Heavy-handed Kashmir police take lessons in how not to kill

After 114 unarmed protesters die, securityforces are desperate to improve their image

By Andrew Buncombe in Srinagar

Sunday, 10 April 2011

AP

Police try on new armour during riot training at Sujwan camp, near Jammu, Kashmir

On a large parade ground set beneath dry brown hills, the Kashmir police went about their business. On one side, officers dressed in normal clothes and waving banners, imitated a gang of protesters. On the other, their colleagues, kitted out in new riot gear, selected for its menacing look as much as its flexibility, jogged forwards, chanting. Quickly, the kitted-out officers lowered themselves into a kneeling position and as those in the centre raised their shields, the officers on the flanks set off after the "demonstrators", waving their truncheons and hitting out. Afterwards, purple-coloured water was fired from a cannon.

Senior officers say the aim of these training sessions – which The Independent on Sundaywas the first international media outlet invited to attend – was to avoid causing serious harm when police clash with real protesters. In Kashmir, where a decades-long struggle for autonomy and the subsequent security clampdown has led to the deaths of more than 70,000 people, protests by youths demanding "azadi" or freedom are nothing new.

But last summer's demonstrations were met with what many believe was unnecessarily heavy-handed tactics by the police, and at least 114 unarmed civilians were killed. There has been mounting pressure on the authorities to devise a non-lethal strategy.

As a result, more than 3,000 officers are being pushed through a rolling programme of sessions on the use of water cannons, crowd dispersal, and the safe discharge of tear gas shells. There has been expenditure on new equipment for officers previously using crowd-control gear based on British-era designs. "We have tried to give our people knowledge about how to disperse crowds without harming them," said R A Vakil, commander of the Jammu and Kashmir force's 6th Battalion. "We want to reduce deaths."

But on the streets, these efforts have already been met with derision. The training sessions have coincided with a crackdown on Kashmiri youths using draconian laws that have sent scores of people to jail without trial. Anger is mounting.

Among those venting their rage is Showakat Mattoo. Last summer, the death of his 17-year-old nephew, Tufail – killed by a teargas shell that struck him on the head – was the spark that set off months of demonstrations. The boy's family insist he was an innocent passer-by and have demanded the police charge the officer responsible.

"This was on 9 June last year and they have done nothing. They even have an eye-witness," said Mr Mattoo, sitting crouched over a basket containing burning embers at his Srinagar home. "This talk of non-lethal training is just rubbish. It's just eye-wash."

It is not hard to find such anger. In the aftermath of last year's demonstrations, the authorities said they would release the youths who had been detained. Yet reports suggest many hundreds remain in custody. The police admit 110 youths have been held under the Public Safety Act (PSA), a piece of legislation whose origins date from the days of British rule that allows someone to be detained for up to two years without trial on the say-so of a magistrate. A family's only recourse is to appeal to the High Court.

Among the more notorious PSA cases – laughable were it not so serious – is that of Omar Hamid Hanga, an 18-year-old arrested in February and accused of beating a police officer who had fallen to the ground at a demonstration last summer. The piece of evidence cited by the police is a photograph that shows several youths beating the officer. But the face of the boy purported to be Mr Hanga is entirely concealed by a mask.

His family insist the two boys look entirely unalike and that he was not even in the town where the incident happened. Their pleas were ignored. "The authorities are not willing to listen to people," said the teenager's uncle, Abdul Masjid, as his wife sobbed.

Ferdousa Zargar's 19-year-old son, Asif, was also detained under the PSA. 'There was no trial. He was accused of stone throwing," said Mrs Zargar, a widow who lives in Srinagar's old quarter. "I was looking to him to raise our family." Her son is currently being held in a jail in the north of the state. A senior police officer, Abdul Gani Mir, defended the use of the PSA. "There are proper checks and balances," he said.

Amnesty International does not agree. In a report, it said up to 20,000 people had been detained using the PSA in the past two decades. "Kashmir authorities are using PSA detentions as a revolving door to keep people they can't or won't convict through proper legal channels locked up and out of the way," said Amnesty's Sam Zarifi. The chief minister has said the report's recommendations will be "seriously considered".

But it is hard to find anyone in this city who has much good to say about the police or their vow to try to reduce casualties. The protesters' demands for freedom have in recent years started to include demands for justice and accountability. Why are no police or paramilitaries, they ask, ever charged when they commit a crime?

Such polarisation means there is little chance for goodwill unless people see concrete action as well. The federal authorities in Delhi have long dragged their heels over a political solution for the people of the valley. Last year they appointed three "interlocutors" to sound out various factions but undermined the deed by selecting three well-informed but politically powerless individuals. As it is, the interlocutors have also raised concerns about the use of the PSA.

Yasin Malik, a former militant who turned to non-violence nearly two decades ago and who heads the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, one of several groups demanding autonomy, lives near Lal Chowk, the area in Srinagar notorious as a location for protests. Last year, one of his cousins was among those killed. "They need to start a discourse," he said, mockingly. "Instead they are trying to decide whether to beat me with a plastic bar or an iron bar."

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France begins ban on niqab and burqa

PARIS As I write this blog, a young woman from the Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois is breaking the law. Even while she is dropping off her three-year-old at nursery she is breaking the law.

For from today the wearing of full-face veils in France is banned. Overnight the woman from the suburb has become a dissenter. She says no law should tell her what she can't wear. She also believes that her faith trumps French law, and therein lies her problem in an avowedly secular French Republic.

Failure to obey the law could lead to a 150-euro (£133, $217) fine and being sent to citizenship classes. A criminal record might follow.

Perhaps, most significantly, anyone found forcing a woman to cover her face risks a 30,000-euro fine.

The burka or niqab is worn by very few in France - perhaps 2,000 women. The Muslim population is estimated at five million. Today - most probably - a few women will be defiant. Protesters against the new law are set to gather close to the flying buttresses of Notre Dame cathedral.

The police have orders to be restrained and respectful. The niqab-wearers, if any show up, will probably today be handed a leaflet. The authorities have printed 400,000 with the message that "the Republic lives with its face uncovered". A few women will see themselves as martyrs for a cause and already have their eye on the European Court of Human Rights. A businessman has offered to pick up any fines.

This law is about putting down a marker. As I have written before, many European leaders now believe that multiculturalism can lead to parallel, segregated communities. A new emphasis is being placed on minority communities integrating into the society they join, rather than just living as they did before. So Western societies are becoming more assertive about the values they uphold and the ones they expect others to respect.

Jean-Francois Cope, the French MP who has taken a lead over the burka ban, argues that seeing someone's face is key to human beings understanding each other. He sees the law as a step against separation.

The Muslim community is divided. It is made up of many voices and many views. Some believe it is important to become part of modern France. Some support the ban. Some don't. Some Muslim women wear headscarves. Many don't. Some believe that the Koran calls for a woman's face to be covered. Others say that such teachings appear in the works of scholars, not the Koran itself. There are Muslim women running companies; there are those discouraged from leaving their houses. Some wear dark headscarves, some are brightly coloured. A few hide their faces, while others are comfortable with heavy eye-liner and bright lipstick.

Ultimately this is an argument between those who believe that living in France demands that you sign up to certain French values and those who say that tolerance should allow you to dress how you want and to respect religious diversity.

The law is likely to be largely symbolic. There will be few prosecutions and it will be difficult to prove that a woman is being forced to wear a niqab because of her husband or family. Over time some women will choose not to wear it. Some shops stocking the niqab already say they will discontinue stocking it.

I suspect that this ban will generate a vibrant debate between Muslims. There are indications it has started already. Some say that the full-face veil is not a religious statement. It is purely cultural. Others say that it belongs to a strand of Islam. Others say that the wearing of headscarves is about asserting identity in a Western Europe that can still be frosty towards outsiders. Within traditional families there are daily arguments about how to live in a society that offers so much choice. Freedom can split families, as it has done with other religions.

What the French authorities want to avoid, at all costs, is a confrontation which could turn a debate about the covering of faces into whether the Muslim community is being singled out for special treatment.

By Gavin Hewitt BBC

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The Kashmir You Need To Know

History

Location:

The State of Jammu and Kashmir encompasses a mountainous region in the heart of Asia, with borders touching to both South and Central Asia. Surrounded by Pakistan, India, China and Afghanistan.  

Area:   

86,000 square miles, more than three times the size of the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium combined. Bigger than 87 member countries of the United Nations.   

Population: 

Estimated 13 million, including 1.5 million refugees in Pakistan and 0.5 million expatriates in different parts of the world. Larger than 114 sovereign nations 

Background: 

Technically, the area is called The State of Jammu and Kashmir, and has been historically independent, except in the anarchical conditions of the late 18th and the first half of the 19th century or when incorporated in the vast empires set up by the Mauryas (3rd century BC), the Mughals (16th to 18th centuries) and the British (mid-19th to mid-20th centuries). 

Cause Of Dispute:

In 1846, the British colonial rulers of India sold the territory, including its populace (by a sale deed called the Treaty of Amritsar, in return for a sum of money) to a Hindu warlord who had no roots there. This warlord who bought himself into royalty, styled the Maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir.  The acts of brutality during his regime have left bitter memories, some of which persist to this present day. Several mosques were closed and occupied by his forces. The slaughtering of a cow was declared a crime punishable by death. Between 1925 and 1947 Maharajah Hari Singh continued this policy of discrimination against the 94 percent Muslim majority. It was nearly 65 years ago, in 1931, that the people of Kashmir made their first organised protest against Maharajah Hari Singh's cruelty. That led to the "Quit Kashmir" campaign against the Maharajah in 1946, and eventually to the Azad Kashmir movement which gained momentum a year later. The first armed encounter between the Maharajah's troops and insurgent forces occurred in August 1947. At this time, Britain was liquidating its empire in the subcontinent. Faced with a insurgency of his people,strengthened by a few hundred civilian volunteers from Pakistan, Maharajah fled to Jammu on 25th October 1947. In Jammu, after he ascertained a commitment of military assistance from the government of India to crush the impending revolution in Kashmir, he signed the "Instrument of Accession" to India. Lord Mountbatten conditionally accepted the "Instrument of Accession" on behalf of the British Crown, and furthermore, outlined the conditions for official acceptance in a letter dated 27th October 1947: "In consistence with their policy that in the case of any (native) state where the issue of accession has been subject of dispute, the question of accession should be decided in accordance with the wishes of the people of the state, it is my government's wish that as soon as law and order have been restored in Kashmir and her soil cleared of the invaders the question of state's accession should be settled by a reference to the people." Then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, in a speech aired on All­India Radio (2nd November 1947), reaffirmed the Indian Government's commitment to the right of the Kashmiri people to determine their own future through a plebiscite: "We have declared that the fate of Kashmir is ultimately to be decided by the people. That pledge we have given, and the Maharajah has supported it, not only to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, but also to the world. We will not and cannot back out of it. We are prepared when peace and law have been established to have a referendum held under international auspices like the United Nations. We want it to be a fair and just reference to the people and we shall accept their verdict." The Government of India accepted the "Instrument of accession" conditionally, promising the people of the state and the world at large that "accession" would be final only after the wishes of the people of the state were ascertained upon return of normalcy in the state.  .Following this, India moved her forces into Srinagar and a drawn­out fight ensued between Indian forces and the forces of liberation. The forces of Azad Kashmir successfully resisted India's armed intervention and liberated one­third of the State. Realising it could not quell the resistance, India brought the issue to the United Nations Security Council in January 1948. As the rebel forces had undoubtedly been joined by volunteers from Pakistan, India charged Pakistan with having sent "armed raiders" into the state, and demanded that Pakistan be declared an aggressor in Kashmir. Furthermore, India demanded that Pakistan stop aiding freedom fighters, and allowing the transit of tribesmen into the state. After acceptance of these demands, coupled with the assurance that all "raiders" were withdrawn, India would enable a plebiscite to be held under impartial auspices to decide Kashmir's future status. In reply, Pakistan charged India with having manoeuvred the Maharajah's accession through "fraud and violence" and with collusion with a "discredited" ruler in the repression of his people. Pakistan's counter complaint was also coupled with the proposal of a plebiscite under the supervision and control of the United Nations to settle the dispute. The Security Council exhaustively discussed the question from January until April of 1948. It came to the conclusion that it would be impossible to determine responsibility for the fighting and futile to blame either side. Since both parties desired that the question of accession should be decided through an impartial plebiscite, the Council developed proposals based on the common ground between them. These were embodied in the resolution of 21st April 1948, envisaging a cease­fire, the withdrawal of all outside forces from the State, and a plebiscite under the control of an administrator who would be nominated by the Secretary General. For negotiating the details of the plan, the Council constituted a five­member commission known as "United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan" (UNCIP) to implement the resolution. After the cease­fire, India began efforts to drag the issue down, and under various pretexts tried to stop the UN resolution from being implemented. To this day, India pursues the same plan, and the resolution of 1948 has yet to be realised. India and Pakistan were at war over Kashmir from 1947­48 and all early U. N. Security Council Resolutions contained admonishment for both countries demanding an immediate case­fire, which would be followed by a-UN directed Plebiscite. However, disregarding that some fifteen resolutions were passed by the United Nations to this very effect, India and Pakistan again initiated military skirmish in 1965. At this point, another cease­fire agreement was effected after United Nations intervention, followed by an agreement at Tashkent with the good offices of the USSR.In 1971, India and Pakistan once again became locked in war. Efforts to bring the latest conflict to an end resulted in the Simla Agreement and was signed by both India and Pakistan and declared commitment to reach a "final settlement" on the Kashmir issue, but this has yet to happen.

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President of Jamiat-e-Ahl-e-Hadees (JAH), Moulana Showkat Ahmad Shah ASSASSINATED

Srinagar, Apr 8: A winding alley leads to this 3-storey house on the corner of Salfia Colony in Lal Bazaar Srinagar. The aura around is gloomy. Pain and anguish is visible.

In the house, chaos is evident everywhere. People are coming in and out. With each incoming female mourner the tone gets shriller and space shrinks. Moulana Showkat’s mother, wife and daughter sit in the foyer of the house. Women around them console and wipe tears on their faces.

Amid these scenes, Moulana’s son, a management graduate, comes out of the house. Shoaib Showkat clad in Pathani suit and black sweater is followed by his fellows. His legs shiver and tremble in the public park and he takes a deep breath followed by a glass of water.

“I want to perform ritual ablution of Abu. Please let me to Maisuma,” Shoaib tells his friends. Maisuma was the place where his father was killed. And his body was placed outside the Masjid where he was going to lead congregational Friday prayers.

Maulana at the time of this attack was accompanied by his nephew, Rizwan, a student of SP School. Rizwan is consoled by everyone. He doesn’t relent and his cries go louder.

“Rizwan is suffering from trauma as he was with Showkat sahib at the time of the gruesome incident. He is a witness to his killing,” said a neighbour outside this house.

Rizwan narrates his ordeal in a room calling Abu Jee every now and then. “Every Friday I take off from school and follow Abu Jee to Masjid at Gaw Kadal. And today I was moving ahead of Abu Jee on stairs when suddenly a huge blast occurred. As I turned back I saw him lying down. Dust was hovering around,” he uttered amid tears flowing out of his eyes.

Moulana is survived by two brothers who are also part of his joint family. “It was Rizwan who rang up home informing this sad blow to the family. Besides someone from local police station told us about the incident,” said their relatives.

Outside, the narrow alley is filled by public. Now more people have joined in. They are discussing with each other Moulana’s gentle nature.

“His was a noble soul in our locality. I saw him leaving the house today morning wearing short coat over Kameez shalwar guarded by security personnel. His house was attacked earlier. He had to erect these tin sheets over this boundary for his security,” said his close neighbour Muhammad Shafi, a retired government employee. His other neighbours echoed Shafi’s views.

“He was helpful to everyone be it any occasion. We knew this family for past more than two decades and his killing is unjust,” they told Greater Kashmir.

In between this all, his brother Reyaz Ahmad announces the burial time and leaves with Shoaib and Rizwan to Maisuma to offer funeral prayers.

(C) GK

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Unmasking National Conference's Hidden Agenda (Power Hungry)

Omar’s government is self-serving.
Kashmir deserves better

BY PREM SHANKAR JHA

Whodunnit? Fire spread from this government building across Kashmir. Mirwaiz and government blame each other

ON SUNDAY, a day after Kashmiris celebrated Eid peacefully on a day that remained unmarred by confrontations with the police, the government of Jammu and Kashmir clamped down the most draconian curfew the Valley has seen in more than two years. Had Omar Abdullah lit a match in a petrol storage depot, he could not have done a better job of setting Kashmir on fire. As of the morning of 14 September, 17 Kashmiri youth died in police firing, another half-dozen were in critical condition and more than 40 were seriously injured. More ominous still, for the first time in the entire intifada, two policemen had also died, a sure sign that the self-imposed restraint was breaking down.

Did the state government set Kashmir alight by accident or design? Omar Abdullah and Kuldip Khoda, the Director-General of Police, accused the followers of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq of not adhering to his promise to control his followers and allowing them to burn down the offices of the Power Development department and the Crime Branch of the Kashmir police. He, therefore, slapped FIRs on him, placed him under house arrest and announced a curfew within hours of the incident.

Kashmiris are convinced, however, that the buildings were set on fire by ikhwanis in the pay of the state police to create the pretext for the crackdown that followed. They point out that the Mirwaiz’s procession had been absolutely peaceful and his speech had been moderate and constructive. He had, in short, honoured the commitment given personally to Omar Abdullah. The Crime Branch building was 500 metres away from Lal Chowk, across the Jhelum river and well off the procession route. Eyewitnesses are unanimous that they saw smoke billowing out from the building while the Mirwaiz was still speaking.

What makes Khoda’s account less than credible is the disproportionate nature of the state government’s response. If the Mirwaiz had been unable (or had not tried) to prevent miscreants from using his procession as a cover for their misdeeds, the most they needed to do was to place him under house arrest. How did his failure justify inflicting such draconian punishment on the population of Srinagar and the entire Valley. For Eid had passed peacefully. Not a single stone had been thrown and not a single policeman hurt. Would it not have been better to take advantage of the respite to start building bridges with the people once again?

But the way in which Omar Abdullah and the state police had used the slimmest of pretexts to launch a premeditated crackdown plan makes it exceedingly likely that the burning of the Crime Branch building was indeed Kashmir’s equivalent of the Gulf of Tonkin incident of 4 August 1964 (a fictitious attack by north Vietnamese navy on an American destroyer) that gave the Johnson administration an excuse for declaring war on North Vietnam.

THE ABDULLAHS, father and son, had motive enough to manufacture such an incident. Omar’s 6 August crackdown had turned into a fiasco. His police officers had started to take leave rather than fire on their own people. As many as 1,800 constables had failed to turn up for duty. In desperation, Omar had to ask Hurriyat Conference leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani to request the ‘boys’ to heed the curfew and abjure violence. This had gravely undermined the authority of his government in Kashmir.

In Delhi, confidence in his capacity to restore order and govern the state was dwindling and the demand for Governor’s rule was gaining strength. In a sudden volte face, the BJP, which had earlier been demanding the replacement of Omar with Farooq Abdullah, had also begun to demand Governor’s Rule on the grounds that only the Centre could launch the massive crackdown that was now needed to keep ‘those renegade Kashmiris’ under Indian rule. The J&K government was also raring to have another go for the Centre had allowed it to induct a number of battalions of the Rapid Action Force from India and boost the number of CRPF companies deployed in the state.

By failing to recognise the moral force of the Kashmiri intifada and allowing his police to use bullets against stone-throwing youth, Omar has unwittingly made his government the most hated in Kashmir’s history

The Abdullahs also had personal reasons for wanting to regain control of the Valley. By failing to recognise the moral force of the Kashmiri intifada (locally called the Ragda) and allowing his police to use bullets against stone-throwing youth, Omar had unwittingly made his government the most hated in Kashmir’s history. Farooq Abdullah therefore knew that if governor’s rule was imposed on the state, the election that would soon follow would spell the end of the National Conference (NC). Keeping it in power at almost any cost, therefore, became Farooq Abdullah’s all-consuming goal.

Today, everything hinges upon crushing the uprising in Kashmir. If the NC succeeds, it will not only be able to prevent the imposition of Governor’s rule but also persuade New Delhi that it is the only Kashmiri party that has the commitment to India and the political will to ensure that the state remains firmly within the Indian union. The longer New Delhi dithers and the higher the post-11 June death count (now 91) rises, the more will it become a prisoner of the NC in Kashmir.

This Faustian pact is anything but new. On the contrary, its origins can be traced back to the very different conditions that prevailed in 1947, when Sheikh Abdullah firmly sided with India in the run-up to Independence and Partition. It was an asset to India when the NC was the indubitable champion of Kashmiriyat in the Valley. But this mantle fell from its shoulders when Farooq Abdullah agreed to fight the 1987 election in coalition with the Congress. Since then he has been fighting a protracted no-holds-barred fight to prevent that mantle from shifting to any other Kashmiri party.

By siding assiduously with him since then, Delhi has gradually become an opponent of Kashmiri nationalism. It allowed Farooq first to rig enough seats in the 1987 elections not only to make sure that its rival, the Muslim United Front, would come a distant second (that was never in doubt) but that it would fail. One of those who lost his seat by a mere 35 votes after a prolonged recount was Syed Salahuddin, who went on to found the Hizbul- Mujahideen. What followed is now history.

WHEN ABDULLAH came back to power in 1996, one of his main preoccupations was to prevent the Hurriyat and the JKLF from returning to the mainstream of Kashmiri politics. In this, he had ruthless, albeit unsolicited, help of the ISI. In 2000, when Abdul Majid Dar, the leader of the Hizbul- Mujahideen in Kashmir Valley, offered a ceasefire and agreed to secret talks with the Indian Home Secretary, the J&K government sabotaged the talks by getting its principal information officer and its director-general of police to inform the media of the conference. The time they gave them, however, was 90 minutes before the secret meeting was to have started. As a result, when Dar and his companions arrived at Chashma-shahi guest house, they found 150 press and television journalists waiting for them (Dar later broke with Salahuddin and was duly assassinated).

When, a few months later, the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s unilateral announcement of a ceasefire was enthusiastically endorsed by the Hurriyat, Abdullah made no secret of his scepticism and warned that the ceasefire would only undo the gains made by the security forces in the previous years. When P Chidambaram initiated his quiet diplomacy in 2009 and invited Yasin Malik and the Mirwaiz for talks, one of Kashmir’s most senior police officers leaked the information deliberately to the press.

In recent weeks, as the search for an alternative to the endless, mindless killing of Kashmiri youth gathered momentum, the NC devoted all its energies to discrediting its main political rival, the PDP. Thus, for weeks, everyone in power firmly believed that it was the PDP that was behind the stone-pelting. When Abdul Ahad Jan threw a shoe at Omar Abdullah on 15 August, by the evening nearly all the television newsrooms in Delhi had received ‘credible information’ that he had been incited into doing so by Nizamuddin Bhat, the secretary-general of the PDP. And when the state government summarily dismissed the extraordinarily able, and incorruptible, chairman of the J&K Bank, Haseeb Drabu, the story quickly spread that he had been dismissed because he had been financing the stone-pelters. Drabu had been appointed by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.

It is against this background that Delhi needs to consider the wisdom of continuing to back the Omar Abdullah government through thick and thin. There is very substantial, if not legally conclusive, evidence that India is becoming the victim of one political party’s determination to stay in power, no matter what the cost. The cost is a steadily hardening animosity in Kashmir as the belief gains ground that Delhi is behind the state government’s killing spree. Whether this perception is true or false is no longer relevant. The only thing that matters is what the Kashmiris believe.

It is still within Delhi’s power to change this perception. Four steps will do so more completely than the government can imagine today. These are, one, to suspend the assembly and create an interim government for a few months under the venerable Congress leader Saifuddin Soz; if for some reason this proves impossible, then declare Governor’s rule straightaway.

Two, announce that curfew and Section 144 will no longer be applied. But ask all processionists and demonstrators to keep the peace and cooperate with the police in ensuring that there are no mishaps. Both the Hurriyat and the police are already familiar with these procedures as they had been successfully used to avoid conflict during the vast post-Amarnath demonstrations from 14 to 21 August 2008, before New Delhi inexplicably reversed its policy of restraint and opted for a state-wide crackdown.

Three, Delhi should, through clear and unambiguous announcements, make it clear that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and the Disturbed Areas Act will be lifted from the entire Valley but only after cooperation between the public and the police has been re-established and demonstrations have become orderly and peaceful.

Four, a fresh general election will be held as soon as life returns to normal in the Valley. Delhi will then lose no time in resuming a dialogue with the elected government on ways to move towards lasting empowerment of the Kashmiri people within the framework of the Indian Union and, when conditions are once more propitious, with Pakistan.

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