*** Jihad unlimited: Does Kashmir need a military response or a political one?

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/fifth-column-jihad-unlimited-nice-attack-burhan-wani-kashmir-protests-2918817/

Fifth Column: Every time the Valley explodes, experts emerge to pronounce in ponderous tones that we need to find a ‘political solution’ instead of just a military one.

Written by Tavleen Singh | Updated: July 17, 2016

Within hours of the attack in Nice, the President of France acknowledged that it was an act of Islamist terror. I consider this an important detail to begin this week’s column with because it is my view that a failure to acknowledge what is really happening in the Kashmir valley is the main reason why we get no closer to finding a political solution. The armed struggle for ‘azaadi’ that began in the last days of 1989, when Yasin Malik and his comrades kidnapped Mehbooba Mufti’s sister, was secular in nature and was a mistaken but sincere attempt to win freedom for Kashmir. This movement was subsumed long ago by jihadi terrorism planned by groups who took their orders from Pakistan’s ISI. These groups fought under the banner of Islam. Nearly every video of Burhan Wani shows him affirming that his fight is for Islam. When he was killed on July 8, the first people to commemorate him as a martyr were Hafiz Saeed and Syed Salahuddin.

Wani belonged to the Hizbul Mujahideen that the ISI formed in the early Nineties with the specific purpose of taking over the ‘azaadi’ movement from the JKLF (Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front). The nature of the movement changed. On Srinagar’s streets suddenly appeared bearded young men who forcibly closed bars, cinemas and video shops. These same fanatics then targeted women who did not cover their faces, and soon emerged zealots like Asiya Andrabi of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat, who not only covers her whole face but wears black gloves so that no hint of female flesh is visible. These changes were dramatic and sudden. They did not happen gradually, but to this day, most Indian commentators continue to be in denial mode.

Is it just me or have you noticed that nobody yet links the violence in Kashmir to the worldwide jihad? In Srinagar last summer when I first heard of Burhan Wani, people talked of him with reverence but without mentioning that his fight was not just for ‘azaadi’ but for Islam. Like his Islamist brothers across the Muslim world, his videos show him saying this in clear terms. The thousands who attended his funeral indicate that in death he remains Kashmir’s biggest hero. So has Islamism put down deep, deep roots? If it has, what should we be doing about it? Can we do anything about it if we continue to deny that it is not freedom from India that the Kashmiris now want but their own little Islamic state?

Every time the Valley explodes, experts emerge to pronounce in ponderous tones that we need to find a ‘political solution’ instead of just a military one. Yes. Everyone knows this. What nobody seems to know is what this political solution could be and if it is even possible to think about political solutions when angry, young Kashmiris hate India enough to risk their lives by attacking armed security personnel. Is a political solution possible as long as Pakistan continues to back jihadists? There is no point in pretending that this did not happen again this time. Synchronised attacks on police stations indicate a degree of planning that is well beyond the strategic capacity of school children and angry young men.

What should worry policymakers in Delhi and Srinagar is why Burhan Wani’s message finds such resonance. What should worry the Prime Minister is that two years of his term have gone by without the smallest indication that his government has a new policy to deal with the changed nature of our oldest political problem. Personally I had hoped that Narendra Modi would open a new chapter in Kashmir by making it completely clear that there will never be ‘azaadi’, and that once this is accepted, we can begin to talk of other things.

Far too many young Kashmiris believe, as Burhan Wani did, that all it needs is for them to continue stoning Indian soldiers and security personnel and this will result in independence. This idea is supported from across the border by men like Hafiz Saeed who rave on about how Allah is on their side and so victory is automatic.

Burhan Wani was so important an asset for Pakistan’s jihad against India that his death was brought up at the United Nations last week. He was described by Pakistan’s representative to the UN as a Kashmiri ‘leader’ who was killed by extra-judicial means. This is as absurd as if Tunisia was to claim that the killing of the man who drove that killing machine of a truck in Nice amounts to a human rights violation. Burhan Wani was a jihadi terrorist who in one of his last videos urged ordinary Kashmiris to stay away from soldiers and policemen because ‘we can attack them at any time’. Should there be a military response to this or a political one?