GIVEN the scale of human suffering in Kashmir at present, on both sides of the divide, only the depraved or the downright evil could try to make matters worse. The assassination of the education minister in Indian-controlled Kashmir is an act of total wickedness. Those behind it evidently do not care about their own people or their present suffering as a result of the devastating earthquake; for them, their war is more important, and goes on regardless.
That is a malevolent sense of priorities. Whatever views people may have about India and Kashmir, the last thing needed by the people of Kashmir at present — particularly Pakistani-controlled Kashmir — is man-made violence; they have had enough of the natural form. In mourning, in shock, in desperation, in chaos, they need all the help they can get at present, and what do they get from the militants? Another dead body, indeed five dead bodies; four others also died in the attack on Ghulam Nabi Lone.
Those responsible and those involved in other attacks in Indian-controlled Kashmir since the earthquake — the Indian Army report several — give proof that they have no conscience, that they are pitiless and cruel. In killing the minister while half a million of their own people cry out for help, while so many are in a living hell, while bodies are still being pulled out of the rubble, while the death toll rises beyond the 40,000-mark, while so many devastated by the loss of family, home, community and livelihood, even limbs, they demonstrate their fundamental inhumanity.
The assassination was clearly intended as a deliberate message that they are not going to stop killing, no matter what. It is a perverse message. Normally people take up arms and fight to put an end to injustice and suffering. That people can understand. Even the umbrella organization of those fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, the United Jihad Council, has temporarily stopped operations against India because of the earthquake. These killers may be a minority within a minority, but it takes only a handful to commit such an atrocity as thus.
For all that, it will have no political effect whatsoever. Both Islamabad and Delhi are committed to resolving their differences over Kashmir. They are not going to allow a handful of militants to derail the process although attitudes are still evidently unreconstructed in certain quarters of the Pakistani military. The helicopter row between the two governments, with Pakistan accepting Indian offers of helicopters but refusing to allow their Indian crews to fly them, should not have happened; the need for more helicopters in the mountainous region is desperate. Here was a chance for good to come out of bad, to give help to the present and hope to the future. Islamabad should have put fears aside and made a leap of faith. It may still do. Either way, it is not going to undermine the rapprochement anymore than the militants will. As for them, all that they are doing is digging their graves — which many may think the best place for them, given their inhumanity and their mindless lust for violence.
