Two steps back

The death of seven protestors in police firing near Anantnag on Monday has sounded the warning bell and with extremely tragic consequences...

The death of seven protestors in police firing near Anantnag on Monday has sounded the warning bell and with extremely tragic consequences. There is a palpable, and immensely dangerous, edginess in the Kashmir Valley, and the police action, whether it be self-defence gone wrong or the result of trigger-happy personnel, is a manifestation of this. A judicial probe may have been ordered, the hows and whys of seven senseless deaths may accordingly be offered some time in the future, but managing the public perceptions of the firing poses a tremendous challenge.

After 10 years of militancy, a certain desensitisation is evident and daily body counts elicit as much surprise and dismay as the fluctuating pollution figures presented by weather girls on television. It would, however, be a mistake to dismiss the Brackpora death toll as the routine litreage of blood extracted in the proxy war. As they wage battle with increasingly audacious foreign mercenaries and brutal Fidayeen squads, the forces, and the authorities, cannot afford to lose the other war being sporadically fought in the Valley: the attempt to assuage feelings of betrayal 8212; real, imagined, and in between 8212; harboured by the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

It has been seen in the past that incidents of police firing in the Valley, provoked or not, have set the endeavours to tackle popular alienation back many steps. Three aspects of incidents of this nature merit attention. The people at large are tragically, and rightly, bound to be angry and anxious.

The security forces, who have been on the back foot since troops were relocated during the Kargil war, will no doubt be left bewildered. And the masterminds choreographing death and destruction will pounce on these deaths to widen the schisms of alienation. Clearly, a recipe for disaster. This demands, for starters, that not only should the inquiry being held be impartial, it should also be seen to be impartial. It is not a simple matter of determining whether personnel of the Special Operations Group and the CRPF are guilty or not, and accordingly announcing punishment, it is imperative that the entire procedure be absolutely transparent.

And if sincerity towards the aggrieved is to be evidenced, the demands that prompted the procession to Anantnag in the first place too have to be addressed. The protestors were questioning the militant credentials of five persons killed in connection with the Chitti Singhpura massacre. Conferring innocence on those killed in encounters is a shrewd move on the part of separatist leaders, but the authorities need to be more forthcoming on the circumstantial evidence they possess. Chitti Singhpura is an emotive issue at the moment, and establishing for the people of the Valley the heinous intent of Pakistan-backed terrorists could only be in the interests of the civil administration. And yet, these will only be short-term measures.

A multi-pronged counter-insurgency initiative still has to be honed to smother the present edginess in the Valley, the hair-raising feeling among the people and security forces that something is about to happen.