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The Kashmir Charade This Winter
The ill-planned and hurried appointment of an interlocutor for Kashmir by the government, supposedly for a sustained dialogue, does not suggest that the government is serious about resolving the Kashmir conflict. The initiative, however, appears to want to hold the United States at bay, which needs India and Pakistan talking to safeguard its Afghan engagement. The interlocutor’s mission will likely turn out to be yet another wasted opportunity in Kashmir.
The day prior to the arrival of United States (US) Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in India, on his maiden visit, Dineshwar Sharma was appointed “as the Representative of the Government of India to initiate and carry forward a dialogue with the elected representatives, various organisations and concerned individuals in the State of Jammu and Kashmir” (PIB 2017). The coincidence in timing was not lost on the Hurriyat, a key participant, among the “various organisations” with which Sharma might have been expected to engage. In its joint statement, the Joint Resistance Leadership—comprising separatist leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, and Yasin Malik—claimed that the appointment was “a tactic to buy time adopted under international pressures and regional compulsions” (PTI 2017a). Consequently, the separatists have rebuffed the offer of a sustained dialogue.
No Inkling of a Strategy
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