National Conference president Omar Abdullah said the situation has gone out of control because the Centre did not pay heed to clear warning signs. “I had warned both PM Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi that this movement to Muzafarabad will take a new dimension and go out of control if not handled urgently,” he said, adding that the blockade highlighted “our weakness in the shape of dependence on a system to guarantee the safety of our economic and lifeline linkages with the rest of the country. It made people realise that the peace process has not delivered anything. Now what we see is the resurfacing of the old anger. Till now, we have blamed Pakistan for everything in Kashmir, this is the first time we have only ourselves to blame.”

Separatist Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, however, said the mass protests have not surprised him. “We always saw it coming,” he said. “Amarnath land row might be the immediate cause, but the level of anger is the result of the long pent up disillusionment with New Delhi’s status quo policies,” he said.

Mirwaiz alleged that the Centre talks of a dialogue only to exit a crisis situation. “New Delhi talks to us when the situation is really bad here. And when there is apparent peace, they ignore us,” he said. “The Hurriyat joined the dialogue risking its own credibility. We lost people. But what was the result? As soon as New Delhi felt there was some peace in Valley, it abandoned the talks and left us in the lurch,” he said, adding that the present crisis is the result of disillusionment. “A disillusionment born of the realisation that all talks on Kashmir were held for the sake of them, to buy time and to buy interlocutors, rather than work out a solution,” he said.

... contd.