Treachery and the Indian occupation

Fifth column

Early this week, Tawseef Ahmed Sheikh, a pro-freedom resistance fighter affiliated with the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), was killed; he was just 22. In ‘normal’ circumstances, the deaths of militants would be a fait accompli. But the occupation has mutated our lives so as to render everything that could be a marker of normality as obsolete.

In his death, though, he has exposed the treacherous machinations of the occupying structure with glaringly haunting details. The ‘gun battle’ that claimed his life was fought for more than 11 hours, with hundreds of heavily armed Indian military and paramilitary forces firing thousands of rounds of live ammunition, mortars, grenades and rockets. To draw the curtain on this macabre mise en scène, the Indian military detonated improvised explosive devices (IED) to rip apart the three-storey brick-and-concrete house where Tawseef was seeking shelter. The IED blasts signal the end of a gunfight and are usually employed to ensure nothing living in the vicinity survives before the army starts combing operations.

The Kashmir Reader, a leading daily, described the scene as a “war rather than an encounter” as the building was blasted so intensely “the slabs and window panes and tin sheets of neighbouring houses were torn apart”. Amid the rubble, when the mangled cadaver was discovered, it was paraded like a trophy amid a sadistic display of pride.

During the ceaseless barrage of mortars and firing, a posse of journalists delivered commentaries on the high-adrenaline spectacle on the TV screens to catapult the poverty-stricken Indian public into a trance through the staple feed of a toxic, Islamophobic Hindu extremist narrative with an anti-Pakistan dressing. From a technical point of view, there was only one downside. This whole ‘nation-building’ drama was all but manufactured in active connivance with the security officials – a tradition that dates back to the Kargil War of mid-1999, when the newly liberalised Indian media cut its teeth with successful, industrial-level news manufacturing based on sparse facts.

Several hours into the ‘gunfight’, various Indian television channels and news portals screened identical footage of blasts provoking plumes of dust in the vicinity of the house where the encounter took place. The heavily choreographed images were supported by near-similar voiceovers, with journalists on the ground reporting an exchange of heavy gunfire. One senior TV Today journalist sitting in New Delhi claimed that several members of the HM and the Lashkar-e-Taiba were inside and that they had refused the calls to surrender. Finally, when the ‘gunfight’ was brought to a close, Indian news channels claimed that the jawans – an alias for the Indian military forces – had to fight very hard to “slay the terrorist”.

According to Tawseef’s father, Ghulam Qadir Wagay, his son “grew up amidst fear” as “he was only a 16-year-old boy when picked up [by the Indian forces] and severely tortured” – a common life experience for many Kashmiri youth. He was booked under the draconian Public Safety Act and sent to prison for four years where he passed his matriculation and class 12 exams and, subsequently, the first year of his bachelors’ degree. After his release in 2015, Tawseef set up his own sheep farming business, but was continuously hounded by the security agencies. Finally, last September, at the peak of the current Intifada, he joined the resistance ranks.

As a fighter, Tawseef lived barely six months. Without much training or experience in warfare, he was hardly a match to the well-trained Indian Army – which is the third largest in the world. According to the newspaper reports, Tawseef was recuperating from a recent operation and battling complications, including internal bleeding sustained during a gunfight a few weeks ago. The most important detail which the rubble and the blasts could not bury was that the slain fighter was only carrying a pistol and few rounds of ammunition – a fact the family that sheltered Tawseef told the army when they evacuated prior to the start of the siege.

The discovery of a mere pistol from over an 11-hour high drama – variously described with such a graphic display of blasts and roaring explosions amid thundering claims of heavy exchange of firing – exposed the treachery of a pliant media and the unaccountable practices of the Indian Army that empowers them to employ disproportionate and brute force. The neighbours and eyewitnesses to this full-day hoax discredited the official claims that the militant was asked to surrender, a testimony that the military forces are only interested in bodies as they are incentivised through promotions and cash awards.

Postscript: The ‘encounter’ at Chadoora also claimed the lives of three civilians who were killed by direct firing as they protested against the siege. Two of the deceased were teenagers while the third – who has been identified as Zahid Rashid Ganie – was 22. In a not-so-unusual display of barbarity, the ambulance carrying his body was carjacked by the troops. The protesting mourners were beaten up and shelled with tear smoke. An anonymous police spokesperson justified that the action was taken “to avoid more protests”.

Twitter: @murtaza_shibli