Its a full-blown national crisis in Kashmir now

The Amarnath row is fast snow-balling into a far grimmer crisis. It now threatens to plunge the Kashmir valley into the anti-India tumult of the early nineties.
The death of senior Hurriyat Conference and People’s League leader Sheikh Abdul Aziz has worsened the situation further. All at once stunning and inflaming the Valley, already in uproar over the alleged economic blockade imposed by protesters in Jammu.

Out of control
Monday’s events have spiraled swiftly out of control and have left the government besieged on more fronts than it had anticipated. The dramatic escalation of violence in the Valley may indeed have radically transformed the nature of the crisis. A provincial problem has overnight been reincarnated into an emergency with international ramifications.
There is an angry and growing mass of Kashmiris bent on marching across the Line of Control into Pakistan-held Kashmir. Within the Valley itself, the latest killings are bound to provoke fresh violent reaction.
On the other hand, Pakistani forces have resumed firing across the LoC on Indian Army pickets in the Poonch-Rajouri sector.

No longer a political crisis
“This is no longer a political crisis in the state,” said a senior official based in Srinagar. “This is now a full-blown national crisis.”
Indefinite Valley-wide curfew was clamped and security forces were put on optimum alert this evening in anticipation of trouble. But similar measures have failed to have much effect even in the Jammu area. Tempers in Kashmir are known to make short work of such restrictions.
Sheikh Aziz’s funeral on Tuesday, slated in the hotbed of militancy near the Jama Masjid in downtown Srinagar, could prove a flashpoint.

Who is responsible?
An irate Hurriyat chief Mirwaiz Omer Farooq tonight warned the government against keeping the Valley clamped under curfew tomorrow, saying the people of Kashmir would give “a fitting funeral” to the slain Sheikh Aziz.
“We want to ask the government who is responsible for the death of Sheikh Aziz and four other innocent Kashmiris and only then shall we disclose out future course,” the Mirwaiz added.
The dramatic turn of events has effectively hijacked the focus from the Amarnath movement and produced a flaming exigency that may well demand immediate intervention from New Delhi.