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.