As happened after the massacre of Sikhs in Chitsinghpura, no militant organisation has taken credit for the murder of Abdul Ghani Lone, the most highly respected member of the Hurriyat's executive council, in Srinagar on Tuesday. Precisely who had him killed is an open secret in Kashmir. The killers were named by none other than Sajjad Lone, the slain leader's son, who stood before the news cameras and told the world that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence had engineered his father's murder. More tell-tale was the cry of fear that went up from the women, including family, who were sitting behind him as he made the accusation. Sajjad stood his ground, turned and told the women that he would tell the truth no matter what the consequences, but the cameras caught the fear that washed over his face. Today, he too knows that his life hangs, as did his father's for 18 long months, by a thread.
Terror is in fact the leitmotif of everyday life in Kashmir. General Musharraf and his glib foreign office spokesmen miss no occasion to tell an ignorant and uncaring world that Kashmiris...
With Us, Or Not At All
Pakistan won't spare Kashmiri nationalists too, as Lone's murder proved, if they opposed the state's merger with it.
illustration by Sandeep Adhwaryu
