How Serious The Situation Is In The Kashmir Valley

The army being out in force in Srinagar for the first time in, perhaps, two decades, is a measure of how serious the situation is in the Kashmir Valley. What is alarming is that the Indian security forces who have successfully battled domestic and foreign militants are finding it difficult to take on a movement that has the appearance of a popular protest.

While there is no doubt that there are separatists and possibly ISI agents in the background pulling the strings, there is also mass- participation in the protests by the youth of the Kashmir Valley, especially the urban young in Srinagar, Baramulla, Sopore, Anantnag and Pampore.

The protest is violent, since it involves pelting stones at the police. But because they are not using lethal force, in the manner of militants, it is difficult to justify the deaths that have occurred in police firing to check their activities.

Every time a protester is shot or injured, it provides ammunition for a new protest.

The big task confronting the authorities is to break the momentum of current events. Tough curfew, such as the one being enforced by the Indian Army now, is one such method, which was used with success in early 1990. But the question is: How long can the instrument of curfew be used? Because every day that a general curfew stays in force, it provides testimony to the fact that there is no normalcy in the state.

The big failure, specifically of the Union home ministry, was in adequately equipping and training the forces who can counter the lessthan-lethal challenge of the stone-pelting protesters. Since 2004, it has been apparent in the actions of Pakistan and its leaders that the challenge to Indian authority will no longer be through the gun-toting militants who had failed to wrest the state from Indian control. Instead, it would be through a mix of conventional and unconventional politics.

The militants would be used for rare demonstrations to show that they are still around, or to eliminate inconvenient politicians such as Abdul Ghani Lone and Sheikh Abdul Aziz, who were shot dead and Fazal Haq Qureshi who survived an attack by the militants.

It is possible to control riots, even by very violent rioters. The South Korean police showed how this could be done in the run-up to the Seoul Olympics in 1988 Prior to that, the South Korean police had a justifiable reputation for brutality. But because of the Olympics, a decision was taken to undertake a massive training and re-equipping programme focusing on crowd control. It was this police that aided the country's transition to a democracy by ensuring that it handled violent protests with patience and guile.

Nothing seems to convince the home ministry that India also needs a similar transition.

Crowds need to be treated with firmness and patience, something only wellequipped, psychologically conditioned and effectively led forces can do. The price for not having such forces is the one the country is paying now in Srinagar as the situation regresses rapidly to the dark days of the 1990s.