically the services of the Hizbul Mujahideen to build cadre support for his new party. If he fails in building a mass organisation, he could find that the Jamaat-e-Islami representative in his Hurriyat faction is an opponent, rather than a source of legitimacy.
Irrespective of what outcomes this fluid struggle yields, it points in the direction of a central political problem in Jammu and Kashmir. In 1994, when People's League leader Shabbir Shah was released from jail, about 60,000 people gathered to greet him at Lal Chowk in Srinagar. The media hailed him as "the Nelson Mandela of Kashmir". Noting the disarray in Jammu and Kashmir politics, Shah promised "to unite the rosary of a hundred beads". "Today", the journalist Ahmad Ali Fayyaz noted wryly in a recent article, "he is one of the beads". Sheikh Abdul Aziz, Ghulam Qadir Hagroo and Farooq Rehmani head rival factions of the People's League, while Shah now heads a party called the Democratic Freedom Party. Even as the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) was engaged in making peace between the Hurriyat factions, its key leader, Javed Mir, parted ranks with his chieftain, Yasin Malik.
Nothing one sees now is new. Peacemaking needs to confront squarely one fundamental reality in Jammu and Kashmir: that Pakistan, not the politicians, holds the key to peacemaking. Both that country and the terrorist groups it backs know that violence has brought India to the table. Stopping the bloodshed, from their point of view, means the loss of an instrument to extract further concessions. Secessionist politicians, in turn, know they can deliver little unless there is meaningful forward movement on putting a meaningful de-escalation in hostilities, but are powerless to realise this objective since they have no influence over the armed groups. Put bluntly, politicians have good reason to pursue a short-term career and organisational objectives, knowing that the big prize is out of their reach. It is tempting to conclude that the peace process is back to square one - but worth pondering whether the game actually moved forward in the first place.
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