Prime Minister Lands in Kashmir, Day After Militant Attack

Farooq Khan/European Pressphoto Agency Army soldiers taking position during a militant attack in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, on Monday.

NEW DELHIâ€" Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has arrived in the state of Jammu and Kashmir on a two-day visit despite a deadly militant attack late Monday in the summer capital Srinagar, which killed eight Indian soldiers and injured at least thirteen.

Mr. Singh is inaugurating a hydroelectric power plant in the Jammu region of the state today.

On Wednesday morning, Mr. Singh will iaugurate an 18-kilometer stretch that has been added to a train line running through the Kashmir valley. The ambitious train project is not unlike China’s train link to Tibet and aims to connect Kashmir to the north Indian plains. Tracks for the most difficult part of the train project, a 100-kilometer stretch through fragile and very high mountains between Jawahar Tunnel at Banihal at Udhampur town in southern Jammu province, are yet to be built and might take years.

Mukesh Gupta/Reuters A passenger train on the Jammu-Udhampur railway line coming out of a tunnel on the! outskirts of Jammu city, Jammu and Kashmir, on March 13, 2012.

Although the agenda of his visit is apparently tied to infrastructure and economic development, Mr. Singh is on his first visit to the disputed region since the swearing in of Nawaz Sharif as the new prime minister of Pakistan, so foreign policy may be a focus.

Mr. Sharif has made reconciliatory gestures toward India and spoken of renewing dialogue to resolve the long-pending dispute over Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Mr. Singh is widely expected to make a significant policy statement on Kashmir and Pakistan.

The Indian Prime Minister has been trying to manage relations with the country’s neighbor and old rival Pakistan. Mr. Singh was instrumental in starting a back-channel dialogue with former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, and their negotiators came close to a grand bargain before Mr. Musharraf was ousted from power in 2007. Mr. Singh also faces the burden of failing to implement any recommendations onKashmir that several official committees established by him over the years have made.

A “working group” established by him in 2006 had recommended restoration of autonomous status for the Indian-administered-Kashmir and another had called for repealing the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which authorizes Indian troops stationed in Kashmir to shoot any person they suspect of being a threat. The controversial law also protects the troops from prosecution in civilian courts unless India’s Home Ministry waives such protection, which is rare.

Further, Mr. Singh’s government has been besieged by allegations of graft and faces a tough election next year with a challenge from the controversial hardliner Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, who is the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s de-facto candidate for prime minister.

The chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance and the head of Mr. Singh’s Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi accompanied Mr. Si! ngh on hi! s visit. The precariousness of Mr. Singh’s political position is likely to muffle any significant policy announcement on India-Pakistan dialogue on the prickly subject of Kashmir.

Separatist leaders in Kashmir have called for a general boycott of Mr. Singh’s visit and schools and commercial establishments in the Kashmir valley have been shutdown in response to the boycott and heightened security measures.

Mr. Singh landed in a tense Kashmir and armed soldiers were on a high alert throughout the region because of the attack that killed the eight soldiers. In that attack, which took place Monday afternoon a few miles from the Srinagar airport, where Mr. Singh landed, two militants from Hizbul Mujahideen, a pro-Pakistan militant group, attacked a convoy of Indian soldiers passing through southern Srinagar. It was one of the deadliest attacks in several years in Kashmir.

The attack has punctured the relative calm in Kashmir, which has seen been attracting more tourists in the past few yers. A long-ranging anti-India insurgency had waned by 2008 and was replaced by mass protests. Kashmir witnessed several months of intense pro-independence protests in 2010, accompanied by rock throwing by young Kashmiri men at the Indian troops and police. Indian troops put down the protests with gunfire; 110 protesters were killed in 2010 and around 6,000 were arrested in the subsequent crackdown.

There has been increasing talk in official and political circles of Kashmir returning to “normalcy”â€" an Indian euphemism describing a state of relative peace and lack of violence. According to official statistics, 14 militants and 33 civilians and troops have been killed in Kashmir in 2013.

The attack on a military convoy before a high-profile visit by an Indian prime minister to Kashmir is not a new development. It is part of a pattern as insurgent attacks around such visit draw intense media coverage. Nine people were killed in militant attacks when Prime Minister Singh visited Kashmir ! in 2006 a! nd two people were killed when he visited Srinagar to inaugurate the first train to run through the Kashmir valley in 2009.