The Kashmiri separatist leadership has still not emerged with a clear leader as various factions are struggling for influence; the year 2004 has witnessed a see-saw battle between pro-Pakistani hardliners and moderate Kashmiris vying for legitimacy as the representative of Kashmiri interests. The hardliners have been able to seize on the power vacuum and hijack the movement. Their ascendancy has resulted in the continuation of further violence and a deteriorating dialogue. The Indian government has continued to keep communication channels open with the moderate Kashmiri leadership; however, the Kashmiri leadership itself has been marginalized within Kashmir and can no longer claim to represent Kashmiri interests. Even if the Indian government were able to make concessions amenable to the moderates, it would have little effect on the destabilizing violence because most of the militant groups are linked with the pro-Pakistani and pan-Islamic political groups. This, ultimately, is the reason India feels little incentive to negotiate with the Kashmiri leadership: India is aware that the key to halting the violence does not lie with politicians but with jihad outfits based in Pakistan who are unwilling to negotiate with India. While there is still occasional talk of a meeting between government and extremist separatist leaders, it seems that the talks would be held on an ad hoc basis and not as an institutionalized dialogue.

India’s defense mechanism, which has seemingly succeeded in deceiving the international community, has been to create a façade of normalcy in the region. The collapse of the talks has forced India to assume a reactionary position and attempt to downplay the need to address the dispute in Kashmir; it has attempted to depict Kashmir as stable and safe by promoting tourism and using the press to propagate its fictional vision of the ground reality in Kashmir. Against the backdrop of their cooperation and dialogue with Pakistan, India has been able to maintain its repressive policies in Kashmir while purporting to be compromising and working towards a solution on Kashmir vis-à-vis rapprochement with Pakistan. The national Indian media has abetted the state in this regard with its traditionally deficient reporting on Kashmir. Despite its ostensible status as a free press, the Indian media has hardly wavered from the state line on issues of national security like Kashmir—optimistic stories of tourism waves and potential breakthroughs have masked the lack of diplomatic progress and rampant violence.

The Bleak Reality

The fundamental reality is that the political prospects for Kashmir may be at their bleakest since the nuclear standoff during the summer of 2001. The region remains a virtual garrison state as approximately 600,000 security forces are deployed for the estimated 6 million people in the Kashmir Valley. The Indian response to the uprising in Kashmir was to ignore the political grievances of the Kashmiri movement and treat it as just a threat to law and order. The solution for India, consequently, has been the authorization of military force in an attempt to crackdown a la India’s successful stamping out of the Punjab insurgency in the 1980s. This approach has failed miserably. The international support for the movement from Pakistan and the Middle East has allowed it to flourish despite the Indian onslaught, while the excesses committed by Indian forces have only stiffened resistance and provided jihadis with cogent recruiting propaganda. It is impossible to deny the continuation of extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, torture, rape, fake encounters, and circumvention of basic civil liberties by the Indian security forces. Despite the much heralded 2002 “free and fair” elections in which the ruling party came to power on a “Healing Touch” platform aimed at limiting abuses by security forces, there have been over 300 documented cases of enforced disappearances over the last two years. India has often touted itself as the “largest democracy” in the world. However, even ignoring for a moment that for every election in Kashmir until 2002, with the exception of 1977 and 1983, there is considerable evidence that elections were rigged and that twice a democratically elected government was dismissed by the central government, there is no evidence to suggest that democratic institutions are functioning in Kashmir. The lack of any democratic process in Kashmir makes the government’s abuses all the more disastrous because there is no legal recourse through which victims can advance their grievances and receive redress.

The judiciary in Kashmir is highly politicized, inefficient, and in the 15-year history of the state crackdown on insurgents has never once convicted a government employee. Not only are the excesses committed by security forces condoned by the judicial system, they are oftentimes legally justified by a host of draconian laws passed by the Indian Parliament to deal with political dissension. Throughout the 1990s the Indian state was able to detain suspected militants in Kashmir under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act; both acts had vague criteria for arrest, enabling security forces to detain nearly anyone. These acts allowed arrests to be made without habeas corpus or due process and also allowed custodial testimony to be used in court that encouraged the state to opt for torture instead of interrogating suspects. Perhaps the most appalling legislation implemented in Kashmir is the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which grants security personnel virtual impunity by allowing them to kill anyone threatening “public order.” The invocation and abuse of these laws has fueled anti-Indian sentiment and only increased support for the insurgency in Kashmir. Violence levels have not shown any evidence of dropping off despite the dialogue between India and Pakistan. The death tolls in 2004 were commensurate with the levels in the late 1990s. In addition to the non-responsiveness of the state, neither the media nor civil society has come to the aid of Kashmiris. While the Western media has largely ignored the conflict, the Indian media has continued to toe the state line on issues of national security like Kashmir; most of the stories emphasize the alleged return of “normalcy” and shy away from open criticism of the government’s policy. Civil society is virtually non-existent in Kashmir due to harassment by the state and difficulty in raising funds. Most of the active nongovernmental organizations in the state have politicized funding and marginal credibility. Those organizations that genuinely attempt to improve the situation through relief or advocacy work must deal with state harassment, minimal community support due to a fear of being labeled anti-Indian, and negligible funding due to strict restrictions imposed by India on international assistance for Kashmir through the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act.