Slim signs of cool off in Kashmir

Despite its eagerness to internationalize an end to the "proxy war," India has repeatedly made it clear over the years that it will not accept outside mediation over the future of Kashmir.

"What is deplorable about the international community right now is that they are not simultaneously asking India to solve this age-old conflict, which has been lying there before the United Nations ever since 1948," says academic and activist Hamida Nayeem.

Indeed, there is widespread cynicism in Srinagar about why rhetoric and forces have been ramped up now.

"The [Indian] government is trying to mislead the whole world into linking events with Al Qaeda," says businessman Parveez Sajad.

Cries of azadi, freedom, fill the air at what is a mourning ceremony for moderate Kashmiri separatist leader Abdul Gani Lone, gunned down last week in an apparent warning to those perceived to be moving too close to Delhi.

"Kashmir is an international recognized dispute, which involves the people's inalienable right to self determination and therefore India's clamor against terrorism carries no conviction," says Prof. Abdul Gani Bhat, one of the leaders of the opposition umbrella group All Parties Hurriyat Conference, to which Mr. Lone also belonged.

On the pro-Pakistani side of the group, the movement is largely indigenous and political, Bhat says, but welcomes "guest" fighters.

Indian Border Security Force deputy inspector Gen. Rajinder Singh Bhuller, whose job is to catch such infiltrators, says that following Musharraf's Jan. 12 pledges there was a dip in the flow of infiltrators, but as snow melts in the high passes, numbers have picked up again.

Those crossing the border are about 55 percent Kashmiri and 45 percent Pakistani with a few Afghans, says Mr. Bhuller.

This is indeed Musharraf's post-Sept. 11 dilemma, with it widely understood that he managed to get militant parts of his administration and Army to join the US-led action against Afghanistan on the understanding that backing for Kashmir would continue.

"If they [Indian officials] think it is so easy to control these extremists – these militants – within a specific time duration, then they are living in a fool's paradise," says Dr. Nayeem. "You have seven lakh [700,000] Indian troops stationed in Kashmir, and they have not been able to root out militancy all these years.... How can Musharraf within months, within days, control them?"

The Indian government appears to have accepted this, for now, with rhetoric cooling in recent days and unconfirmed reports in the local media that it will extend up to two months to the general to take action.

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