As Kashmir was gradually cooling after a spate of killings, there was yet another incident of shooting. This time it is in Sopore, where after an encounter two young boys were mowed down and five others injured. This is expected to keep Kashmir boiling this week as well.
After every such incident there is an assurance that such incidents will not to be repeated. Chief Minister summons the super cops and each time seeks an assurance. He takes up the issue with the top functionaries of the central government too. But nothing changes, not at least this summer. Announcing probes and special investigations neither stop recurrence of these incidents nor help to deliver justice or make it seem so. Something somewhere seems to have gone wrong.
Kashmir obviously is massively militarized. The counter-insurgency grid is currently chasing a handful of fugitives who may not even be more than a few hundred all across the state. The security personnel enjoy impunity under law.
But why can not the security agencies simply be told to stop killing civilians simply because it is not their mandate. They are supposed to protect them.
These incidents trigger chain reactions. People come out on the roads and sometimes the youngsters resort to stone pelting as well. The policymakers then take recourse to another extreme of cracking down the whip on political opponents. It has created a situation that part of the separatist camp is either in the jails or underground. This essentially makes mockery of the larger issue of creating political space to fight on issues non-violently and peacefully.
The entire crisis emerged at the peak of summer. People usually should have been busy earning their livelihood but the killings have vitiated the atmosphere. Every society gives life a preference.
Ideally, a peaceful situation in Kashmir was in the interest of the talks that have already started in Islamabad. There is already a debate going on publicly between different appendages of the government of India over the continuation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in its present or amended form. But there are clear interventions from the side of the establishment that peace does not prevail.
Even though the militant violence has nosedived, authorities have decided against downsizing the counter insurgency establishment. Barring certain cosmetic withdrawals and inter-spot shift of the security forces, the numbers never changed. Even the state has not taken seriously the larger reality that the Kashmir is jumping into a non-violent protest phase in which there is least room for guns and bullets. Training curriculum with the police and the paramilitary forces continues to be aimed at fighting a militant. Even sections in the security grid coined words like ‘agitational terrorism’ linking stone-pelting with the militancy. Rather than ending militancy, the iron fisted security approach can only turn the whole population violent.
