A NEW INTIFADA IN KASHMIR ON CARDS
1. In English, the word intifada is often translated as a “rebellion” or “uprising,” but the original meaning in Arabic is closer to “shaking off” or “getting rid of” someone or something. When intifada is used in the context of the decades of fighting between the Palestinians and Israelis, it means an organized, both grassroots and politically backed uprising of local Palestinians against the Israeli military. The opposing sides already fought two such conflicts. The first one started in 1987 and ended in 1993, and the second one, far bloodier, broke out in 2000 and lasted for over four years. The Al-Aqsa Intifada, also known as The Second Intifada, began with rocks and tear gas before mushrooming into an armed conflict in which more than 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis were killed.
2. Kashmir Valley by a very crude analogy has also gone through a sinusoidal wave of violent unrest peaking and ebbing at various points of inflection on its temporal matrix. The re-invocation of the CFA of 2013 and closing the tap of infiltration along Line of Control (LC) by Pak Deep State has set the stage where in the message from Pak to the local Nexus is to ‘DO MORE’ if they are looking for Pak support as the abrogation of Article 370 didn’t create the requisite flare up in the valley as was anticipated by Pakistan. The prognosis for future would be incomplete without taking into account the effect of two agitations which rocked India in recent past, the anti CAA agitation which mutated into a communal riot in the national capital and also the farmer agitation which again targeted the NCR.
3. What India is likely to face this summer is not, therefore, another bout of unrest to be managed and then forgotten, but an uprising. A trigger for such an uprising may be doctored or be inadvertently precipitated by actions of the civil administration or the security forces. This would have the propensity to instantly metastasize from what is presently being seen as an uneasy calm to a simmering revolt and into a general uprising. The youth of Kashmir has been kept home bound due to COVID pandemic and has had enough time on its hand to be subjected to an electronic intifada by social media and vitriolic narrative engineering by inimical agents and parsimonious pseudo-liberals. This generation harbours vivid childhood memories of accentuated violence and stone pelting agitations in the recent past and despite recent tactical and political setbacks, the Nexus may not be reluctant to revisit that paradigm albeit with a novel line of effort by creating an ecosystem in the info-sphere by using a pen and writing, by opening a blog and reaching out to the people, by having a diplomatic effort — even though it has proved to be useless these days much to the consternation of Pakistan which has failed to garner any traction on Kashmir in international fora. “Existing as a Kashmiri is resisting” is the new thought. While Indian security forces and their alleged brutalities loom large in discussions, many young Kashmiris are also frustrated at their own leaders plagued by years of infighting that has undermined young people’s faith in both the political and separatist action. Some accuse the Nexus leadership of suppressing political expression, snitching on OGWs and alleged freedom fighters for their petty gains.
4. The burden of the common Kashmiri song is the same as before: “Our schools and colleges are closed and our children have lost another year; our businesses are ruined and we don’t know how to pay back our loans; we are short of food, of medicines, of fuel, but this time we are going to support the boys to the bitter end. For as long as India rules Kashmir through the gun and the security forces alone, the killing and the upsurges of anger and violence will continue and we will face ruin again and again.” What the government of India is likely to face, therefore, is not terrorism or a proxy war by Pakistan; it would be home bred and home engineered. The new intifada will have different characteristics from earlier movements. While it will may comprise of non-violent political and civil disobedience expression, violent emotions may be entwined too. Emotions are running equally high among pro-independence and ultra-radical segments of the terrorist movements in J&K. They can resort to violent actions separately or both lines of effort could converge to increase the impact of the intifada. The face of non kinetic intifada would surely be Kashmiri but the same cannot be predicted of the violent line of effort.
5. There is also a large section of the youth who have encountered deaths in the near family and who firmly believe that force of arms is the only way to achieve their goals duly corroborated by the recent spate of recruitments from the strife torn districts of South Kashmir . Lack of leadership compounded with lack of faith in whatever existing leadership is has set the stage for import of leadership if not from Pakistan but may be Afghanistan. As the US draw down is completed on 9/11 of this year, thousands of the war-tourists who’ve spent two decades battling what they see as the invasion of a Muslim land by godless Westerners may shift eastward in their quest for another battlefield that pits Muslim insurgents against a predominantly non-Muslim army”. Islamabad may have already resumed its policy of pushing such terrorists into India by alternate routes to keep dangerous veterans of the Afghan campaign from destabilizing Pakistan by joining groups like Jamat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) or Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) which are running an anti establishment agenda within Pakistan.
6. Visions of the dreadful years in the 1990s following the withdrawal of the vanquished Soviet troops from Afghanistan, when the Afghan mujahideen were re-routed to Kashmir in large numbers, would be a flash back none in the security establishment would want to revisit. The Afghan mujahideen transformed Pakistan-backed, proxy war in Kashmir into a ruthless terror machine. The degree of their penetration into Kashmir can be gauged from the fact that they made parts of the Kashmir Valley such as Sopore their own “liberated zones”. Operation SARP VINASH and many such operations would be still vivid in the minds of troops who participated to reclaim these liberated zones. These Afghan may not even have to go through the trial and tribulations of illegal entry into India today, there exists a very comprehensive medical tourism industry in India which is tailor made to suit the Afghan needs and may be the optimum conduit for any such movement. From 2016 India sought to meet the medical needs of Afghans constrained from visiting Pakistan and introduced a same-day visa policy for Afghan medical tourists. Even in 2018 it was reported that more than 500 Afghans sought an Indian visa from the Indian consulate in Herat every day. Of these, 80% sought medical treatment.1
7. The impending summer may not be as calm as it is expected to be by the security forces with the new found freedom from Pakistan shackles may embolden the ‘new separatist’ to take matters into own hands free of a narrative across the LC and run its own course on its own terms. The only dampener to this could be the COVID surge India is experiencing and may force the educated leaders and the not so educated led to stay indoors. India may face the consequences of the emerging intifada bereft of Pakistan’s complicity and the present CFA and the prevailing peace on the LC may be the modus vivendi which Pakistan may be wanting to propagate to establish plausible deniability to any eruption of violence in Kashmir Valley.
1Singh, V.(2018), ‘Pak losing Afghan medical tourism to North India’, The Tribune, 26 December 2018, https://www.trclass="•-No-break">ibuneindia.com/ news/punjab/pak-losing-afghan-medical-tourism-to-north-india/704169.html accessed 04 May 2021.
