National News
Jammu and Kashmir: Delegation from state asks Centre’s Representative to get forces to use velvet gloves
Let us incentivise the counterinsurgency forces in Kashmir to get local militants to surrender. To do that, let’s pay those responsible for a surrender ten times the reward we already hand out to those who kill militants.
That was one of the more significant suggestions that came from a delegation that met the Centre’s Representative for talks in Kashmir, former Intelligence Bureau chief Dineshwar Sharma. The Representative was in Kashmir for his second visit earlier this week.
Of course, the delegation that suggested it thought it was an important point. More revealing is the fact that Sharma seemed to think so too.
Arafat, an activist, educator, and leading member of that delegation, says Sharma told them at dusk that theirs was the best interaction he had had all day. He jotted notes, and asked them to send him an e-mail repeating the exact words they had used.
This vignette is important for two reasons. First, it is an indicator of how little of concrete value regarding long-term solutions has come from the large number of delegations that have so far met Sharma during his two visits.
He has done his best. He ventured out of Srinagar this time, and even met some of the youth who are categorised as ‘former stone-pelters’. In fact, the suggestion to incentivise surrenders (of local boys) came from a delegation that met him in Anantnag, the main city of south Kashmir.
For the most part, however, delegations have apparently brought up mirco-level issues and administrative concerns. One wanted a tehsildar transferred. Several others spoke of power outages and the state of infrastructure. Some sought funds to engage with other Kashmiris.
Peace dividend
The other reason this particular suggestion is important is that each surrender or capture deflates the movement, while the movement generally gets a huge boost when a militant is killed — particularly a local boy.
For, on the one hand, such killings generate resentment and anger among his family and neighbours, especially his friends. Some of those friends are liable to pick up the killed militant’s baton by also turning to arms.
Some perceptive and responsive army commanders are aware of the ills of incentivising kills rather than surrenders. For example, Lt General DS Hooda had raised the issue at a conference of army commanders when he was commander-in-chief of the northern army.
In an on the eve of his retirement in November 2016, Hooda had emphasised the need to improve the surrender policy, so that Kashmiris might find it easier to surrender.
Army commanders who have served in Kashmir in top positions have sometimes pointed out the ironic fact that officers and soldiers are offered incentives to increase the number of ‘kills’ in their operations but no incentive to achieve peace in their areas of operations.
Although the army runs a well-funded Sadbhavana programme to increase goodwill among the people in Kashmir, many officers see it as a means to increase the flow of information.
In fact, many in the forces and intelligence agencies are well aware of the fact that the flow of vast budgetary allocations and unaccounted secret funds would dry up if peace were actually achieved. So would the medals, citations, promotions, and other rewards that hinge on maximising ‘kills’.
The huge power of the police and other forces in areas that are seen as dominated by insurgency also hinges on the continuation of that image.
