New Delhi: The newly appointed interlocutor for talks on Kashmir, Dinesh Sharma, Friday said that the biggest challenge and the top priority for New Delhi was to de-radicalize Kashmiri youth and militants to prevent it from turning into a Syria of India.
Sharma, who headed the Intelligence Bureau (IB) for two years from December 2015, said his mission is to bring an end to violence by way of talking to anyone even a rickshaw puller or a cart puller who can contribute to peace in the State as soon as possible.
I feel the pain and sometimes I become emotional also. I want to see this kind of violence ends as soon as possible from all sides, said Sharma.
He said the way youth of Kashmir were moving, which is radicalisation, it will ultimately finish the Kashmir society itself.
I am worried about the people of Kashmir. If all this picked up, the situation will be like Yemen, Syria and Libya. People will start fighting in so many groups. So, it is very important that everybody, all of us, contribute so that suffering of Kashmiris end.
I will have to convince the youth of Kashmir that they are only ruining their future and the future of all Kashmiris in the name of whether they call it azadi (independence), Islamic caliphate or Islam. You can take examples like Pakistan, Libya, Yemen or any country where such things are going. They have become the most violent places in the world. So, I want to see that it doesnt happen in India.
I am open to talking to everybody… He can be an ordinary student, ordinary youth, a rickshawwala or a thelawala with some good idea. I will consider that. Dineshwar Sharma, govt interlocutor
The former IPS officer, who led the spy agencys Islamist Terrorism Desk between 2003 and 2005, was named on Monday to open talks in a bid to end the nearly three-decade-old insurgency in Kashmir.
When the IB was investigating the fledgling modules of the Islamic State in Kerala, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh in 2015, Sharma was widely known to have advocated a policy of arresting the problem by counselling and reforming, instead of arresting the potential recruits of the global terror network.
The soft-spoken intelligence veteran is known to have established friendly relationships with arrested militants in a bid to reform them when he was assistant director IB from 1992-94 the time when militancy was at its peak in Jammu and Kashmir.
Serving in Kashmir as an IB man, Sharma was instrumental in the arrest of then Hizbul Mujahideen commander Master Ahsan Dar in 1993 after he broke away from Syed Salahuddin, the Hizb chief based in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
He recalled how he had met Dar in Srinagar jails and how the militant commander asked him to bring his daughter and son to meet him in the prison. I actually took them to meet him.
Asked if he had identified the way to reach out to the youth in Kashmir, Sharma said he was still working out the modalities.
I am open to talking to everybody. Anybody who believes in peace and wants to come and give me some ideas how to go about, I am willing to listen. He can be an ordinary student, ordinary youth, a rickshawwala or a thelawala with some good idea. I will consider that.
He was asked if he had started reaching out to Hurriyat leaders, who have maintained silence over his appointment even though they had dropped hints in their statements about engaging in constructive talks with the government of India after some of their aides were arrested in terror funding case.
Let me see. I am ready to talk to everybody. Anybody who wants to contribute to peace, said Sharma.
Replying to a query that radicalisation of Kashmiri youth was a more recent phenomenon than the problem of Kashmir itself, Sharma said the state was almost at peace before the 2008 unrest over a land row and the 2016 wave of violent street protests after the killing of Burhan Wani.
Somehow the minds of youths and students have been diverted somewhere else. That is the point of address. I have seen the violence in Kashmir from very close quarters. I was posted in Srinagar. So the kind of violence I have seen, I am really pained. I am very sad.
Commenting on previous attempts by the government of nominating peace emissaries and other initiatives to solve the problem, he said he would desperately like to try some new ideas.
I am studying the reports (of previous interlocutors) but other than that I am trying to see some new ideas.
Kashmir is not Sharmas first assignment of brokering peace. In June this year, he was tasked to initiate a dialogue with insurgent groups in Assam, including the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and those representing Bodos.
Asked over any difference between his previous peace brokering assignment and the new one, he said; The big difference is that there is not any involvement of Pakistan and any third country in the northeast.
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