Shopian Incident: A Reminder to Re-formulate Policy

Regions of the Kashmir Valley, administered by India have witnessed unprecedented protests since May 30. From University teachers to Government employees, from protest strikes to student’s demonstrations at Lal Chowk, the entire valley is submerged in expressing displeasure and anger in one form or another. The protests have been prompted by the alleged rape and murder of two Kashmiri girls by the personnel of the Indian Security Force. The two women, who were sisters-in-law, went missing on the way home from their orchard on Friday. Their bodies were found the next morning, one in a canal and one on open ground about 1km (0.6 mile) away. The initial official was that the girls had drowned in the stream where their bodies were later recovered. However, forensic tests have established that the girls were raped before dying. The month-long inquiry ordered by the State Government is viewed by the people as delaying tactic and they are demanding immediate action. The Government inquiry commission has been declared as eyewash and the Shopian Bar Association has launched a parallel investigation. Protests across the valley have crippled normal life and the Government has responded by firing tear gas shells to disperse demonstrators and imposing curfew.
The Shopian incident is a stimulus for the Government of India to re-think its politico-strategic policy in the state of J&K. Home Minister P. Chidamrabam has already given hints of refurbishing the policy with the announcement that the CRPF would henceforth play a secondary role in the state. But the Government of India needs to realize that two additional measures will have to be taken for ensuring the short and long term resolution of the current impasse. In the short term, the Government should conduct an impartial inquiry into the Shopian incident and punish the guilty; any attempt to shield the CRPF personnel will breed greater discontent among the people of J&K. In the long term the Government will have to supplement its politico-strategic involvement in the state with a well-planned socio-psychological approach to address the root causes of discontent in the state. 
The Government of India has been waging a long struggle in the state of Jammu and Kashmir to win over the people. In this process it has experimented with a variety of economic, political and strategic solutions. Unfortunately, none of these have worked and the magnitude of the problem has increased. The most disturbing development of this prolonged struggle has been the alienation of the people of J&K. Reports of human rights violations in J&K by the Indian military personnel are widely cited. The army on the other hand accepts and defends a limited degree of coercion given the nature of challenges they encounter in the region. The situation in the state is challenging; the army in the process of defending people has emerged as a source of apprehension and common people distancing themselves from the army have been suspected as supporting terrorists.
No other dimension of the J&K issue requires immediate attention than bridging this gap between the people and military. The success or failure of the various peace plans, economic proposals, and strategic doctrines will be determined by the equations shared between the local population and the army personnel. The Government of India can take inspiration from the Human Terrain System (HTS) of the US and apply the programme with necessary modification in J&K.
The HTS, a programme run by the US Foreign Military Studies Office is currently being used in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Programme seeks to gather ethnological and cultural intelligence from the ‘war zones’ and thereby assist the US military in employing a more informed and humane approach for post-intervention stabilization in Iraq and Afghanistan. The HTS is an updated version of the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) programme, used in Vietnam by President Johnson. Within the HTS several categorizations exist - Human Terrain teams, reach-back research cells, subject-matter expert networks and language specialists.
The operations of the Indian military in J&K cannot be compared to the US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in principle the strategy of HTS can be borrowed from the US’ experiment. The socio-cultural ethos of J&K (and of every state in India) is distinct and the military training necessarily does not address this reality. The military has been trained to fight enemies and not for protecting its own population. Since the operational dynamics of the military has changed, given the realities in J&K, the HTS could contribute significantly in addressing the loophole
HTS is an attempt to make available the expertise of the social scientists and regional experts to the military personnel for the purpose of factoring the local sensitivities into the military strategy. The military campaign in J&K is not just about defending a territorial unit but also about integrating the population of the state into the national mainstream. The achievement of national security objectives in J&K largely rests on a clear understanding of the society where the army is engaged. As the programme over-view of the US HTS explains, the local civilian population in the area of conflict - the human terrain - must be considered as a distinct and critical element of the environment. The HTS in J&K could engage with this human terrain and serve two vital purposes.
The HTS will have to be contextualized for use in J&K. The government will have to put together a Human Terrain Team (HTT) comprising of journalists, academicians, anthropologists, lawyers, economic experts, religious leaders, medical personnel, psychologists and civil engineers from within the state and across the nation. The HTT would be able to comprehend and respond to the micro needs of the people and emerge as feedback loop not only for the military but also the government. The issues of sanitation, education, economic development, viable employment are concerns affecting the daily lives of the people of J&K. The HTT would be better equipped to address the human security concerns of the local population. Since the HTT would operate as an adjunct of the military forces, the negative perceptions towards the army could be neutralized.
The HTT would also operate as an advisory body for the purpose of strategic and political planning. Benefiting from the expertise and experience of the HTT, the political and military leadership will be able to devise strategies for providing security with development to the local population. The HTT would create space for social and human concerns in the macro politico-strategic perspective of the government of India.
The creation of HTT may appear ambitious and a time consuming proposition given the dominance of traditional strategic planning. But it is time to realize that J&K is not a traditional theater of war and hence innovative strategies need to be devised for countering the challenge.

[The article is a modified version of an earlier article "Developing a Human Terrain system for Jammu and Kashmir"]