1. Home
2. Editorial

Truce comes calling. What next?

By Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal. Dated: 5/19/2018 11:39:07 PM

On the face of it, the ceasefire announcement for Kashmir made by union home minister Rajnath Singh sounds good. But it needs to be taken with Shakespeare's note of caution: All that glitters is not gold.
What is the purpose of any truce call? Does it signify a brief break from the violence or is it aimed at achieving the purpose of making a transition from military handling of a conflict to a political one? If it is the former, there is nothing to expect other than a possible and not so possible lull of few days. As for the latter, the signs don't seem visible.
Ceasefire is not an end in itself but a means to achieve an end. It can either be a useful tool for building a comprehensive peace process that is in the making or be introduced as a confidence building measure to lay the edifices of the process. There is nothing on ground to suggest either. There are no clear signs of what the Centre is trying to achieve, leave aside the contradictory signals that came from union defence minister and the army chief as well as the state level BJP spokesperson after being party to an all party meeting where the consensus for appealing the Centre to start a Ramazan ceasefire emerged. Is the move inspired by whims or by a western push for brokering some peace? Is there a genuine desire, even if belated, to reach out to the people of Kashmir through the ceasefire? Or, is it just some act of mindless charity on the occasion of Ramazan? Or, is there some other design? Even if inspired by the most benevolent of reasons and good intentions, doubts arise about the outcome of the announcement.
There are three missing elements that explain the unconvincing power of the ceasefire announcement. First, the truce announcement stands on shaky ground. Neither is it preceded by any back channel diplomacy nor by any softening of public posturing which could enable its reciprocity by militant organizations with some measure of success. Second, there are no moves on ground to suggest that government hopes to use the occasion for reaching out to the people or beginning some kind of a political initiative. Hurriyat leader, Mirwaiz Umar's profound question, "what after the ceasefire?" was a foreboding of return of violence after one month of Ramazan. On the second day of the truce announcement, with business of encounters, protests and clashes as usual, one may not need to wait for even a month for the violence to return. It hasn't vanished in the first place. Truce call came mixed with provocation as separatist leader Yasin Malik was arrested, sending a confusing message rather than generate goodwill.
The third and major invisible element is any bid for rapprochement with Pakistan or getting it to make commitment with respect to the ceasefire. The deaths of four civilians and a BSF jawan in the border firing incident demonstrate the fragility of any peace moves in Kashmir without bringing Pakistan on board at some level. Pakistan claimed that four of its civilians died in cross border firing and blamed India for the incident. Reciprocally, India blamed Pakistan. It is immaterial who pressed the trigger first. Historic, political and geographic complexity of the Kashmir dispute makes any moves for peace vulnerable to sabotage. Several vested interests on both sides of the borders and within Kashmir are inimical to interests of peace and would try their best to queer its path even if the moves and gestures are backed by the best of planning. Kashmir is both a cause and consequence of the India-Pakistan animosity and that is why there is need for opening channels on both fronts simultaneously.
Efforts for conflict resolution in the past have failed because either one of the two fronts was missing. Or, consistency and patience was in short supply, the onus of which is on all the stake-holders including the non-state actors. In more recent times, during the peace process between India and Pakistan between 2002 and 2006, the Kashmir component was missing other than its territorial aspect that lead to the historic ceasefire on the borders that paid dividends and lasted for over a decade and the opening of symbolic trade and bus routes between the two sides of Jammu and Kashmir, administered by the two countries.
Post armed insurgency, the first ever ceasefire announcement was made by JKLF chairman Yasin Malik soon after his release from prison in 1994 when insurgency was still at its peak. It was a huge risk he undertook but New Delhi did not respond and JKLF also earned the bloody wrath of other militant organizations. The JKLF maintains that over 500 of its men were killed by security forces after Malik's ceasefire announcement. The government intention was not to use the opportunity to start a peace initiative but to split and weaken JKLF. This policy ultimately allowed militancy to be fully dominated by pro-Pakistan groups like Hizb-ul-Mujahideen.
In July 2000, the Hizb announced a unilateral ceasefire and hastily withdrew it in two weeks after failed attempts to initiate a dialogue between the organization and Delhi's points-man Kamal Pande. Both India and Pakistan blame each other for sabotaging the talks. The ceasefire offer was a culmination of backdoor channel diplomacy but the dramatic haste with which it was made betrayed lack of clarity, thus unnerving other stake-holders as well as causing insecurities and anxieties in their mind. Conspiracy theories played their role in the imagination of the National Conference which was awaiting Atal Behari Vajpayee government's response on its autonomy resolution as well as in the minds of other militant organizations which feared a "sell-out".
In November 2000, Vajpayee announced a ceasefire during the month of Ramzan and this was later extended to another five months. Several militant organizations including Hizb called it a 'trap' and failed to reciprocate. The ceasefire did not help scale down violence but gave space to political mobility for constituency of peace. Two prime reasons for the failure of the ceasefire were the skepticism of the militant outfits, primarily because Pakistan was kept out of the loop, and Vajpayee's limitations of balancing his desire for going ahead with peace and the maximalist position of the hawks within BJP. The gains were frittered away because the much needed diplomatic offensive between India and Pakistan, which could have provided the ceasefire greater stability, remained missing.
Today Kashmir is at a point where the new militant resistance is in the hands of youth and is extremely hardcore and venomous in nature. On the other side is the BJP which has maintained a maximalist position, inspired by its ideological moorings, and spent the last four years brutally crushing Kashmiris. The gap between New Delhi and Kashmir has widened to almost an unbridgeable extent and suspicions on either side have multiplied. This ground reality further shrinks the space for a process of conflict transformation.
Ideally, the ceasefire required some leg-work before it was announced so as to give it a sound footing. That has not happened. But now that it has come, it must be turned into an opportunity for creating a constituency of peace. New Delhi may need to offer much more to sound credible and also desist the temptation of puncturing this goodwill gesture with actions that are provocative. The apprehensions of the separatist leaders with respect to this ceasefire announcement are understandable but there is no headway that can be made through a continuum of violence. There is no option but to initiate a dialogue. Ceasefire is an opportunity to grab for reducing violence and jointly create space for that dialogue. The greater onus, however, is on the Centre. As a follow up to the generous announcement, actions should follow. New Delhi also needs to show more magnanimity, sincerity and consistency for enabling Kashmir to make the transition from conflict to conflict resolution and create space for working on a road map for peace.
Whether or not this is wishful, a truce without a purpose or goal runs the risk of not just failing but also back-firing and further vitiating the atmosphere.