THE OMENS FROM MUZAFFARABAD
by B. Raman
There are indications that in the wake of his failure to
bring home from Agra a joint declaration or statement which could have
been projected as a success for his Kashmir strategy, Gen. Pervez Musharraf,
Pakistan's self-reinstated Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), self-styled
Chief Executive, and self-promoted President, has decided to further step
up the proxy war in Jammu & Kashmir.
After a series of consultations with the
National Security Council (NSC), some of his Corps Commanders and
his kitchen Cabinet, Gen. Musharraf has reportedly decided to send
Major Gen Mohammad Anwar Khan, who belongs to the powerful Sudhan
tribe and is a resident of Tain village in district Poonch, which
is also the home village of the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK)
Legislative Assembly Speaker Sardar Siab Khalid, to Muzaffarabad
to be "elected" on August 1 as the so-called President
of the POK on the ticket of the Muslim Conference allied to the
Pakistan Muslim League (PML) of Nawaz Sharif, now living in exile
in Saudi Arabia. Under strong pressure from the Army, the Muslim
Conference has reportedly agreed to nominate him for the post of
the so-called President instead of Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan.
The
electoral college for the post of the so-called President
comprises the POK Assembly (48 members), the POK Council (6
members) and the Federal Minister in charge of the POK Council,
Sardar Sarfaraz Khan, a retired Army officer.
Maj.Gen.Mohammad Anwar Khan, who is reportedly
related to Lt.Gen.Mohammed Aziz, former Deputy Director-General of
the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Chief of the General Staff
and now a Corps Commander in Lahore, is presently the Vice Chief
of the General Staff, in the GHQ under Lt.Gen.Mohammad Yousef
Khan. Maj.Gen.Mohammad Anwar Khan had earlier served in the ISI
under Lt.Gen.Aziz, who is also a Sudhan from POK, in the division
responsible for training, arming and guiding the Army of Islam
consisting of the Al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden, the
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the Al
Badr. This Army of Islam has since been joined by the Jaish-e-Mohammad
(JEM) of Maulana Masood Azhar.
Under the so-called Interim Constitution of POK,
no public servant can contest any elected post within two years of
his quitting public service. To enable Maj.Gen.Anwar Khan to
contest the election, the POK Government promulgated an ordinance
on July 28 removing this provision. It is expected that
Maj.Gen.Anwar Khan would take premature retirement from the Army
on July 29 or 30 and file his nomination.
Under a similar provision in the Pakistani
Constitution, no public servant can hold the office of the
President of Pakistan until at least two years have lapsed after
his quitting public service. Despite this provision, Musharraf
promoted himself as the President on June 20 while continuing as
the COAS.
The elections to the POK Assembly were held on
July 5. The nomination papers of 40 candidates of the Jammu Kashmir
Liberation Front (JKLF) were rejected by the Army-appointed
electoral officer on the ground that they had refused to sign an
affidavit that they stood for Jammu & Kashmir's accession to
Pakistan.
In a letter sent to the President, the Chief
Executive, the Foreign Minister, the Minister for Kashmir Affairs
and the heads of all important political parties of Pakistan, as
well as to the President, the Prime Minister, the Chief Election
Commissioner and the heads of all political parties of POK,
Amanullah Khan, Chairman of the JKLF, said that this provision in
the nomination form was tantamount to keeping 40 pro-independence
candidates from contesting these elections and depriving hundreds
of thousands of their supporters of their right to vote for the
candidates of their choice which was a gross violation of their
basic human and democratic rights.
The Muslim Conference (MC) swept the polls
winning 30 seats and defeating the hitherto ruling People's Party
of Mrs.Benazir Bhutto, which could win only 17 seats. The Jammu
Kashmir Muslim League, which supports the Muslim Conference, won
the remaining seat.
After the elections, it was widely expected that
either Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan or his son Sardar Attique Khan
would be elected by the MC for the post of the so-called Prime
Minister. But on July 20, three days after the return of Musharraf
from Agra and after his meeting with his kitchen Cabinet,
Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz and the General Officer Commanding Murree,
Maj-Gen Shahid Aziz, who is also in charge of POK affairs, visited
Muzaffarabad and told Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan and Sardar Abdul
Qayyum that Musharraf had decided that Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan,
who was the Prime Minister of POK from 1985 to 1990 and its
President from 1991 to 1996, should be "elected" as the
Prime Minister.
Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan was accordingly
"elected" as the Prime Minister by the Assembly and
sworn in on July 25. After taking over as the Prime Minister,
Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan had announced that he would nominate
Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan to the post of President. But on July 26,
Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz and Major.Gen Shahid Aziz reportedly informed
Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan and Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan that
Musharraf had decided that Maj.Gen.Mohammad Anwar Khan should
prematurely retire from the Army and be "elected" as the
President with the backing of the MC. The ordinance was thereafter
issued on July 28.
It is reported that these decisions were taken
by Musharraf on the advice of Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz, who is
regarded as the clandestine Chief of Staff of the Army of Islam,
in order to step up the proxy war in J & K to force India to
accept the Pakistani stand on J & K as projected by Musharraf
at Agra. The appointment of Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan as the
Prime Minister is due to the fact that the proxy war in J & K
had started in 1989 when he was the Prime Minister and that he had
helped the ISI in setting up the so-called Kashmir Liberation
Cell, consisting largely of retired ISI officers, to supervise the
conduct of the proxy war. Musharraf was also reportedly unhappy
with Qayyum Khan for his statements of last year welcoming India's
initiative for a ceasefire in J & K.
Musharraf is believed to be planning to revive
the Liberation Cell, which was abolished during the second tenure
of Nawaz Sharif as the Prime Minister, and persuade the component
units of the Army of Islam, whose headquarters and training camps
are presently located in Pakistani Punjab, to shift them to POK so
that Maj.Gen.Anwar Khan, as the "elected" President of
POK, could orchestrate them against the Indian Security Forces
under the over-all guidance of Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz based in
Lahore.
Sixty-nine-year old Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan is the sixth Prime
Minister of POK since the late Z.A.Bhutto introduced a façade of
multi-party parliamentary democracy there in 1975. The POK Interim
Constitution Act of 1974,under which this was introduced, however,
limits the right to freedom of association in the state when it
says in Article 4(7)(2): "No person or party in Azad Jammu
and Kashmir shall be permitted to propagate against, or take part
in activities prejudicial or detrimental to, the ideology of the
State's accession to Pakistan".
Prospective candidates for elections to the
Assembly have to sign an affidavit declaring that they support the
accession of J & K to Pakistan. According to the Amnesty
International, people who do not subscribe to the accession to
Pakistan have also lost their jobs and have been denied access to
educational institutions.
Writing in the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung, a
well-known daily of Zurich, Switzerland (May 28,1998), its Editor,
Andreas Ruesch, who had visited the POK, said: "It is not
surprising that the rump state of Azad Kashmir is kept on an
extremely short leash. Though Pakistan has never annexed it in
order not to violate UN resolutions, it treats the area as one of
its own provinces. Azad Kashmir has its own parliament, prime
minister and president, but their authority is very limited.
Foreign policy is forged in Islamabad, Pakistani troops guard the
frontline, and the economically weak region lives on financial
injections from the "motherland." As one local
journalist points out, whoever is at the helm in Islamabad has
enough ways of manipulating the situation to help their own party
people to win elections in Azad Kashmir. The degree of the
region's dependence on Pakistan is also illustrated by its 1974
interim constitution, which forbids political activity that does
not accord with the doctrine of Kashmir as part of Pakistan -
including Kashmiri independence movements. Anyone wishing to run
for a parliamentary seat in Muzaffarabad must sign a loyalty
declaration to that effect.
"It is difficult to judge how strong the
supporters of the "third option" are in Azad Kashmir.
On
the streets of Muzaffarabad, no one seems willing to declare
himself an advocate of independence. But how much is conviction,
and how much the result of intimidation from higher up? A former
Kashmiri partisan fighter, who was full of praise for Islamabad's
policies when in the company of Pakistani acquaintances, shows a
very different face when we are in private, accusing the Pakistani
regime of exploiting the Kashmir conflict for its own ends. He is
thoroughly convinced, however, that were he to speak openly about
his dream of an independent Kashmir, he would quickly find himself
in trouble with the authorities."
In an article in the "Dawn" of Karachi
(October 2,2000), Mrs.Asma Jahangir, the well-known human rights
activist of Pakistan, who was recently criticised by Musharraf for
her alleged anti-Pakistan statements while he was negotiating with
the Indian Prime Minister, Mr.A.B.Vajpayee, in Agra, wrote:"A
leader, who claims he has little control over militants in his
country and "spiritually" supports the strategy of
"jihad", is not likely to be taken seriously, especially
as he does not officially head the "jihadis", who are
central to the tensions between the two countries - India and
Pakistan. A government which has banned political activities and
refuses to hold general elections in its own country can hardly be
expected to champion the cause of human rights of the people of
Kashmir. To give weight to his concerns regarding the situation of
human rights in Kashmir, the Chief Executive would be best advised
to improve the record of human rights domestically too."
She added: "Elections are regularly rigged
in Azad Kashmir and the people denied basic rights. All this is
glossed over in the name of security. Solving the Kashmir problem
is not easy. It is complex and best left to political leaders.
No
interim government, without a public mandate, can hope to do much
about it. It may well complicate matters. The only route to
solving the Kashmir issue is through a series of negotiations -
but they cannot start until violence decreases in Kashmir. The
recent cease-fire was a positive development but short-lived.
Whether it is a sustainable cease-fire or a series of talks, they
can only be negotiated by a civilian elected government."
(The writer is Additional Secretary (Retd),
Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director,
Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com
)
