Indian paramilitary soldiers search Kashmiri Muslim pedestrians during a routine "cordon and search" operation in Srinagar, India, 2001. Photo Courtesy of AP.

Not very often do the trepidations of a state and its rebels coincide. The whisper of Taliban in Kashmir has however generated a common disconcertion for both the Indian state and the Kashmiri separatists fighting it.

The possibility of Taliban’s infiltration into Kashmir has alarmed not only those concerned with Indian defense but Kashmiri separatist leaders and intelligentsia too. First came the reports that Taliban had already entered Kashmir, then that the Indian security forces were fighting them along the Line of Control (LoC) and later that the Indian Army declared that there was no trace of Taliban in Kashmir. Amidst these conflicting reports were Kashmiri separatists dismissing the probability of Taliban’s presence in the valley. The separatists even went so far as to ask Taliban to not enter Kashmir and not fight the Kashmir war on behalf of Kashmiri Muslims.

As American prognoses about Pakistan deteriorate and the Pakistani government continues its capitulation to the burgeoning Taliban, the prospect of Taliban in Kashmir- conjures up a specter that is unnerving to both the Indian state and the Kashmiri separatists.

The Taliban were of little immediate concern to India as long as the term represented the group that had established dominion in most of Afghanistan. Taliban, as such, does not have the same goals or modus operandi as that of Al-Qaeda. So even as Taliban, unlike Al-Qaeda, had not operated outside Afghanistan, but its recent rise and expansion in Pakistan indicates that the assumption that its sphere of influence and operations could be permanently limited may not hold true forever. Also, now that the term Taliban defines the loosely allied ragtag militias that are spreading out from the border regions, seemingly on a mission to establish their own writ, with Sharia as the pretence of their cause, and the most primitive barbarism as their promise. It would immediately and drastically worsen the equation in Kashmir.

The Taliban controls 10 out of 26 provinces and it has now established its dominion over 18 out of Pakistan’s 30 provinces in its Northwest and Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The Pakistani Army and ISI’s relationship with the Taliban, both as enemy and a strategic asset, provides a deep insight into Pakistan’s convoluted and self-destructive priorities. Even when the Taliban are threatening the Pakistani state itself, Pakistan fatalistic idée fixe remains India and Kashmir and seeks to save the militants for their strategic value, instead of acting to save itself. With the Taliban advancing against the Pakistani state, in areas not too distant from Kashmir, the Talibanization of the militants who come from Pakistan to fight in Kashmir is highly probable, and India would find itself having to fight the Talibanization of Kashmir.

The Kashmiri Separatists too are finding the Taliban’s association with Kashmir detrimental to their goals. From the very onset of Kashmir’s political movement for freedom, inclusion of religion remained a contentious issue and an uncertainty has prevailed about whether Islamists were a favorable force or a deleterious one. Kashmir has seen wavering phases of obedience and defiance of the orthodox Islamic laws. At the height of the insurgency, terrorist groups enforced social and moral codes that mirror the Taliban’s. In more recent and relatively more peaceful times, Kashmiri women radical militants’ group have attempted to ban association between men and women, smashed Internet cafes, etc.

Religion was a significant and common thread that galvanized people across the Muslim-majority valley and the Indo-Pak Line of Control. Pakistan had disputed Jammu & Kashmir’s accession on the basis of religion, supported Kashmiri politically disillusioned youth and lumpen element on the religious brotherhood notion, and Islamists within Kashmir had taken insurgent movement to the grass root level by fomenting the religious sentiment. Mosques had played an instrumental role in the persuasion of Muslim masses to support a movement that was for many, political in nature to begin with.

However, the lack of opposition to the inclusion of religion in the political movement was taken by Pakistan to imply the centrality of religion to the Kashmiri insurgency. Brutal terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, more or less ideologically akin to Taliban or Al-Qaeda, thus operated unchallenged and unopposed, with the full support of Pakistan. Political calculations of Kashmiri separatist leadership permitted pan-Islamic groups to fight a Kashmiri indigenous war. A widespread fear evoked by massacres and atrocities committed by these terrorist groups also destroyed any opposition to the involvement of religion in the Kashmiri freedom struggle.

9/11 brought considerable clarity of thought. Since then, a consistent campaign has been carried out to project Kashmir as a political conflict rather than a religious one. Pro-freedom separatists have mastered a selective narrative that reconfigures the Kashmir issue into a purely political one, rather than one of religious nationalism. There are at least three factors – image, action and consequences- that motivate this selective erasure.

In a post 9/11era, no insurgent movement can justify secession on the basis of religion, and a political struggle cannot appear to have religious motivations. In case it does, it instantly becomes an ‘Us vs. Them’ conflict, where the “them” is invariably regarded as ‘Islamic terrorists’. This is a Bushism that has stuck. Kashmiri separatists, are seeking to evade or shed the “Islamic terrorist” label. Though they have not yet fully resolved to reject the likes of LeT, for they are not viewed as terrorists by their patrons in Pakistan, they do realize that the Taliban are indefensible on this count. This is without even considering Kashmiri suspicions about the lack of regard for Kashmiriyat that the Taliban would surely have.

The second factor involves the expectations that were attached with the election of President Barack Obama. To the disappointment of many in Kashmir, President Obama has taken a centrist position on Pakistan. He chose sterner action against Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Pakistan, committed to a troop surge in Afghanistan, and increased drone attacks in Pakistan. This brought a realization in Kashmir that regardless of the party lines, America behaves consistently on its strategic and security goals. The hope that Obama would force India into a resolution started to look misplaced. It was finally dashed when Richard Holbrooke’s role was restricted to only Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Third, Pakistan’s misplaced faith in using religious extremism to fulfill its political goals has brought it to the verge of virtual collapse. Both the state and the Pakistani society are falling apart. Kashmiri separatism ideologues are now conscious of the catastrophe that nurturing of fundamentalists groups entails. Representative of a primitive lifestyle, Taliban in Kashmir would mirror the same images- a reversed clock that deprives women of their rights in a democracy, builds a larger appetite for public slaughtering and eliminates space for freedom of expression- that we now see in Pakistan’s Swat valley or hear of Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Kashmir’s intelligentsia is highly wary of replicating a similar fate.

It is thus that Kashmir, a conflict between secular and religious-political nationalism finds both players united in their opposition to the entry of the Taliban into the scenario.

Aarti Tikoo Singh is a journalist and a Columbia University graduate in International Affairs. She can be reached at aarti.tikoo@gmail.com