It is hard to believe that the situation in Kashmir favours the rise and growth of a strong guerilla movement. But there can be no doubt any longer that some extremist young men in the State have begun to think of organising such a movement. This represents a major change in the nature of the challenge the country faces in the valley and it can ignore it only at its peril.
Before the Indian Airlines plane was hijacked to Lahore last Saturday, there may have been some reason to suspect that the State Government was exaggerating the magnitude of the threat to justify its earlier decisions to ban the Plebiscite Front, arrest its leaders and keep Sheikh Abdullah and Mirza Afzal Beg out of Kashmir. The hijackers have dispelled the last lingering suspicion on this score. It is clear in retrospect that the State Government has by no means acted in a vindictive manner.
By demanding the release of the 36 persons, who were arrested recently in Kashmir on charges of a conspiracy to carry out acts of sabotage as the price for allowing the return of the plane, the two packers have confirmed the existence of a well-knit guerilla organisation in the State. Since they have apparently taken their inspiration from Palestinian commandos, who have engaged in a number of similar operations, it is not at all surprising that they have named their organisation Al Fatah.
Possible
It is more than possible that Pakistan has assisted these men by providing them with training, equipment and money. But the more important point is that the men involved belong to Kashmir. They are not Poonchis or Punjabis who have infiltrated from across the cease-fire line and set up a base in the valley.
The Pakistan Government learnt the bitter lesson in 1965 that infiltrators cannot organise successful guerilla operations in the State. It has not tried to send its own men there since then. Its talk of training Mujahids in “Azad” Kashmir does not negate this fact. It is quite likely indeed that the Pakistan Government has been content so far with a secondary role and left the initiative to the local extremists.
The timing of the hijacking lends support to the view that the initiative for the move came from Al Fatah itself. The affair has major implications for Pakistan’s domestic politics and it is improbable that Islamabad would have liked to encourage this kind of action at the present juncture.
Mr Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s dash to the Lahore airport to meet one of the hijackers soon after his return from Dacca illustrates this point. As a shrewd politician he recognised at once that he could use the occasion not only to advertise his own commitment to what he calls the Kashmiri people’s right of self-determination but also to embarrass Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, who favours an altogether different approach to this country, and possibly even President Yahya Khan.
In the context of the controversy between him and the Sheikh on the nature of the future constitution of Pakistan, Mr Bhutto needed to underscore the point that the detachment of Kashmir from India was not only desirable but also possible. Nothing could have helped him to do so as effectively as the presence of the hijackers in possession of the Indian plane at the Lahore airport. The howling mob outside provided a dramatic background for Mr Bhutto’s meeting with Hashim Quereshi.
Superficial
On a superficial view it may seem a little naive to suggest that the Kashmir issue will play a key role in shaping the future of Pakistan’s polity. But that indeed is the case because if Sheikh Mujibur Rehman concedes that Islamabad should support secessionist movements in Kashmir, he cannot logically justify either his six-point autonomy programme, which will weaken the Central Government and deprive it of the means to maintain a large military establishment, or his demand for resumption of trade and other ties with India.
All in all it is unlikely that President Yahya Khan and his close advisers, who have little to gain by boosting Mr Bhutto’s position in West Punjab and complicating their task of promoting accommodation between him and Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, have been over-enthusiastic about Al Fatah’s action.
If this assessment regarding the local character of Al Fatah is reasonably accurate, it represents a more serious challenge than a purely puppet organisation would.
Two points are pertinent in this context. First, irrespective of one’s appreciation of Sheikh Abdullah’s politics, ambitions and designs, he and his colleagues in the Plebiscite Front do not have either the capacity or the will to organise and lead a violent insurrection with external assistance.
Second, the anti-Indian elements belonging to the younger generation have over the years become disenchanted with the Sheikh, his agitational politics and his refusal to blow up all bridges with this country and have evidently been gravitating towards a violent struggle. The activities of some of the students in Srinagar in recent years have pointed in that direction.
The State Government claims to have smashed Al Fatah. If it is sufficiently vigilant it may also be able to forestall the growth of other similar organisations. But it needs to bear it in mind that dramatic actions like the present hijacking of the Indian plane can have a considerable impact on the restless and educated youth and that the inevitable process of politicisation and radicalisation may in the short run strengthen the separatist sentiment in Kashmir.
The problem in Kashmir is entirely different from that in West Bengal which is highly urbanised and overcrowded. The West Bengali intelligentsia, which dominated the professions, the civil service and the nationalist movement till the first decade of this century, feels cramped in what is left of what was once the Bengal Presidency and seeks an outlet in senseless violence. The economic and social difficulties in Kashmir are fortunately less acute. But there too the growing intelligentsia is beginning to feel cramped and blame the States adherence to the Indian Union for all its difficulties.
It is a harsh fact of life that modernisation in its early stages strengthens the feeling of separate identity and weakens the pull of the Centre in peripheral areas.
This is not to suggest that a guerilla movement in Kashmir can, in the foreseeable future, acquire the dimensions of the Naga rebellion in the ‘fifties and the early’ sixties. The Kashmiris are a peace-loving people. But the process of modernisation is transforming attitudes and creating new tensions.
It is a fact of history that Kashmiri sub-nationalism as represented by Sheikh Abdullah refused to be submerged in Muslim communalism before partition and that it made common cause with Indian nationalism. This was an alliance of convenience and it lasted so long as the Sheikh and his supporters felt threatened by Pakistan. Once the danger receded as a result of India’s military superiority, the alliance came under great strain. Developments since 1952 bear testimony to this fact.
Clash
Mercifully, even in the changed circumstances sub-nationalism and communalism have not merged in the valley. This is illustrated by the continuing clash between Sheikh Abdullah and Mir Waiz. But rebels belonging to the younger generation who are growing up in a different atmosphere from men of Sheikh’s generation may overcome this dichotomy. They will need a “cause” to fight for as they are alienated from their traditional moorings.
It is of course much easier to analyse the currents and cross-currents in Kashmir than to suggest the means of countering the negative trends and harnessing those that are positive to the larger purpose of national integration. There is no pat solution. But it is clear that security arrangements in the State leave much to be desired.
The authorities took months to locate Al Fatah headquarters even after they came to know of its existence and it did not even occur to them that its members could hijack a plane. New Delhi too has been wholly inept in its handling of the whole affair. It failed to anticipate that the hijacker’s would stipulate conditions for releasing the plane and there would be a great deal of support for them in Pakistan.
The Government must ensure that dissident elements are not able to carry out further acts of air piracy because this can have adverse effect on the morale of the Kashmiri people.
The Times of India, 3 February 1971