Kashmiris were drowned in September 2014 floods because terror proxies of Pakistan harmed them by harming the Wular lake works.
It is very important to understand the real motivation of
Pakistan to foment trouble in Jammu and Kashmir. Our western neighbour talks
about the alleged atrocities of the Indian nation on Muslims living in Kashmir,
a term used as a shorthand sign for the state of Jammu & Kashmir.
The reason is it cannot allow the world to detract from the centrality of the Kashmir issue, and the nomenclature and semantics are vital here. Kashmir is predominantly Sunni Muslim now, after Pakistan engineered the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus from the Kashmir Valley. This helped it expel from Kashmir those who could not have
been of any use to it for furthering its interests.
Unfortunately for it, a majority of the Kashmiri Muslims too did not join the orchestrated moves at harming India. This necessitated for it to push forward its strategic agenda of gaining mind control of sections of the population. For this, it has been using non-state actors, which are essentially its low cost proxies, to achieve its goals at very low costs.
Pakistan had objected to the Tulbul Navigation Project,
which is essentially a project on the Wular lake.
It could not achieve its stated goal of stalling this project at the bilateral level through talks on more than one occasion. This stated goal was then farmed out by the political leadership to its Army, which is a regular component of its overt and covert designs.
On August 27, 2012, attacks were carried out at Wular
restoration works in Adipora village of Bandipora district. This single attack
was enough to derail the entire work of the lake restoration and thus was
accomplished Pakistani strategic objective of disruption and stoppage.
The beauty of the predominant narrative in the newspapers of
the Kashmir Valley remained that of these attacks being stray, wildcat attack
of sorts. No worthwhile newspaper or journalist has analysed its deeper causes
and consequences till date.
This was a very low cost, very efficient and effective way
of achieving the objectives which Pakistan could not meet at the level of the
Indus Commission through negotiations and talks, it rather achieved it through
the use of terrorists and its proxies. This is the takeaway from the episode of
objections on Tulbul Navigation Project and the rejection of their claims by
the Indian government.
What could not be achieved through the mechanism of Indus
Commissioner was thus achieved through the wink of an eye from the Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI). The costs were abysmally low and it repeats these things
every now and then.
Pakistan’s terror proxies worked out to help the Indus
Commissioner of Pakistan and the goal of stalling Tulbul Navigation Project has
been achieved now. What happened next was something unprecedented but perhaps
nothing much was learnt by its loyalists, some local inhabitants of Kashmir.
On September 7, 2014, massive flooding was witnessed all
over the Kashmir Valley due to unprecedented rains over several days. Those in
the know of things admit in private that two years of excavations in Wular
lake, from August 2012 to September 2014, could have helped the residents a
lot.
They argue that augmentation of the lake’s capacity to
handle larger volumes of water could have been a boon during September 2014
floods. This could have helped mitigate the severity of the flooding and
brought relief to the distressed residents.
It was a disruption in the works at Wular lake which drowned
Kashmir then and unless this natural sponge is restored to health, Kashmir will
face floods again.
