Kashmir issuess

Challenges to internal security through communication networks

 Dineshwar Sharma was appointed “as the Representative of the Government of India to initiate and carry forward a dialogue with the elected representatives, various organisations and concerned individuals in the State of Jammu and Kashmir
 By denying space for dialogue, the Narendra Modi government has reinforced its policy of a military approach to Kashmir which will only give more opportunities for extremism and violence.
 On September 11, Home Minister Rajnath Singh spelt out the contours of a plan of engagement in Jammu and Kashmir.
 He said that a permanent solution to the Kashmir problem was based on five Cs, which he would define as “compassion, communication, coexistence, confidence building and consistency”.
Compassion
 On the political front as had been indicated at the height of the 2016 summer uprising when he tried to reach out to the separatist camp.
 However, the hard-line approach of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government at the Centre seems to have stalled any such move, and Rajnath Singh found himself isolated in view of the strong lobby that advocated and pursued a security-oriented approach.

Communication
 Communication has been missing.
 The line of communication has been kept open only with those who do not challenge India’s rule in Kashmir.
 By gathering the pro-India political parties again and again to understand the Kashmir problem, the government has been defeating the idea of communication with the people of Kashmir.
 Shutting the door on those who have been spearheading the resistance against the state has not been helpful in past and the same would be the case with the present and the future.
 By not engaging in a political dialogue with forces such as the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, the Government of India is also giving them an excuse to not do anything.
 Having a line of communication and putting their ability to test would have helped people think about the capacities of the leadership, but that perhaps cannot come without communication that has no precondition.
Coexistence
 There is no coexistence on the ground.
 Particularly in the past few years, the effort has been to isolate the community.
 New Delhi has defeated the idea of Jammu and Kashmir being an “integral part of India” on the ground by not showing any respect for coexistence.
 Use of military power, that too, indiscriminately against the civilian population, putting them under curfew for 54 days at a stretch, and protecting those who commit human rights violations are some of the hard facts that talk about a different existence.
Confidence building
 Confidence-building measures have been another casualty. Confidence has been shaken for a long time now.
 Deploying more and more forces does not help to build confidence; it dents the very essence of it.
 Confidence comes from measures that are aimed at addressing the concerns that are directly linked to people’s existence, their daily life, and their rights.
 The government’s loss of confidence in the people has dealt a severe blow to any process of reconciliation.
 When institutions fail to deliver justice, there can be no hope of confidence building. By treating the people as the “other”, confidence-building measures can become far-fetched and that is how it has played on the ground.
 The finest example of confidence building vis-a-vis Kashmir was when former Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee took a giant step by extending a hand of friendship to Pakistan from Srinagar on April 18, 2003.
 This gesture was followed by opening the roads between the divided Jammu and Kashmir, starting trade exchanges across the Line of Control (LoC) and allowing people on the borders to live peacefully.
Consistency
 Consistency is the only requirement in dealing with an issue like Kashmir.
 No matter what happens, foreign policy has to be consistent.
Strategic advantage for Pakistan due to Kashmir
 It is a reasonable expectation that J&K could turn restive at the onset of war. Pakistan has not sustained the insurgency in Kashmir out of a sense of affinity with Kashmiris alone. Its military overlords have national security and the military’s institutional interests at heart.
 Operationally, they wish to undercut India’s conventional military advantage prior to its application on the western front.
 Keeping rear areas insecure helps in interdicting and disrupting the Indian forces en route to the frontline.
 An example is Pakistan’s choice in the late 1990s of the Hill Kaka area in Surankote tehsil as a base for terrorism.
 Not only would the terrorist base prove useful for disrupting India’s defences in Poonch sector from the rear, but would also help sustain the insurgency across the Pir Panjal range in the Kashmir Valley. The base was finally evicted in a division-
level operation, Operation Sarp Vinash (2003), on the heels of Operation Parakram (2001–02).
Afghanistan factor
 This makes clear the background to the appointment as not rooted so much in a conflict resolution initiative regarding India’s leading internal security challenge, as much as in the regional security situation, energised by US President Donald Trump’s Afghanistan policy speech of 21 August 2017.
 Keeping its interests at heart in Afghanistan, the US has expressed its keenness on occasion to intervene in the India–Pakistan stand-off that Pakistan, leveraging its strategic location, regularly urged.
 While India had in 2009 decisively rebuffed Richard Holbrooke, US Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan (Af–Pak), the new US administration in its settling-down stage had revisited the notion.
 The Pakistanis, being past masters at manipulating the US, will, to their advantage, allow transit of US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) logistic lines through Pakistan, demanding that the US lean on India over the Kashmir issue in return.
 Apprehending this, India appears to have scrambled to put together a dialogue process of sorts in