Why Sopore matters
The primary reason why the recent killings of two young girls in Sopore matters is known to everyone. It is the Talibanisation of the state that is worrying the moderate Kashmiris. Evidently these girls were killed as a part of the moral policing campaign by the militants.
Sopore, for those who care to remember, was known as a "liberated zone" till 1993, when the Indian Army launched an operation to regain control over the town.
In the nineties, when militancy began in Kashmir, Sopore fast became its hub. It was in Sopore that one of the first major pro-Pakistan militant outfits, the Tehreek-e-Jihad-e-Islami (TJI) led by Abdul Majid Dar, set up base.
The strategic importance of Sopore—it links Baramulla, Kupwara and Bandipore—made it a favourite haunt of militant groups like the Hizbul Mujahideen, which found substantial support in the town and its adjoining cluster of villages.
In 1993, Afghan national and Hizb-e-Islami leader Gulbadeen Hikmatyar's bodyguard, Akbar Bhai, lived and operated in Sopore for over two years. Akbar Bhai was killed in a fierce gun battle with the Border Security Force (BSF) on August 7, 1993. His killing encouraged the Army to enter the town and launch an operation to flush out militants. Finally on November, 26, 1993, the Army entered Sopore and launched one of the biggest-ever combing operations in the history of Kashmir's counter-insurgency. And for the first time, tanks rolled out in the Valley. Sixteen people, most of them militants, were killed in the gunbattles that followed. Though thousands of troops swooped down on Sopore, they could not enter the congested Kraltang neighbourhood where militants, armed with heavy weaponry, had taken position on roof tops.
The Army, however, took over the town, shut it for a week and subsequently set up a network of bunkers to establish a permanent foothold. The Army left soon after the operation was called off and the BSF was once again deployed.[
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However Sopore, merely 55 kilometres away from Srinagar, is also known for being a separatist stronghold with a substantial support base for the Jamat-e-Islami. Before the advent of militancy, Sopore was, in fact, represented for three terms by Syed Ali Shah Geelani in the state Assembly. One of the top-most pro-Azadi Kashmir leaders and founder of Mahaz-e-Azadi (Front for Freedom), Sofi Akbar, too came from Sopore. The hold of the separatists on the area can be gauged from the polling percentages in Sopore constituency in the successful assembly elections of 2008 and parliamentary elections of 2009: 19.96 percent and 7.8 percent respectively.
While militancy has seen a downturn over the last few years in all other areas of the state, Sopore continues to remain the area with most active militancy even now. Even the CM contends that "Sopore has some committed militants that take advantage of policy of no collateral damage to hide."
The police have a list of 63 top militants active in Sopore, among them foreign militants belonging to the Lashkar-e-Toiba, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and Jaish-e-Mohammad. Apart from them, there are new recruits and local boys too: the police put their number at around 200 and growing. According to a recent report compiled by the police, 23 boys are missing in Sopore town alone and police say they have all joined militant ranks.[
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It is this confluence of separatism and terror that lends Sopore its significance in the happenings in the state. It is the place which provides the top-separatist leader Syed Geelani with his committed support base. He draws his political strength from here and his idea of an Islamic state of Kashmir, being run in accordance with the Shariah, seems to being slowly put into place with the recent killings in Sopore.
For all those who claim to stand by the ideals of the Indian Republic, this is a moment of reckoning. Either they can ignore it as just another ghastly terrorist act by the jehadis or they can choose to confront the demon of Talibanisation now. Those who opt to look the other way need not go further than the neighbouring Islamic Republic of Pakistan to see the consequences of tolerating this brand of Islamisation.
Even when viewed from the lens of realpolitic, this is a great opportunity for the mainstream politicians to put the separatist leaders on the backfoot. Syed Geelani can be cornered in his own backyard and his true colours exposed in front of the national and international media. Crypto-Islamists, commonly known as the moderate separatists, should also be forced to take an unequivocal call on the incident. There can be no better time and place for all the political parties in Kashmir to mobilise their supporters and put the separatists on the defensive.
However, this can only happen if all the mainstream parties in the state are willing to grasp this moment. Alas, this doesn't seem to be the case. The leader of the PDP, the main opposition party in the state, Ms Mehbooba Mufti has refused to comment on the incident. PDP's close political association with the Jamat-e-Islami and their brand of soft separatism easily explains her reluctance to do so. Moving beyond, there has been no statement from the ex-CM of J&K, Ghulam Nabi Azad, of the Congress party so far. Perhaps, his own personal political ambitions of regaining the CM's chair seem to be affecting his behaviour. The BJP is more keen on laying siege outside Yasin Malik's residence in Delhi than on pushing the Congress party to act boldly in Kashmir.
The time has come not only to condemn those who perpetrated this ghastly act, but also to name and shame those who are silent on the matter. For silence is often the voice of complicity.
Ideally, the national leadership of all the political parties should have grabbed this opportunity and moved in to support the J&K CM, Omar Abdullah in condemning the incident. It would not have been unfair to expect an All party Delegation from the centre to pay a quick visit to Sopore to send a strong, united message to the terrorists and their sympathisers. If our leaders waste this opportunity, they would have no one else to blame for when these Islamist terrorists raise their ugly head soon again in the state, somewhere else. By then, it might be too late.
Two related issues. Firstly, a lot of anger is being directed against people like Ms Arundhati Roy and others of her ilk for their silence on the brutal murders. Other than venting out steam, it serves no purpose and is irrelevant to the subject. Let us instead focus on those who matter.
Secondly, the call for political action by the parties does not take away from the responsibility of the state to tackle the challenge on other fronts simultaneously: ensure better law and order by enhanced security, undertake accelerated development in the town and monitor the running of madrassas in the area.
http://pragmatic.nationalinterest.in/2011/02/02/why-sopore-matters/
