November 12, 2007	Monday	Ziqa’ad 01, 1428

Archives Write to Mr. Jawed Naqvi

I visited Kashmir after a longish gap last week to participate in yet another seminar on the media’s role in conflict zones. The host, Shabnam Hashmi, is a remarkable person. She is involved neck deep in relief and rescue of secularism in Gujarat, is immersed irretrievably in providing help to Kashmir’s earthquake victims and now she was hosting this seminar. Shabnam told us to bring along heavy woolens but she moved around the higher reaches of the earthquake zones in shalwar kameez with a light shawl as her only concession to the weather.

It is of course getting nippy in Srinagar, and an occasional mist has tended to play havoc with air traffic. This kind of weather is said to be normal for November. Our flight from Delhi was one among several that returned after hovering over Srinagar; but ours took off again after an hour in Delhi. It made a successful, though I suspect a tricky, landing in the second effort. The following day most planes could not land again in the persistent foggy weather in Srinagar. That forced a few of us to take a tortuous road journey to the more weather friendly Jammu. This way we felt just slightly surer of not being perpetually stranded in a conflict zone that seems to have fallen off from everyone’s radar for now.

As a matter of fact Srinagar these days looks eerily normal. There is no overbearing security, no pillboxes of the past except for the stray strategically placed bunkers occupied by the newly detailed CRPF paramilitary troopers. They have replaced the notorious BSF. It’s not that the CRPF is more humane. We only have to ask friends in Hyderabad who have covered the Naxalite insurgency about how dreaded and ruthless these federal police troopers are when they so choose to be. The army that once led the field as the coercive arm of the state is said to have moved mostly to the rural regions. Perhaps that’s where the action is. Or as some people believe Indian troops are simply combing the higher mountain ranges for armed guerrillas and with the onset of winter both will come down to escape the bitter cold and snow.

The road journey from Srinagar to Jammu was my first in many years and I had the company of Tehelka’s Sankarshan Thakur who had traveled through the region more recently to play my guide. We began at six in the evening and reached at close to three in the morning. On the way we passed through the strategic Jawahar Tunnel without which India cannot rule Kashmir. The tunnel was not as heavily guarded as it was not too long ago. Before it came about, Mughal, Sikh and British rulers used the Lahore-Muzaffarabad route to reach the famed paradise on earth. In the dark meandering journey to Jammu we could barely see the outlines of the sprawling Baglihar dam project on the Chenab that has been put on hold in view of Pakistan’s protest over it. Many of the villages and towns we crossed were brightly lit giving the impression of ample electricity from other sources. An important feature of the longish journey was that we were not once stopped for security checks. That was just the opposite of our experience on the approach road to the airport where passengers and drivers are still frisked and luggage checked through a scanner a mile before the airport.

Inside the airport, while we waited endlessly for the flight that never came, I engaged a couple of CRPF troopers in a meandering conversation. My interlocutors revealed that their families were entitled to get four million rupees if they died on duty in Kashmir. Also, Kashmir was an easier posting but it remained more risk prone. India’s northeast was more settled by comparison, they said. There were no sudden militant attacks on government targets there. In Kashmir the absence of a similar series of agreements with militant groups made all the difference. There was no ceasefire like the ones that gave the security forces in the northeast considerable breathing space. In a sense from what I understood of their experiences in both the strife-torn regions of India the occupation was more complete and, therefore, institutionalised in the northeast. But the resistance was far more palpable and robust in Kashmir. I forgot to ask the CRPF men if their fatality package was more attractive in Kashmir than in other parts of India.

But I did ask them if there was a special reward for the number of people they killed in the course of duty, a reference to frequent reports of this being so. “That is there, sir,” said one of the CRPF men guarding the exit to the tarmac. “But then,” he added, “it is the army that gets most of those prizes. Of course we too have to eke out a living.” He spoke with a nervous smile and it could be said that he had a feeling of remorse written on his face. The shooting of fellow troopers by angered colleagues, which is believed to be a problem in the army and the paramilitary wings guarding Kashmir could be related to this psychological clash – of being an armed defender of the state who has orders to shoot to kill and a mellow human being lurking within.

The contradiction was apparent even within the Kashmiri populace who has accepted government jobs. The lower rung intelligence man I met at the airport was one such official. He walked over to me and asked if I was a foreigner. His instinct was wrong. But very soon he was revealing to me his own identity. It was his job as an airport sleuth to keep an eye on people. He was a Kashmiri Muslim. He was angry. The security forces were rough and abusive and often loved to humiliate the local people. He thought the violence in the Valley had eased somewhat because of Pakistan’s difficulties with Islamic militants while some of the Kashmir-specific militants too were busy fighting the state there. I wasn’t sure if the equation was that simple. But this is how perceptions exist in conflict zones. People try to string together disparate facts and create a logical storyline that sometimes dovetails with facts but is very often far removed from reality.

The seminar itself involved journalists from Kashmir and Delhi. Most of the other participants came from Srinagar’s media institutes. I said there was no point going over the issues again and again. Why don’t journalists, security forces, militants and their supporters become familiar with the key clauses of the International Humanitarian Laws, the Geneva Conventions and there would be no problem if people observed the ground rules, I said. I knew of course that it was all easier said than done.. One of the participants came from strife-torn Manipur. Yumnam Rupachandra is editor of ISTV, a leading channel popular with resistance groups in the northeastern state.

I took Rupachandra the next day to meet JKLF chief Yasin Malik. Most of my other contacts including journalists had gone away to Ireland, I was told, courtesy the British Commission. Apparently Kashmiris are having a ball, being briefed about the Irish model to end the conflict between India and Pakistan. My idea in visiting Yasin of course was to savour a breakfast of hareesa and ‘noon chai’ or salt tea, a Kashmiri specialty. His sister makes excellent hareesa with ground meat and ‘noon chai’. These things are no longer available in Srinagar’s restaurants. Like elsewhere in India, restaurants serving Chinese noodles are doing better business than local cuisine outlets.

The conversation between Yasin Malik and Yumnam Rupachandra is worth recalling. The Manipuri friend asked him if he was familiar with the situation in the northeast. Yasin said he knew the story of Sharmila Irom, who he met in Delhi. But there was not much else that he could speak about on the situation in the northeast. Yasin acknowledged that the extent of state violence had gone down in the Valley, but insisted that the degree of daily humiliation of Kashmiris by an occupation force remained intact. Years after Pakistan-based militants would stop crossing the LOC to target Indian forces, a new generation of angry Kashmiris would be ready to continue the protest, some peacefully, others not so tamely. Another winter is setting in in Kashmir.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com