In Indian Kashmir, angry youth flirt with armed militancy
By Frank Jack Daniel
(Reuters)
- Ishfaq first threw a rock at an Indian policeman six years ago. Now he's
thinking about arming himself with a gun.
The
21-year-old is the human face of a trend that is worrying security sources,
politicians and a rights group spoken to by Reuters - the revival of violent
anti-Indian sentiment among the Kashmir Valley population just as New Delhi
fears a renewed onslaught from Pakistan-based
militants.
Ishfaq
and his friends were among thousands who took to the streets across the
Muslim-majority Himalayan state following the July 18 killing of four men by
Indian border police during a day of protests against an alleged desecration of
the Koran.
Three
weeks on, hiding from police in a crowded bazaar of the lakeside city of
Srinagar, Ishfaq said several years of unarmed struggle against India's rule
had been met only with violence.
"If
the same situation persists, the day is not far away when we go back to the
gun," said Ishfaq, who asked for his second name to be withheld. "We
cannot fight without weapons."
Rising
attacks on security forces and evidence that more young people are slipping
into the grasp of armed militants risk undoing years of security gains in
Indian-controlled Kashmir.
The
timing could not be worse for India.
A
looming general election has prompted accusations that some politicians are
manipulating the instability. Meanwhile, intelligence sources say militant
groups may turn their fire on India again when Western troops leave Afghanistan next year.
"People
generally feel pushed to the wall here," said Khurram Parvez, an activist
with rights group the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition for Civil Society whose
grandfather was shot dead by security forces at a protest. His own leg was
blown off by a militant bomb in 2004.
"In
the last three or four years they have tried to criminalize protesters and curb
public speaking. Unfortunately this pressure and violence from the state is
starting a new sense among people where violence is getting legitimized."
That
is certainly the view of Ishfaq, who spoke to Reuters in a room gruesomely
decorated with photos of victims of alleged torture at the hands of Indian
security forces.
With
separatist leaders frequently under house arrest and banned from public
speaking, and no sign of dialogue that could lead to a political solution, he
feels betrayed by India.
"We
are on the threshold, we cannot bear it, we cannot tolerate it any more,"
he said.
RISE
IN FATALITIES
Last
summer was the most peaceful in the disputed South Asian region since an armed
insurgency exploded in 1989 as Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan.
Ashok
Prasad, the chief of police in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, said the number
of attacks by militants was actually down this year.
But
the fall in the number of attacks disguises a sharp rise in the number of
fatalities. Eight soldiers died in a single brazen ambush on an army truck in
heavily defended Srinagar the day before Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
visited in June.
According
to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, which tracks the violence, 42 members of
the security forces have been killed so far this year, up from just 17 in all
of 2012.
That
reverses a decade-long trend in which fatalities fell annually as militants
laid down arms and protests and riots replaced bullets and bombs.
The
violence coincides with an upswing in tension along the Line of Control (LoC)
that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan,
who have been quarrelling over the region they both claim in full since freedom
from British colonial rule in 1947.
Tit-for-tat
artillery exchanges regularly rattle the de facto border. Two weeks of shelling
between India and Pakistan has followed an ambush that killed
five Indian soldiers on August 6.
Pakistan
denied any involvement in that ambush. But Indian security officials suggest a
new wave of Pakistan-based Islamist guerrillas are trying to cross the LoC,
part of a shift in focus to India ahead of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan next year that some feel has echoes of
1989.
The
foreign fighters bring weapons and inspiration, but they can only flourish with
local support. There are signs that support is growing.
"Anyone
who comes across, we welcome them," said Ishfaq.
Jammu
and Kashmir's Chief Minister Omar Abdullah in June said the numbers of people
joining the militancy was still extremely low, but conceded that a trend of
young, educated youth joining the ranks of militants was "a serious
concern".
Several
factors are blamed for this creeping radicalization. One security source
pointed to the growing popularity of more conservative strains of Islam and to
high unemployment. Many Kashmiris simply feel India has not made enough
concessions despite several years of peace, making normal life difficult.
Widely
despised laws protecting security forces from trial are still in place, access
to simple technology such as text messaging is limited and the heavy military
and police presence in the state has not been lifted.
FERTILE
GROUND FOR RADICALS
Though
the latest violence is small compared with the worst years of the insurgency,
when thousands died in fighting annually, some Kashmir politicians warn that,
left unchecked, the situation could quickly get out of hand.
"In
1989 there was almost no violence, but it exploded into a full insurgency
within a year," said Yasin Malik, a former militant who now leads a
political movement calling for a Kashmiri nation independent of both India and
Pakistan, which polls show is what most people in the Kashmir Valley want.
Some
trace the latest uptick in violence to the execution in February of Afzal Guru,
a Kashmiri convicted of a 2001 attack on India's parliament. Fearful of a
backlash, the Indian government imposed a week-long blanket curfew across the
state immediately after Guru was hung, infuriating much of the population.
Others
look further back. Parvez, the rights activist, says police shootings that
killed more than 100 young protesters in 2010 and a campaign of arbitrary detention,
documented by Amnesty International, both helped radicalize opinion.
A
security source with close knowledge of anti-militancy operations met Reuters
on a wooden bridge across the Jhelum river that runs to Pakistan. He said some
of the anger directed at the police was justified because of rights abuses.
"There
is a deepening of radicalization and a slight increase in recruitment of
locals," the source said, adding that he feared next year's election would
be fertile ground for violence from militants seeking to undermine the vote.
Ishfaq
and his friends, already halfway to going underground, say they are in no mood
to back down.
"We
are hopeful a day will come when there will be results and until there we will
keep fighting. We want independence from both India and Pakistan," he
said.
(Additional
reporting by Ashok Pahalwan in JAMMU and Fayaz Bukhari; Editing by Alex
Richardson and Pravin Char)
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