MUZAFFARABAD: Grief knows no boundaries in divided Kashmir. Naseema Niaz is buried in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Azad Kashmir.
The flowers on the 53-year-old woman’s grave come from her childhood home in Srinagar, in Indian-occupied Kashmir, where she was born and lived until moving to Muzaffarabad to marry a cousin 28 years ago.
Niaz’s body was dug out of the rubble of the government girls school where she had been headmistress until Oct 8 last year — the day an earthquake killed 73,000 people in Pakistan and another 1,500 in Indian-held Kashmir.
Her brother, Syed Azad Hussain, brought the long-stemmed gladioli and his tears from across the Line of Control that splits this beautiful, sorrowful region.
“I still don’t believe that she has chosen this place for herself,” said Hussain, as he scattered the red and yellow flowers over the grave, tears streaming down his face.
“These flowers are from her parental home,” he said, remembering times before Naseema left Srinagar to get married.
Hussain went with her then, but the last time he saw her alive was when she visited Srinagar in 1997.
It is a common enough story in Kashmir, where thousands of people lost relatives in the quake on the other side of a frontier that only a few have been able to cross.
LOST OPPORTUNITY: Almost every family history is part of a tragedy that goes back long before last year’s earthquake to the creation of Pakistan in 1947.
Since then, Kashmir has been the cause of two of three wars fought by India and Pakistan. Around 45,000 people have been killed in an uprising that began in 1989.
The movement isn’t over despite New Delhi and Islamabad starting a peace process almost three years ago.
At least they are talking, but there is still little sign that the two old enemies are moving closer to a resolution of the dispute over Kashmir, which both countries claim in full.
Hopes that the quake would shake both governments out of entrenched diplomatic positions proved futile.
There was never much chance of people busting through the political barriers by rushing to each other’s aid given the security presence on the heavily mined frontier.
“It was definitely an opportunity missed,” said Noor Ahmad Baba, head of Kashmir University’s political science department in Srinagar.
“Both India and Pakistan have not been able to rise beyond their traditional politics after such a big human tragedy,” he added.
The two governments did open five border crossings in Kashmir weeks after the quake to allow survivors to help each other and for exchanges of relief, but the move was seen as largely symbolic.
“If these two countries had launched joint relief operations, it would have given a big boost to peace efforts. But unfortunately it did not happen,” said Baba.
For all the talking, the only tangible advance on the Kashmir dispute so far has been the opening in April 2005 of a fortnightly bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, and a second service that was started in June this year between Rawalakot in Pakistani Kashmir and Poonch in Indian Kashmir.
But even the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service has been a casualty of the quake. Landslides have swept away the road in several place and destroyed the bridge that passengers crossed to take a bus on the other side.
The road has been rebuilt and buses are running again, but people are put off by tiresome bureaucracy, strict security and the long odds against getting one of the 45 or so seats available.
“It was a smooth journey, but the complicated paper work and elaborate security checks should be simplified,” said Mohammad Farooq Khan Afridi, an Indian Kashmiri who visited the Pakistani side last month to meet his relatives.
Despite the hurdles, officials on both sides say there are plenty of requests for seats.
“We have forwarded 1,500 applications to the Indians for approval while around 900 from their side are being processed here,” said a senior government official in Muzaffarabad.
Even so, the bus service seems to have slipped down officialdom’s list of priorities.
Hailed as a major step towards greater people-to-people contact when it was opened, the service is regarded as an expensive, security-intensive headache at a time when the administration is stretched.
“We have many a times requested the Foreign Office seek funds from the finance division for smooth operation of these services. But we are yet to receive money,” said Khawaja Shafiq Ahmed, the travel coordinator in Muzaffarabad.
If they appreciated the lengths people are ready to go to just to put flowers on a relative’s grave, the governments might make a more concerted effort to open up the border.
When the quake struck a year ago and there was no chance of crossing the Kashmir frontier, Hussain travelled a long roundabout route to reach the school where his sister worked and died.
This time it took only a few hours drive on the special bus.
“I couldn’t believe my ears when I came to know that I had been given permission to travel to Azad Kashmir,” Hussain said, referring to news he had a seat on a bus to Pakistani Kashmir.
“I am lucky I will be here for the anniversary of her death on October 8.”—Reuters
