June turned out to be a fateful month. It began with an optimism that the unilateral ceasefire announced by the centre in May will succeed but by the time it ended not only had the truce been called off but the state government too had fallen. And what is more, the prominent journalist Shujaat Bukhari was brutally shot dead outside his office in Srinagars press enclave.
Kashmir is worse off than it ever was since the nineties. And going forward situation looks unlikely to improve. The militancy is back with a vengeance. This was recently demonstrated by the massive funeral of the Lashkar militant Shakoor Dar at village Sopat in Kulgam district. Thousands participated in his nimaz-i-jinaza that was offered several times over.
Funerals of this scale have become commonplace now, so have the protests of the people near encounter sites. In fact, since the end of ceasefire alone, six civilians have died during encounters, one of them, Faizan Ahmad, the son of Dr. Abdul Gani Poswal who was on duty at the hospital when the son’s body came.
At the same time, killings of the militants have hardly deterred fresh recruitment. Despite security forces killing 218 militants last year and around 70 more since January, the number of the active militants hovers around 280, by and large, the same number as in January 2017 and the same month in 2018.
As the BJP may have learnt to its detriment, the militancy in Kashmir is so deeply rooted in the public sentiment and structurally so entrenched that it cannot be completely dislodged even by an all-out military operation. Local recruitment and infiltration ensures that the depleted number is easily replenished. Or in case of depletion in numbers of the one component, another fills in the vacuum: that is, if local recruitment is down, infiltration compensates for it and the vice versa.
With the BJP deciding to continue with its muscular policy on the state, following the imposition of Governor’s rule, the situation looks unlikely to improve. If the past four years are any guide, a hardline policy has created a bloody roundabout: killings of civilians and militants leads to more alienation and anger which in turn leads to more militant recruitment and more killings.
So, Kashmir, in a sense, is at a dead-end as of now. That is unless the BJP starts looking at the situation in the state outside its ideological straitjacket and beyond the prism of elections.
As for the capacity of the local mainstream politicians to address the situation through political mobilization, they hardly retain the credibility to do it. As of now, Mehbooba Mufti is politically finished. Her loss is not Omars gain too. He has his own past failings to account for. But between the two, Mehboobas looks worse off and her return to political centre stage will be tougher. The only thing that can be hoped to get her back in public favour in the long term is the resurrection of her intrinsic politics. But that will be easier said than done. It would be very difficult for Mehbooba to once again convince people of a politics, she didn’t practice in power. Omar remains a default option for the people, he similarly can regain confidence only if he practices his politics in power.
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