ISLAMABAD – Syed Ata Hasnain, former general-officer-commanding of theIndian army’s Srinagar–based 15 Corps has admitted that Indian hard powerapproach in Kashmir is failing with rise in insurgency.

He wants the government to balance its hard approach in Jammu and Kashmirwith ‘adequate doses of soft power’.

Lt General (Retd) Hasnain told officials, diplomats and researchers at theInternational Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) that Pakistan’s ‘proxyhybrid war’ in the state could not be met only by conventional force or acounter-terror response.

The situation, he said, needs a comprehensive ‘all-of-government’ responsethat includes the political, social, economic and psychological domains,not only military. India also needs what he called ‘a mature informationstrategy’ to counter Pakistan.

According to him, Pakistan’s Inter Services Public Relations has createdalienation among the Kashmiri people. With radicalisation rife, more IEDsand suicide bombings in Kashmir can be expected, he warned.

Shabir Choudhry of the United Kashmir Peoples National Party, who is alsoone of the founders and former president of the recently-banned Jammu &Kashmir Liberation Front, wants India and Pakistan to focus on conflictresolution, rather than a conflict management strategy.

No party to the dispute could impose a solution, it has to be negotiated,and the people of Jammu and Kashmir must be made part of that process,Choudhry told the event titled ‘Civil society in Jammu and Kashmir:democracy versus terrorism’ last week.