Pragmatic Euphony  

Can Omar Abdullah match the execution of his plan to his statement of intent.

At the insistence of the Chief Minister of J&K,  Omar Abdullah, the CRPF has been withdrawn from Baramulla district and replaced by the J&K police. The Union Home Minister has welcomed the move by stating that the “young chief minister in the state… must be supported to tackle the situation.”

More than a security measure, this withdrawal of CRPF is a major political step to drive the final nail in the coffin of the separatist sentiment in Kashmir. Due to the wide publicity likely to be provided to the withdrawal of CRPF, the state government must be hoping that the demand for the removal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act [AFSPA] will take a back seat. The state government also seems to have figured out that at this moment, the state police can be a more adequate replacement for the CRPF than for the Rashtriya Rifles or the army in Kashmir.

In The Hindu, Praveen Swami estimates that the J&K police cannot find numbers to replace the CRPF from the complete state. He buttresses his point by stating that the state police has been unable to even provide the numbers to replace the 1500 CRPF troopers, who were moved to their barracks in Baramulla earlier this week.

Thus, one thing is absolutely clear — the army and the central forces can not move out of the state simultaneously. If the CRPF moves out from the various population centres in the state and hands over the maintenance of law and order duties to the local police, then the army and the Rashtriya Rifles will have to stay deployed in the state for some time to come. In a calibrated pullout process, being supervised by the CM himself, the first step seems to be the movement of the CRPF to its barracks — to start within the next 10 days. The movement of army and the RR from the state would be the next logical step, to be undertaken sometime in the future. The second step would be contingent on a successful completion of the first step — primarily on how well the state police steps up to the plate in this stage of transition.

The state government also wants the army to be available to play a more supportive — operating in the background and directly under the civil magistrate — role to the state police. Although this proposal to operate in a legalistic, restrictive environment is likely to be rejected by the army top brass, the political leadership in Delhi would be more than happy to have the army available in the state to cater to any contingency. With the army still being available in the state and the provisions of the AFSPA still in force, the centre can step in to control any situation that threatens to get out of hand.

The major problem at hand is of finding enough local policemen to replace the CRPF troopers. It is not a question of merely finding more numbers, but of capacity building for such a force — something that can not happen in a matter of a few weeks or months. Thus a solution will have to be found by replacing policemen on static and other non population-centric duties within the state with paramilitary troopers.

However, it also needs to be remembered that the number of local policemen required to police any area is much lesser than the number of paramilitary or army soldiers required to clear or hold the same place in a COIN operation. Thus effective systems and processes of policing would render this replacement number game redundant, if the political and administrative setup in the state is able to backup their bold gestures with a pragmatic plan of police deployment and empowerment in the state. It is here that the state leadership could look to emulate the example of Punjab where the Punjab Police operated so successfully against the Khalistan movement in the 1980s. A robust junior to middle level leadership in the state police would be critical to tiding over the challenges provided by this state of flux. It is up to the political, bureaucratic and police leadership in the state to rise to the occasion and finally provide a local solution to the vexed problem.

It also needs to be understood that while the Kashmir valley — despite the strikes and the protests — is stable, it is still not completely safe from the security angle.  In the near future, there could be a couple of sporadic terrorist attacks in the state. They should not be read as a part of some mounting trend, but as normal and to be expected from time to time in such an environment. If Kashmir has to return to full normalcy — paradoxically — it will necessarily mean making itself more vulnerable to these kinds of sporadic terrorist attacks for some time.

Let it be said that the army and the central forces have taken it as far in Kashmir as they can.  Anything they do [or not do] now in the cities and towns in the Valley seems to be doing more harm than good in delaying the inevitable and reinforcing their, at times, crippling malaise. The only enduring role for the central forces, the army and the RR is to provide the safety net to prevent complete collapse, chaos and return of jehadi terrorism to the state — three things that India can not allow to happen in any event.

The steps initiated by Omar Abdullah are bold and are being rightly supported by the central government. Intent is always the easier part, execution always the tough one. The  tough part — for the state of J&K — begins now.