Srinagar: India’s former spymaster, Amarjit Singh Dulat has said that if the alliance between Congress and National Conference remains intact then Jammu will vote for it, but if it fails, the BJP will win and J&K will have a Hindu chief minister for the first time in history.
In an opinion piece titled “Den of Intrigue: India’s border with Pakistan chooses a New Chief Minister”, which was carried by Russian media house RT on Saturday, the former Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) chief Dulat writes that there is “abnormal normalcy” in Kashmir, which is not “normalcy” as claimed by the central government.
Dulat has served as Joint Director of India’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) during what was the most turbulent period of Kashmir’s history – between 1988-1990. In 1999, he became chief of RAW until his retirement in December 2000. After retirement, he was served as Adviser on Kashmir in the Prime Minister’s Office from January 2001 to May 2004.
Dulat writes that Kashmir could see a “radical change overnight” as the region heads for an “historic” election. “But which way it is now headed, nobody can say. It looks increasingly messy and fragile,” he said.
He said the “muscular policy” of New Delhi had paid off initially, but there have been constant whispers of a volcano waiting to erupt.
“More scary is the silence in Kashmir. Silencing even the past is not easy and will continue to haunt us. To paraphrase the renowned Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali, desolation cannot provide peace,” Dulat wrote.
The Director General of Police in the region said recently that there were around 100 foreign terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir; 50 in the valley and 50 in Jammu. The actual figure may be twice as many, Dulat insists.
About the recent spate of attacks in the otherwise peaceful Jammu, Dulat says that the Pakistani Army’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) “appears to have figured out our counterterrorism deployment and strategy, whereas our sources of ‘humint’ (human intelligence) are drying out with shifting loyalties.
“An increase in terrorism is a clear sign of the growth of pro-Pakistani sentiment,” says Dulat.
“The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), a conglomerate of separatist Kashmiri organizations, was a Pakistani creation but because of our engagement with it, we always had information from across the Line of Control. The separatists are now muted, and so is intelligence,” he says.
Commenting about the jailed parliamentarian from north Kashmir, Engineer Rashid, Dulat said, “As for now, Sheikh Abdul Rashid, also known as Engineer Rashid, who was elected to parliament from north Kashmir in June (despite having been detained in Tihar jail since 2019 for allegedly funding separatists in the valley), is of more value to Pakistan than the Jamaat. Let him out on parole and he will not be half as useful to anyone than he is in jail.”
Regarding the National Conference chief, Dr. Farooq Abdullah, Dulat says that when it comes to elections in Kashmir, nobody can choreograph an election better than he can.
He concludes the article with remarks on the NC-Cong alliance, saying, “If the Congress-NC alliance stays, then Jammu will vote for it; if it frays, then the BJP is sitting pretty and we have every chance of a Hindu chief minister for the first time in Jammu and Kashmir’s history.”
