Dr. Arif Ahmad Dar
Kashmir leadership cannot be measured using standard criteria only. In areas where political life is exercised under the conditions of a long history of the conflict development, uncertainty and instability of institutions, leadership is evaluated not only by the policy productions or indicators of development, but by more liquid features. Being available on a crisis occasion, capacity to receive grief, anger of the people and show a clear edge to continuance of the institution become primary indicators of serving the people.
In this context-specific paradigm, the political principal bearing of Sakeena Masood Itoo is quite an instance of leadership that is not molded so much on ideological affirmation but rather on endurance, restraint, and interpersonal responsibility.
The Kashmir situation presents unique requirements of leadership. Political power exists in the environment of periodic violence, administrative ruptures and profound social trauma. The institutions operate under difficulty and trust of the people is easily shaken more often than not, the occurrence of events outside the mandate of the governance of civil citizens.
Under these conditions, leadership takes on an ethical level beyond managerial competence. It is not only the presence of leaders as decision-makers that is expected, but also as witnesses, who recognize suffering, are available in the presence of disruption, and perpetuate the conception of governance when its systems are compromised.
Being there during a crisis is the first and, perhaps, the most obvious standard of leadership evaluation. Crises in Kashmir are not a special phenomenon of the life of the mass media, but a common phenomenon. Closing of operations, demonstrations, patrol, natural interruptions, and abrupt changes of administration break stream after stream. At this point, the lack of political figures tends to further suggest feelings of being dumped, and the presence, albeit with minimal practical value, has all the symbolic value of that.
The career path of Sakeena Masood Itoo shows that she is keenly aware of this dynamic. Her style of politics continuously focused on visibility in time of insecurities. Such presence was hardly dramatic or challenging. Rather, it was in the form of visits to the impacted families, communication with the local communities and follow up communication with the administrative lines.
These moves did not work out crises, but they opposed the obliteration that violence and disruption are inclined to create. Leadership forged the relevance of civilian representation by staying visible during the time of withdrawal when being invisible could have been considered safer and more convenient.
Notably, vision in this matter had to be person-centrically calibrated. Too much publicity might incite a backlash or jeopardize personal security but less publicity might diminish credibility. It required guile to maneuver through this tension and not braveness. Presence itself was thus selective and based on the building of small kind of interactions as opposed to mass mobilization. This strategy was manifested in an awareness that crisis leadership is not about exerting control but an awareness of maintaining contact.
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