Even as I write this column, hectic discussions are on between and within the various factions of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference in Kashmir on whether or not to join hands once again. Undoubtedly, the catalyst for this change has been the reopening of the Muzaffarabad bus service and President Musharraf's visit. The former triggered a wave of joy in the Valley and awoke the Hurriyat to the fact that if they don't join the dialogue over the future of Kashmir, they would soon become irrelevant. Musharraf pushed them a step further by haranguing them for three-and-a-half hours on the need to unite and come to terms with reality if they wished to play a hand in deciding their future.
The overtures to unity that followed have reached a point where the two factions are trying to decide whether to merge or simply set up a coordination committee. Opinion within the Hurriyat seems to be veering towards a merger provided it is accompanied by an enlargement of the executive committee and the induction of new people into it. The Kashmiri nationalist intelligentsia may be forgiven for believing that this will be to their benefit. A unified Hurriyat will carry the weight they need to influence thinking both in New Delhi and Islamabad. In fact, in the tortured, fear-ridden politics of that unhappy state, the unification could also have exactly the opposite effect—at its very worst, it could plunge Kashmir and, with it, both India and Pakistan back into the vortex of violence in which they have lived for the past 15 years.
To see why, we need only to remember the reasons for the original split some 20 months ago. The crack brought into the open the simmering disagreements between the minority led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani and backed by the Jamaat-e-Islami which wanted to merge with Pakistan and the larger faction that wanted independence or self-determination. This deep division, which harked back all the way to the split between the Muslim Conference and the National Conference in 1939, remained latent in the early '90s but surfaced after the indigenous insurgency died down and Kashmiris began to yearn for peace.
Till very recently, Pakistan has solidly supported the Geelani faction. For five years, from 1998 to 2003, the isi has battled the growing desire for compromise with New Delhi within the Hurriyat. They threatened to cut off funds and even kill those who favoured the idea. In 2002, when this ceased to work, it sanctioned the assassination of Abdul Ghani Lone, the leading moderate and most respected leader in the organisation other than Geelani. To drive home the threat, it chose May 21, anniversary of the assassination of Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq, to execute the foul deed.
Since then, assassins have killed the brother of former Hurriyat chairman Prof Abdul Ghani Bhat and come within an inch of killing a second rank leader, Shahid-ul-Islam. Bhat himself escaped when a grenade in his car with the pin half pulled out was discovered in time.
It speaks volumes for the steadfastness of the moderates. Despite these attacks, they continued to seek an accommodation with New Delhi. Last year, before they left for a second meeting with the then deputy PM L.K. Advani, they were bombarded with calls from Pakistan warning them not to go. When they went ahead, the controllers of terrorism in Pakistan 'punished' them by sanctioning the killing of the gentle and harmless uncle of the young Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, burning his century-old school to the ground and lobbing a bomb into his garden. To say that the moderates live in constant fear of death is an understatement.
If the Hurriyat reunites, the old schism between Geelani and the moderates will reappear. Geelani may heed Musharraf's admonition to 'use his brains' but he is unlikely to stray too far from his original stand. The most we can expect from him will be a readiness to support the separation of the Valley, possibly clubbed with some parts of Poonch, Rajouri and PoK, on condition that they are turned into a UN protectorate. Musharraf may know this will not be acceptable to India but it will be music to the ears of the isi, which stands to lose its raison d'etre if the Kashmir dispute is resolved. The moderates will then find they have exchanged the frying pan for the fire. Threats to them will multiply in order to make them toe Geelani's new line. It will only be a matter of time before, persuaded by another assassination or two, they cave in.
Manmohan Singh has made it clear that India cannot accept such a 'solution'. But since it would be virtually impossible for Musharraf to oppose a 'reasonable' proposal if it comes from the Kashmiris themselves, the peace process will collapse.
New Delhi has only itself to blame for allowing this possibility to arise. The mere fact that the isi and Pakistan wanted to destroy the moderate Hurriyat should have made it do everything it could to treat its leaders as the most authentic (although not the only) leaders of the Kashmiri people. Instead, for more than two years both the home and defence ministries have spared no effort to belittle the moderates and persuade the prime minister that they are 'small men in big chairs'. They have thus joined hands with the isi in tearing down the only ethno-national segment that is capable of making the Kashmiris accept a solution that does not involve separation from India. That the policymakers in these ministries did not even know what they were doing reveals their inability to think strategically. Both Kashmiris and Indians deserve better.