Srinagar, Dec 29 (KNS): Former RAW Chief of India A S Dulat said Force has never worked in Kashmir, nor has our muscular policy since the abrogation of Article 370.

" almost 200 local boys mainly from South Kashmir have joined militancy in the last one year, not for azaadi or Pakistan but in the name of Allah. These figures are higher than any time since 2007. Pakistan too is back fishing once again in the troubled waters of Kashmir, (sic)" he said in an article titled -Kashmir looks ahead at a winter of discontent published in Deccan Chronicle newspaper.

"The security forces have suffered substantial losses. Suicide and fratricide among the forces, particularly the CRPF, who are in the thick of the anti-terror war, has grown due to stress, duress and trauma due to long-term duties in unfamiliar surroundings,(Sic)" he added.
He asked New Delhi to demonstrate accommodation, grab the opportunity, and break the lockjam in Kashmir.
"The recently concluded District Development Council elections may provide a silver lining. Kashmir can always change overnight. Election results rarely, if ever, satisfy everybody in J&K; such is its arithmetic, but the recent results have been almost, perfect providing an opportunity for peace, reconciliation, and resolution. Predictably, the BJP dominated Jammu, and the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) the Kashmir Valley. The BJP’s three seats in the Valley are significant, but the PAGD’s 35 in Jammu even more so. The National Conference again demonstrated that it was the only party with a significant following in both the Jammu and Kashmir divisions of the erstwhile state. The polarisation of Jammu and Kashmir on a religious basis was dangerous as the scholarly Balraj Puri had warned in his relentless pleading for regional autonomy," he wrote.

Former Spy Chief also wrote "Democracy has, in a sense, as Union home minister Amit Shah said, “been revived in J&K”, but democracy can only flourish, as Mufti Mohammed Sayeed was wont to say, with a level playing field, without buying and selling, bullying and locking up. The leprechaun cannot easily replace the towering Sher-e-Kashmir in the Kashmiri psyche."

"Notwithstanding the political rhetoric across the board, Article 370 is not the issue, done and dusted on August 5, 2019, and left only for the Supreme Court to sanctify its burial. It was, in any event, a hollow provision at best, a fig leaf to assuage Kashmiri pride whose erosion had begun as far back as August 9, 1953 with the arrest of Sheikh Abdullah. Sheikh Sahib, who had steadfastly stood for peace and reconciliation, had himself endorsed the mainstreaming of Kashmir with the 1975 Accord. When the Hurriyat Conference leaders agreed for talks with then deputy prime minister Lal Krishna Advani, in early 2004, it was virtually the beginning of the end of separatism. What Kashmir needs is peace, justice, honour and dignity," he wrote

Former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, whose birth anniversary was celebrated last Friday, believed that we needed to move forward in Kashmir and end the permanent confrontation with Pakistan, he added.(KNS)