SRINAGAR: Militants in Kashmir do not appear to be sharing the Pakistan government’s euphoria over the outcome of the recently held talks between the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan,

Observers in both India and Pakistan agree with the Pakistan foreign secretary, Shahrayar Mohammad Khan that the discussion of Kashmir was by itself an achievement for Pakistan. “Earlier, Kashmir would not be discussed” said Khan, Radio Pakistan, in its post-news commentary recently, quoted India observers as calling it a shift in Indias stand on Kashmir brought out by “international pressure.”

Independent observers said that by offering to hold a summit conference Kashmir under article 6 of the Shimla agreement, Pakistan had “put the ball in India’s court.”

The observers add that by constructing the agreement that the Shimla Agreement is a means to realizing the UN resolution on Kashmir, Pakistan is “eating the cake and having it too.”

Yet, all this is not reflected in the reactions of secessionist leaders and parties in Kashmir. The Jamaat-i-Islami Kashmir (JIK), which has a most formidable militant arm, the Hizbul Mujahideen, decried the talks as a “futile exercise” which was only prolonging the “subjugation” of Kashmiri people.

In a Press release issued here recently, the JIK lamented that while people of Kashmir were going through a “nightmare,” the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan were sitting in glasshouses in Delhi to discuss their fate. Nothing had come of these talks in the past and nothing would come out of them now, said JIK.

It said that Kashmir was not a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan to be sorted out between the two countries, it was a question of life and death for the 12 million people of the state and could be decided only through a referendum under the UN resolutions to which both India and Pakistan were committed.

The senior most leader of the JIK, Geelani, later added that only tripartite talks involving genuine representatives of the Kashmiri people, besides India and Pakistan, could lead to a lasting solution.

Thus stand of the JIK is a kin to that of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) which differs with the JIK on the future status of the state, The JKLF has all along opposed any Indo-Pakistan talks on Kashmir which exclude Kashmiri representatives. Like on all such occasions in the past, it called a bandh in Kashmir on August 16 when Khan arrived in India for the sixth round of secretary-level talks between the two countries.

Whether the Jamaat-i-Islami is reacting at the insistence of Pakistan or in defiance of the later is not clear. In Pakistan the Jamaat relations with the Nawaz Sharif government are anything but cordial. The developments in Afghanistan, where the fundamentalist leader, M. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, stands isolated, has drivena wedge between the Jamaat and the ruling alliance, the IJK. But it was long before the Jamaati -lslami Pakistan’s (JIP) estrangement with the Nawaz Sharif government came to surface that the Hizbul Mujahideediluted its stand on the status of Jammu and Kashmir. On December 12 last year, the supreme commander of the Hizb, Syed Salahuddin, said in a written statement that “neither independence nor accession to Pakistan is an article of faith with us: we have to first fight the common enemy, India.” Observers had then opined that the Hizb or the JIK was trying to neutralize the JKLF and to broaden its popular base in the Valley.

In this context, the JIKs latest stand on the Indo-Pakistan talks would be easy to understand. But, a day earlier on August 18anewlyformed alliance of 10 militant groups, the Al-Mujahideen Force (AMF), had also described the secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan as a “wasteful exercise.” The Al-Mujahid Force urged Pakistan to make the future talks on Kashmir conditional on the participation of Kashmir representatives. It mentioned the names of the “Azad Kashmir” (PaK) prime minister, Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan and the JKLF chairman, Amanullah Khan, as the leaders, who according to it, could represent Kashmir at the tripartite talks.

The AMF is believed to be a pro Pakistan alliance though it has not spelled out its policy. Moreover, it is widely believed here that this alliance has the direct patronage of Sardar Qayyum, who is an avowed advocate of Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan.

This leads some observers to believe that the idea of tripartite talks or the voicing of such a demand by the people of Kashmir suits Pakistan in so far as it emphasizes that Kashmir is not a territorial dispute but the issue of a peoples fundamental right to self-determination. Observers point out that the imperative talks would be a major climb down on the part of India.

Article extracted from this publication >> September 4, 1992