What to expect when Kashmir leaders meet Modi of India in New Delhi | New conflicts

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Srinagar, Indian administered Kashmir – Indian chief politicians of Indian Kashmir meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi after first discussing special status of region it was disbanded two years ago.

They are moving away from the tough stance Modik had in the region after the talks were repealed Articles 370 and 35A In August 2019, after a long and disabled military and communications blockade to stifle any opposition to the government’s controversial behavior.

Both constitutional provisions gave the Muslim-majority region a degree of autonomy. But the removal of its special status divided the region into two federally administered territories.

Thousands of Kashmiri politicians, separatists, activists and lawyers arrested in India as part of the crackdown, including some former chief ministers of the region were due to meet with the Indian leader on Thursday.

The Kashmir region of the Himalayas is claimed in its entirety by India and Pakistan, who have ruled in parts of it since the two nations gained independence from the British in 1947.

An armed uprising on the Indian side began in the early 1990s to demand independence from India or annexation to Pakistan. Separatists who are making the same demands through non-violent means remain in jail or under house arrest.

The Muslim-majority region also has a small group of pro-Indian politicians and political parties participating in national and regional elections.

Why have they invited the heads of Kashmir?

There have been more than a dozen of these pro-India political parties Invited to New Delhi Modi and his trusted lieutenant Amit Shah for a meeting with Interior Minister.

Although there is no clarity on the agenda of the meeting, it is thought that the federal government wants to resume the political activity that has stopped in the region and resume the state that was abolished two years ago.

As the region lost its state, the pro-Indian parties that had dominated regional politics since 1947 were also targeted by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Three former regional prime ministers – 83-year-old Farooq Abdullah, his son Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti – were arrested under the controversial Public Security Act (PSA), a rights group designated by the law, Amnesty, as an “illegal law”. International.

Author Abdullah was released in March last year after an eight-month arrest following his son’s release, and Mufti was released in October for 14 months house arrest.

But the decision of the right-wing federal government on 5 August 2019 has already changed the political and geographical realities of the region.

To challenge this, for the first time the two main political parties in the region – the National Conference led by Abdullah and the Mufti People’s Democratic Party – grouped under a group of umbrellas With smaller parties and named the Gupkar People’s Alliance for Expression.

The coalition, also known as the Gupkar Alliance, seeks to restore the limited and state-owned autonomy of Kashmir administered by the Indians.

After the fall of the regional coalition between the PDP and the BJP in 2018, no regional government has been elected. New Delhi is mandated directly or through manually chosen administrators.

Over the past two years, the BJP has made a number of controversial changes to regional laws, among others allowing outsiders a permanent settlement in the region, a fear that the natives would change the nature of the majority of Muslims.

What do the leaders of Kashmir say?

Before heading to New Delhi, the leaders said they did not know the agenda of the meeting with Modi.

“We hope to present our position to the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior,” Farooq Abdullah told reporters at a press conference after meeting with PAGD members in the main city of Srinagar on Tuesday.

Mehbooba Mufti, left, stands next to Farooq Abdullah after meeting with local leaders [Tauseef Mustafa/AFP]

Mufti, the PDP president and the region’s top minister, said “there is a need for dialogue to resolve Jammu and Kashmir” and that New Delhi has “humiliated” key politicians in the last two years.

“What we have been deprived of before, we will talk about it. Without restoring our rights, we will tell them (the government) that they cannot bring peace to the region, ”he said, citing Article 370.

Meanwhile, the BJP has tried to sideline pro-Kashmir parties by labeling them as “dynastic and corrupt”. In a tweet last year, Interior Minister Shah said the PAGD alliance was a “Gupkar gang” and sparked outrage in the region.

The government has also tried to introduce new faces and new parties into the political framework of the region, but to no avail local surveys was held in December last year.

Most of the election seats were secured by the PAGD alliance, even though the electorate has little power in a federal territory.

New Delhi-based Manoj Joshi Observer Research Foundation (ORF) political expert said local polls could not exceed the authority of traditional political parties, and forced the government to contact them.

“I think it’s a planned move,” Joshi told Jazira.

“In the last two years, the government has renewed its state administration and also got a restriction commission that can change the balance of political power in any new state that comes up,” he said.

Nirmal Singh, a former regional BJP minister who also plans to attend Thursday’s meeting, told Al Jazeera that the talks are part of a promise made by Modik.

“The Prime Minister promised from the Red Fort that he would start the political process in Kashmir,” he said, referring to the Indian Prime Minister’s annual Independence Day speech on the walls of the Mughal-era fort in New Delhi.

“It has taken time, but we hope to have a golden opportunity to maintain our perspective,” Singh added.

Are they having conversations as a result of US pressure?

Ruhulla Mehdi, a former member of parliament for the regional National Conference, told Al Jazeera that the Modi government may have agreed to speak with Kashmir leaders secret meetings at the beginning of the year between India and Pakistan, the mediation of the United Arab Emirates.

In April, Reuters news agency reported that intelligence officials from the two nations held secret talks in January in Dubai in an effort to calm military tensions over the disputed Himalayan region.

“I assume it has more to do with international dynamics than with domestic ones,” Mehdi said, adding that the U.S. Road Administration “wants India to play democratically with Kashmir.”

“The US has mentioned the Kashmir issue several times. The step is to save face now because the BJP has realized that it needs to contact Kashmir’s political leaders.”

After covert talks, India and Pakistan published it together a rare expression, Ratifying the decision to adhere to a ceasefire agreement in 2003, along the Line of Control (LoC), on the de facto border between them.

For five months, guns have been silent in the LoC, with more than 8,000 ceasefire violations in 2020, resulting in hundreds of deaths on both sides.

Are there geopolitical factors behind the decision?

Some experts have also said that New Delhi’s surprising offer of dialogue has come between India’s two main geopolitical concerns: the unresolved border crisis with China in the Ladakh region and the Taliban’s advances in Afghanistan.

Last month’s high tensions with China raised the ghost of the entire war between two nuclear-armed Asian rivals.

At least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a riot in the Ladakh Galwan Valley in June last year – the first fighting losses at the disputed border for more than 40 years. China admitted earlier this year that it had also lost four soldiers in the fighting.

Tensions eased in February this year, at the actual control line (ALK), on the de facto border between them, after thousands of soldiers on both sides retire and a ordinary telephone it was announced among their foreign ministers.

Showkat Hussain Sheikh, a political analyst based in the disputed region, said New Delhi is reviving the bridge with old parties in Kashmir concerned about the development in Afghanistan.

“One of the factors is that the US is retreating from Afghanistan, and India is appalling because it is so much closer to the Srinagar than Kabul Delin. They are worried and need to do something, ”Hussain said.

But he also called the talks a “marketing exercise”.

“It simply came to our notice then. There has been a withdrawal from New Delhi because before (Kashmir politicians) they were portrayed as a bunch of rebels, ”he said.

Hussain said Modik had an “understanding” with former U.S. President Donald Trump.

“He (Modi) acted as Trump’s election agent. It does not have the same relationship with the Biden administration, which is made up of Cold War hawks who are eager to regain the support of former allies like Pakistan and Turkey, ”he said.

But analyst Joshi ruled out any international pressure to speak to Kashmiri leaders behind New Delhi’s decision.

“I do not think there is any special international pressure. The situation in the valley is not so worrying to attract international attention, ”he told Al Jazeera.

Although Joshi acknowledged that “the Biden administration has made critical statements about the removal of the internet people”, he said that “in itself, it does not affect the government much”.

“Normalcy (administered by Kashmir in India) is far away, but yes, a resumption of the political process can help restore that,” he said.



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