Opinion

Zahir-ud-Din
May marks the end of spring in Kashmir. It starts getting hot. Usually the political situation, security experts believe, gets hot in June. I like Professor Bhat for his temperament. He remains cool mostly. In fact, at times people have to tell him not to freeze. But the learned Professor has his own ways. He watches a situation keenly and reacts rarely. However, since last year, the learned Professor has shown a tendency of getting hyper in May.

Shujaat Bukhari
Foreigners have played a major role in preserving Kashmiri culture and language in the form of authentic research. Their travelogues and books on history continue to provide an invincible insight not only to Kashmir dispute but also to geography, land and flora and fauna. This indisputable work on Kashmir has mostly been done in foreign lands. The circle is now coming back, though with a difference.

Dr Javid Iqbal
In Pakistan a queer interplay of forces is being witnessed with the army, judiciary and parliament engaged in taking positions which are far from being in harmony with each other. Democratic polity rules out a role for army except following the diktat of an elected parliament exerting authority through chosen executive. Judiciary though is an institution apart. It is designed to check the excesses if any of the political executive as well as any contravention of the constitution. Democratic institutions have well defined roles.

Dr Syed Nazir Gilani
The uprising in the Hurriyat (M) on the statement made by Muslim Conference chief Prof Abdul Gani Bhat that UN resolutions on Kashmir had become irrelevant or impracticable seem to have caused a storm in the tea cup of Kashmir politics. He has been accused of ‘violating Hurriyat constitution’. No leader in history has been perfect.
Churchill is the classic example. Before the war he was something of a misfit. In the war he became the great British hero. When he became Prime Minister again after the war, he is memorable for more or less nothing.

Saeed Naqvi
It would be bad form to put it down to the curse of the Sufi Saint Sheikh Salim Chishti. Nicolas Sarkozy lost the French Presidency because he had become the most hated French leader in history.
True, on December 4, 2010 the President and his wife, Carla Bruni, did visit the Sheikh’s mausoleum in Fatehpur Sikri and received special blessings. Only the superstitious would insist that the baby born to them nine months later was a result of this visit. Indeed, ever since Mughal emperor declared his debt to the Saint for having answered his prayers by providing the expanding kingdom with Salim, or Emperor Jehangir made famous by the Bollywood classic, Mughal-e-Azam, the childless turn up at the shrine in droves.

D Suba Chandran

After the recent visit by the American President Obama and the subsequent strategic partnership agreement between the US and Afghanistan, where does Afghanistan stand today? Are there the signs of positive change, or should the region gear for another round of instability in Afghanistan and its fall out in South Asia and Iran?
More than the visit by the American President, what stands out as a benchmark of the recent developments is the coordinated attack by the insurgents in Kabul last month.

Zafar Choudhary
Standing in the Valley of Kashmir and looking towards west, the off-stream political eye has always bypassed the other Kashmir to touch down in Islamabad or Rawalpindi. This is a serious gripe in Pakistan administered Kashmir that the country they aligned with has always treated them as ‘base camp’ and the Valley on the eastern side of divide never factored them in. So who do they look forward to in alliances for ideas should the discontentment with Pakistan deepens.

Rekha Chowdhary
With a year having passed after the successful conduct of election of Panchayats, the issue of empowerment of Panches and Sarpanches is still unresolved. This is despite the noise being made by the political class in the state. Not only the leaders belonging to the opposition parties but also the ruling Congress have been ‘demanding’ the empowerment of Panchayats and as if on clue, the leaders of the National Conference have also been making a commitment, almost on daily basis that the government is going to empower the Panchayats.

Shujaat Bukhari
Except for one reason that his party is in coalition with National Conference in the state, Member of Parliament from Congress, Chowdhary Lal Singh’s outright opposition to any political concession in Jammu and Kashmir must not be taken as a surprise. Reacting to NC MP Mehboob Beg’s demand of restoring greater autonomy, removal of controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and reverting back to the nomenclature of Sadr-e-Riyasat (for Governor) and Prime Minister (for Chief Minister),

Dr Javid Iqbal
Of late Chinese have been meddling in South Asian affairs more than what New Delhi could accept as normal diplomatic activity. By posing as a friend of Pakistan and on the face of it trying to prop up the country with the obvious motive of gaining weightage in subcontinent, China is giving India a cause for concern. While China’s public posture of need to improve Indo-Pak relations in a meaningful manner is welcome, its forays in South Asia, especially across Line of control in the State of Jammu and Kashmir is taken as an affront in Delhi.

Dr Syed Nazir Gilani
A well-known Indian in the Valley, A S Dulat, has been very modest and not over pompous when asked by Rising Kashmir about the purpose of his visit to Srinagar. He has called his visit as a "continuing education about Kashmir". He remains one of the few Indians who have a reliable understanding of our mainstream, Hurriyat and other vestiges of non Hurriyat politics. His role in Kashmir politics distinguishes him to be able to sketch private and public character of the broad spread of Kashmir politics of all manner at home and abroad.

Saeed Naqvi
The stealth with which President Barack Obama landed at Bagram air base on a dark night was in its secrecy an improvement on the Navy Seals miraculous visitation on Abbotabad last year.
Just as the Seals sailed away with Osama bin Laden, so did Obama fly away with the document that will enable him to show something of a success at the NATO Summit on Afghanistan in Chicago on May 20 to 21. Poor Karzai must have felt like a schoolboy from whose hand a diving bird has snatched away the cheese.

Abdul Majid Zargar
There are now enough evidences to order reinvestigation of 1995 abduction and killing of six foreign tourists following startling revelations by a new book that killing was done by counter-insurgents. The book, ‘The Meadow, Kashmir 1995 Where the terror began’ by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark”,   succinctly  details the reasons and circumstances  leading to the brutal killings of five out of six abducted innocent foreign tourists.

Zafar Choudhary
In Srinagar coming Monday, it is not only the state government reopening after transit recess in capital switchover but also another secretariat which has been following similar biennial ‘darbar move’ since 1948–the United Nations Peace Keeping Mission in India and Pakistan or the UNMOGIP. The UNMOGIP moves between Srinagar in summers and Islamabad in winters following the same biennial pattern as does the state government between Srinagar and Jammu.

Shujaat Bukhari
On a chilly evening Parvaz Mohammad Sultan was giving final touches to his daily bulletin when two unidentified gunmen entered his Press Enclave office and fired at him from point blank. Left in a pool of blood, the 40-year-old editor of local news gathering agency News and Feature Alliance (NAFA), was shifted to hospital but he lost the battle with his life on the way. Parvaz was not the first journalist killed during the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir, but he left a trail of misery behind him with a young wife and three small children.Parvaz hailed from a remote village of Khiram in South Kashmir. A talented guy, he tried his hand in writing and soon carved a space for him in the vernacular press. He worked in Al Safa, and then a leading Urdu daily published from Srinagar and also wrote analytical pieces for Urdu weekly Chattan.