There was a time in the early nineties when several innocent civilians lost their lives on the streets of Valley in the reprisal action by security forces after grenade throws and the shoot-outs. And then there came a time towards the late nineties when a high degree of restraint was certainly in evidence in the way the troopers responded following a militant attack. By a deliberate security strategy, the loss of civilian lives was reduced to a minimum. But now the situation is back to square one. Suddenly it seems yesterday once more. Civilian killings have once again become routine.  Small provocations here and there lead to a series of killings. The past three weeks alone have witnessed 15 deaths, with four of them killed on July 6 alone. The toll over the past three years of unrest is around 80 civilians killed which seems unprecedented considering that all these deaths have taken place in reaction to stone throwing incidents. Situation, it seems, has come a full circle. A security establishment which could by and large successfully reduce the civilian deaths in the face of the guns and grenades has now become so trigger-happy in the face of the stones. The stones that don't kill, while guns and grenades do. The fact that not a single police or paramilitary personnel has faced a fatal injury in the past three years of stone throwing only underscores the excessive level of force used to contain the unrest. Both the previous as well as the present state government have miserably failed to come to grips with the situation, let alone address it.  Looking back at the past three years, one can't help but conclude that it is these wanton killings more than the separatist leadership which have thrown Valley into turmoil. While these deaths may not have made a CNN or BBC headline which a single death in Palestine does, it is cruel to expect people not to be angry about them. And angry they are. More than anything else, it is this anger that in the first place is responsible for the spread of unrest through the Valley. While scapegoating separatists and of course mainstream opposition would serve as a convenient excuse for the government under the circumstances, it doesn't detract from the fact that the government has singularly failed to protect lives. In any other state of India such an uninterrupted cycle of killings would have made the very survival of the government impossible. But in Kashmir, like always, it is the exceptional that passes off as normal. The standards that are duly followed in the rest of country are only observed in breach in the Valley. Here, it is not the long oppressed people who need to be provided a sympathetic treatment but the security agencies who have been, to put it mildly,  singularly unthoughtful in their response to the situation. Just when people were getting angry about the long shutdown calendar in the middle of the peak business season in Valley, the killings ensured that the extended strikes appear a legitimate protest tool. Three years is a long time to understand a new phenomenon of public unrest and to calibrate a response to it. More so, when the protests have been chiefly of stone throwing nature. No doubt, the situation is much more complex. These otherwise disparate incidents of stone pelting and their implicit support across the Valley comes from a political baggage rooted into the troubled origins of the modern India and Pakistan. It is nobody's case that situation at the end of the day needs an overarching political solution that puts to rest the demons of history. But while that is a prospect whose realization by any stretch of imagination doesn't appear anywhere nearer, a more nuanced and understanding government response could have certainly prevented the situation from being pushed off the cliff. As for the response by police and paramilitary is concerned, they would have certainly been able to handle the situation better if they realized that even while stone throwing may at times be provocative, it is thousand times preferable to militancy.

Lastupdate on : Sun, 11 Jul 2010 21:30:00 Mecca time
Lastupdate on : Sun, 11 Jul 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Mon, 12 Jul 2010 00:00:00 IST