Burhan Wani was an icon, says ex-RAW chief

AS Dulat says anger has been simmering for a long time and it just needed a spark

India’s former spymaster has said that a Kashmiri separatist killed by Indian security forces last month was an ‘icon for the people’ of Kashmir.

Burhan Wani, was killed by Indian security forces in an alleged gunfight on July 8. New Delhi called Wani a terrorist of the Hizbul Mujahideen and rebuked Pakistan for ‘supporting a terrorist.’



“You may call him a terrorist, but you can’t ignore that he was some sort of an icon for the people there,” AS Dulat, a former head of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), told The Economic Times in an interview. “He was different. He was popular. So, when he got killed, it created the situation for the flood of anger to come out,” Dulat added.

Wani’s killing has triggered an outrage in the disputed valley. India responded with a brute force to quell the widespread protests. Surprisingly, New Delhi blamed Pakistan for fuelling the unrest.

Dulat doesn’t agree. “There has been anger simmering for a long time and we [India] did not take cognisance of it. That anger just needed a spark, and Burhan Wani did that,” said Dulat, who was also adviser on Kashmir in the government of prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.



“As an intelligence officer, I would have tried to bring him overground. Many militants in the past had a new life overground,” said Dulat who had revealed in a 2015 interview that RAW had been bankrolling Kashmiri separatists.

Pakistan has invited India for exclusive talks on Kashmir, but India turned down the offer. “The worst situation is when you don’t talk either with Pakistan or with Kashmiris. So, we must talk with Kashmiris and we must talk to Pakistan.”

Published in The Express Tribune, August 29^th, 2016.