Kashmir is in a state of churn. Will 2020 mark a new dawn?

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Ali Ahmed

That India and Pakistan escaped coming to blows twice in 2019 tells us much about the scenario going into the next year.

In the first instance, in Balakot-Rajouri, they exchanged aerial punches. In the second, Pakistan refrained from any hasty action in response to India’s early August constitutional initiatives on Kashmir.

That Kashmir is in partial lockdown for the fourth month indicates that it is not out of the woods yet. Extension of detention of National Conference’s Farooq Abdullah by three more months betrays the government’s thinking that it needs to work through the winter to avoid the seeming stability unwinding in case of a premature let-up.

By then, spring will be at hand and the year’s cyclical campaign set to start. That would also unlikely be the time when the government would seek to loosen up. It has elections to prepare through the summer, the dates of which are not out yet.

This would be cue for Pakistan to get its act together. It appeared outwitted by India’s deft footwork over the Kashmir initiative. It was not able to upset India’s applecart because of not only Indian security preparedness, but also its economy, which is on the rocks. It’s also not able to secure its western flank in time through brokering a deal between Americans and the Taliban for a dignified US withdrawal.

It almost looked as if the Pakistani Army was doing a repeat of its 1971 act. Then, it had promised to save East Pakistan by attacking the west. Then, Yahya Khan developed cold feet. This time round, when its ‘jugular’ – Kashmir – was yanked out of reach, it left the rhetoric to civilians, in particular its ‘selected’ Prime Minister, Imran Khan, while presumably holding its powder dry for a better day.

That day appears nigh. Pakistan’s economy was elevated in Moody’s ratings from a negative status to a stable one even as India’s went in the reverse direction. It received its 13th financial bailout from the International Monetary Fund. Geopolitically, the US has resumed its talks with the Taliban even as President Donald Trump hits his election year stride to deliver on his promise of drawdown from America’s longest-ever war.

For its part, India got away relatively unscathed globally. International opprobrium has expectedly been muted. Though India has been prickly towards criticism, it has not been able to readily brush off the observations of the international media and human rights bodies.

However, India is marching down a right wing ideology-driven path. Most recently, by enacting the Citizenship Amendment Act, it is losing its political capital. This is to be followed by a nation-wide citizen’s register, which can only lead to further dwindling of its secular-democratic image, opening up Kashmir, which it considers as an ‘internal matter’, to external interest.

While yielding short-term dividend of buying India time, its security measures in Kashmir have diminishing marginal utility. A central police force analysis reportedly has it that the tight grip down to the mohalla level in Kashmir is unsustainable, particularly as it continues to be ad-hoc, with troopers roughing it out through the harsh winter. The paramilitary is already being pulled out for firefighting elsewhere, for now in the North-East.

Its Army has suffered 20 casualties from snow-related accidents. Along the Line of Control (LC) itself, even if it is drawing more blood than the Pakistani military and mujahids, it has little to show anything different from two decades ago when similar stand-offs were routine.

Thus, while Pakistan appears poised for a proactive turn, India appears jaded. Its newly appointed Lieutenant Governor – a bureaucrat – is busy with non-essential activity such as house listing at a time when major political and developmental initiatives should have been unleashed as part of a political strategy to defuse the pent-up anger in Kashmir over its “demotion”.

The political decapitation of Kashmiris by jailing every shade of their leadership has not resulted in lack of innovation on their part. There is utter lack of clarity as to how to tackle the campaign of non-cooperation.

Even if the government manages to get a new leadership supposedly under a Bharatiya Janata Party dispensation led by a Jammuite Hindu in place, continued turmoil coupled with renewed Pakistani interference may set up the region for the proverbial perfect storm in the coming year.

Ali Ahmed is visiting professor at Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Jamia Millia Islamia. Views are personal.