Former chief of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) Amarjit Singh Dulat has said that if the alliance between Congress and National Conference remains intact then Jammu will vote for it, but if it fails, the BJP will secure the win and J&K will have a Hindu chief minister for the first time in history. In his opinion piece titled “Den of Intrigue: India’s border with Pakistan chooses a new chief minister” which was carried by Russian media house RT on Saturday, Dulat, said that the central government says there is “normalcy” in Kashmir, but it is “abnormal normalcy,” Dulat wrote. Dulat has served as Joint Director of India’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) during what can arguably termed as the most turbulent period of Kashmir’s history-between 1988-1990. In 1999, he became chief of Research and Analysis Wing until his December 2000 retirement. After retirement he was appointed as Adviser on Kashmir in the Prime Minister’s office where he served from January 2001 to May 2004. Dulat wrote that Kashmir could see a radical change overnight as the region heads for an “historic” election. “But which way it is now headed, nobody can say. It looks increasingly messy and fragile,” he said. He said the muscular policy of New Delhi has paid off initially but there have been constant whispers of a volcano waiting to erupt. “More scary is the silence in Kashmir. Silencing even the past is not easy and will continue to haunt us. To paraphrase the renowned Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali, desolation cannot provide peace,” Dulat wrote. The Director General of police in the region said recently that there were around 100 foreign terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir; 50 in the valley and 50 in Jammu. The actual figure may be twice as many, Dulat insisted. About the recent spate of attacks in the otherwise peaceful Jammu, Dulat said, the Pakistani Army’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) appears to have figured out our counterterrorism deployment and strategy, whereas our sources of ‘humint’ (human intelligence) are drying out with shifting loyalties. An increase in terrorism is a clear sign of the growth of pro-Pakistani sentiment,” said Dulat. “The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), a conglomerate of separatist Kashmiri organizations, was a Pakistani creation but because of our engagement with it, we always had information from across the line of control. The separatists are now muted but so is intelligence,” said the former RAW chief. Commenting about the jailed parliamentarian from north Kashmir, Er Rashid, Dulat said, “As for now, Sheikh Abdul Rashid, also known as Engineer Rashid, who was elected to parliament from North Kashmir in June (despite having been detained in Tihar jail since 2019 for allegedly funding separatists in the valley), is of more value to Pakistan than the Jamaat. Let him out on parole and he will not be half as useful to anyone than he is in jail.” Regarding the JKNC chief, Dr. Farooq, Dulat said that when it comes to elections in Kashmir, nobody can choreograph an election better than he can. He concluded the article with remarks on JKNC-Cong alliance, saying, “If the Congress-NC alliance stays, then Jammu will vote for it; if it frays, then the BJP is sitting pretty and we have every chance of a Hindu chief minister for the first time in Jammu and Kashmir’s history.”
