Will Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front achieve its goal?

A US-based leader of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) is of the view that India has succeeded in exposing Pakistan in Kashmir but "they are totally wrong in entertaining the idea of defeating Kashmiris" and added that "it is a matter of time before a new form and resistance style will hit the road."

In an interview, Altaf Qadri, holding the post of acting Chairman of JKLF after Yaseen Malik's sentence for life, justified his coming to the US "to discharge his duties to create a favourable understanding for an independent sovereign Kashmir. The US has a consistent position on Kashmir that will facilitate any political engagement and solution between India and Pakistan that is acceptable to Kashmiris."

However, he said that JKLF is striving to discard the false narrative and political impression that the Kashmir dispute is between India and Pakistan. "The actual issue is concerning the fact that the front does not want any foreign forces on its land including China."

When asked does the demand for an independent Kashmir pragmatic approach, Qadri replied, "As far as our position is concerned, we do not doubt it. Yet we are open to engaging and listening to the opposite point of view."

Qadri's response indicates that JKLF will approach the Kashmir dispute with a flexible mind and determined objective.

With confidence in the US' consistent position on Kashmir, Qadri said, " The US will facilitate any political engagement and solution between India and Pakistan that is acceptable to Kashmiris." That is an oversimplification of the geopolitical atmosphere.

In reply to a question on China's position if J&K becomes an independent state, without mincing the words Qadri said, "There is no reason for India, Pakistan and China to be nervous or sceptical that independent sovereign Kashmir will turn into an American bastion. America is more close to India, Pakistan and China. There are multiple accords, consortiums and partnerships between America, India, Pakistan and China. Therefore, there are no plausible reasons for any of these countries to be worried about the independence of Kashmir."

Pakistan's position on the question of liberation of Kashmir is very clear: It's committed to the UN resolution which gives Kashmiris only two options of either joining India or Pakistan through a plebiscite -no third option. Pakistan considers any talk of the third option (independence) as anti-Pakistan. As far as India's position is concerned, the whole of Jammu and Kashmir is its integral part.

The promoters of the JKLF could not be so naive as not to know the impossibility of its goal. Yet they launched it and led thousands of Kashmiris to their grave in the insurgency unleashed by the JKLF in 1988 on order from the ISI.

In 1994, the Front decided to give up violence, but now it may have up its ante, with a difference. Over this, Qadri empathically made it clear "It is a matter of time before a new form and resistance style will hit the road. Believe it or not, that will shock the whole Indian intelligentsia. Nevertheless, it will deeply pain me to see another generation of Kashmir thrown again into a violent phase that was avoidable."

If Qadri's claim (that the JKLF is secular) at its face value is taken, then it should be closer to India than to rabidly communal Pakistan. But the fact is that this "secular" Front is always waging war against secular India and keeps its eyes closed to the slaving Kashmiris in "Azad" Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.

However, he caused confusion by implying that Pakistan is with JKLF in its demand for independence. He said, "Our focus on an independent Kashmir will continue, as long as Pakistan remains open-minded to this option because we will have no issue with them,...? Does it mean Pakistan is amenable to the third option?

Whatever the so-called liberation outfits may say, the fact is they are all dipped in Pakistan's Islamic ideology on the basis of which it makes claims to Kashmir. These outfits only work as slave agents against India. They are indifferent to the plight of Kashmiris confined to the 86,023 sq.-miles area that Pakistan has been under its illegal occupation for the past 75 years.

These outfits did not protest when Pakistanis began occupying Gilgit-Baltistan in 1988 and captured its politics, administration, economy, and business. When Pakistan settlers demand provincial status for Gilgit-Baltistan it is falsely taken to be the demand of the whole of Gilgit-Baltistan. The liberation activists do not bother about protestors being jailed on charges of terrorism.

JKLF did not raise the issue when Pakistan allowed China to build China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) through Gilgit-Baltistan treating Kashmiris as non-existent in the same fashion when in March 1963 Pakistan gave away 2,500 sq. miles of territory in Hunza (Shaksgam Valley) to China despite protests from the Mir of Hunza. Pakistan flouted its so-called commitment to the rights of Kashmiris.

Will JKLF ever ask Pakistan to get back this Kashmiri territory? Qadri in a diplomatic answer said, "The JKLF believed that all occupiers must vacate every inch of our motherland."

Disclaimer: The author of this opinion piece is R C Ganjoo, a senior journalist and columnist.

( With inputs from ANI )

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