J&K needs a hearts and mind approach

The recently appointed Army Chief, General Bipin Rawat, has brought a fresh and positive approach to dealing with the very difficult insurgency-like situation in Kashmir Valley triggered by the killing last July of a young Hizbul Mujahideen commander, Burhan Wani, who had acquired cult status as much on account of his scrubbed good looks as the fact that — and this is the popular belief — he chose to take up arms and fight back after his brother was (unfairly) killed by the security forces.

The Army Chief has, however, rightly surmised that the basic cause behind the relatively high figures of Kashmiri youth being drawn to militancy of late lies elsewhere — that they are falling victim to “false propaganda” generated by Islamic organisations interpreting Islam “in a very incorrect manner with inaccuracies”, and on account of “developments in the Middle East”. This brings in the factor concerning Pakistan, where false propaganda is being manufactured on a sustained basis to incite the Valley’s Muslim population, and also points to the rise of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria as a potent development that has attracted young Muslims from around the world.

Kashmiris themselves are fully conscious of the play of these malignant forces exacerbating a situation in which the sense of political alienation in the Valley has not been addressed. Worse, they rightly feel that the Narendra Modi government has abandoned the path chosen by his predecessors Manmohan Singh and Atal Behari Vajpayee and dropped the idea of engaging the different social and political constituencies in Kashmir in dialogue.

Gen. Rawat’s thinking does not seem out of sync with this, although in his public remarks he has quite appropriately not gone into the question of political engagement. But he has said that it is “not a happy situation” when “our own countrymen” get involved in insurgency. This is what leads him to articulate the view that rather than target individuals alone, what is needed is the targeting of false propaganda.

This is the hearts and minds approach in the war of perceptions. This is classical counter-insurgency as distinct from counter-terrorism. Under the first, the environment is to be made such that people reject the enemy’s propaganda to achieve certain aims; the second merely thinks killing a few terrorists would solve the problem.

In Kashmir, the hearts and minds approach is badly needed. But success has another key ingredient — that the government appreciate the value of dialogue with the people. This is outside the Army’s domain. Kashmir is the first place the new Army Chief has chosen to visit after assuming charge a week ago. This suggests the priority to be accorded to the issue when we look at the security map of the country.