Priority to prevent Kashmir from turning into Syria: New interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma

Mangalore Today News Network

Kashmir 28, oct 2017 : Deradicalizing Kashmiri youth and militants, and preventing Kashmir from turning into an Indian Syria represent the biggest challenge and the top priority in the Valley, says Dineshwar Sharma, the newly-named interlocutor for talks in Jammu and Kashmir.

 

Sharma is a 1976 batch Kerala cadre IPS officer who retired as IB director on December 31, 2016. He was handpicked by the Ministry of Home Affairs to hold a dialogue with stakeholders in the strife-torn northern state. Union minister Jitendra Singh has said Sharma isn’t an "interlocutor," but a "special representative."

He says he’s personally pained to see the path Kashmiris, particularly young Kashmiris, have chosen - a path that will only destroy society.


"I feel the pain and sometimes I become emotional also. I want to see this kind of violence ends as soon as possible from all sides. The youth of Kashmir like Zakir Musa (Kashmir Al Qaeda chief) and Burhan Wani (slain Hizbul Mujahideen commander) get hype when they talk about (establishing Islamic) Caliphate," Sharma told the news agency IANS in an interview.

"I am worried about the people of Kashmir. If all this picked up, the situation will be like Yemen, Syria and Libya. People will start fighting in so many groups. So, it is very important that everybody, all of us, contribute so that suffering of Kashmiris ends."

"I will have to convince the youth of Kashmir that they are only ruining their future and the future of all Kashmiris in the name of whether they call it azadi (independence), Islamic caliphate or Islam," Sharma said. "You can take examples like Pakistan, Libya, Yemen or any country where such things are going. They have become the most violent places in the world. So, I want to see that it doesn’t happen in India."



I.B. TENURE

The soft-spoken intelligence veteran is known to have established friendly relationships with arrested militants in a bid to reform them when he was Assistant Director IB from 1992-94 - the time when militancy was at its peak in Jammu and Kashmir.

Serving in Kashmir as an IB man, Sharma was instrumental in the arrest of then Hizbul Mujahideen commander Master Ahsan Dar in 1993 after he broke away from Syed Salahuddin - the Hizb chief based in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

He recalled how he had met Dar in Srinagar jails and how the militant commander asked him to bring his daughter and son to meet him in the prison. "I actually took them to meet him."

When the IB was investigating the fledgling modules of the Islamic State in Kerala, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh in 2015, Sharma is widely known to have advocated a policy of arresting the problem by counselling and reforming, instead of arresting the potential recruits of the global terror network.

Asked if he had identified the way to reach out to the youth in Kashmir, Sharma said he was still working out the modalities.

He said his mission to bring an end to the violence in Kashmir included talking to anyone who could contribute - even a rickshaw puller or a cart puller - so that peace returns "as soon as possible".

"I am open to talking to everybody. Anybody who believes in peace and wants to come and give me some ideas how to go about, I am willing to listen. He can be an ordinary student, ordinary youth, a rickshawwala or a thelawala with some good idea. I will consider that."



WHAT ABOUT THE HURRIYAT?

Hurriyat leaders have been silent about Sharma’s appointment, even though they’d dropped hints in their statements about engaging in "constructive" talks with the Centre after some of their aides were arrested in a terror-funding case.

Asked whether he had started reaching out to them, Sharma replied cautiously.

"Let me see. I am ready to talk to everybody. Anybody who wants to contribute to peace."

When he spoke exclusively to India Today shortly after his appointment on Monday, Sharma said he would visit Jammu and Kashmir in a "week or 10 days" to hold dialogues with stakeholders.



’DESPERATE TO TRY NEW IDEAS’

Sharma said Kashmir was almost at peace before the 2008 unrest over a land row and the 2016 wave of violent street protests after the killing of Burhan Wani.

"Somehow the minds of youths and students have been diverted somewhere else. That is the point of address. I have seen the violence in Kashmir from very close quarters. I was posted in Srinagar. So the kind of violence I have seen, I am really pained. I am very sad."

Commenting on the government’s previous attempts to nominating peace emissaries and other initiatives, he said he would "desperately like to try some new ideas".

"I am studying the reports (of previous interlocutors) but other than that I am trying to see some new ideas."

Kashmir is not Sharma’s first peace-brokering assignment. In June this year, he was tasked to initiate a dialogue with insurgent groups in Assam, including the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and those representing Bodos.

Is there any difference between his previous assignment and the new one? "The big difference is that there is not any involvement of Pakistan and any third country in the north-east," Sharma said.


courtesy: IndiaToday