Monday, Oct. 26, 2009
India's War at Home
By Jyoti Thottam / Srinagar
Abid Baig is a salesman in a dried-fruits shop in Lal Chowk, the central shopping district of Srinagar, Indian Kashmir's capital. But Baig's real calling is as a stone thrower. A familiar figure at protests forazadi, or freedom, that regularly clog Srinagar's streets, 21-year-old Baig is angry, blaming the pervasive Indian security presence for choking off his chance at a decent life. His parents pulled him out of school when he was just in 10th grade because they worried that their only child would be picked up by police trolling for militants. Baig speaks intensely and deliberately, looking down at his hands, so an arc of black hair droops over his forehead. "Everybody wants to be something," he says. "I wanted to be a doctor." Instead, he hurls stones to vent his frustration. "They don't allow us to live in peace."
Peace in Kashmir — as in Afghanistan, Iraq and much of the Middle East — has long seemed out of reach, but it is just as urgent. India and Pakistan have fought three wars over the territory since 1947, when Muslim-majority Kashmir acceded to mostly Hindu India, over Pakistan's objections. Kashmir is much more than an unresolved border dispute, however. To Pakistan, it is an endless grudge against an old enemy that seems to supersede even its own war against the Taliban. To India, Kashmir is the most potent reminder of the violence it has been unable to escape while aspiring to a more prosperous future. (Read "A Violent Crime Resurrects Kashmir's Call for Freedom.")
The two countries negotiated a Line of Control dividing Indian and Pakistani Kashmir in 1971, but that unofficial border has been a source of constant conflict and tension. In 1989, a homegrown movement of Kashmiri separatists rose up against India; Islamabad supported some of them, as well as groups of cross-border militants. To put down this multiheaded insurgency, New Delhi sent in what amounts now to a presence of 700,000 troops (among a civilian population of just 5 million). The military's hard-line tactics have sparked considerable anger among the local populace. The presence of those troops — despite the decline of the separatist movement — is the core complaint for ordinary Kashmiris like Baig. India ignores the rage of these young men at its peril. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, head of Srinagar's central mosque and chairman of the moderate faction of the Hurriyat group of separatists, warned in a recent speech that if the concerns of the Kashmiri people are not heard, "the mind-set of those individuals, particularly youth, will likely deteriorate into a continuous feeling of occupation and endangerment, leading them to pick up arms again."
Baig and his friends are the new icons of Kashmiri hostility toward the Indian state. The stone throwers are often photographed in action, yet little is known about them. On a recent afternoon, however, I actually met several. There was Amir, a reedy 17-year-old who sneaks out to the protests without telling his parents; Asif, a muscular 24-year-old rickshaw driver; and Muddasar, 20, with soft blue eyes and a dark red bullet wound in his left shin. Their de facto leader is Imran Zargar, 24, who spent 11/2 years in jail after one ugly clash. His police record then disqualified him from any job with the government, by far Kashmir's largest employer. Says Zargar: "I found that I had no future."
Will such disillusionment evolve into a more serious threat against the Indian state? In their jeans and Nikes, the resentful young men of Srinagar identify most closely with youths on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank, not those in jihadist training camps. But they also insist that religious heads support what they do, and that if they die in a protest, they will be considered martyrs. A military intelligence official in New Delhi who has served in Kashmir worries, "Many young Kashmiris have taken arms and embraced radical Islam because there is no hope of a good life."
Indian forces in Kashmir have traditionally been more focused on jihadists based in Pakistan, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group that Indian and U.S. authorities blame for last November's terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Indian officials say that Pakistan has not only failed to prosecute any top LeT leaders, it has continued to support their incursions into Indian Kashmir. They hold up as evidence several recent incidents, including a Sept. 12 car bomb set off next to a police bus in Srinagar. "Two Lashkar commanders masterminded the attack," claims Farooq Ahmed, inspector general of police for Kashmir. Ahmed says that one of them, Abdur Rehman, "is hiding somewhere in south Kashmir."
In this climate, resolving Kashmir may seem to have little chance, yet diplomacy has picked up a bit of pace. Over the past few months, there have been signs of a thaw and hints that the two countries, prodded by Washington, would reopen a dialogue that has been stalled since the Mumbai terror attacks last year. On June 16, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari shook hands at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Russia, where Zardari acknowledged that Pakistan's greatest threat was the Taliban — a remarkable admission for a country that has long considered India its most dangerous neighbor. Indian authorities, meanwhile, may soon start talks with the Hurriyat separatists. But every gesture of reconciliation — most recently, meetings between top diplomats on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City — has been followed by tough talk and accusations from both sides.
A Spreading Rage
The formative event for Kashmir's angry youth was the August 2008 protests over Amarnath, a Hindu shrine about 88 miles (141 km) from Srinagar. A massive movement opposed the Kashmir state government's controversial decision to allocate 100 acres (40 hectares) of land to a local Hindu pilgrimage group, and drew as many as 500,000 protesters on one day. The police fired on the crowds (Muddasar, the young stone thrower, was among those injured) and as many as 20 people were killed in the most intense week of protests. For Basharat, just 14, Amarnath was his initiation. I asked him what he felt the first time he threw a stone. "Anger," he says. But throwing wasn't enough. "It has to hit its target."
See pictures of Kashmir residents at the polls.
Read about the 2008 clashes.
The Amarnath controversy alone is not behind the resurgence of local protests against New Delhi — although most of the protest leaders are closely linked with separatists. The more lasting effect has been a pervasive sense of cynicism. The Amarnath killings have been added to a long list of grievances against the Indian security forces, who pretty much run Srinagar on their own — they have wide powers to shoot, arrest and search without fear of repercussions — while Indian and Pakistani politicians and bureaucrats ponder their next moves. The recent rape and murder of two young girls in the town of Shopian, allegedly by Indian soldiers, is the latest outrage. Bashir Dabla, a professor of sociology at Kashmir University who has studied the social impact of the 20-year conflict, says that young people feel abandoned as the issue drags on: "This has given the impression among Kashmiri youth that both these countries are just following their own interests."
That sentiment extends well beyond the young and disaffected. Meraj Gulzar, 36, is the owner of a small information-technology-services firm, one of about 40 companies employing 2,000 people in Srinagar's tiny IT industry. Gulzar wants to bring Srinagar a piece of the economic boom that has transformed so many other Indian cities. "We would like to be as successful as Bangalore, Pune or Delhi," he says. Kashmir has a big advantage — a large population of well-educated but unemployed college graduates whose salaries are far below those in India's established IT hubs. But the state government and the army are virtually Gulzar's only clients; multinational companies are reluctant to outsource work to Kashmir. "Unless and until there is a political solution," he says, "it won't happen."(Read "Big Turnout, Amid Protests, in Kashmir Vote.")
There's also the psychological impact of living under constant stress, worrying about whether family members will be stopped by security forces. For a visitor to Kashmir, the number of checkpoints and bunkers, all manned by soldiers carrying AK-47s and sometimes just feet apart, is hard to ignore. But more unsettling are the curfews, called during major protests, elections or any time authorities see fit. They are unpredictable, and breaking curfew can mean arrest. So Srinagar tends to empty out after dark; some shopkeepers who used to keep late hours have simply given up, pulling down shutters before 8 p.m.
Talking the Talk
The terms of any likely deal between India and Pakistan are widely known. Earlier negotiations, including so-called "back channel" talks between unofficial representatives of India's Singh and Pakistan's former President, Pervez Musharraf, had moved the two countries toward soft borders, free trade and some kind of joint governance of Kashmir. "Nothing more needs to be done," says Sardar Qayyum Khan, former Prime Minister of Pakistani Kashmir. I heard repeatedly from Kashmiris that an end to the political uncertainty is more important than the details of any proposal. "Anything," says Yasser Kazmi, founder of Myasa Network Solutions, one of Kashmir's oldest IT firms. "Any solution that is acceptable to the people of Kashmir."
Reaching a solution will require overcoming 60 years of deeply entrenched positions held by India's political and security establishment, for whom Kashmir has always been the defining foreign policy issue. Ever since a 1948 U.N. resolution calling for a plebiscite on Kashmir's future — a move categorically rejected by India — any concession is read as an affront to national pride. Pakistan, too, will have to move past decades of mistrust of its larger, better-armed neighbor. The Mumbai terror attacks proved that Pakistan has not let go of its longstanding policy of supporting jihadist groups to destabilize India. Under months of intense international pressure, Pakistani authorities twice detained Hafiz Saeed, an LeT founder who now leads another banned organization, but released him on Oct. 12 citing lack of evidence. Several other suspected top LeT commanders were arrested last December, but none of them have so far been prosecuted. "Without the progress on Mumbai, I don't see very much being possible," says Radha Kumar, director of the Nelson Mandela Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution at Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi.
While there has been no large-scale attack in Indian Kashmir since last November, Indian authorities say that the number of suspected militants trying to cross over from Pakistan has increased noticeably since last year. In late March, Indian troops fought a five-day gun battle in the border district of Kupwara. Eight Indian commandos were killed, as well as 25 suspected LeT militants, but others are assumed to have entered successfully. By late summer, violent attacks returned to the heart of Srinagar after a respite of nearly three years. On Aug. 1, two men from the Central Reserve Police Forces (CRPF) were shot, point blank, in the busy Regal Chowk area. On Aug. 31, two more CRPF men were shot in Lal Chowk in an almost identical attack, this time coordinated with a grenade tossed at the Srinagar police chief's office nearby. September witnessed a further escalation. A Sept. 12 car bomb killed four policemen outside the Srinagar Central Jail; 10 days later, security forces say they killed two suspected terrorists, including a commander of Hizb-ul-Mujahedin, a group based in Pakistani Kashmir. On Sept. 28, CRPF killed three militants; a day later, three CRPF men were gunned down in a market in the town of Sopore.
It could get worse. I ask the young men why they persist if, as they say, the police fire at the known stone throwers first. Most laugh off the question with bravado. But Baig is darkly serious. He will keep throwing stones, he says, "until death." If there is another future for him in Kashmir, the time for it is running out.
— with reporting by S. Hussain / New Delhi, Yusuf Jameel / Srinagar And Ershad Mahmud / Islamabad
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