Mehbooba is right: peace deserves first chance

Arun Joshi

Tribune News Service

Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti is a troubled soul as she cannot prevent the killings and violence in the Valley. She is caught between two fiercely opposite arguments: first, Kashmir needs a solution and therefore guns are there and the government has unheeded the peaceful alternatives; second, the curse of the guns has to be eradicated for peace in Kashmir. Now the new dimension is that civilians too have assumed the role of semi-combatants with stones being their weapons.

Mehbooba should not give up her effort in talking and working for the restoration of peace. This is, however, out of the picture frame for a man in Kashmir who has seen nothing but violence.

To suspect her to be pro-militants when she says peace is the only way out to come out of the mess of violence in Kashmir is patently wrong. She is not responsible for bringing in militancy nor were her predecessors. All of them might have committed mistakes, but the continuous violence as a means to press for the urgency of a solution is a self-destructive proposition.

On the civilians killing in Chadoora on Tuesday, Mehbooba was very clear: guns and bombs for the past three decades have only distanced the people from the resolution of issues confronting Kashmir. This sentence sums up the violence from all sides — militants, stone-throwers and the counter-insurgency forces. Loosely translated, it means that let the militants give up arms, thus leave nothing for the forces to fight against. It also is a plausible suggestion that they should wait for the outcome of peaceful means to work out a solution.

She also wanted the security forces not to rush after the militants to trigger a full-fledged fire that becomes uncontrollable. Some 200-300 militants cannot do much but the psychology of hurt, anger and hate can make the atmosphere really explosive.

As far as local militants are concerned, her instructions to the police are meaningful: work out a way to get them back to the violence-free mainstream.

Besides allegations from others, there have been voices from her own party PDP as well about the forces going on the rampage and killing three civilians while trying to neutralise a single militant. This runs contrary to her own narrative that the civilians should not become victims to the conflict running parallel to the encounters and gun battles.

That means the civilians have no business to be at the encounter sites. There would be voices that would hold her government guilty of killings in Kashmir after the death of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani last year. These people are trying to push her into a corner. She needs to resist that, failing which she would be falling into the designs of all those who want more chaos, confusion and violence in the Valley.

The general expectation is that she should heed the sane voices and redouble her efforts to bring peace and order. She is looking towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi and he should spell it out in very clear terms that peace should be given the first chance, as everything else can wait.