Islamic militants shot dead an Indian state minister and killed at least 15 other people in the disputed mountains of Kashmir on Wednesday in a mounting wave of violence in advance of state elections.
Mushtaq Ahmad Lone, the state Law Minister, was gunned down as he spoke at an election rally in a school building in Kupwara, one of the more violent areas of Kashmir, about 100km north of Srinagar. Five police officers and one civilian were also killed when the gunmen emerged from a paddyfield in a hail of bullets and grenades.
In a separate attack, militants opened fire on a crowd at a bus station in Surankot, about 200km west of the town of Jammu. Seven people died, including four soldiers from the border security force and a boy aged 12, police said. In another gun battle north of Srinagar this week, police killed two Islamic militants. The violence marks one of the bloodiest days in Kashmir for several weeks.
For the past decade, Islamists have been fighting an increasingly brutal guerrilla war against the Indian army in Kashmir.
Militant groups have said they will disrupt the state elections, scheduled to begin later this month, and have called on all politicians to boycott the poll. In the past, the vote has been heavily rigged by the Indian government, which has tried to use the election to legitimise its troubled rule over the country’s only Muslim majority state and to deflate the separatist movement.
Lone was the second candidate to be killed since election campaigning began last month and was one of the most heavily guarded politicians contesting the polls. His death is likely to intimidate many other candidates.
Lashkar-e-Taiba, a leading Pakistan-based Islamist group, and Al-Arifeen, a previously unknown organisation, both claimed responsibility for his murder on Wednesday.
Last Friday Sheikh Abdul Rehman, a politician from a party representing India’s lower castes, was shot dead. Two more politicians were attacked on Tuesday but survived.
Many analysts fear the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir is likely to flare up again later this year.
For many years Pakistan’s military has given covert funding and support to the militant groups, who were used as a proxy army in Kashmir in an attempt to force the Indian government to negotiate on the future of the state. India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir, and nearly began a third in May 1999.
Earlier this year, tension in Kashmir nearly pushed the world’s two newest nuclear powers into another, potentially devastating, war.
Under pressure from the United States and Britain, Pakistan’s military ruler General Pervez Musharraf promised to stop militants crossing from Pakistan into Kashmir. For several weeks he did appear to have halted infiltration, despite hostility from hardline religious groups in Pakistan.
But in recent weeks Indian officials have complained about increasing numbers of militants crossing from Pakistan, some of whom may not be under Islamabad’s control. Relations between the two countries have slumped once more.
Earlier this week Musharraf accused India of ”intransigence” and said relations were at their ”lowest ebb.” His administration has consistently complained that India is unwilling to start negotiations, and it is desperate to have Washington step in and mediate.
Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Munir Akram, heightened tension this week when he said that Islamabad feared India could attack Pakistan if the US was distracted by an offensive against Iraq.
Indian officials say they will use the Kashmir elections as a test of Pakistan’s promise to stop militant infiltration. Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, said this week that Washington was pressing Musharraf’s government not to interfere in the vote. But many in India appear unconvinced.
”It is very clear that just as Pakistan’s promise on ending cross-border infiltration was not kept, there will be serious doubts whether Musharraf is going to hold to his words on the Kashmir elections,” said C Rajamohan, a defence analyst in New Delhi.
Already more than 300 people have been killed since the election schedule was announced last month, despite the deployment of 32 000 extra soldiers. Kashmir’s leading separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, has rejected the election.
Instead, Pakistan and separatist parties are pushing India to hold a plebiscite, which was promised by the UN in 1948 and never carried out. — (c) Guardian Newspapers 2002