J&K unrest under frost but Maoists blaze away

The year-2010 partly turned out to be an year of ‘stoning’ in the Kashmir valley with the spiral of violence seeing no end.  Around 100 Kashmiri youths were killed in 100 days of summer of  unrest and retaliatory firing from security forces digging in their heels.

If  Kashmir in the North witnessed repeated ‘bundhs’ and curfews converting ‘paradise on earth’ into a ‘No Man’s Land’, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal saw a minefield of Maoist activities. The epicentre of Naxal violence - Dantewada - struck hard at the claims of Union Home Minister P Chidambaram of reining in left-wing violence in two-to-three years when 75 CPRF men were killed by the CPI (Maoist) in an ambush on April 6, 2010.

The treacherous land mines planted by Naxals in Chhattisgarh repeatedly hit the morale of central forces and forced the Centre to change it’s bullet-for-bullet policy. The plan of development in the tribal zones was revived following the audacious Maoist attacks in several states. The Home Minister sought to resign, taking responsibility for failed internal security but was expectedly stopped in his track by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. 

Jehadi terrorism did not give the country a miss in 2010 as Chidambaram’s ‘luck’ ran out fast with a bomb blast in Pune on February 13, 2010 that resulted in 17 deaths. In December, there was a blast in Varanasi in which two lives were lost.  As the year closed, Varanasi was again ‘touched’ by terror with only one death. The year saw the peaceful completion of the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi which turned more (in)famous for things other than the sports. 

As a chilling reminder of November 26, 2008, Mumbai terror strikes, David Headley, the Pakistan-born-American citizen and an operative of  terror outfit LeT arrested at Chicago in 2009, spilled the details of  terror designs in India in 2010. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) finally had access to Headley in the US and got a peep into crucial details of the LeT’s macabre plans on India.

Pakistan, the factory of cross-border-terrorism, was visited by  Home Minister when he was closeted with his counterpart  in  Islamabad on June 25-26, while attending the Third SAARC Conference of Interior Ministers. Nothing much materialised with Pakistan pretending not to understand Indian concerns on terror-mastermind Hafiz Sayeed who allegedly put Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab on the job to execute the 26/11 strike in Mumbai.

Mercifully, the communal situation throughout the country remained  largely peaceful. The historic judgment in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title suits was delivered on September 30, 2010, dividing the disputed sites into three parts. The Hindu-Muslim communities showed exemplary maturity in accepting the judgment though the political class did make some feeble attempts to stoke the communal fire. 

Three-months before the curtain came down on 2010, the centre sought to douse the fire in the Kashmir valley sending an all-party delegation to the valley. It announced an eight-point programme which included redeployment of security forces in the valley. Thereafter,  the Centre dispatched senior scribe Dilip Padgaonkar, Prof M M Ansari and Prof Radha Kumar to do further trouble-shooting. Since then, the famed  Dal lake and the Jhelum river appear to be less turbulent. May be it is ‘the peace of the winter’ with a sheet of snow capping the unrest in the valley.