A wounded valley

I lost my last newspaper job because of a rather emotional piece I wrote on the mindless killings in Kashmir way back in 2010, most of them stone-throwing young boys gunned down by the security forces.

So I should probably just shut up and ignore what has been going on in the Himalayan state claimed by both India and Pakistan. But how can anyone with even a semblance of conscience turn away from the daily carnage being witnessed in the state celebrated as paradise on earth? How can anyone remain silent in the face of this endless dance of death and loss of precious human lives, most of them in their prime?

How can a country that is fêted as the world’s largest democracy with a long history of freedom struggle allow its security forces to shoot to kill unarmed protesters? And what is even more remarkable is the deafening, deathly silence that the country’s leading political parties, the media and civil society groups have been maintaining over these killings. It is a collective conspiracy of silence if there was ever one. As though those being killed in Kashmir are not even human, deserving our compassion and empathy. Not even our pity.

Last Saturday, 11 people were killed in Pulwama, in southern Kashmir when the Indian army opened fire on a group of protesters that had gathered at the site of a so-called encounter. Seven civilians, three militants and a soldier died in the incident. Scores of civilians sustained bullet injuries. This is the latest episode in a mind-numbing, never-ending saga of killings and carnage.

Of course, Kashmir has been bleeding and burning for decades. It has lost more than 100,000 people to the conflict over the past three decades. Tens of thousands more have simply disappeared with their families forever waiting, hanging between despair and hope.

However, things have gone from bad to worse under the current order in Delhi. With a party and leader that have always championed a masculine approach to both Pakistan and “Kashmiri terrorists”, some toughening of postures was perhaps to be expected.

But what the BJP government seems to have unleashed is a virtual war on the Kashmiris. And helping the government in the mission is an army chief who increasingly talks and acts as if he is a BJP and RSS pracharak, rather than a professional soldier and the commander of one of the world’s largest armies known for its professionalism and secular ethos.

The frustration of losing power in Srinagar, after the disastrous marriage of convenience with Mehbooba Mufti’s PDP collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, seems to have only added to the volatile situation in the state.

With the New Delhi-appointed governor being in charge in Srinagar now, even the façade of a representative government presiding over Jammu and Kashmir and acting as a bridge between the state and the Union of India has been ripped apart. No wonder things have unravelled at such an alarming pace in the state over the past few months. The few ‘pro-India’ politicians who enjoyed some degree of recognition and acceptability in the valley have all been side-lined or silenced.

As the ‘Indian Express’ noted in a powerful editorial the day after the Pulwama killings, each time a civilian dies at the hands of the security forces in Kashmir, a bridge breaks irreparably between the valley and the rest of the country.

The standard official narrative on these killings has been that the security forces shoot in self-defence. But the question is, as one of India’s most respected newspapers demanded, why do they always shoot to kill? And in many cases, innocent bystanders or those far from the scene are brought down by “stray bullets” of security forces, as has been the case of Abid Hussain Lone, an MBA returnee from Indonesia, who had stepped out to fetch milk for his three-month-old baby. Hussain had returned only recently to the valley with his young Indonesian wife. Kashmir is full of such heart-breaking stories of innocents being caught in the crossfire if only one cares to know them.

Since the current army chief, Gen Bipin Rawat, warned in 2017 that all civilians who gather at encounter sites and obstruct operations by security forces would now be treated as “over-ground workers of terrorists”, there has been a dramatic surge in such killings of innocent civilians.

To quote the ‘Express’, whether or not Rawat’s words have acted as a dog whistle, scores of people have been killed near encounter sites over the past two years, reinforcing the impression in the valley that soldiers, protected by AFSPA, act with impunity. While India insists on Kashmir’s centrality to its territorial integrity, it does not seem to care about Kashmiri lives.

The current policy of ‘financial reward system’ in place for killing a militant is not helping either. As Haseeb Drabu, finance minister in the late PDP-BJP government in the state explains in an op-ed piece, in the ‘Express’ again, “Over the last 30 years, a security system has evolved which incentivises the killing of militants rather than catching them alive or getting them to surrender. The killing of civilians is not just collateral damage but also a natural corollary and consequence of this system.

“No amount of sensitisation, appeals for restraint, or adherence to a standard operating procedure will make a difference within such a system. Killing has become the key axiom on which the state paradigm of tackling militants is built. An entire system has come into being, centred on making money for eliminating militants rather than eliminating militancy.”

The former minister points out that there is a well-laid-out “financial reward system” in place for killing a militant but none for taking him into custody alive. Every time security personnel kill a militant, they get a cash award; the amount depends on the “grade” of the militant killed. For example, killing a “grade A” militant fetches a prize of Rs7 lakh to Rs12.5 lakh. This is a legalised version of contract killing; a supari system morally sanctified in the name of national security. They all share in the spoils.

What would it take for politicians and military and security head honchos in Delhi to realise that there can never be a military solution to Kashmir. If the history of the past seven decades is any guide, it should have been clear as daylight by now that you cannot kill your way to peace or stability in the Himalayan state. These continuing killings and daily humiliations at the hands of security forces only go to reinforce the deep sense of alienation and persecution in the wounded valley.

The late Atal Behari Vajpayee, the first BJP prime minister, had talked of resolving Kashmir within the framework of Kashmiriyat, Insaniyat and Jamhuriyat. In his Independence Day address earlier this year from the ramparts of the Red Fort, Prime Minister Modi had also reached out to the Kashmiris – vowing to go forward not with “goli aur gaali” (bullets and barbs) but by embracing the “Kashmiri brothers”.

Whatever happened to that promise? Was it just yet another piece of hollow rhetoric, just yet another ‘jumla’ as has been typical of this government?

Unless the prime minister and the policy planners in Delhi walk the talk and offer a real and meaningful change on the ground to win back Kashmiri hearts and minds, peace will continue to elude Kashmir – and India risks losing the paradise forever.

The writer is an award-winning journalist and editor.

Email: Aijaz.syed@hotmail.com

Twitter: @AijazZaka