Stirring militancy in Kashmir

THE end result of the new strategy of Kashmiri militants — travelling to Pakistan on valid visas and infiltrating via the LoC — was the same. The four Kashmiri militants who crossed Wagah with valid documents and infiltrated back into the Valley ended in coffins. Indoctrinated Pakistani youngsters pushed into the Valley too have an equally short shelf life. As Imran Khan promises a Naya Pakistan, the premier-in-waiting and his allies in GHQ need to ponder whether there is also a need to overhaul and, perhaps, dump the old tactics of stoking militancy as means to pressurise neighbours into accepting their worldview. Pakistan’s security managers also flag their concerns about militancy in Balochistan as if to justify their quarterbacking of the insensate violence in Kashmir.

Today, when Pakistan stands at an economic crossroads — parlous foreign exchange reserves, sharply curtailed US assistance and put on notice by FATF — it may not be a terribly good idea to continue on the same path while depending on just Beijing for financial and political bailouts. An Imran-army axis has to move towards an era of internal reform which means jettisoning its tactics of unrelenting promotion of a militant mindset. The recent antics of the once-celebrated Afghan and Kashmiri ‘freedom fighters’ have brought only a bad name to Pakistan. In Gen Musharraf’s words, ‘religious militancy turned into terrorism. Now they are killing their own people and this should be controlled and stopped’.

In other words, at least a section of the Pakistan army realises its active stoking of violence has backfired. Uncertainty has led to exacerbation of poverty, ascendancy of militarism and internal acrimony. The reductionist view of political occurrences to justify militancy across the borders has also stopped providing any external strategic advantage, if there ever was one. With Imran Khan at the helm and the army guarding his back, Pakistan needs to summon its creative capacity to change the nation’s ethos that now stands defined by its military muscle. It is in its own interest to become a welfare state rather than a national security state.