Kashmir: pessimism may be good news - The Hindu

Last month, Noorjehan Baba left her home in Srinagar's Dal Gate area to start a new life across the Line of Control with the man who unleashed a war which claimed her first husband's life. Her husband, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen field commander Khurshid Baba, died in 1995, fighting the Indian forces in central Kashmir. For the next five years, Ms Baba retreated into a dark shroud which widows across South Asia are expected to do. Early this year, though, a family friend approached her with an offer of marriage. Her suitor was much older — but had wealth and status.

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United Jihad Council chairman and Hizb supreme commander Mohammad Yusuf Shah's marriage to Ms Baba at his Rawalpindi home drew neither television crews nor newspaper reporters. It ought to have: that the 61-year-old jihad commander had love on his mind this summer, rather than war, tells us not a little about where Jammu and Kashmir is headed. Eight weeks after the November 2008 carnage in Mumbai, Shah told a rally in Muzaffarabad, “Jihad will continue until the independence of Kashmir.” Instead, violence in the State has diminished to an all-time low and the Hizb has all but disintegrated. This is good news for India — but a serious problem for New Delhi's efforts at peacemaking in Jammu and Kashmir.

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