Three legs good

Kashmir

Sep 8th 2005 DELHI
From The Economist print edition

A tentative beginning to a dialogue between India, Pakistan and Kashmiris

MANMOHAN SINGH, India's prime minister, is often portrayed as a decent but weak-kneed man, constantly tailoring his reformist economics to the conservative cloth of party colleagues and coalition partners. In at least one sphere, however, he has taken bold steps: making peace with Pakistan. September 5th, for example, saw his first meeting, in Delhi, with a five-member delegation from the All-Party Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella group opposed to Indian rule in Kashmir, a divided state claimed by both countries.

“Small minds wanted to spoil this,” says Saifuddin Soz, a member of parliament from Kashmir, who helped arrange the meeting. The prime minister, he said, had the “vision and courage” to ignore the hawkish voices of his own officials. The result of the meeting was encouraging. The Hurriyat delegation, led by Umar Farooq, the mirwaiz, or spiritual leader, of the Kashmir valley's Sunni Muslims, agreed that “all forms of violence at all levels should come to an end”.
Perhaps 80,000 people have died in the 16-year insurgency. Mr Singh agreed to a review of the cases of all those detained under anti-terrorist laws in Kashmir.

Nobody is cheering yet. Much the same was agreed at two meetings the Hurriyat held early last year with the previous Indian administration. The violence did not stop, though it has somewhat abated. And the government failed to deliver the promised improvements in human rights. Many Kashmiris, long cynical about India's motives, suspected it simply wanted to divide the Hurriyat and discredit its leaders.

Similar fears were evoked on September 6th, when nine women, led by a well-known separatist, who had been acting as an Islamic “moral force”, campaigning against prostitution, and vandalising liquor shops, were charged under Kashmir's tough “public safety” act. The mirwaiz questioned the timing of the move.

But this time dialogue need not fizzle out acrimoniously as happened last year. Relations between India and Pakistan have continued their slow improvement, and Kashmir itself has benefited from some of the confidence-building measures, notably the opening this April of a bus-route between Pakistani- and Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Mr Singh and Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, seem to trust each other. To placate his own hardliners, however, General Musharraf badly needs evidence that he is making progress over Kashmir. By having allowed Hurriyat leaders to visit Pakistan in June, and by talking to them himself, Mr Singh is providing it. That is useful spadework for his next get-together with the general, in New York on September 14th. Three days later, the mirwaiz will also meet the Pakistani president there.

This Hurriyat delegation, however, represents only one section of anti-Indian sentiment—broadly speaking, a moderate-pro-Pakistani line. A harder-line faction, led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, with support from hawks in Pakistan, has stayed aloof. So, for now, have leaders such as Shabir Shah and Yasin Malik, who, like many Kashmiris, want independence from both India and Pakistan. So this is only the beginning of a dialogue that needs to be broadened and deepened, before it can even begin to touch on the core issue: Kashmir's status.

Until that happens, Pakistan is loth to abandon the weapon it has long used to exert pressure on India: the infiltration of militants to help fight the insurgency. Indian officials say infiltration continues, though at lower levels than in previous years. Nor has Pakistan dismantled the networks that raise money and cannon-fodder for the war. That is why Mr Singh's gesture to Kashmiri separatists is unpopular among some of his own advisers. Amitabh Mattoo, vice-chancellor of the University of Jammu, in Kashmir, says the prime minister has shown he is prepared to take risks in order to be remembered as a peacemaker. Peace would be an achievement worth even the sacrifice of a few economic policies.

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