India's War at Home

[BATMAN]

India's War at Home
By Jyoti Thottam / Srinagar

Abid Baig is a salesman in a dried-fruits shop in Lal Chowk, the central shopping district of Srinagar, Indian Kashmir's capital. But Baig's real calling is as a stone thrower. A familiar figure at protests for azadi, or freedom, that regularly clog Srinagar's streets, 21-year-old Baig is angry, blaming the pervasive Indian security presence for choking off his chance at a decent life. His parents pulled him out of school when he was just in 10th grade because they worried that their only child would be picked up by police trolling for militants. Baig speaks intensely and deliberately, looking down at his hands, so an arc of black hair droops over his forehead. "Everybody wants to be something," he says. "I wanted to be a doctor." Instead, he hurls stones to vent his frustration. "They don't allow us to live in peace."

Peace in Kashmir — as in Afghanistan, Iraq and much of the Middle East — has long seemed out of reach, but it is just as urgent. India and Pakistan have fought three wars over the territory since 1947, when Muslim-majority Kashmir acceded to mostly Hindu India, over Pakistan's objections. Kashmir is much more than an unresolved border dispute, however. To Pakistan, it is an endless grudge against an old enemy that seems to supersede even its own war against the Taliban. To India, Kashmir is the most potent reminder of the violence it has been unable to escape while aspiring to a more prosperous future. (Read "A Violent Crime Resurrects Kashmir's Call for Freedom.")

The two countries negotiated a Line of Control dividing Indian and Pakistani Kashmir in 1971, but that unofficial border has been a source of constant conflict and tension. In 1989, a homegrown movement of Kashmiri separatists rose up against India; Islamabad supported some of them, as well as groups of cross-border militants. To put down this multiheaded insurgency, New Delhi sent in what amounts now to a presence of 700,000 troops (among a civilian population of just 5 million). The military's hard-line tactics have sparked considerable anger among the local populace. The presence of those troops — despite the decline of the separatist movement — is the core complaint for ordinary Kashmiris like Baig. India ignores the rage of these young men at its peril. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, head of Srinagar's central mosque and chairman of the moderate faction of the Hurriyat group of separatists, warned in a recent speech that if the concerns of the Kashmiri people are not heard, "the mind-set of those individuals, particularly youth, will likely deteriorate into a continuous feeling of occupation and endangerment, leading them to pick up arms again."

Baig and his friends are the new icons of Kashmiri hostility toward the Indian state. The stone throwers are often photographed in action, yet little is known about them. On a recent afternoon, however, I actually met several. There was Amir, a reedy 17-year-old who sneaks out to the protests without telling his parents; Asif, a muscular 24-year-old rickshaw driver; and Muddasar, 20, with soft blue eyes and a dark red bullet wound in his left shin. Their de facto leader is Imran Zargar, 24, who spent 11/2 years in jail after one ugly clash. His police record then disqualified him from any job with the government, by far Kashmir's largest employer. Says Zargar: "I found that I had no future."

Will such disillusionment evolve into a more serious threat against the Indian state? In their jeans and Nikes, the resentful young men of Srinagar identify most closely with youths on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank, not those in jihadist training camps. But they also insist that religious heads support what they do, and that if they die in a protest, they will be considered martyrs. A military intelligence official in New Delhi who has served in Kashmir worries, "Many young Kashmiris have taken arms and embraced radical Islam because there is no hope of a good life."

Indian forces in Kashmir have traditionally been more focused on jihadists based in Pakistan, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group that Indian and U.S. authorities blame for last November's terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Indian officials say that Pakistan has not only failed to prosecute any top LeT leaders, it has continued to support their incursions into Indian Kashmir. They hold up as evidence several recent incidents, including a Sept. 12 car bomb set off next to a police bus in Srinagar. "Two Lashkar commanders masterminded the attack," claims Farooq Ahmed, inspector general of police for Kashmir. Ahmed says that one of them, Abdur Rehman, "is hiding somewhere in south Kashmir."

In this climate, resolving Kashmir may seem to have little chance, yet diplomacy has picked up a bit of pace. Over the past few months, there have been signs of a thaw and hints that the two countries, prodded by Washington, would reopen a dialogue that has been stalled since the Mumbai terror attacks last year. On June 16, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari shook hands at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Russia, where Zardari acknowledged that Pakistan's greatest threat was the Taliban — a remarkable admission for a country that has long considered India its most dangerous neighbor. Indian authorities, meanwhile, may soon start talks with the Hurriyat separatists. But every gesture of reconciliation — most recently, meetings between top diplomats on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City — has been followed by tough talk and accusations from both sides.

A Spreading Rage
The formative event for Kashmir's angry youth was the August 2008 protests over Amarnath, a Hindu shrine about 88 miles (141 km) from Srinagar. A massive movement opposed the Kashmir state government's controversial decision to allocate 100 acres (40 hectares) of land to a local Hindu pilgrimage group, and drew as many as 500,000 protesters on one day. The police fired on the crowds (Muddasar, the young stone thrower, was among those injured) and as many as 20 people were killed in the most intense week of protests. For Basharat, just 14, Amarnath was his initiation. I asked him what he felt the first time he threw a stone. "Anger," he says. But throwing wasn't enough. "It has to hit its target."

The Amarnath controversy alone is not behind the resurgence of local protests against New Delhi — although most of the protest leaders are closely linked with separatists. The more lasting effect has been a pervasive sense of cynicism. The Amarnath killings have been added to a long list of grievances against the Indian security forces, who pretty much run Srinagar on their own — they have wide powers to shoot, arrest and search without fear of repercussions — while Indian and Pakistani politicians and bureaucrats ponder their next moves. The recent rape and murder of two young girls in the town of Shopian, allegedly by Indian soldiers, is the latest outrage. Bashir Dabla, a professor of sociology at Kashmir University who has studied the social impact of the 20-year conflict, says that young people feel abandoned as the issue drags on: "This has given the impression among Kashmiri youth that both these countries are just following their own interests."

That sentiment extends well beyond the young and disaffected. Meraj Gulzar, 36, is the owner of a small information-technology-services firm, one of about 40 companies employing 2,000 people in Srinagar's tiny IT industry. Gulzar wants to bring Srinagar a piece of the economic boom that has transformed so many other Indian cities. "We would like to be as successful as Bangalore, Pune or Delhi," he says. Kashmir has a big advantage — a large population of well-educated but unemployed college graduates whose salaries are far below those in India's established IT hubs. But the state government and the army are virtually Gulzar's only clients; multinational companies are reluctant to outsource work to Kashmir. "Unless and until there is a political solution," he says, "it won't happen." (Read "Big Turnout, Amid Protests, in Kashmir Vote.")

There's also the psychological impact of living under constant stress, worrying about whether family members will be stopped by security forces. For a visitor to Kashmir, the number of checkpoints and bunkers, all manned by soldiers carrying AK-47s and sometimes just feet apart, is hard to ignore. But more unsettling are the curfews, called during major protests, elections or any time authorities see fit. They are unpredictable, and breaking curfew can mean arrest. So Srinagar tends to empty out after dark; some shopkeepers who used to keep late hours have simply given up, pulling down shutters before 8 p.m.

Talking the Talk
The terms of any likely deal between India and Pakistan are widely known. Earlier negotiations, including so-called "back channel" talks between unofficial representatives of India's Singh and Pakistan's former President, Pervez Musharraf, had moved the two countries toward soft borders, free trade and some kind of joint governance of Kashmir. "Nothing more needs to be done," says Sardar Qayyum Khan, former Prime Minister of Pakistani Kashmir. I heard repeatedly from Kashmiris that an end to the political uncertainty is more important than the details of any proposal. "Anything," says Yasser Kazmi, founder of Myasa Network Solutions, one of Kashmir's oldest IT firms. "Any solution that is acceptable to the people of Kashmir."

Reaching a solution will require overcoming 60 years of deeply entrenched positions held by India's political and security establishment, for whom Kashmir has always been the defining foreign policy issue. Ever since a 1948 U.N. resolution calling for a plebiscite on Kashmir's future — a move categorically rejected by India — any concession is read as an affront to national pride. Pakistan, too, will have to move past decades of mistrust of its larger, better-armed neighbor. The Mumbai terror attacks proved that Pakistan has not let go of its longstanding policy of supporting jihadist groups to destabilize India. Under months of intense international pressure, Pakistani authorities twice detained Hafiz Saeed, an LeT founder who now leads another banned organization, but released him on Oct. 12 citing lack of evidence. Several other suspected top LeT commanders were arrested last December, but none of them have so far been prosecuted. "Without the progress on Mumbai, I don't see very much being possible," says Radha Kumar, director of the Nelson Mandela Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution at Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi.

While there has been no large-scale attack in Indian Kashmir since last November, Indian authorities say that the number of suspected militants trying to cross over from Pakistan has increased noticeably since last year. In late March, Indian troops fought a five-day gun battle in the border district of Kupwara. Eight Indian commandos were killed, as well as 25 suspected LeT militants, but others are assumed to have entered successfully. By late summer, violent attacks returned to the heart of Srinagar after a respite of nearly three years. On Aug. 1, two men from the Central Reserve Police Forces (CRPF) were shot, point blank, in the busy Regal Chowk area. On Aug. 31, two more CRPF men were shot in Lal Chowk in an almost identical attack, this time coordinated with a grenade tossed at the Srinagar police chief's office nearby. September witnessed a further escalation. A Sept. 12 car bomb killed four policemen outside the Srinagar Central Jail; 10 days later, security forces say they killed two suspected terrorists, including a commander of Hizb-ul-Mujahedin, a group based in Pakistani Kashmir. On Sept. 28, CRPF killed three militants; a day later, three CRPF men were gunned down in a market in the town of Sopore.

It could get worse. I ask the young men why they persist if, as they say, the police fire at the known stone throwers first. Most laugh off the question with bravado. But Baig is darkly serious. He will keep throwing stones, he says, "until death." If there is another future for him in Kashmir, the time for it is running out.

Abid Baig is a salesman in a dried-fruits shop in Lal Chowk, the central shopping district of Srinagar, Indian Kashmir's capital. But Baig's real calling is as a stone thrower. A familiar figure at protests for azadi, or freedom, that regularly clog Srinagar's streets, 21-year-old Baig is angry, blaming the pervasive Indian security presence for choking off his chance at a decent life. His parents pulled him out of school when he was just in 10th grade because they worried that their only child would be picked up by police trolling for militants. Baig speaks intensely and deliberately, looking down at his hands, so an arc of black hair droops over his forehead. "Everybody wants to be something," he says. "I wanted to be a doctor." Instead, he hurls stones to vent his frustration. "They don't allow us to live in peace."

Peace in Kashmir — as in Afghanistan, Iraq and much of the Middle East — has long seemed out of reach, but it is just as urgent. India and Pakistan have fought three wars over the territory since 1947, when Muslim-majority Kashmir acceded to mostly Hindu India, over Pakistan's objections. Kashmir is much more than an unresolved border dispute, however. To Pakistan, it is an endless grudge against an old enemy that seems to supersede even its own war against the Taliban. To India, Kashmir is the most potent reminder of the violence it has been unable to escape while aspiring to a more prosperous future. (Read "A Violent Crime Resurrects Kashmir's Call for Freedom.")

The two countries negotiated a Line of Control dividing Indian and Pakistani Kashmir in 1971, but that unofficial border has been a source of constant conflict and tension. In 1989, a homegrown movement of Kashmiri separatists rose up against India; Islamabad supported some of them, as well as groups of cross-border militants. To put down this multiheaded insurgency, New Delhi sent in what amounts now to a presence of 700,000 troops (among a civilian population of just 5 million). The military's hard-line tactics have sparked considerable anger among the local populace. The presence of those troops — despite the decline of the separatist movement — is the core complaint for ordinary Kashmiris like Baig. India ignores the rage of these young men at its peril. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, head of Srinagar's central mosque and chairman of the moderate faction of the Hurriyat group of separatists, warned in a recent speech that if the concerns of the Kashmiri people are not heard, "the mind-set of those individuals, particularly youth, will likely deteriorate into a continuous feeling of occupation and endangerment, leading them to pick up arms again."

Baig and his friends are the new icons of Kashmiri hostility toward the Indian state. The stone throwers are often photographed in action, yet little is known about them. On a recent afternoon, however, I actually met several. There was Amir, a reedy 17-year-old who sneaks out to the protests without telling his parents; Asif, a muscular 24-year-old rickshaw driver; and Muddasar, 20, with soft blue eyes and a dark red bullet wound in his left shin. Their de facto leader is Imran Zargar, 24, who spent 11/2 years in jail after one ugly clash. His police record then disqualified him from any job with the government, by far Kashmir's largest employer. Says Zargar: "I found that I had no future."

Will such disillusionment evolve into a more serious threat against the Indian state? In their jeans and Nikes, the resentful young men of Srinagar identify most closely with youths on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank, not those in jihadist training camps. But they also insist that religious heads support what they do, and that if they die in a protest, they will be considered martyrs. A military intelligence official in New Delhi who has served in Kashmir worries, "Many young Kashmiris have taken arms and embraced radical Islam because there is no hope of a good life."

Indian forces in Kashmir have traditionally been more focused on jihadists based in Pakistan, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group that Indian and U.S. authorities blame for last November's terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Indian officials say that Pakistan has not only failed to prosecute any top LeT leaders, it has continued to support their incursions into Indian Kashmir. They hold up as evidence several recent incidents, including a Sept. 12 car bomb set off next to a police bus in Srinagar. "Two Lashkar commanders masterminded the attack," claims Farooq Ahmed, inspector general of police for Kashmir. Ahmed says that one of them, Abdur Rehman, "is hiding somewhere in south Kashmir."

In this climate, resolving Kashmir may seem to have little chance, yet diplomacy has picked up a bit of pace. Over the past few months, there have been signs of a thaw and hints that the two countries, prodded by Washington, would reopen a dialogue that has been stalled since the Mumbai terror attacks last year. On June 16, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari shook hands at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Russia, where Zardari acknowledged that Pakistan's greatest threat was the Taliban — a remarkable admission for a country that has long considered India its most dangerous neighbor. Indian authorities, meanwhile, may soon start talks with the Hurriyat separatists. But every gesture of reconciliation — most recently, meetings between top diplomats on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City — has been followed by tough talk and accusations from both sides.

A Spreading Rage
The formative event for Kashmir's angry youth was the August 2008 protests over Amarnath, a Hindu shrine about 88 miles (141 km) from Srinagar. A massive movement opposed the Kashmir state government's controversial decision to allocate 100 acres (40 hectares) of land to a local Hindu pilgrimage group, and drew as many as 500,000 protesters on one day. The police fired on the crowds (Muddasar, the young stone thrower, was among those injured) and as many as 20 people were killed in the most intense week of protests. For Basharat, just 14, Amarnath was his initiation. I asked him what he felt the first time he threw a stone. "Anger," he says. But throwing wasn't enough. "It has to hit its target."

The Amarnath controversy alone is not behind the resurgence of local protests against New Delhi — although most of the protest leaders are closely linked with separatists. The more lasting effect has been a pervasive sense of cynicism. The Amarnath killings have been added to a long list of grievances against the Indian security forces, who pretty much run Srinagar on their own — they have wide powers to shoot, arrest and search without fear of repercussions — while Indian and Pakistani politicians and bureaucrats ponder their next moves. The recent rape and murder of two young girls in the town of Shopian, allegedly by Indian soldiers, is the latest outrage. Bashir Dabla, a professor of sociology at Kashmir University who has studied the social impact of the 20-year conflict, says that young people feel abandoned as the issue drags on: "This has given the impression among Kashmiri youth that both these countries are just following their own interests."

That sentiment extends well beyond the young and disaffected. Meraj Gulzar, 36, is the owner of a small information-technology-services firm, one of about 40 companies employing 2,000 people in Srinagar's tiny IT industry. Gulzar wants to bring Srinagar a piece of the economic boom that has transformed so many other Indian cities. "We would like to be as successful as Bangalore, Pune or Delhi," he says. Kashmir has a big advantage — a large population of well-educated but unemployed college graduates whose salaries are far below those in India's established IT hubs. But the state government and the army are virtually Gulzar's only clients; multinational companies are reluctant to outsource work to Kashmir. "Unless and until there is a political solution," he says, "it won't happen." (Read "Big Turnout, Amid Protests, in Kashmir Vote.")

There's also the psychological impact of living under constant stress, worrying about whether family members will be stopped by security forces. For a visitor to Kashmir, the number of checkpoints and bunkers, all manned by soldiers carrying AK-47s and sometimes just feet apart, is hard to ignore. But more unsettling are the curfews, called during major protests, elections or any time authorities see fit. They are unpredictable, and breaking curfew can mean arrest. So Srinagar tends to empty out after dark; some shopkeepers who used to keep late hours have simply given up, pulling down shutters before 8 p.m.

Talking the Talk
The terms of any likely deal between India and Pakistan are widely known. Earlier negotiations, including so-called "back channel" talks between unofficial representatives of India's Singh and Pakistan's former President, Pervez Musharraf, had moved the two countries toward soft borders, free trade and some kind of joint governance of Kashmir. "Nothing more needs to be done," says Sardar Qayyum Khan, former Prime Minister of Pakistani Kashmir. I heard repeatedly from Kashmiris that an end to the political uncertainty is more important than the details of any proposal. "Anything," says Yasser Kazmi, founder of Myasa Network Solutions, one of Kashmir's oldest IT firms. "Any solution that is acceptable to the people of Kashmir."

Reaching a solution will require overcoming 60 years of deeply entrenched positions held by India's political and security establishment, for whom Kashmir has always been the defining foreign policy issue. Ever since a 1948 U.N. resolution calling for a plebiscite on Kashmir's future — a move categorically rejected by India — any concession is read as an affront to national pride. Pakistan, too, will have to move past decades of mistrust of its larger, better-armed neighbor. The Mumbai terror attacks proved that Pakistan has not let go of its longstanding policy of supporting jihadist groups to destabilize India. Under months of intense international pressure, Pakistani authorities twice detained Hafiz Saeed, an LeT founder who now leads another banned organization, but released him on Oct. 12 citing lack of evidence. Several other suspected top LeT commanders were arrested last December, but none of them have so far been prosecuted. "Without the progress on Mumbai, I don't see very much being possible," says Radha Kumar, director of the Nelson Mandela Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution at Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi.

While there has been no large-scale attack in Indian Kashmir since last November, Indian authorities say that the number of suspected militants trying to cross over from Pakistan has increased noticeably since last year. In late March, Indian troops fought a five-day gun battle in the border district of Kupwara. Eight Indian commandos were killed, as well as 25 suspected LeT militants, but others are assumed to have entered successfully. By late summer, violent attacks returned to the heart of Srinagar after a respite of nearly three years. On Aug. 1, two men from the Central Reserve Police Forces (CRPF) were shot, point blank, in the busy Regal Chowk area. On Aug. 31, two more CRPF men were shot in Lal Chowk in an almost identical attack, this time coordinated with a grenade tossed at the Srinagar police chief's office nearby. September witnessed a further escalation. A Sept. 12 car bomb killed four policemen outside the Srinagar Central Jail; 10 days later, security forces say they killed two suspected terrorists, including a commander of Hizb-ul-Mujahedin, a group based in Pakistani Kashmir. On Sept. 28, CRPF killed three militants; a day later, three CRPF men were gunned down in a market in the town of Sopore.

It could get worse. I ask the young men why they persist if, as they say, the police fire at the known stone throwers first. Most laugh off the question with bravado. But Baig is darkly serious. He will keep throwing stones, he says, "until death." If there is another future for him in Kashmir, the time for it is running out.

A Violent Crime Resurrects Kashmir's Call for Freedom - TIME

 

[amna]

this is from june. why have you brought this up now after zardari and qureshi sahab just sold our nation and any possibility of kashmiri liberation for the next 7 years?

 

[Hellfire]

this is from june. why have you brought this up now after zardari and qureshi sahab just sold our nation and any possibility of kashmiri liberation for the next 7 years?

actually Kashmir is now a dead issue ...... what use? Has no relevance and your leadership understands the same very much.

You have to fight your own enemies in your cities now ..... with last few days serving to highlight the task you have at hand ........ why fret over territory you have no hope of getting, when your own survival and way of life is at stake?

 

[PakSher]

Yes and Naxalities wil carve out their next homeland in India in the next 10 years. Wait until the Chinese trained moaists start striking.

 

[indian_blues]

Yes and Naxalities wil carve out their next homeland in India in the next 10 years. Wait until the Chinese trained moaists start striking.

Remeber your pants are already in fire

 

[Indian Su30 MKI]

Dear Pakistani brothers I am not an anti Pakistani guy but forget about Kashmir. India will not leave it. Same about Arunachal Pradesh

 

[sirius]

Yes and Naxalities wil carve out their next homeland in India in the next 10 years. Wait until the Chinese trained moaists start striking.

Good night and have sweet dreams....oh!sorry you are already dreaming..please post something worth reading

 

[navtrek]

Yes and Naxalities wil carve out their next homeland in India in the next 10 years. Wait until the Chinese trained moaists start striking.

Just because they are called as Maoists they do not become Chinese trained.

Stop derailing an already derailed thread

 

[BATMAN]

Naxal Threat - Always In The Line Of Fire

By Harinder Singh and Ramesh Phadke

For some weeks now there has been a growing chorus for the employment of the armed forces to combat the ever growing Naxal threat. With every Maoist strike the demand gets shriller and the opposition also becomes equally vociferous. There is an urgent need to address this dilemma because there has been a tendency among civil society to root for the armed forces every time the country faces a crisis situation; whatever its origins and objectives. But use of the armed forces would be counter productive and severely stretch their resources that are meant to be used to face external threats.

While the threat of Maoist violence has indeed become increasingly menacing and has spread to a sizeable expanse of the country, the state response has been less than adequate. As a result, there exists an atmosphere of despondency and helplessness sometimes bordering on desperation. The reasons for this less than optimal response are not far to seek. An enduring lack of consensus between the central and state governments, accompanied by the inability of the state police and central paramilitary forces to contain the threat, are the main causes for the worsening of the problem. Compulsions of coalition politics both at the state and the centre and the unholy nexus between some elements in the establishment and exploitative elements in civil society has allowed the Maoist leadership, ideologues and their sympathisers to capitalise on the genuine grievances of the tribals - since Maoist affected areas are also rich in minerals and natural resources - and at the same time question the legitimacy of the state apparatus and response. Employment of the army also cannot guarantee a lasting solution since the problem is essentially political. As seen in Jammu & Kashmir and the North East, the army had brought the situation under control over a decade ago but the regions continue to be plagued by civil unrest and poor development.

Ironically, the Indian state boasts a strength of 716,0001 paramilitary forces – a whopping 60 per cent of the strength of the army. Here, we do not include the 65,000-strong Rashtriya Rifles (RR), because the force was specially raised to fight the insurgency in Jammu & Kashmir, remains manned by army personnel and is under the control of the Ministry of Defence. The 64,000 troops of Assam Rifles (AR), a true paramilitary force officered by the army but controlled by the Ministry of Home Affairs, are deployed in the Northeast. Of the remaining forces, 208,000 BSF personnel are primarily deployed to guard the international borders, whereas 230,000 CRPF, and 94,000 CISF men are currently employed in various other sundry security tasks wherein they perform only static, VIP security, watch and ward, and guard duties at vital installations. As a result, they find themselves completely incapable of undertaking counterinsurgency operations involving guerrilla tactics in difficult terrain. Absence of suitable and appropriate training and organisational structures prevent their ability to respond to such threats and hence the confusion and reluctance on the part of decision makers to deploy them in strength. Very often aged and yet inexperienced leadership is employed in a knee jerk fashion resulting in avoidable failures and casualties. Lack or at times complete absence of local intelligence exacerbates the problem.

Under these circumstances the clamour for immediate and massive deployment of the armed forces would appear natural. This would, however, have serious and long term consequences and carry the risks of further stretching the capacity of the armed forces to face external threats and defend the nearly 5000 kilometres of disputed and live border almost all of which falls in difficult mountainous terrain. Inhospitable and hostile terrain in these border areas compel the armed forces, especially the army, to periodically rotate their personnel from forward areas to peace time locations to ensure adequate rest and recuperation with their families and training to continuously enhance and update their skills. The soldier’s rest and recuperation time has already reduced to a level where he spends a mere 18 to 24 months in peace location before he is once again due for a three-year long field tenure. The over two decade long insurgency in Jammu & Kashmir and the Indian Army’s involvement has increased the total time spent by a soldier in field areas from about half to two-thirds of his total service career of 17 to 20 years. The army has already witnessed a higher level of dissatisfaction and unhappiness due to the soldier’s inability to find enough time to resolve pressing familial issues back home. Insensitivity and indifference if not total apathy of civilian officials at the district level further exacerbates this problem and affects the morale of the troops. This, therefore, leaves a very small number of reserve forces for deployment in other contingencies. It is therefore axiomatic that the additional burden of combating the Maoists shall aggravate the army’s difficulties. There is also the risk of the armed forces inviting more criticism from civil society, especially from the Maoists sympathisers if and when allegations of excesses are made. This would be fodder for those vehemently opposing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) without which the army simply cannot be expected to function.

Our past experience clearly shows that the army has invariably fought internal disturbances and insurgencies with one hand tied behind the back and suffered avoidable loss of life. The myth of an insensitive army unleashing disproportionate violence on hapless civilians and taking shelter under the so-called draconian AFSPA needs to be exploded here and now. It is not as if the army is beyond law but it certainly dislikes being dragged into concocted allegations and litigations that are often politically motivated. The Indian Army has always taken the most stringent action against wrong doers. The truth is that the army has all along shown the utmost distaste to get involved in any operations directed against fellow citizens. Unlike the Pakistan Army which routinely uses offensive air power and heavy weapons to quell civil protests and insurrections the Indian army has mostly resorted to softer methods. Past experience shows that long term deployment in counterinsurgency operations affects the mindset of the soldier and requires re-orientation for the primary role of fighting conventional military threats.

This, however, does not mean that the armed forces cannot make a useful contribution in combating this grave national threat. The army can help train in reasonably good time a sizeable number of paramilitary forces including young officers to lead them from the front. It can also run short term courses for middle and senior level paramilitary leadership to sensitise them to the gravity and magnitude of the problem and the inescapable necessity of addressing it on a war footing. Fighting the Maoist threat can no longer be treated as a part-time task. Another very cost effective and efficient way of building paramilitary forces is to immediately begin or allow the lateral transfer of ex-servicemen to quickly build their capacity. Currently some 50,000 thirty five to forty year old servicemen retire every year, and of these a sizeable proportion is already trained and experienced in counterinsurgency operations, providing a readymade and willing element for almost immediate deployment. The reason why this economical option has not been used in the past, we believe, is the problem of granting the ex-servicemen the necessary and well deserved seniority, perks and status that their true worth actually demands. It is time that the civilian bureaucracy overcame the fear of being swamped by the military. Such a mutually beneficial enterprise would undoubtedly help the paramilitary to absorb specialist military skills at no additional time and cost.

Yet another area of useful contribution that the army can make is in providing training for logistical support operations. Here the experience of RR battalions is relevant. Traditionally a RR unit consists of personnel with various assorted skills such as signalmen, mechanics, doctors and paramedics and maintains its own accounts and stores records enhancing the overall efficiencies and the ability to instantly react to a situation. We also recommend the use of helicopters and where possible UAVs for reconnaissance, surveillance, air mobility and casualty evacuation. Even a relatively small force of helicopters seconded or owned by the paramilitary (BSF already has a few) can provide almost instantaneous reinforcement in crisis situations raising the determination and morale of the CRPF and its sister organisations. Finally, it is imperative that the senior paramilitary leadership learns to function from operational command centres on a 24x7 basis to be able to provide timely guidance, support and oversight. The one critical attribute for success in anti-Maoist operations, however, is the availability of reliable and accurate intelligence for which the services of local police and CID/IB and state intelligence operatives is inescapable and unavoidable.

In short there are no short cuts to overcoming this grave threat to our democratic way of life. Broadening the mandate by handing over the problem to the army is neither fair nor efficacious.



1. IISS Military Balance, 2009, p. 349. This document actually shows the strength of India’s paramilitary forces to be 13,00,586 but that is because the figure includes Defence Security Corps, Civil Defence, Home Guards and Rashtriya Rifles.



Originally published by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses) at Always in the Line of Fire | Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses

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[javaman]

India's War at Home
By Jyoti Thottam / Srinagar

Abid Baig is a salesman in a dried-fruits shop in Lal Chowk, the central shopping district of Srinagar, Indian Kashmir's capital. But Baig's real calling is as a stone thrower. A familiar figure at protests for azadi, or freedom, that regularly clog Srinagar's streets, 21-year-old Baig is angry, blaming the pervasive Indian security presence for choking off his chance at a decent life. His parents pulled him out of school when he was just in 10th grade because they worried that their only child would be picked up by police trolling for militants. Baig speaks intensely and deliberately, looking down at his hands, so an arc of black hair droops over his forehead. "Everybody wants to be something," he says. "I wanted to be a doctor." Instead, he hurls stones to vent his frustration. "They don't allow us to live in peace."

Peace in Kashmir — as in Afghanistan, Iraq and much of the Middle East — has long seemed out of reach, but it is just as urgent. India and Pakistan have fought three wars over the territory since 1947, when Muslim-majority Kashmir acceded to mostly Hindu India, over Pakistan's objections. Kashmir is much more than an unresolved border dispute, however. To Pakistan, it is an endless grudge against an old enemy that seems to supersede even its own war against the Taliban. To India, Kashmir is the most potent reminder of the violence it has been unable to escape while aspiring to a more prosperous future. (Read "A Violent Crime Resurrects Kashmir's Call for Freedom.")

The two countries negotiated a Line of Control dividing Indian and Pakistani Kashmir in 1971, but that unofficial border has been a source of constant conflict and tension. In 1989, a homegrown movement of Kashmiri separatists rose up against India; Islamabad supported some of them, as well as groups of cross-border militants. To put down this multiheaded insurgency, New Delhi sent in what amounts now to a presence of 700,000 troops (among a civilian population of just 5 million). The military's hard-line tactics have sparked considerable anger among the local populace. The presence of those troops — despite the decline of the separatist movement — is the core complaint for ordinary Kashmiris like Baig. India ignores the rage of these young men at its peril. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, head of Srinagar's central mosque and chairman of the moderate faction of the Hurriyat group of separatists, warned in a recent speech that if the concerns of the Kashmiri people are not heard, "the mind-set of those individuals, particularly youth, will likely deteriorate into a continuous feeling of occupation and endangerment, leading them to pick up arms again."

Baig and his friends are the new icons of Kashmiri hostility toward the Indian state. The stone throwers are often photographed in action, yet little is known about them. On a recent afternoon, however, I actually met several. There was Amir, a reedy 17-year-old who sneaks out to the protests without telling his parents; Asif, a muscular 24-year-old rickshaw driver; and Muddasar, 20, with soft blue eyes and a dark red bullet wound in his left shin. Their de facto leader is Imran Zargar, 24, who spent 11/2 years in jail after one ugly clash. His police record then disqualified him from any job with the government, by far Kashmir's largest employer. Says Zargar: "I found that I had no future."

Will such disillusionment evolve into a more serious threat against the Indian state? In their jeans and Nikes, the resentful young men of Srinagar identify most closely with youths on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank, not those in jihadist training camps. But they also insist that religious heads support what they do, and that if they die in a protest, they will be considered martyrs. A military intelligence official in New Delhi who has served in Kashmir worries, "Many young Kashmiris have taken arms and embraced radical Islam because there is no hope of a good life."

Indian forces in Kashmir have traditionally been more focused on jihadists based in Pakistan, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group that Indian and U.S. authorities blame for last November's terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Indian officials say that Pakistan has not only failed to prosecute any top LeT leaders, it has continued to support their incursions into Indian Kashmir. They hold up as evidence several recent incidents, including a Sept. 12 car bomb set off next to a police bus in Srinagar. "Two Lashkar commanders masterminded the attack," claims Farooq Ahmed, inspector general of police for Kashmir. Ahmed says that one of them, Abdur Rehman, "is hiding somewhere in south Kashmir."

In this climate, resolving Kashmir may seem to have little chance, yet diplomacy has picked up a bit of pace. Over the past few months, there have been signs of a thaw and hints that the two countries, prodded by Washington, would reopen a dialogue that has been stalled since the Mumbai terror attacks last year. On June 16, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari shook hands at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Russia, where Zardari acknowledged that Pakistan's greatest threat was the Taliban — a remarkable admission for a country that has long considered India its most dangerous neighbor. Indian authorities, meanwhile, may soon start talks with the Hurriyat separatists. But every gesture of reconciliation — most recently, meetings between top diplomats on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City — has been followed by tough talk and accusations from both sides.

A Spreading Rage
The formative event for Kashmir's angry youth was the August 2008 protests over Amarnath, a Hindu shrine about 88 miles (141 km) from Srinagar. A massive movement opposed the Kashmir state government's controversial decision to allocate 100 acres (40 hectares) of land to a local Hindu pilgrimage group, and drew as many as 500,000 protesters on one day. The police fired on the crowds (Muddasar, the young stone thrower, was among those injured) and as many as 20 people were killed in the most intense week of protests. For Basharat, just 14, Amarnath was his initiation. I asked him what he felt the first time he threw a stone. "Anger," he says. But throwing wasn't enough. "It has to hit its target."

The Amarnath controversy alone is not behind the resurgence of local protests against New Delhi — although most of the protest leaders are closely linked with separatists. The more lasting effect has been a pervasive sense of cynicism. The Amarnath killings have been added to a long list of grievances against the Indian security forces, who pretty much run Srinagar on their own — they have wide powers to shoot, arrest and search without fear of repercussions — while Indian and Pakistani politicians and bureaucrats ponder their next moves. The recent rape and murder of two young girls in the town of Shopian, allegedly by Indian soldiers, is the latest outrage. Bashir Dabla, a professor of sociology at Kashmir University who has studied the social impact of the 20-year conflict, says that young people feel abandoned as the issue drags on: "This has given the impression among Kashmiri youth that both these countries are just following their own interests."

That sentiment extends well beyond the young and disaffected. Meraj Gulzar, 36, is the owner of a small information-technology-services firm, one of about 40 companies employing 2,000 people in Srinagar's tiny IT industry. Gulzar wants to bring Srinagar a piece of the economic boom that has transformed so many other Indian cities. "We would like to be as successful as Bangalore, Pune or Delhi," he says. Kashmir has a big advantage — a large population of well-educated but unemployed college graduates whose salaries are far below those in India's established IT hubs. But the state government and the army are virtually Gulzar's only clients; multinational companies are reluctant to outsource work to Kashmir. "Unless and until there is a political solution," he says, "it won't happen." (Read "Big Turnout, Amid Protests, in Kashmir Vote.")

There's also the psychological impact of living under constant stress, worrying about whether family members will be stopped by security forces. For a visitor to Kashmir, the number of checkpoints and bunkers, all manned by soldiers carrying AK-47s and sometimes just feet apart, is hard to ignore. But more unsettling are the curfews, called during major protests, elections or any time authorities see fit. They are unpredictable, and breaking curfew can mean arrest. So Srinagar tends to empty out after dark; some shopkeepers who used to keep late hours have simply given up, pulling down shutters before 8 p.m.

Talking the Talk
The terms of any likely deal between India and Pakistan are widely known. Earlier negotiations, including so-called "back channel" talks between unofficial representatives of India's Singh and Pakistan's former President, Pervez Musharraf, had moved the two countries toward soft borders, free trade and some kind of joint governance of Kashmir. "Nothing more needs to be done," says Sardar Qayyum Khan, former Prime Minister of Pakistani Kashmir. I heard repeatedly from Kashmiris that an end to the political uncertainty is more important than the details of any proposal. "Anything," says Yasser Kazmi, founder of Myasa Network Solutions, one of Kashmir's oldest IT firms. "Any solution that is acceptable to the people of Kashmir."

Reaching a solution will require overcoming 60 years of deeply entrenched positions held by India's political and security establishment, for whom Kashmir has always been the defining foreign policy issue. Ever since a 1948 U.N. resolution calling for a plebiscite on Kashmir's future — a move categorically rejected by India — any concession is read as an affront to national pride. Pakistan, too, will have to move past decades of mistrust of its larger, better-armed neighbor. The Mumbai terror attacks proved that Pakistan has not let go of its longstanding policy of supporting jihadist groups to destabilize India. Under months of intense international pressure, Pakistani authorities twice detained Hafiz Saeed, an LeT founder who now leads another banned organization, but released him on Oct. 12 citing lack of evidence. Several other suspected top LeT commanders were arrested last December, but none of them have so far been prosecuted. "Without the progress on Mumbai, I don't see very much being possible," says Radha Kumar, director of the Nelson Mandela Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution at Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi.

While there has been no large-scale attack in Indian Kashmir since last November, Indian authorities say that the number of suspected militants trying to cross over from Pakistan has increased noticeably since last year. In late March, Indian troops fought a five-day gun battle in the border district of Kupwara. Eight Indian commandos were killed, as well as 25 suspected LeT militants, but others are assumed to have entered successfully. By late summer, violent attacks returned to the heart of Srinagar after a respite of nearly three years. On Aug. 1, two men from the Central Reserve Police Forces (CRPF) were shot, point blank, in the busy Regal Chowk area. On Aug. 31, two more CRPF men were shot in Lal Chowk in an almost identical attack, this time coordinated with a grenade tossed at the Srinagar police chief's office nearby. September witnessed a further escalation. A Sept. 12 car bomb killed four policemen outside the Srinagar Central Jail; 10 days later, security forces say they killed two suspected terrorists, including a commander of Hizb-ul-Mujahedin, a group based in Pakistani Kashmir. On Sept. 28, CRPF killed three militants; a day later, three CRPF men were gunned down in a market in the town of Sopore.

It could get worse. I ask the young men why they persist if, as they say, the police fire at the known stone throwers first. Most laugh off the question with bravado. But Baig is darkly serious. He will keep throwing stones, he says, "until death." If there is another future for him in Kashmir, the time for it is running out.

Abid Baig is a salesman in a dried-fruits shop in Lal Chowk, the central shopping district of Srinagar, Indian Kashmir's capital. But Baig's real calling is as a stone thrower. A familiar figure at protests for azadi, or freedom, that regularly clog Srinagar's streets, 21-year-old Baig is angry, blaming the pervasive Indian security presence for choking off his chance at a decent life. His parents pulled him out of school when he was just in 10th grade because they worried that their only child would be picked up by police trolling for militants. Baig speaks intensely and deliberately, looking down at his hands, so an arc of black hair droops over his forehead. "Everybody wants to be something," he says. "I wanted to be a doctor." Instead, he hurls stones to vent his frustration. "They don't allow us to live in peace."

Peace in Kashmir — as in Afghanistan, Iraq and much of the Middle East — has long seemed out of reach, but it is just as urgent. India and Pakistan have fought three wars over the territory since 1947, when Muslim-majority Kashmir acceded to mostly Hindu India, over Pakistan's objections. Kashmir is much more than an unresolved border dispute, however. To Pakistan, it is an endless grudge against an old enemy that seems to supersede even its own war against the Taliban. To India, Kashmir is the most potent reminder of the violence it has been unable to escape while aspiring to a more prosperous future. (Read "A Violent Crime Resurrects Kashmir's Call for Freedom.")

The two countries negotiated a Line of Control dividing Indian and Pakistani Kashmir in 1971, but that unofficial border has been a source of constant conflict and tension. In 1989, a homegrown movement of Kashmiri separatists rose up against India; Islamabad supported some of them, as well as groups of cross-border militants. To put down this multiheaded insurgency, New Delhi sent in what amounts now to a presence of 700,000 troops (among a civilian population of just 5 million). The military's hard-line tactics have sparked considerable anger among the local populace. The presence of those troops — despite the decline of the separatist movement — is the core complaint for ordinary Kashmiris like Baig. India ignores the rage of these young men at its peril. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, head of Srinagar's central mosque and chairman of the moderate faction of the Hurriyat group of separatists, warned in a recent speech that if the concerns of the Kashmiri people are not heard, "the mind-set of those individuals, particularly youth, will likely deteriorate into a continuous feeling of occupation and endangerment, leading them to pick up arms again."

Baig and his friends are the new icons of Kashmiri hostility toward the Indian state. The stone throwers are often photographed in action, yet little is known about them. On a recent afternoon, however, I actually met several. There was Amir, a reedy 17-year-old who sneaks out to the protests without telling his parents; Asif, a muscular 24-year-old rickshaw driver; and Muddasar, 20, with soft blue eyes and a dark red bullet wound in his left shin. Their de facto leader is Imran Zargar, 24, who spent 11/2 years in jail after one ugly clash. His police record then disqualified him from any job with the government, by far Kashmir's largest employer. Says Zargar: "I found that I had no future."

Will such disillusionment evolve into a more serious threat against the Indian state? In their jeans and Nikes, the resentful young men of Srinagar identify most closely with youths on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank, not those in jihadist training camps. But they also insist that religious heads support what they do, and that if they die in a protest, they will be considered martyrs. A military intelligence official in New Delhi who has served in Kashmir worries, "Many young Kashmiris have taken arms and embraced radical Islam because there is no hope of a good life."

Indian forces in Kashmir have traditionally been more focused on jihadists based in Pakistan, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group that Indian and U.S. authorities blame for last November's terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Indian officials say that Pakistan has not only failed to prosecute any top LeT leaders, it has continued to support their incursions into Indian Kashmir. They hold up as evidence several recent incidents, including a Sept. 12 car bomb set off next to a police bus in Srinagar. "Two Lashkar commanders masterminded the attack," claims Farooq Ahmed, inspector general of police for Kashmir. Ahmed says that one of them, Abdur Rehman, "is hiding somewhere in south Kashmir."

In this climate, resolving Kashmir may seem to have little chance, yet diplomacy has picked up a bit of pace. Over the past few months, there have been signs of a thaw and hints that the two countries, prodded by Washington, would reopen a dialogue that has been stalled since the Mumbai terror attacks last year. On June 16, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari shook hands at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Russia, where Zardari acknowledged that Pakistan's greatest threat was the Taliban — a remarkable admission for a country that has long considered India its most dangerous neighbor. Indian authorities, meanwhile, may soon start talks with the Hurriyat separatists. But every gesture of reconciliation — most recently, meetings between top diplomats on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City — has been followed by tough talk and accusations from both sides.

A Spreading Rage
The formative event for Kashmir's angry youth was the August 2008 protests over Amarnath, a Hindu shrine about 88 miles (141 km) from Srinagar. A massive movement opposed the Kashmir state government's controversial decision to allocate 100 acres (40 hectares) of land to a local Hindu pilgrimage group, and drew as many as 500,000 protesters on one day. The police fired on the crowds (Muddasar, the young stone thrower, was among those injured) and as many as 20 people were killed in the most intense week of protests. For Basharat, just 14, Amarnath was his initiation. I asked him what he felt the first time he threw a stone. "Anger," he says. But throwing wasn't enough. "It has to hit its target."

The Amarnath controversy alone is not behind the resurgence of local protests against New Delhi — although most of the protest leaders are closely linked with separatists. The more lasting effect has been a pervasive sense of cynicism. The Amarnath killings have been added to a long list of grievances against the Indian security forces, who pretty much run Srinagar on their own — they have wide powers to shoot, arrest and search without fear of repercussions — while Indian and Pakistani politicians and bureaucrats ponder their next moves. The recent rape and murder of two young girls in the town of Shopian, allegedly by Indian soldiers, is the latest outrage. Bashir Dabla, a professor of sociology at Kashmir University who has studied the social impact of the 20-year conflict, says that young people feel abandoned as the issue drags on: "This has given the impression among Kashmiri youth that both these countries are just following their own interests."

That sentiment extends well beyond the young and disaffected. Meraj Gulzar, 36, is the owner of a small information-technology-services firm, one of about 40 companies employing 2,000 people in Srinagar's tiny IT industry. Gulzar wants to bring Srinagar a piece of the economic boom that has transformed so many other Indian cities. "We would like to be as successful as Bangalore, Pune or Delhi," he says. Kashmir has a big advantage — a large population of well-educated but unemployed college graduates whose salaries are far below those in India's established IT hubs. But the state government and the army are virtually Gulzar's only clients; multinational companies are reluctant to outsource work to Kashmir. "Unless and until there is a political solution," he says, "it won't happen." (Read "Big Turnout, Amid Protests, in Kashmir Vote.")

There's also the psychological impact of living under constant stress, worrying about whether family members will be stopped by security forces. For a visitor to Kashmir, the number of checkpoints and bunkers, all manned by soldiers carrying AK-47s and sometimes just feet apart, is hard to ignore. But more unsettling are the curfews, called during major protests, elections or any time authorities see fit. They are unpredictable, and breaking curfew can mean arrest. So Srinagar tends to empty out after dark; some shopkeepers who used to keep late hours have simply given up, pulling down shutters before 8 p.m.

Talking the Talk
The terms of any likely deal between India and Pakistan are widely known. Earlier negotiations, including so-called "back channel" talks between unofficial representatives of India's Singh and Pakistan's former President, Pervez Musharraf, had moved the two countries toward soft borders, free trade and some kind of joint governance of Kashmir. "Nothing more needs to be done," says Sardar Qayyum Khan, former Prime Minister of Pakistani Kashmir. I heard repeatedly from Kashmiris that an end to the political uncertainty is more important than the details of any proposal. "Anything," says Yasser Kazmi, founder of Myasa Network Solutions, one of Kashmir's oldest IT firms. "Any solution that is acceptable to the people of Kashmir."

Reaching a solution will require overcoming 60 years of deeply entrenched positions held by India's political and security establishment, for whom Kashmir has always been the defining foreign policy issue. Ever since a 1948 U.N. resolution calling for a plebiscite on Kashmir's future — a move categorically rejected by India — any concession is read as an affront to national pride. Pakistan, too, will have to move past decades of mistrust of its larger, better-armed neighbor. The Mumbai terror attacks proved that Pakistan has not let go of its longstanding policy of supporting jihadist groups to destabilize India. Under months of intense international pressure, Pakistani authorities twice detained Hafiz Saeed, an LeT founder who now leads another banned organization, but released him on Oct. 12 citing lack of evidence. Several other suspected top LeT commanders were arrested last December, but none of them have so far been prosecuted. "Without the progress on Mumbai, I don't see very much being possible," says Radha Kumar, director of the Nelson Mandela Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution at Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi.

While there has been no large-scale attack in Indian Kashmir since last November, Indian authorities say that the number of suspected militants trying to cross over from Pakistan has increased noticeably since last year. In late March, Indian troops fought a five-day gun battle in the border district of Kupwara. Eight Indian commandos were killed, as well as 25 suspected LeT militants, but others are assumed to have entered successfully. By late summer, violent attacks returned to the heart of Srinagar after a respite of nearly three years. On Aug. 1, two men from the Central Reserve Police Forces (CRPF) were shot, point blank, in the busy Regal Chowk area. On Aug. 31, two more CRPF men were shot in Lal Chowk in an almost identical attack, this time coordinated with a grenade tossed at the Srinagar police chief's office nearby. September witnessed a further escalation. A Sept. 12 car bomb killed four policemen outside the Srinagar Central Jail; 10 days later, security forces say they killed two suspected terrorists, including a commander of Hizb-ul-Mujahedin, a group based in Pakistani Kashmir. On Sept. 28, CRPF killed three militants; a day later, three CRPF men were gunned down in a market in the town of Sopore.

It could get worse. I ask the young men why they persist if, as they say, the police fire at the known stone throwers first. Most laugh off the question with bravado. But Baig is darkly serious. He will keep throwing stones, he says, "until death." If there is another future for him in Kashmir, the time for it is running out.

A Violent Crime Resurrects Kashmir's Call for Freedom - TIME

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