From the President's Desk - The need to counter the insurgents' strategy

Vijay Raina 

Dear community members,

Namaskar,

It is indeed alarming that the security situation in the Valley is deteriorating with each passing day. Attacks on the security personnel and installations by irate mobs are on the rise and anti-India sentiments fanned by the separatists and Islamists seem to have assumed dangerous dimensions. While the number of ISI sponsored terrorists active in Kashmir may not be more than 200 or so, as a recent report in the press suggests, the increasing support that insurgency has succeeded in drawing locally has created a very disturbing scenario. The mollycoddling of the separatist elements engaged in violence by the state's recently installed alliance government to cater to its vote banks is making the situation there worse. One of the jobs of the ISI agents has been persistently carrying on is to poison the minds of the local population against India and its secular ideals. The latest trend in brainwashing young people adopted by them is the extensive use of the social media to spread disinformation about Indian democratic institutions-the legislature, executive as well as the judiciary in Kashmir. Ideas incompatible with modemity and expressive of religious fundamentalism and intolerance are sought to be inculcated in the youth, who are taught to follow the Jehadist ideology of hate and terror.

Demonising the Indian army by spreading false rumours has been a favourite strategy of the separatists and Jehadists in the state and it has been repeatedly used by them to create unrest and alienate Kashmin Muslims from the rest of India. The recent event of mob-violence in Handwara is only the latest example of this nefarious tactic. Facts have now fortunately come to the surface and the diabolical designs of the ISI-supported mischief-mongers and their political masters stand fully exposed. Two local young men tried to violate the modesty of a schoolgirl from Handwara in Kashmir, but hue and cry was raised that an army man had done it. Working according to a preconceived plan, the rampaging mob erupted into violence and set fire to the Army bunker in the town, trying to roast alive the Army Jawans inside. The Army was compelled to open fire in which several people were killed. This led to further violence in the area which went viral and in no time spread to other parts of Kashmir. As usual, separatist outfits spread wild rumours to malign the Army and gave calls for strikes and protests throughout the Valley, bringing normal life to a standstill. But just as the situation was about to spiral out of control, the young girl showed courage and boldly refuted the allegations against the poor army man. She unambiguously stated that it was not the poor army man but two local miscreants who had tried to molest her as she came out of the toilet. With her father, she stood by her statement in spite of the all the threats to her life she received from the Jehadists and their supporters leaving them and the biassed local media dumbfounded. It was her constant stand that finally saved the situation from further local deteriorating.

There have been Taliban-style activities in Kashmir earlier also. False rumours have continuously provided a pretext to subversive elements for disrupting peace in Kashmir ever since militancy started. In 1994, a local crowd dragged a youthful tailor out of his home in the Nawa Bazar area of Srinagar and stoned him to death on the allegation that he had raped a three-and-a-half-year-old girl. The tailor's body was thrown into the Jhelum river. Later, investigations revealed that the tailor had not even touched the little girl.

Again in 2,009, the Valley had witnessed tremendous outcry over allegations of rape and murder of two young girls in the Shopian area. Later, investigations revealed that there had been neither rape, nor murder. The unmarried girls' bodies were exhumed. Forensic experts from AIIMS and FSL found no evidence of sexual assault on them. But by that time the situation in Shopian had become very explosive. Violence had broken out in the Shopian and other areas. This is the pattern that emerges from the separatists' modus operandi. On the one hand allegations of sexual assault and rape against local Muslims remain unnoticed, unreported and unquestioned, on the other allegations against army personnel are deliberately blown out of proportion.

Look at another recent example of how the ruling dispensation deals with the trouble created by anti national elements. When local students of the NIT Srinagar attacked and pelted stones at non-Kashmiri students who refused to celebrate India's defeat at the hands of West Indies in a T-20 cricket match, Jammu & Kashmir Police personnel instead of protecting them chose to lathi-charge the latter. While more than 20 non-Kashmiri students were injured in the brutal lathi-charge at the Srinagar National Institute of Technology, neither news agencies, nor newspapers, in Srinagar, carried a line about the incident. People came to know about it when the news emanated from Delhi. Peace was somewhat restored only when the Central Reserve Police personnel.

were asked to take charge of the security situation there. There is little doubt, now, that many of the Valley's journalists, so-called human rights activists, judges, lawyers and members of the police force always tend to interpret things with a deliberately distorted and pro-separatist bias, choosing to malign India and absolve the blatantly anti-national and pro-separatist forces of any wrongdoing.

It is in such an atmosphere that some mainstream political leaders seek withdrawal of the special powers given to the Army, which in actual effect is protecting national interests and preventing the insurgents to create mayhem. It always helps the state administration in controlling the law and order situation and in tackling natural calamities like floods. One shudders to think what will happen if the Army is denied its essential powers to maintain peace in that trouble-torn area.

Vijay Raina

Email: vijayraina4681@yahoo.in

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Courtesy:  Vijay Raina  May 2016 Koshur Samachar