Kashmir after Agra

Kashmir: In the grip of Indian security forces

By Mark Tully

NEW DELHI, India -- India and Pakistan are celebrating the fifty fourth anniversary of the end of colonial rule, but in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, most citizens will not be allowed any where near the Independence Day Ceremony.

Armed paramilitary police have thrown a cordon around the stadium where the ceremony is to take place, and the rest of the capital has the appearance of a city under occupation. With the upsurge of violence in the state which followed the inconclusive Agra Summit between the leaders of India and Pakistan, the state is even more tightly in the grip of the Indian security forces.

The Governor of Kashmir, Girish Saxena, told me Independence Day celebrations this year would coincide with "terrorist incidents", as he called them, mounting to fifty thousand in number since the violence started twelve years ago.

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The security forces, according to the governor, have killed a thousand militants this year alone. But in spite of all those deaths India is still not in control of the situation.

While I was in Kashmir twelve people were shot dead on the platform of the railway station at Jammu, the winter capital of the state. The government retaliated by extending the draconian provisions of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act to districts outside the Kashmir valley. The act even permits non commissioned officers of the rank of sergeant and above to kill and to destroy buildings.

Attempts to give the impression that everything is normal in Srinagar itself have been abandoned. Armed paramilitary police with helmets and bullet proof vests are posted every hundred yards or so on both sides of main roads, they peer through holes in sandbagged bunkers, and man check-posts.

Most of the security forces on the streets come from other parts of India and can't speak Kashmiri, yet on several occasions I saw them interrogating people. My driver told me that a young man standing hopelessly beside one armed policeman, realising he would be shot if he ran for it, was under arrest.

Suffocating security

The governor told me this suffocating security was necessary to "sanitise" the city. But it comes at a price.

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Last week a reliable Srinagar daily reported that thirty five people had died in the custody of the security forces over the last twenty days. I met one young man who had been arrested tortured and released only when his family paid off the police with a heavy bribe.

The paramilitary forces, particularly those raised by the state government, cannot be trusted with the powers they have been given. The governor himself admitted, "we should attempt to do security with more imagination and intelligence, there should be gadgets and force multipliers."

The deeply unpopular cordon and search operations which I remember from the early days of the militancy are rare now. The army, the last resort, is not often seen on the streets, but apart from those improvements I saw little evidence that the security had become any more subtle over the last twelve years. Certainly the hostility towards the security forces has not decreased, and that of course leads to hostility towards India.

Alienation

As almost all those who suffer at the hands of the security forces are Muslims, their alienation from India is heightened, which could have dangerous consequences in the Muslim community in the rest of the country.

One of Kashmir's most influential clerics, who is also a prominent opposition politician, Maulvi Umar Farooq, said to me "This is primarily a political struggle, we don't want to see it as an Islamic struggle, but now because of the security forces Muslim Kashmir versus Hindu India is coming into people's thinking."

Of course Pakistan wants Kashmir to be a Hindu Muslim issue because it claims that it was created to be the homeland of Muslims and therefore has a right to the state with its Muslim majority.

The young men it is training and sending across the line of control to fight the Indian security forces certainly see themselves as Jehadis or Islamic warriors. It is even accepted by ante-Indian politicians in Srinagar that most of the fighting is being done by non-Kashmiris, many of them Afghans, who see this as a Jehad, or holy war.

Teaching Pakistan an lesson

But Pakistan might have a price to pay for supporting the Jehadis.

At a meeting with community leaders in Jammu after the station massacre, Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah was told that action by the security forces had proved futile and that what was needed now was to teach Pakistan a lesson.

The Chief Minister said to me, "The way political parties are making demands in parliament there will be a bloody situation between India and Pakistan unless the Jehadis are reined in."

An increasing number of Kashimris are now saying "a plague on both your houses." They feel trapped between the Jehadis and the Indian security forces and only want to be able to live in peace again.

But there are those Kashmiris in favour of Pakistan who will tell you that if the Soviet army can be driven out of Afghanistan the Indian army can be driven out of Kashmir.

And there are those on the other side, like Governor Saxena, who say this is a battle India can't possible loose.

The Agra summit has shown that a political settlement is nowhere in sight, there is no sign of either side winning a military victory either, but it isn't necessarily safe for the governments of India and Pakistan to say let the stalemate continue, which seems to be the only answer they are offering at present.