Azad

Restless energy today. Can’t decide what to do with myself. A story waiting to be written, another waiting to be uncovered and my mind slips into an elegiac stasis. Outside the rough and tumble vicissitudes of Pakistan. Musharraf offers a fig leaf to India: his nation will renounce all claims to Kashmir in return for a comprehensive settlement that includes far-reaching self-governance for the alpine Shangri-la. Sounds good, very magnanimous. But little Satan still stalks the details. Pakistan has always called its part of Kashmir Azad (Free). Azad Kashmir, that’s the propaganda forwarded by Pakistan. But Kashmir is far from free. The ruling government is a Pakistani puppet, supplicant to the will of Islamabad. Will Pakistan truly turn Kashmir over to its people? They harbour deep resentments toward the central government. I remember one of the first stories I wrote for MacLean’s, back during the 2001/2002 nuclear standoff. I went to the Line of Control, on a media tour with the Pak army. It was quite a fine excursion, with lunch and small talk and a little hiking to boot. It was well-planned, beautifully scripted and for those reasons, exactly what I DIDN’T want. So I went again, but this time, during the chaos of photo-ops and interviews, I slipped away and went to a tiny, serene village of plum trees and wheat fields straddling the LoC, a 10-minute walk from the military outpost. I spoke with the locals who told me of their love for their land, of the hardships they suffered because of two infantile nations bickering over a future that didn’t belong to them. These people wanted nothing to do with either Pakistan or India. The Pakistani government, they told me, were not protectors, as so many of the generals claimed. They were dictators who ruled them, installed their own people in the corrupt farce called the Azad Kashmir government. They also told me of that other Kashmir, not the one on the Indian side, but the one in Pakistan, now conveniently called the Northern Areas. This is also Kashmir, they said, but Pakistan has stolen it. Will this area be returned? No. Not a chance.

I managed about half an hour alone with the villagers before the military tour guides noticed I was missing. They came scrambling down the trail from the military post, a herd of T.V. news crews in tow. They smiled, labouring to look unconcerned, and told me I shouldn’t have wandered off like that. This was, you see, still a war zone. But I’d opened the gates and the T.V. crews now complained that they too should be allowed to interview the villagers. The army had to agree. What unfolded next was a little taste of the dramatic irony Kashmiris have had to live for 2 generations. Not one of them spoke about their desire for a truly Azad Kashmir. With the army present, they only spoke of their love for Pakistan and their desire to join it. With the ears of government in their midst, they said what they were expected to say.

That is the problem with guided tours and embedded assignments: you can never be certain you’re getting the truth. The context is biased.

So how genuine is Musharraf’s offer? If he truly wants to resolve Kashmir, then he must be willing to sacrifice ALL Pakistani claims to Kashmir. He must dissolve the puppet government, withdraw the army and ISI and any other clandestine security services lurking about (there are many of them, Kashmir is crawling with government spies). He must allow the people to rule themselves without interference. Azad Kashmir must, in every way, be set free.