In the summer of 2001, Noor Husain Gujjar made the two biggest mistakes of his life: he decided to stand for election and, even worse, he won.

Terrorist groups had warned villagers not to participate in the village-body elections then underway in the State of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), but since local members of the Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin allowed a well-connected ethnic-Kashmiri neighbour to contest, Gujjar thought he would give it a shot as well. For his pains, he was tried by an impromptu HM court, and was punished by having his ears and nose chopped off, and his hand almost successfully severed by a single blow from an axe.

On Pakistan's Independence Day this year, General Pervez Musharraf described the coming elections in J&K as 'a farce'. He's partly right, but still dishonest. Dishonest, that is, because the democratic process in J&K has long been distorted by violence directed at all those who participate in it. In the build-up to the 2002 elections, assassinations of political activists who oppose terrorist formations have reached all-time highs, with 49 political activists in the State killed in the current year itself. Most, but by no means all, are from the ruling National Conference (NC). Opposition groupings like the Congress (I), the People's Democratic Party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and a welter of political organisations raised from the ranks of one-time terrorists themselves have also been hit.

Given that the ruling NC is the front-runner in the coming elections, there is little surprise that its activists have been singled out for special attention by terrorists. Some of these killings have been notable for their sheer cruelty. In May this year, for example, NC members Abdul Jabbar Bhat and Abdul Khaliq Bhat were ordered out of their home, and marched to the dense Batpora forest. Both men were tortured, and then beheaded. Nor is the assault on the party wholly new. Ghulam Mohammad Mir, a National Conference activist from Chiarkut, near Magam, defied terrorist posters, plastered on walls and lamp posts through the area, demanding that no one participate in the local elections held in 2001. He was executed. Elsewhere, other NC workers were forced at gunpoint into mosques, and told to proclaim their disassociation from the party over public address systems.

Even politicians committed to secession from India have not been safe, witness the assassination of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference's (APHC's) Abdul Gani Lone on May 21, 2002. Lone's 'crimes' included a willingness to engage in dialogue with the Indian government, opposition to the presence of Pakistan nationals among terrorist groups active in J&K, and an articulation of his belief that there was no military solution to the 'Kashmir problem'. Lone's killing was a clear warning to other 'moderates' within the APHC not to speak out against the 'global jehad' that Pakistan-backed terrorists were executing in J&K, and the chilling impact of his death on political discourse and the possibility of electoral participation is still intensely felt in political meetings and discussions in the State. Earlier, in year 2000, the senior centrist politician Aga Syed Mehdi had met a similar fate. As in the case of the NC, similar killings have repeatedly taken place over the last decade, notably those of Srinagar religious leader Mirwaiz Maulvi Mohammad Farooq and his Anantnag counterpart Qazi Nisar Ahmad.

For all of Musharraf's supposed commitment to de-escalating levels of violence in J&K, Pakistan has made little effort to conceal its direct role in subverting the ongoing election process. The HM, which has offices in Islamabad and Muzaffarabad, has issued repeated public warnings directed at potential candidates and voters. So, too, has the Pakistan-based al-Umar, led by Mushtaq Zargar, one of the terrorists released by India in return for the safety of passengers on an Indian Airlines flight hijacked to Kandahar in December 1999. Neither Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin nor al-Umar have faced any form of administrative sanction in Pakistan for their well-documented role in recent killings. The Pakistan-based Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen (JuM) has, moroever, clearly articulated this strategy to 'thwart so-called polls in held Kashmir,' stating that the 'elimination of activists of the ruling National Conference party was the initial phase of this programme.' Another group, the Islamic Front, proclaimed that the 'separatist leaders' in Kashmir were forbidden from participating in the elections, adding ominously, "We will never forgive those who will take part in Indian polls."

Attacks on democratic politicians date back to 1990 - the one-time National Conference general secretary Mohammad Sayyed Masoodi was killed by Hezbullah that December. Trend data, however, makes it clear that the pattern has intensified as mainstream parties have again begun to assert their influence over civil society, particularly after the 1996 elections. Indeed, the assassination of politicians and political activists needs to be read in the wider context of efforts to intimidate civil society as a whole. On November 24, 2001, for example, 57-year old schoolteacher Gulzar Lone was shot dead in front of his students at the Government Middle School in Alal, near Thanamandi in Rajouri. His crime was to have taught his own daughter, Jabeera Lone, how to ride a two-wheeler (scooter). In March 2001, Kashmir-based businessmen providing supplies to the Indian Army faced death-threats, forcing many to beg terrorist groups for a reprieve through advertisements, in which they pointed out that their transactions were of a non-military character.

Top politicians, naturally, have been under sustained pressure. National Conference legislator Dilawar Mir's brother, Abdul Majid Mir, was killed at Rafiabad in January 2001, and the homes of State Ministers Mushtaq Ahmad Lone and Ali Mohammad Sagar were subsequently bombed. Both have faced repeated assassination attempts, as has Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah himself. On occasion, these tactics have had the desired results. Days after the 2001 attacks on Sagar and Lone, for example, the party's provincial president G.N. Shaheen accused India of "ruling Kashmir by its Army", and of "denying the people their right to self determination" - both assertions a stark departure from the party's official line.

Little effort is needed to understand why terrorist groups seek to intimidate the democratic process and its participants. Governments and political parties provide channels of patronage, grievance-resolution and authority, all of which the guns of the Islamist Right had exclusive control over until 1996. Although those elections were relatively peaceful, it rapidly became clear to terrorist groups that the new government posed a very real threat to their authority and influence. 1996 - the election year - itself had seen 75 political leaders and activists killed. 1997 witnessed another 52 such assassinations and, by the end of 1997 alone, there had been another 39 attacks directed at major and minor political figures. The tenor and intensity of these attacks has steadily escalated, from the bombing of an insignificant political figure's apartment in 1997 to the attempted mass-assassination of J&K legislators at the State Assembly in Srinagar in October, 2001.

Sadly, there is no international pressure on Pakistan to ensure action against groups active from its soil engaged in subverting the democratic process in J&K. Calls from Europe and the United States of America for international observers to be posted in J&K suggest that the West just isn't getting it. No election can be fair unless voters can vote, and candidates can seek their vote, freely and without fear. Perhaps international observers need to be looking at what's going on in Islamabad, not Srinagar.  

Author is Chief of Bureau, Mumbai, Frontline

By special arrangement with Institute of Conflict Management, New Delhi

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