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Srinagar: Former Indian spymaster AS Dulat has claimed that Pakistan has given up on Kashmir and the message coming out from Kashmir is that the stakeholders want peace and a dialogue with New Delhi, Tribune India reported.

Stating that the Kashmir problem cannot be solved by force because it is not an military issue but a political one, Dulat said the only way forward is to engage and talk with the stakeholders.

“Today we have a situation where a former Norwegian Prime Minister goes to Kashmir and speaks to the Hurriyat, but the Hurriyat cannot speak to the Pakistani High Commissioner or to New Delhi’s special representative in Kashmir. However, the message from the Hurriyat is clear that they want peace and dialogue,” he said at a session on “Kashmir Quandary: Diagnosis and Remedy” at the Military Literature Festival in Chandigarh.

“While we continue to exaggerate the role of Pakistan in the Kashmir issue, today the Kashmiri has no interest in Pakistan. It was only till about 1994-95 that Pakistan was a real player and was behind virtually everything that happened,” Dulat, who headed India’s external intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing, in 1999-2000, remarked.

“Today things are in control, but the political process has to start. The question, however, being raised in several quarters is how to start the political process as they don’t have any political workers on the ground level,”

Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee (retd), former Chief of Staff, Central Command, said.

Things in Kashmir were fine till about 1989 and thereafter, the military created a situation four or five times where the political or ideological process could have been started, but it was never done and the situations were abandoned for the armed forces to handle, he added.

He also said the Kashmiris know that they can never get separated from India but they act in a rebellious manner because it has become a culture due to a societal breakdown. A social and political transformation process has to be initiated.

Stating that the situation in Kashmir is more dangerous today than it was earlier, Lt Gen MC Bhandari (retd) said Kashmir is not a security problem but an amalgamation of historical, political, ideological issues and a clash of egos on both sides. The military can only be a part of the solution, he added.

Srinagar: Hurriyat Conference (M) chairperson Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has said that former Norwegian Prime Minister to Kashmir had a go ahead from New Delhi.

In an interview to New Delhi based Hindustan Times, Mirwaiz while responding to a question whether “centre had given him the go-ahead”, he said: “Definitely, there has been some interest on Kashmir recently in the international arena, especially after the UN (human rights) report on Kashmir. We hope the initiative will continue and there is some movement forward.”

Mirwaiz said that it was after 5-6 years that a visit by any foreign dignitary happened. “Mr Bondevik and particularly Oslo Center (founded by Bondevik) have some experience in conflict regions. He came here, went to Delhi, and went across to Islamabad. The important thing is that he talked about involvement of Kashmiris and secondly that there can be no military solution. Definitely his visit must have the blessings of certain powers; otherwise he would not have been allowed to come here.”

He said that there has been a change in policy as far as New Delhi is concerned as compared to the policy adopted by then NDA (National Democratic Alliance) government under Vajpayee.

“I think the basis of that engagement then was the realisation that Kashmir is a humanitarian problem. That is why Mr Vajpayee said we are willing to engage within the ambit of humanity. That opened a way for us to engage with Delhi and also go to Pakistan… This was a triangular approach where every party was talking to the other party. That approach is totally missing now. We have seen hardening of stand and extreme repression. That Vajpayee doctrine has been replaced by Doval doctrine. Now the state is engaging people through cordon-and-search operations. While Vajpayee was talking about peace, Mr Modi and his team are talking about war.”

Mirwaiz also brushed off the presence of Al-Qaeda or Islamic State in Jammu and Kashmir.

“As far as the Kashmir militant movement is concerned, you can’t label it as al-Qaeda or any other thing. There is absolutely no trace of that. Even parties like Hizbul Mujahideen and others, they have been very clear about what their goal is. They are limited to Kashmir. There are certain aberrations, certain youth; when you are pushed to the wall, there is a possibility that certain sections tend to see things from a different picture. As a Mirwaiz, as a religious head, we have always maintained that it is a political problem. We have never said that it is Hindu India versus Muslim Kashmir.”

Says, ‘excessive use of salt makes people prone to stomach cancer’

Srinagar: The medical experts Tuesday said that the excessive use of salt can cause stomach cancer, saying that Kashmir and Ladakh province in Jammu and Kashmir are witnessing more such cases as compared to Jammu division.

Noted gastroenterologist, Prof (Dr) Showkat Ali Zargar said that the places where excessive salt is being used are much prone to stomach cancer.

He said that besides slat, bacteria called H Pylori present in any human body can also cause cancer but everybody is not prone to the disease, saying that those who are genetic can get affected.

Dr Showkat said that like other places of the country, H Pylori is also found rampant in Kashmir but the bacteria can’t cause cancer to ever patient but those can get affected easily who are genetic.

He said that the stomach cancer is found in Kashmir and Ladakh province in the state that causes due to the food and other things.

Dr Showkat said that the peptic Ulcer is also found in Kashmir and according to the study, 10 per cent of people are affected due to the H Pylori and excessive use of salt.

Authorities at the Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST) have postponed the examinations slated for Monday (10 December 2018).
The spokesman of the varsity said the new dates will be notified later separately. He further said the class work will also remain suspended on Monday.

Srinagar: The eighteen hour long gunfight in Mugund area in the outskirts of Srinagar ended Sunday morning with the killing of three militants.
Reports said the government forces launched a cordon and search operations Saturday evening following which a gunfight broke out in the area with militants firing from their hiding place of residential house and forces retaliating. The heavy exchange of fire was suspended late in the evening hours on Saturday and resumed Sunday morning. During the heavy exchange of fire between the militants and the government forces, three militants are reported to have been killed and five residential houses have been damaged. A police official said the identity of the slain militants is yet to be ascertained.
Clashes in the area had broken out Saturday evening and again on Sunday morning but calm has been restored in the area by now.

India conducted the “surgical strike” on September 29, 2016 across the Line of Control as a response to attack on an Indian Army base in Uri sector of Jammu and Kashmir earlier that month. Nineteen Indian soldiers were killed in the attack.

Vice Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen Devraj Anbu has said the security forces would not hesitate to launch another surgical strike if the need to do so arises.
“The surgical strike on militant launchpads across the border was a show of strength by our armed forces and we won’t hesitate to do it again if the enemy challenges us,” Lt Gen Anbu said in reply to a question by reporters on the sidelines of the Indian Military Academy’s Passing Out Parade (POP) in Dehradun on Saturday.

India conducted the “surgical strike” on September 29, 2016 across the Line of Control as a response to attack on an Indian Army base in Uri sector of Jammu and Kashmir earlier that month. Nineteen Indian soldiers were killed in the attack.
On Friday, Lt Gen (retd) D S Hooda, who was the Northern Army commander when the surgical strikes were carried out, said the constant hype around the precision operation was unwarranted. He, however, said it was natural to have initial euphoria over the success of the military action.
Responding to a question from the audience during a panel discussion in Chandigarh, Lt Gen Hooda said in hindsight, it would have been better had “we done it (surgical strikes) secretly”.
On the plans to give women combat roles in the armed forces, Lt Gen Anbu said different aspects of the proposition are being examined as conditions along the borders with Pakistan and China are different from the rest of the country.
In July this year, Army chief Gen Bipin Rawat said the process to allow women in combat role, currently an exclusive domain of men, is moving fast and initially women will be recruited for positions in military police.
In November, he said the Indian Army is not yet ready to have women in combat roles. He said there are several other fields where the Army was thinking of inducting women and there were plans to have women as interpreters.
Lt Gen Anbu was in Dehradun to address the POP at IMA as the reviewing officer.
The POP saw a total of 427 gentlemen cadets including 80 from seven friendly foreign countries graduating from the academy.

SRINAGAR: The military can only have a limited role, with solutions critical for resolving the larger Kashmir issue lying in the realm of politics — good governance, and political engagement as witnessed during the Vajpayee years, according to the Army’s Valley chief, Lt Gen A K Bhatt.

“The military can only create conditions of normalcy. Beyond that, the initiatives have to be at levels of good governance, politically talking to people. During the Vajpayee era, it has happened, and similar initiatives the government will take at the right moment. I am sure they will,” General Officer Commanding (GoC), 15 Corps, Lt Gen Bhatt said in an interview to The Sunday Express.
“One of the main things is to find the methods and means to convince the youth that the path of violence will not deliver anything. And second, more importantly, is to work in the psychological space with the populace of Kashmir, to tell them that their future is far better in India than in Pakistan… that they are only being used as tools by the Jamaat, by the separatists and Pakistan,” he said.
About the Army’s role, Bhatt said, it was to ensure that peace was maintained. “Of course long-term solutions, the government has to look at them.”

Admitting that different people could have different interpretations about what a political solution should comprise, he said, “I don’t want to get into that realm because it not mine.”

Admitting the challenge posed by social media in the Valley, the Lt General said it is being used to radicalise youth as well as to mobilise crowds to sites of counter-terror operations. “Social media is the biggest concern for me. This, which is a privilege we have in a democratic nation… why I am calling it a privilege in a democratic nation… you see how China handles it, how other countries handle it and have tight control over social media. Here, social media is entirely free. And the freedom has resulted in this being used very actively by our adversaries.” Creating an “indigenous social media platform” could be the solution, according to Bhatt.

Calling elements based in Pakistan the “instigators”, he said “all stone-throwing groups in Kashmir have Pakistani numbers”.

Noting that attempts at infiltration had increased, Bhatt said 50 militants had been eliminated this year trying to cross the Line of Control. “About hundred have been able to infiltrate. Every day and night, at some place or the other on the LoC, an attempt is being made to infiltrate… They try and use new methods.”

The other worry for the Army has been “larger number of local recruitments”. “It has gone down in the last two months. But in the early months of April, May and June, this slightly increased. That is why, despite us neutralising about 200 (militants), the number is still the same.”(Inputs from Indian Express).

Srinagar: The gunfight which broke out last evening in Mujgund area on the outskirts of Srinagar is still on with a militant, believed to be a foreigner, firing at the forces from different locations.
A police official said that heavy firing is going on at Mujgund.

“One foreign militant is giving tough time to the forces by changing locations,” he said.
The gunfight broke out last evening after the forces launched a cordon-and-search-operation in Mujgund following inputs about the presence of militants. Several forces’ personnel were injured in the initial exchange of fire with the militants.
Last night, news reports said that two bodies, believed to be militants, were lying at the gunfight site. However, there was no official confirmation.
“Due to poor visibility, it is not clear whether any militant has been killed,” said SSP Srinagar SP Pani, adding that things will be confirmed after the site is cleared.
Meanwhile, authorities have suspended mobile Internet service in Srinagar.

Sajad Lone’s “total transformation”, as he tells it, took place when he was a 24-year-old in one of the overcrowded prisons in Srinagar. The means of his makeover, his disillusionment with enmity, was the kindness shown by a constable of the Border Security Force deployed, in panic, in the Valley, a year after eruption of insurgency took the establishment by surprise.

Two simple acts of compassion are forever etched in his mind: the constable called him a brother, and once, in the dead of the night, brought him chicken and bread when Lone could not bear any more of the prison’s food. Two months after the constable showed him kindness, Lone was a free man and soon left the country. He did not for a moment think that the events in the coming decades would take an unexpected turn: the former secessionist grew close to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

At his cosy residence in Srinagar’s fortified Church Lane, Lone sees the act of kindness as the key to addressing the alienation of Kashmiris from India – with love. “Nothing much will come of Imran (Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan) and Modi (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) talking to each other,” he said. “Our problems will still remain.”

The BJP’s most vocal ally in the Valley, Lone had a “typical” Kashmiri upbringing that instilled in him “some sort of love” for Pakistan. That was until a visit to Karachi, Pakistan’s city of lights, as a high-school graduate in 1984, six years before the total transformation, dimmed his infatuation with the Muslim neighbour when he, unwittingly, defended India as “our country” in an argument with his peers.

On the streets of Karachi, Lone would act “more loyal than the king” among his associates, he admits candidly. Nearly three decades later, the 52-year-old is now presenting himself as a change-maker who could possibly lead the conflict-ridden state out of chaos, as its chief minister, and is no longer alone. As the BJP threw its weight behind Lone, politicians disgruntled with the control of and subservience to dynasts have begun to look towards Lone’s People’s Conference as an alternative.

The rabble-rouser

Lone had been in Cardiff in the United Kingdom to pursue a degree in economics before his 1990 detention. He married for love, and ran businesses abroad. Life was good until May 2002, when his father, Abdul Ghani Lone, was assassinated by Pakistan-trained jihadists at the commemoration of another slain Hurriyat colleague, Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq. Lone was anointed the chairman of the separatist People’s Conference.

That year, the public war of words between the senior Lone and the Jamaati, separatist hawk, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, had put the Hurriyat on the edge. Geelani accused Lone of being willing to field proxy candidates in the elections that were to be held later that year in October. Following the assassination, Lone’s reaction would surprise many: the 35-year-old publicly blamed Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence for his father’s killing.

Geelani’s resentment with the People’s Conference, however, did not end with the senior Lone’s demise. About a year and a half into active politics as the separatist party’s chairman, Lone said he was shunted out of the Hurriyat’s fold. In 2004, Lone parted ways with his brother, Bilal who remains committed to the secessionist cause that both brothers say is their father’s “true legacy”.

While still within the “separatist spectrum”, Lone dared to upset the secessionist leadership’s apple cart by doing the unthinkable. He earned another distinction in the camp – where, he says, “same statements and slogans of 1989, printed on the first day are still in circulation, photocopied over and over” – to abandon rhetoric for roadmap. After eight months of research, Lone claims he came up with the paper titled ‘Achievable Nationhood’ to be presented to the-then prime minister Manmohan Singh.

However, the document was never acknowledged by the prime minister, Lone said. That made it clear to him that the “Congressis make so much of a noise” but would not come through when it was their turn to take a step forward. Lone was denied a passport for three years, he “infers” from the events, following the release of the document. His Pakistani wife and their two children, all in Pakistan at that time, were also refused visas for the same period. “Even then, I was singled out,” Lone recalled. “I was this big terrorist guy. I was put in the PAC (Prior Approval Category) list with the dreaded terrorists.” Lone said it was the BJP’s efforts that reunited him with his family by clearing his passport.

Two years after the release of the document, the Kashmir Valley would plunge into a massive uprising that, in the years to come, set off a series of events. After the months-long uprising, a high voter turnout in the Assembly elections gave way to speculation about Lone. Geelani would yet again accuse the People’s Conference – this time Lone – of fielding proxy candidates in the polls.

Lone had had enough. At the press conference – where he famously swore on the Quran, distancing himself from the candidates named by Geelani as the PC’s proxies – he lashed out at the Hurriyat hawk, calling him a “liar” and “curse” on Kashmir. “I cannot be a punching bag for the rest of my life,” he charged at reporters. “Does one have to suffer Geelani’s abuses (to be in the separatist camp)? I will rethink (if I want to be in this camp), I will talk to my people once again. It’s not worth it.”

Less than six months later, it seemed Lone had decided it really was not worth it. He entered the 2009 parliamentary elections, contesting from the Baramulla Lok Sabha constituency. At that point, he told reporters: “Fighting elections is a change of strategy and not ideology.” Though he lost the polls, coming in third, Lone did not lose his resolve. His critics had dismissed him as an opportunist who lacks political acumen, but Lone’s rise has been steady. The “idealism” about Pakistan was lost on Lone in 1984, he said. In retrospect, Lone says that he had never accepted the Hurriyat in their “current form” from the time he joined them as a “legacy politician” – as a dynast whose legacy ended with his exit from the secessionist camp.

In 2014, the Lone legacy was revived as Lone was elected to the state Assembly from Handwara – the constituency his father had represented. That year, Lone had surprised many, but falling short of stirring the hornet’s nest, when he publicly declared his proximity to the BJP, days before the 2014 Assembly elections, after a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi. He was reported to have said that the meeting went so well that he was unsure whether he was speaking “to the PM or my older brother”. Besides Lone, another candidate fielded by the PC also won. The party had managed to reach the civil secretariat, the state’s corridors of power, as part of the BJP’s quota in the cabinet.

It is this confidence and his proximity to the BJP that has armed his detractors, whose coordinated and sustained campaigns against him have made one thing evident: the possibility of his emergence as a leader and the PC as an alternative to the National Conference and the People’s Democratic Party has unnerved those who got the reins to the state from their fathers. As he lit a Parliament cigarette, Lone said a vilification campaign against him portrayed him as “some James Bond – an RSS, BJP, Hindutva, anti-Muslim, anti-jihadi demon”. His detractors, he said, are “frustrated, flustered”.

Taking a fraction of the blame for the state’s most unpopular governments in recent history, Lone said the BJP was not a political untouchable in Jammu and Kashmir. “My people believe in me,” he said confidently. “It’s all about the leader and how he sells it. If you sell hatred, you will get hatred in return. If you sell love and development, you will get those in return.”

Now a former cabinet minister residing in the VIP quarters at one of Srinagar’s most secure areas, Lone reminisces of the early days since he became “the butt of jokes” in Kashmir. As he campaigned for his parliamentary polls in the bygone days before the advent of WhatsApp, he still remembers, SMS alert-based news groups sent out updates stating “Sajad Lone addressing six people… three people”. Today, he sees the possibility of his coronation nearer. Cutting short a hypothetical question about a possible PC-led government, Lone said, “It’s not hypothetical; it’s going to be a reality.”

The one with the ‘crazy ideas’

In the Hurriyat spectrum, Lone said, ideas about the importance of governance and social issues – that could not wait till independence – were deemed “crazy”. A state ravaged by corruption, fast losing its forest cover, could not afford to stay silent. “Trees will not grow faster after independence,” he said. “Our schools are not good and an entire population cannot be re-educated.”

If and when there is a government that Lone presides over, it would be “totally different” as he had a “mind of his own about how to govern” – decentralisation and liberalisation were key to the governance guided by the understanding of the difference between grievances and aspirations. While the former was within the ambit of the Constitution, Lone equates the latter with the demands for secession and “outside our political system”.

There are no short-term solutions, he said, and counter-insurgency operations, therefore, yielded only short-term results. “You cannot totally say that operational measures have no space. They are needed when there is violence, a gunman staring at you,” he said. “But there is a vast majority of unarmed civilians who have not taken to violence that you need to reach out to.” What Kashmir needed, he reiterates, are the structural responses beyond the regional unionist parties’ repeated demands of dialogue with Pakistan – for a beginning, the constables showing kindness.

Lone’s politics, so far, has been that of very few turns compared to his counterparts in the NC and PDP. There is a clarity of vision and discourse and a primary focus on addressing grievances. Lone intends to shun the “pretence”, often termed soft separatism, which is typical of the Valley-based unionist parties. “When we seek a vote, we seek to redress grievances not to fulfil aspirations. Vote is to address grievances and I will only address grievances,” he said.

The Kashmiri, Lone believes, is not a “political robot” who doesn’t have social issues. “Kashmiris are sum of many parts and one part of that is political. Maybe 20 percent political but the 80 percent is social,” he said. If in power and given a chance, Lone said he would look into “how (separatist sentiments) can be chiseled to fit into the category of grievances rather than aspirations outside the system”.

Though his father – a two-time minister in state governments who favoured dialogue with the Indian Union – was said to have been willing to field proxy candidates in the 2002 elections, he had avoided seeking a solution within the ambit of Indian Constitution. Lone, however, has crossed that line. “Boundaries can’t be redrawn, it’s impossible,” he says today.

In the days after the drama enacted over moves to form the government and the governor’s panicked dissolution of the Assembly, Lone feels the Opposition has upped its ante. The same environment was being created, he observed, which was created before his father’s assassination. “Utterances in the last twenty years have been the cause of killings,” he said grimly. His father dared to take a stand and gave his life for it. The son now dares to dream.

Courtesy: FirstPost.