Hurriyat leaders have openly said that both Hafiz Saeed and Syed Salahuddin told them that militancy in the valley would escaate soon after the US-led ISAF troops leave Afghanistan in 2014.
The Hurriyat leaders had also met Pakistan Army Chief, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who told them to try to bring the Kashmir issue back into focus for the world arena.
“Pakistani authorities believe that the Taliban insurgency would spill over into Pakistan and possibly into Kashmir,” said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who led the delegation told Tehelka magazine. “Should this happen, they say, Pakistan would not be in a position to stop it.”
”Saeed and Salahuddin think that with the US off their back, the militants would be in a position of command in Kashmir after 2014,” a Hurriyat delegate said. ”They say India won't bargain sincerely unless armed militancy forces its hands.”
The Hurriyat delegation that visited Pakistan from December 16 to 28, included Abdul Gani Bhat, Bilal Gani Lone, Maulana Abbas Ansari, Aga Syed Al-Hassan, Musadiq Adil and Mukhtar Ahmad Waza.
The Hurriyat leaders also met ISI chief Lt Gen Zahir ul Islam and had interactions at the National Defence University and the Pakistan Institute of Strategic Studies.
The meetings with Saeed and Salahuddin were unscheduled and took place on the personal initiative of some leaders “with no government role in the matter”, a Hurriyat leader said. They were “short and focussed on the situation in Kashmir”.
“Both Saeed and Salahuddin disapproved of dialogues between India and Pakistan,” he said.
“They also said the war in Afghanistan had adversely affected the armed struggle for the liberation of Kashmir from India.”
The meetings between the Hurriyat leaders and the alleged terror masterminds are significant as the two sides have long shared an ambivalent relationship. Pakistan-based Saeed and Salahuddin have often dubbed the Hurriyat as “moderate” and slammed them for engaging in “pointless dialogue” with New Delhi.
This friction was blamed for the shooting of a separatist leader, Fazal Haq Qureshi, in 2009, after a meeting between Hurriyat leaders and then Union Home Minister P Chidambaram was reported.
