GHULAM MOHAMMAD MIR was shot dead five days before the border district of Kupwara voted for Jammu and Kashmir's first panchayat elections in two decades. The halqa (block) president of the National Conference (N.C.) at Chiarkut, near Magam, had defied te rrorist posters, plastered on walls and lamp posts through the area, decreeing that no one should participate in the elections. On January 10, a hit squad of the Hizbul Mujahideen, led by local operative Abdul Ganai Vilayat, enforced their ban. Elsewhere , N.C. workers were forced at gunpoint into mosques, and told to proclaim their disassociation from the party over public address systems.
It is little wonder that Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah is seriously unhappy with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's conduct of Jammu and Kashmir policy. At least eight workers of his party have been executed by terrorists since the Ramzan ceasefire c ame into force. With security forces having withdrawn to defensive positions, N.C. cadre and their families are being targeted one by one. MLA Mohammad Dilawar Mir's brother Abdul Majid Mir was killed at Rafiabad on January 12, bombs were hurled at the h omes of State Ministers Mushtaq Ahmed Lone and Ali Mohammad Sagar on January 11 and 13. Abdullah himself was subjected to a grenade attack in downtown Srinagar on January 14, although the usual 2-km security cordon around his public meetings ensured that the explosives fell only some distance away.
Abdullah's efforts to show that the party still has legitimacy have been sabotaged by the sustained violence. Some 75 per cent of voters in the three blocks of Kupwara, and over 65 per cent of voters in five blocks of Rajouri and Poonch, exercised their franchise on January 15. But owing to the sustained violence, the subsequent phases of the elections, which were to have taken place on January 17 and 19, were cancelled.
The elections were intended to show that the N.C. still commanded popular legitimacy in the State, and the high voter turnout seemed to prove that. The Chief Minister hoped to use the elections to show that any negotiation on the future status of Jammu a nd Kashmir could not exclude his party.
On the record, Abdullah has supported the extension of the ceasefire, and asked terrorist groups to join the peace process. Off the record, he has made no secret of his scepticism about the Union government's policy. At a January 18 meeting in New Delhi, he expressed his reservations to the Prime Minister. The number of instances of the killing of civilians, he said, had not come down and levels of violence had in fact risen. The ceasefire, he later told reporters, "did not just mean violence had to sto p at the borders". One day earlier, he had asked Pakistan to end its support for terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir "or face war". The day he was attacked, the Chief Minister proclaimed that he had instructed his police force not to capture terrorists, as he did not have "money to feed them in jails".
Indeed, the Jammu and Kashmir Police have renewed their operational activities at near pre-ceasefire levels. Several top terrorists have been eliminated, some in controversial circumstances. One of the far-Right Muslim League's activists, Mushtaq Ahmed, was eliminated by the Jammu and Kashmir Police's Special Operations Group in an encounter in mid-January. The police claimed that he was working with Hizb terrorists, a charge that Ahmed's supporters deny. "I don't see why we should protect the rights of people who have no compunctions about killing innocent people themselves," one senior officer told Frontline. The Chief Minister's hardline approach is in stark contrast to his position some months ago, when his party activists sought to disassoc iate themselves from alleged excesses.
Within the N.C., not all appear to share the Chief Minister's new aggression. On January 23, the party's provincial president G.N. Shaheen accused New Delhi of "ruling Kashmir by its Army", and of "denying the people their right to self-determination". T his stark departure from the N.C.'s official position may have been intended to appropriate part of the secessionist constituency. There is also not a little disquiet in N.C. ranks over the Chief Minister's unwillingness to push ahead with demands for la rger federal autonomy. The intense terrorist pressure on the N.C., and talks of a dialogue with secessionist groups, could leave the largest political formation in the State increasingly alienated from New Delhi.
How Abdullah plays his cards in the months to come will be interesting to watch. The ceasefire, barring some unexpected and dramatic development, is unlikely to survive the spring. Renewed offensive operations will then pave the way for the panchayat ele ctions to proceed. Although the elections are being fought on a non-party basis, high turn-out levels will be interpreted by the N.C. leadership as reason for confidence. Abdullah could then recommend early Assembly elections in order to pre-empt any arr angement between the All Parties Hurriyat Conference and the Union government involving a shift in political power in Jammu and Kashmir.
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