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There are still opportunities for India, Pak to resolve Kashmir issue: Omar

Kashmir Times. Dated: 4/23/2018 12:16:11 AM

`Last Maharaja was for independent J&K’

SRINAGAR, Apr 22(Agencies): India and Pakistan have squandered a lot of good chances to resolve the Kashmir issue, but there are still opportunities, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah has said.
He was speaking at an event at University of Berkeley in California in the US last week.
He outlined the need for a dialogue process both internally as well as externally to address the issue, saying the solution cannot be driven by the barrel of the gun.
While batting for restoration of autonomy, former Chief Minister and National Conference working president also said that last Dogra ruler of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was more interested in an independent Kashmir.
“The Maharaja, as I understand it, was more interested in an independent Jammu and Kashmir. He asked for time to decide (future of his state) and didn’t opt either for India or for Pakistan. So on the night of August 15, 1947, when India attained independence and Pakistan was born, actually a third independent (entity) came into existence and that was Jammu and Kashmir. It remained independent for few months. But it was a short-lived period”, Omar said in his opening remarks at the Berkeley University on April 20.
He was speaking on the topic, “The Path Forward” in Jammu and Kashmir,
With regard to Kashmir issue, he said, “There are clearly two dimensions (to Kashmir issue). It is not simply a matter between New Delhi and J-K, nor is it a matter between Islamabad and J-K. A part of the state continues to remain with Pakistan and I belong to the part of the state that is with India- that acceded to India. So when we come to the way forward, both these dimensions of the problem will have to be tackled.”
His speech was followed by a question and answer session where he spoke on varied topics, including on the current political situation in the country and the run-up to the general elections next year.
Omar, the working president of the opposition National Conference (NC), wondered if the time had come to ask are we being overly ambitious and overly emotional in talking of getting Pakistan-Administered Kashmir (PAK) back.
Referring to the Kargil war of 1999 between the two neighbours, he said that even with the greatest of provocations that time, India respected the sanctity of the Line of Control (LoC).
In spite of the fact that we took losses on account of that, there were express instructions by the government of India that Indian planes and helicopters will not cross the LoC, that Indian troops will not cross the LoC. So, imagine even if with the provocation of Kargil we decided to respect the sanctity of the LoC, haven't we somewhere or the other, decided that perhaps this is the way and let's move forward, he said.
In this context, he said one of the ways to move forward is to sit down with Pakistan and once and for all, address this issue.
“We can't do it with the international mediation. I think mediation is a word that particularly people in India have a lot of suspicion about. But facilitation is not something that we have a problem with. Perhaps friends in the right places can facilitate this process between India and Pakistan and address some of the suspicions that we have. I believe that we came incredibly close during the time of (former Pakistan president) General Pervez Musharraf first with (former) Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and then with (ex-PM) Manmohan Singh, but time ran out for us because it took so long to finally put aside our suspicions of Musharraf as the architect of Kargil War that by the time we realised he was somebody we need to do business with, he wasn't nearly as powerful as we needed him to be,” he said.
He, however, said there still was scope for forward movement.
"...I don't believe that all opportunities have been lost, but we have squandered a lot of good chances and I hope we don't do that going ahead, he said.
Without naming the separatists, Omar called for an internal dialogue with all shades of opinion.
“The path forward has to start from the dialogue process both internally as well as externally. It has to take in all shades of opinion. It is no good that the government of India often hides behind this false screen that they create that let Kashmiris first agree on something and then we will talk. Look, Kashmir is not going to uniformly agree on one thing, no matter what solution you work out whether it's part of something similar to Musharraf's four-point formula or it is drastically different from that.”
“The fact is that you are not going to get a 100 per cent of population to agree on anything and therefore the effort has to be to bring in the majority of the population into whatever you agree and that can only be possible if we involve, in the dialogue process, those people, who at the moment we not only do disagree with but have kept away from that dialogue process. So, if we can agree to start talking to each other, start listening to each other rather than talking at each other, we can start addressing some of these problems,” he said.
The NC working president said the state is facing a very unusual situation as the number of youths willing to pick up arms in the valley is more than the number of weapons actually available and stressed the need for political and economic measures to wean them away.
“We need to create economic opportunities for the state. We need to create a promise of better future for the youngsters who are today being drawn to pick up the gun. It is a very unusual situation that we have in J-K today where there are more youngsters willing to pick up the guns than there are actually guns available.”
And that sentiment needs to be addressed and it needs to be addressed both politically and in terms of giving them opportunities. Opportunities in education, opportunities in employment and hopefully creating avenues and opportunities for them beyond the boundaries of the state, he said.
Former Chief Minister said that last Dogra ruler of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was more interested in an independent Kashmir.
He said the tribal invasion from across the border “in a sense forced the Maharaja’s hands” and he sought help from India to repel the invasion. “India that time rightly said, look you are an independent entity and our forces have no right to come to your rescue. The only way Indian army can come to rescue Jammu and Kashmir if J&K acceded to the Union of India, which is what happened and Jammu and Kashmir become part of Union of India," he said, adding Indian army came in after the Instrument of Accession was signed.
Omar said an issue of Jammu and Kashmir went up to the Security Council of the United Nations. He cited Resolution 47 of 1948. He said the Resolution says people (of Jammu and Kashmir) would be given the right to choose which dominion they want to go. The Resolution, Omar said, lays down certain rules, like Pakistan would withdraw its forces from the territorial boundaries of Jammu and Kashmir first. “It is withdrawing, not downsize, downscale, or reduce”, Omar said laying emphasis. He said following the withdrawal of Pakistani troops, India has to downsize its troop level that would manage the plebiscite authority to carry out the exercise. But, Omar said, Pakistan never took the first step.
He said over the years Kashmir has remained as an unfinished agenda of the partition for Pakistan as Islamabad couldn’t understand how a Muslim majority State would opt for stay with India.
He said unlike other states of India, the princely State of Jammu and Kashmir acceded to the Union of India but it didn’t merge in toto. “That is why Jammu and Kashmir enjoys a distinct position within the Indian Union. We are the only state with our own flag, only State with our own constitution, we are the only state for whom laws passed by the Parliament in New Delhi do not apply automatically unless the State government ratifies those laws for the extension to Jammu and Kashmir”, he said.
Omar said when the Accession terms were finalized, the Union of India was responsible for four things only in Jammu and Kashmir: Currency, Communication, Defence and Foreign affairs. “Everything else was the State’s domain, which meant, Supreme Court of India, Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Election Commission of India, Indian Administrative Services, Indian Police Service had no jurisdiction on Jammu and Kashmir.” He said the present constitutional position of the State was a pale shadow of its past. “This is one of the reasons, why we are facing the problem in Jammu and Kashmir”, he said alluding toward the erosion of the autonomy.
He said at present the biggest problem in Jammu and Kashmir is the security situation. “Almost 30 years later we are still dealing with an uprising, we are still dealing with militancy and we are still dealing the terrorism”, Omar said pointing toward armed insurgency that broke out in the State in 1989, when his father Dr Farooq Abdullah was Chief Minister of the State. He said what started purely as an indigenous struggle for political rights (in 1989) are no longer an indigenous struggle. He termed transformation of the political struggle into a religious one, saying at least fighters from six different nationalities including Sudan, Chechnya, have been killed in Jammu and Kashmir over the years though a large number of militants were locals.
He said the worrying drift was joining of the two youths from two states of India to Kashmir militancy. “Even though India has second largest Muslim population after Indonesia, it is only recently that Indian Muslims have joined militancy”, he said and mentioned two recruits, one was from the Telangana State of India, who was killed in an encounter last month and another is active and hails from Assam. “That is a significant change and it will have grave implication”, Omar said.
Omar as the Way Forward also insisted restoring autonomous status to the state to its fullest extent possible as it existed in 1953. But he also showed flexibility on his part saying workable model can be adopted and many things could be taken off the table like jurisdiction of the Election Commission of India to Jammu and Kashmir in the hope that New Delhi will respond in the kind. “In the end, we should arrive at a workable model that to some extent restore Jammu and Kashmir its autonomous position even if it doesn’t take us where we would like it to be”, Omar said.
With Jammu and Kashmir being called the highest militarized region, Omar conceded the State has far too many troops and soldiers than it should have. He, however, said Jammu and Kashmir have remained theatre of all wars India fought with Pakistan and it was also part of the war theatre during 1962 India-China war. “So regardless whether there is militancy in Jammu and Kashmir or not, so long as China and Pakistan are militarized Jammu and Kashmir will have a military presence. But the hope is that military presence will be as it was before 1989, which is on the borders, on the Line of Control and the Line of Actual Control, not in the civilian areas, because that is where problems arise. There have been reports and incidents of grave human rights violations that have not been adequately addressed,” he said.
He also pitched for Truth and Reconciliation (TR) model which should be applicable to both the parts of Jammu and Kashmir. He said people have not only died in this part of Jammu and Kashmir due to the long drawn conflict but they have also died “whether in training camps or through natural causes” in the Pakistani part of Kashmir
“We have right to ask how it happened”, Omar said.