Part 13 (1/2)

The Hurriyat, however, turned him down. The reason which moderate leaders have reiterated from time to time as the occasion warrants is that they want to deal directly with the PMO. At the time Prof. Abdul Ghani Bhat, a member of the Muslim Conference (which was the party that Sheikh Abdullah started before he changed it to the more secular National Conference; it then became the premier party of PoK, led by Sardar Qayoom) and a Hurriyat executive member, said he would not meet Pant unless an agenda for the meeting was made clear and something was given in writing.

Some bright spark in the government immediately put an ad out in the newspapers in Kashmir saying Pant had been appointed interlocutor and that everybody who wanted to talk to him could meet him. This elicited many sn.i.g.g.e.rs in the Valley, and the Hurriyat said no thanks.

Pant had already set his visit for 28 May 2001, and he asked me to arrange some meeting for him. So I called up my old friend Shabir Shah and said, 'Aap toh milo Pant Saheb se, you are the main player here and the biggest leader, so you must meet him.'

Anyone getting an ego ma.s.sage like that would immediately say yes, and Shabir was no different, but he set a condition: 'I will meet him, but he will have to come to my house.'

I told Pant and he said, 'Woh kaise hoga?'

'Gaadi mein jayenge aap, usse milenge, aise hi hoga,' I said. Which is what Pant didhe went in a car and Shabir spent some time with him, so his visit wasn't a total washout. Pant then said to me, 'Now you must get him to Delhi to come to my place.'

'Yes,' I said. 'We'll do that.'

Shabir did come to Delhi and to Pant's place, with a lot of TV cameras in tow. But that was the end of that.

A year later Pant was sidelined in August 2002 by the formation of a Kashmir Committee on the initiative of eminent jurist and political maverick Ram Jethmalani, but that too went nowhere as the Hurriyat refused to formally meet the committee because it was not sponsored by the government. This committee hung around till 2004 but in any case was made redundant when in February 2003 former bureaucrat N.N. Vohra was appointed the interlocutor. (Though the Hurriyat also refused to meet him, Vohra was appointed governor when the post opened up in 2008.) Fortunately the six-month respite between interlocutors was when the J&K a.s.sembly election took place, in which obtaining broad-based partic.i.p.ation was my brief.

Many things helped create the atmosphere for the 2002 election, including Majid Dar's coming back from Pakistan and announcing a ceasefire, Vajpayee's unilateral Ramzan cease- fire in November 2000, and the 2001 Agra summit.

The Ramzan ceasefire lasted six months and when it came to an end in May 2001 the prime minister explored follow-up measures to this successful initiative. Both his foreign minister Jaswant Singh and his home minister L.K. Advani have said in their respective memoirs (A Call to Honour and My Life, My Country) that the three of them had a meeting in which it was decided to put the Kargil misadventure of two summers ago behind them and invite Gen. Pervez Musharraf over. Advani made this suggestion, he says, following his interactions with the Pakistani high commissioner here, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi.

Again, despite Advani's hardline image, he was the one who broke the ice with Qazi. As the story goes, following the Kargil war, Pakistan was in the doghouse here in India and though the high commissioner went about his engagements he kept a lower profile than usual. At one particular function, Advani and Qazi came face-to-face and the high commissioner was at a loss over how to face the home minister. He was turning away when Advani said: 'Aapne udhar mooh kyon kar liya?' And he met Qazi with warmth.

The two began to meet: veteran television anchor Karan Thapar set up secret meetings (twenty of them, according to Karan) between Advani and the high commissioner. Karan Thapar's story goes back to 1998 (as published in his column 'Sunday Sentiments' in March 2008.) Qazi, a friend of Karan's, needed someone to establish rapport with the NDA government. Karan introduced him to George Fernandes, then defence minister, and the two would meet for dinner at Karan's place and became friends. But Qazi was keen to meet Advani so George set it up and asked Karan to drive Qazi to Advani's residence in Pandara Park late one night. Karan waited outside while Qazi met Advani for 90 minutes. On the second occasion Karan was seen waiting under a street light by Sudheendra Kulkarni, then Vajpayee's speech writer. When Kulkarni saw Karan the latter pa.s.sed it off saying he was waiting for a friend having dinner at the Amba.s.sador Hotel. Thereafter, Advani's daughter Pratibha suggested that he wait with them (her and Mrs Advani) while the two 'A's met. Possibly no one got a whiff of these meetings. A link developed, which proved useful when Vajpayee was deciding on the government's next move, and whether or not to invite General Musharraf. The feedback was that the general was equally keen to visit, and so an invitation was extended for him to come for a summit meeting in Agra in July 2001. In preparation for the meeting, General Musharraf had himself appointed president in June, so that he was a genuine head of state and not just 'chief executive'.

The summit did not produce anything, and in fact President Musharraf left in a huff, without even stopping at Ajmer Sharif to visit the dargah as he had planned. As has been recorded in not just Jaswant's and Advani's memoirs, but also in the memoirs of the foreign minister, Abdul Sattar, and President Musharraf himself (Pakistan's Foreign Policy, 19472009: A Concise History, and In the Line of Fire), the sticking point came on 15 July, when Jaswant and Sattar exchanged drafts that the other had problems with; basically Musharraf wanted to focus on Jammu and Kashmir, which Vajpayee and the rest of his Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), whom he had taken along to Agra, were willing to do provided there was equal focus on terrorismand that did not happen to our satisfaction. Worse, of course, was Musharraf's belligerent press conference the next morning, which pretty much unilaterally declared the summit over.

In his memoir, Musharraf claims that he gave an earful to Vajpayee about someone above the two of them who could 'overrule' and 'humiliate' them both. Advani says this was an indirect reference to himself. Sattar in his memoir first puts the blame on the 'political affairs committee', as he mistakenly calls the CCS, and then writes that they later heard that it was Advani who torpedoed the summit by rejecting a final draft that Jaswant had brought to the CCS. (Jaswant himself claims it was a collective rejection.) Furthermore, Musharraf claims that Vajpayee sat there 'speechless' listening to him. Obviously, Musharraf was clueless about Vajpayee's ways. Vajpayee's habit was never to utter a word, even in internal meetings, unless he had to; often it was puzzling. When I was the R&AW chief, for instance, there were many times when I spoke to him on the RAX phone and then waited a long, long time for a response, wondering what had happened to the old fellow. And Jaswant in his memoir says that later he asked the prime minister what transpired in the final meeting with Musharraf, to which the prime minister said in Hindi that nothing had happened: Musharraf kept talking and he kept listening. Musharraf the commando could not fathom Vajpayee the Chanakya.

If Advani had torpedoed the summit by vetoing the final draft, the irony would be that it happened due to a tactical error by the Pakistanis, who focused on pleasing only the prime minister. They believed he was their best chance at diplomatic success. Public perception was that if the Pakistanis wanted to do any business here it had to be Vajpayee and not Advani the hardliner. This is possibly why Agra failed. Had they kept Advani in good humour then perhaps it would not have failed. That they ignored him is ironic considering that Qazi was almost a family member in Advani's home, as some people say.

An interesting story has lately emerged from Musharraf's vantage point. He has apparently told some people, after he lost power and fled Pakistan for first Dubai and then London, that the main culprit was not Advani. The villain as he put it was one of Jaswant's joint secretaries, Vivek Katju. He would have been a.s.sisting Jaswant when the draft statement was going back and forth, proposing language changes that would satisfy both sidesas is the job of foreign ministry mandarins. If the Pakistanis feel he had been intransigent in finding common ground before a final draft was sent to the CCS, then how Advani reacted becomes a moot point. Was he the villain that Pakistanis make him out to be? Why would he sabotage something which was his own brainchild? And why did High Commissioner Qazi not use his friends.h.i.+p with Advani rather than putting pressure on the prime minister who, according to Brajesh Mishra, found himself almost alone. Qazi corroborates Brajesh and provides greater insight into what happened in Agra.

Ashraf Qazi told me during a recent visit to Delhi that Advani was the 'architect' of Agra. He said Advani was a wonderful human being so long as you pandered to his vanity; he himself had a great relations.h.i.+p because he was always respectful of Advani. But he added, the Advani of Agra was very different from what he knew of him in Delhi because he had suddenly developed all kinds of reservations. According to Qazi, it all started badly the previous evening when Advani called on Musharraf in Rashtrapati Bhavan and brought up the matter of Dawood Ibrahim. Qazi says, Musharraf was taken aback and said, 'Let us at least get to Agra!' Their chemistry never took off and this was to haunt the Agra summit throughout. Qazi felt that Musharraf the general could still have pulled it off but Vajpayee the politician found himself alone with only Jaswant Singh for support. And Qazi said Jaswant Singh called him twice in Agra to say that the deal was done and yet it never happened.

Perhaps Musharraf regretted the fact that he stormed out of Agra like an army chief and did not act like the president he had become just the previous month. He must have regretted it because it took three years to restart the peace process. As Dr Manmohan Singh said in his last press conference as prime minister in January 2014, he and Musharraf nearly clinched a deal on Kashmir in late 2006 or early 2007. It was a window of opportunity we lost. So had the failure of Agra not stalled things for three years, who knows what might have been accomplished while Vajpayee was in office?

In the end it put too much pressure on the prime minister and one enduring criticism of Vajpayee is that he didn't have the gumption to go the last mile to get something that he really wanted: a positive conclusion to the Agra summit. And when the team returned from Agra, there was huge, palpable disappointment. This is a point that most accounts of the Agra summit have skipped: the feeling of 'so close, yet so far' shared by the two old men running the government.

'Yaar, hote-hote reh gaya,' Brajesh sighed to me, shaking his head at the done deal that came undone. 'Ho gaya tha, woh toh.'

Yet the Agra summit had its positive fallout in Kashmir, for when things are going peacefully between India and Pakistan, then that is when the Kashmiri feels most optimistic, and this helped in the run-up to the 2002 a.s.sembly election, because the summit helped in discussions with the separatists. You may recall from the Lone chapter that on his way to Agra, Musharraf met the Hurriyat, and Lone had told him that Kashmiris were exhausted and also tired of being killed (though Geelani disagreed).

The attack on America on 11 September 2001 also had its effect on Kashmir and in paving the way for elections. In the process the militancy suffered a series of setbacksfirst when militants like Firdous and Yasin Malik burnt out by 1993 or '94, then when the political process was restored by the 1996 a.s.sembly election, and again when Pakistan's Kargil misadventure disillusioned those Kashmiri militants stranded in Pakistanthen 9/11 further clinched the fact in the Kashmiri minds that nothing could be expected from Pakistan.

The events of the 9/11 attack are well known. The NDA government acted fast and openly expressed support. In a statement, the Cabinet Committee on Security expressed its 'great horror at this crime that has been perpetrated and has offered its deepest condolences and sympathy to the people, government and the president of the United States of America'. The government further said that 'terrorism is a crime against humanity and India is committed to fight it'. The focus on terrorism was what India had wanted highlighted at the Agra summit, and now it was America's focus. Kashmir was suddenly, for those around the world who had so far refrained from seeing it so, a terrorism problem above all else.

Prof. Ghani told me that 9/11 was a sobering experience for the Kashmiris. 'Yeh apne ko nahin bacha sakte, humein kya bachayenge,' he said. It was quite a statement for the man who used to be the most pro-Pakistan of the Hurriyat leaders by virtue of being a member of the PoK prime minister's party.

Immediately after the attack, President George W. Bush famously gave Musharraf a choice: 'You're either with us, or against us.' For the military man, whose army had deep links with the Pentagon (and whose ISI chief was sitting in the Pentagon when it was attacked), the choice was a no-brainer, even though it would have serious repercussions in his country, where there was a section of people with sympathy for the man behind the 9/11 attack, Osama bin Laden.

'Who can depend on Pakistan?' Prof. Ghani asked me. 'It can't look after itself, how will it look after us Kashmiris? Now that Musharraf has joined the war on terror, Pakistan is an American stooge. So how will it help us?'

In effect, Prof. Ghani was also saying the same thing that Majid Dar said when he returned from Pakistan: that the tap of terrorism can be turned off by Pakistan any time, and that all the tap required was American pressure. There was thus a parting of ways between Kashmiris and Pakistan: 'They're sponsoring terrorism and also fighting terrorism,' Prof. Ghani pointed out. 'It's a contradiction.'

The setback for us was the 13 December 2001 attack on our Parliament by five terrorists of the Jaish-e-Mohammed, an outfit formed by Maulana Masood Azhar a few months after he had been released by India in exchange for the hostages of the hijacked flight IC-814. It was the first time ever that someone had dared attack our Parliament and it wasn't just an attack on an official building, it was symbolic. As they say, in a democracy Parliament is supreme. It was akin to an attack on the entire country and its political system at one go.

One of the PMO security guards rushed into my room with news of the firing. 'Sir, udhar goli chal rahi hai, MHA mein goli chal rahi hai.'

I did not take him seriously. MHA was just across the road. 'Paagal ho gaya hai kya?' I scolded him. 'Go and find out.'

Moments later he rushed back in and said, 'Parliament mein goli chali hain, attack ho gaya hain.' He said we could hear it from here.

So I opened the window and I heard gunshots.

I barged into Brajesh Mishra's room and said: 'Sir, Parliament is under attack.'

I was expecting a commotion and activity, but the old fellow was having a smoke and watching the attack on television. 'Haan-haan, come and sit,' he said. 'Watch it, it's all here.'

I was too excited to sit, so he rea.s.sured me. 'n.o.body's gotten inside,' he said. 'They're all outside.'

He was monitoring the attack from his room in a most calm and composed manner. For me, it was one of those rare days that I did not go home for lunch. But at quarter to two, as was his practice, Brajesh Mishra left the building, though on this particular day he went to 7 RCR, where at 3 p.m. the prime minister would address the nation: 'Now the battle against terrorism has reached a decisive moment. This is going to be a fight to the finish.'

The five terrorists were killed but also lost were six Delhi police personnel, two members of Parliament's watch-and- ward staff and a gardener. A week later, the Indian army launched Operation Parakaram and began mobilising troops on the border. By early January five lakh soldiers had been mobilised. (Also, India suspended the DelhiLah.o.r.e bus that Vajpayee had inaugurated. It would restart only in July 2003.) The Pakistanis were worried, and Musharraf on 12 January 2002 on Pakistan television denounced 'religious extremism', pledged to reform madrasas, and banned the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed. Yet India kept up the pressure, especially after a terrorist attack on an army camp in Kaluchak, Jammu, on 14 May 2002, in which 34 persons were killed, a number of them army wives and children. It was the last straw that broke the camel's back. The Pakistan high commissioner was asked to leave. Earlier on 1 October 2001 the J&K a.s.sembly had been attacked which resulted in the death of 38 people, another dastardly attack by the Jaish. Farooq's apprehensions were proving right again. It was only in June that the pressure of two armies facing each other began to ease.

Yet while tension between India and Pakistan always makes Kashmiris insecure, the government used the opportunity of the build-up to ensure that pre-election violence in Kashmir, where the a.s.sembly election was going to be held in September October, was curbed. Thus it was only by October that the forces were completely demobilised to the status quo ante.

While I was in the PMO I was occasionally invited to the National Defence College (NDC) for lectures. The NDC provides a course in strategic learning for defence and civil officials of the level of brigadier or joint secretary and above, and I used to go and brief them on Kashmir. One of my lectures took place after Operation Parakaram, and I found that on that particular day, the brigadiers were being quite aggressive.

'Why did we not go to war?' the brigadiers asked. 'Why are politicians always reluctant to go to war?'

'What makes you think the politicians were reluctant to get into this war?' I asked. 'What makes you think the generals wanted to go to war? My sense is that the generals were not ready to go to war.'

That quietened the military fellows down for the rest of the lecture. Let's face it, armies nowhere like to go to war. It is the last bad option. Since I have been on the Indo-Pak track two dialogue, I keep hearing that the most honest dialogue takes place between retired generals. Logically, militarymen of both countries need to meet regularly.

The army's chief of staff at that time was a brilliant officer, General S. Padmanabhan, who had been the corps commander in Srinagar from 1993 to 1995, and later in charge of northern command. He was the only army chief to have spoken about scaling down the military presence in Kashmir. The rest of them would on one hand say that the situation in Kashmir had improved and on the other say that the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, also known as AFSPA, couldn't be removed. While AFSPA gives legal cover to armed forces fighting militancy, it is also on several occasions used by rogue soldiers to act with impunity, and there is always an inst.i.tutional reluctance to properly look into the allegations of extra-judicial executions or of rape of civilians by individual officers or units.

Thus the ASFPA is a dirty word not just in Kashmir but in the states in the north-east as well. It is another cause of anger against India, and undermines all efforts at trying to mainstream Kashmiris or Manipuris, etc.

Yet the AFSPA is linked to the bigger question of how much power the army is wielding, and the movement in Kashmir has provided the army with an opportunity to expand its presence in J&K. Though the army justifies its heavy deployment by periodically raising the bogie of infiltration, it is not restricted to the border; many Kashmiris feel the army has turned the entire Valley into a cantonment.

One of the ways to mainstream Kashmiris, it goes to reason, would be to reduce superfluous army presence. The moment to have done this was ideally after the 1996 a.s.sembly election, when a democratic government was in place. The army had done a d.a.m.n good job of containing militancy in the early 1990s, but now it was time for the army to be pulled back and gradually withdrawn. The army could have gone back to guarding the border. Doing so would give more s.p.a.ce for political activity, which in turn further marginalises the separatist movement.

Yet the army did not want to cede the power it wielded as head of the unified command, and insisted that only it could be in charge; Farooq wanted it headed by his DGP. The compromise was that the name of the set-up was changed to the unified headquarters, headed by the chief minister, who was a.s.sisted by the two corps commanders deployed in J&K. Farooq said fine, and then blamed all law and order problems on the army.

General Padmanabhan in 2001 said that the army had done its job, now it was up to the politicians to resolve the matter. Sadly, he was told that generals were not supposed to make political statements. He had the sharpest mind as far as generals go, and he was frank enough to say that the army's job was over, and he was basically told to shut up. (It's a different thing that nowadays the generals make the army out to be indispensable by offering some theory or another about infiltration and terrorism every six months or so.) The border mobilisation was not the only way in which the government cut off the metaphorical oxygen to militants and separatists in the run-up to the 2002 a.s.sembly election. It is a fact that the IB under K.M. Singh not only neutralised sleeper cells in Kashmir but also neutralised hawala transactions. Hawala is the illegal foreign exchange trade, and in Kashmir it is used mainly by Pakistan to fund its a.s.sets, be they militants, separatists, or even the odd mainstream politician. The IB had detected twenty cases and the finger pointed directly at S.A.S. Geelani, the Hurriyat hardliner.

Twenty transactions were detected between December 2001 and June 2002, and the IB interrogated one of the suspects who revealed that the money was coming to Geelani through Ayub Thakur, a London-based Kashmiri famous for being on the ISI payroll. The IB provided the details to the Reserve Bank of India and that led to the income tax raid on Geelani in June 2002. The raid took place in so much secrecy that even the raid party had no idea where they were being taken. The only person who had any knowledge of the raid was Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah.

The raids turned up some unaccounted money and foreign exchange, and so Geelani was arrested and sent to jail in Hazaribagh, Jharkhand. A charge under POTA was slapped against Geelani. The government was a bit apprehensive over how the public might react to the arrest, but the reaction was muted. What also became muted was Geelani's usual anti- election propaganda.