Onus of Pahalgam massacre is on Centre, but Omar will bear the brunt

As a chief minister with no powers over the security and intelligence apparatus of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah can’t be faulted for lapses that led to the April 22 daylight massacre of 26 people, 25 of them tourists from other parts of India, by The Resistance Front (TRF) terrorists in Pahalgam’s Baisaran Valley. Yet, the tragedy portends ominous signs for Abdullah.

Since J&K was downgraded from a full-fledged state to a Union Territory in 2019 following the abrogation of Article 370, the Centre and its Lt Governor have enjoyed absolute powers over law and order, including day-to-day policing, local intelligence, as well as the deployment of state police, paramilitary and armed forces. In the years since, the office of the LG (currently, Manoj Sinha) and the Centre have repeatedly made bombastic boasts about “breaking the backs of terrorists in J&K”.

Also read: Pahalgam revenge: Why India should not go for an Israel-like assault

Shah’s admission of failure

The hollowness of these claims was always known — the TRF came into existence after the abrogation and has since claimed several lives in both the Jammu region and the Kashmir Valley — but never acknowledged by the Centre. The horrific sight of bodies scattered across the Baisaran meadow has finally lifted that deceptive veil of normalcy spun by the BJP leadership, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

Earlier this month, Shah had informed Parliament that “terrorists now lie buried in Kashmir”. On April 24, cornered by an Opposition united in demanding answers from the Centre on intelligence and security lapses, Shah had to concede at the all-party meeting convened to discuss the massacre that “we would not be having this meeting if everything was fine”.

IB blames tourists

Attempts by Intelligence Bureau officials present at the meeting to shirk blame for the tragedy by asserting that the tourists had arrived at Baisaran without any police permission were also snubbed by Opposition leaders who pointed out that tourists had always been visiting the meadow and it was the “job of the police and other security agencies to ensure (their) safety”, sources told The Federal.

Leader of the Opposition (Lok Sabha), Rahul Gandhi, it is learnt, also told Shah that if the IB’s account was to be believed, it only confirmed a “colossal security failure if hundreds of people were going there without the police’s knowledge” and that the police were no longer accountable to the state government but to the LG and the Centre.

Also read: Pahalgam Live: Ready to counter any aggression, Pakistan tells India

Omar’s worries

So, if the buck for the Baisaran massacre stops with the Centre, why must Abdullah worry? The answer isn’t a straight one but then nothing about J&K’s politics and administration ever is.

The past six months since Abdullah rode a landslide electoral victory for the National Conference to become chief minister have seen him stumbling from one political challenge to another. The first and still continuing one among these challenges is the NC’s electoral promise of fighting for not just the restoration of J&K’s statehood but also Article 370 and how Abdullah has, since becoming the chief minister, dealt with these.

Article 370

The NC’s promise of finding a way to restore Article 370, for all practical purposes, pretty much became a dead letter with Abdullah declaring shortly after becoming chief minister that he cannot expect the very party that was responsible for the abrogation to now cooperate with his government to restore the Article.

More recently, Abdullah’s father and NC chief Farooq Abdullah was caught off guard on the issue when his ‘friend’ and former Research & Analysis Wing chief AS Dulat insinuated in his newly released book The Chief Minister and The Spy that the senior Abdullah had confided in the abrogation’s aftermath that the NC would have cooperated with the Centre on repealing Article 370 had it been consulted before hand. The Abdullahs, of course, rubbished Dulat’s claim.

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J&K’s statehood

The more prickly issue has been the restoration of J&K’s statehood. Abdullah did manage to get a resolution passed in the J&K Assembly pressing for this demand shortly after stalling a more strongly worded resolution, moved by legislators of the PDP, AIP, People’s Conference, and the AAP raising the same issue, in the first session of the new J&K Assembly.

The Centre has continued to drag its feet on granting J&K statehood while the chief minister and his party have shown no aggression in building pressure on Modi and Shah to respect the J&K Assembly’s resolution and public sentiment in the Union Territory.

Sources close to the NC leadership say that in the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack, the CM “will find the Centre even more rigid against the idea of restoring statehood”.

Immediate problems

A senior NC MLA from central Kashmir told The Federal: “The attack is a huge setback; there is no way that the Centre will restore statehood in the present situation… for the CM it will be all the more difficult because after such a tragedy, he will have to cooperate with whatever the Centre plans to do in Kashmir using the excuse of security while on the ground his critics will slam him for surrendering to New Delhi and to Modi.”

Kashmiri politicians across party lines believe the killings in Pahalgam and Modi’s strident assertion of an unprecedented pushback against Pakistan and its actors in J&K would translate into “heavier militarization of the Valley”, aggravating the risk of “increased collateral damage” in counter-terror operations, which are likely to see a spike in the region in coming weeks.

Also read: Pakistan defence minister admits terror ties, warns of 'all-out war' with India

Centre lets down Kashmiri students

Another NC leader said that in the immediate aftermath of the Baisaran massacre “all of Kashmir stood united against terrorists and in solidarity with our Indian brothers who were killed”. The leader, however, lamented that neither Modi nor Shah spoke against “radical Hindutva elements” who were attacking Kashmiris living in different parts of the country and forcing them to return home.

“If this targeting of Kashmiri civilians continues in other parts of the country while the Centre intensifies its anti-terror crackdown in J&K, the trust deficit between Kashmir and New Delhi will widen and Omar Abdullah will have to walk a very tightrope because he can neither ignore the voice of Kashmiris nor antagonize New Delhi,” the NC leader said.

Terrorism kills tourism

While the fight for restoration of J&K’s statehood was always going to be long-drawn, the Pahalgam attack has also presented Abdullah with a more immediate challenge — the economic fallout.

In his telephonic conversation with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on the evening of the Pahalgam attack, a distraught Abdullah is learnt to have remarked, “We are finished”.

According to Kharge, Abdullah was referring to the economic damage J&K would have to face as a result of the Baisaran massacre, which occurred just when Kashmir’s tourist season had begun. That tourism is the single biggest driver of Kashmir’s economy is well-known.

Also read: Pahalgam attack: Meet the Kashmiri guide who risked his life to save 11 tourists

Fiscal calculations

Since the attack, scores of videos of local Kashmiris — Shikara boatmen, shopkeepers and hotel staff to pony-wallahs and porters — echoing exactly the same sentiment Abdullah reportedly shared with Kharge have gone viral on sundry social media platform.

“The immediate concern for Abdullah will be how to ensure that tourism doesn’t take a hit for the entire season. This year, the government was anticipating that tourism will bounce back to the pre-abrogation and pre-pandemic levels because the last two years had seen a very steady increase in tourist footfalls but this attack has happened just when our season was starting; May and June are peak tourist months and then we have the Amarnath Yatra beginning in July… the Pahalgam attack will adversely impact all of this,” a J&K government official told The Federal, on condition of anonymity.

More dependence on Delhi

More importantly, the official added, that the Baisaran massacre was “different from other terror attacks of the past because earlier tourist hotspots would not be targeted this way”. Terrorists, he said, “understood that attacking tourists would hit livelihood of Kashmiri locals and then locals who may have some sympathy with separatists and militants will not cooperate with them; this is one of the reasons why you have seen spontaneous outpouring of solidarity with the victims from Kashmiris, they know how badly they could be affected if tourists don’t come this season”.

A sharp fall in tourist footfall would naturally hit the Abdullah government’s revenue stream too, making it more dependent than it already is on central aid and cooperation. This likely eventuality, sources say, may have its own political pitfalls for the chief minister as it would demand Abdullah to work closely with the Centre, which in turn will require him to keep the BJP top brass, an object of grave mistrust among people of the Valley, in good humour.

Also read: Fear grips Kashmiri students amid threats in several states after Pahalgam attack

Restive politics

For now, Abdullah’s political rivals in the Valley are echoing the same tune as the NC as far as cooperating with the Centre in responding to terror is concerned. They are, however, also are also aware that the conversation will, sooner than later, switch back to more domestic issues of Kashmir – economy, livelihood, the NC government’s performance, the Centre and LG’s meddling in state affairs, et al.

“On counter-terrorism, we obviously will stand with whatever the Centre decides but let us also not forget that many promises were made to the Kashmiris, by the BJP in New Delhi and the NC in Srinagar and we can’t let either of them hide behind this tragedy to not deliver on those promises,” a senior PDP leader told The Federal.

PDP’s warning

The PDP leader added: “As far as the chief minister is concerned, the last six months have shown that on every promise NC made during the elections, the CM has a ready excuse to not deliver, whether it is about statehood or regularizing contractual employees or fighting the BJP; look at how the NC stalled demands for a discussion and condemnation of the Centre’s Waqf Amendment Act… We can only hope that he will not use this tragedy to hide his lies and failures, or worse, as an excuse to surrender J&K to New Delhi in the name of ‘cooperating’ with the Centre in Kashmir’s interest.”

A barrage of challenges awaits Abdullah but will he have the right response?