The Bride With A Bomb

Yasmeena Akhter is claimed by Kashmir militants as a suicide bomber and a martyr. But was she? Basharat Peer pieces together the story of a young militant and her dangerous love affair

Basharat Peer
(via The Guardian)
Saturday August 5 2006

Five days after the earthquake struck Kashmir in October last year, Ghulam Nabi sat in his shop in the south Kashmir town of Avantipura looking out at the highway that connects the Kashmir Valley to the Indian plains. Today, as every day, he saw hundreds of Indian military vehicles drive past. A hundred metres or so from his shop stands the local headquarters of the anti-insurgency wing of the Kashmir Police, and beyond that an Indian army camp.

Some of the most lethal attacks on Indian troops in the past few years have happened on this highway. It is an area dense with military and militants. That morning Nabi noticed even more soldiers and armed policemen on patrol than usual. An inspector general was visiting the police HQ and he wondered if a militant attack was expected. But, mostly, Nabi’s thoughts were with the earthquake victims on both sides of the Line of Control, the temporary border dividing Kashmir into parts controlled by India and Pakistan.

Political discontent has simmered in the Indian-controlled sector of Kashmir since partition in 1947 – the more so in latter years as Kashmiri rights and autonomy were eroded. Wars, several insurgencies, and countless political manoeuvres have failed to settle the issue of the “ownership” of Kashmir, and since the mid-1990s the rebellion has taken on a more jihadi, pro-Pakistan aspect; secular Kashmiri separatist groups that have laid down their arms have been overshadowed. Peace talks between India and Pakistan have made little progress and death remains a constant visitor.

At about 10.30am, Nabi heard a deafening explosion and saw a dark cloud of smoke rising. He pulled down the shop’s iron shutters and lay on the floor. He expected gunfire – instead he heard a crowd outside. Scores of policemen, soldiers and civilians were rushing towards the house behind his shop. The explosion had shattered the windows of the house and a boundary wall. The vegetable garden in front of the house was covered with shards of glass and blood.

The crowd talked about a fidayeen, or suicide bomber, who had accidentally triggered off the explosives before the attack. “I saw parts of legs torn from the knees, shredded intestines and then I saw a part of the skull and a long braid of black hair. It was hard to believe. But it was a girl.” Nabi’s face contorted in horror as we talked in his shop eight months later.

After the blast, a spokesperson of the Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed – which is believed to have carried out the attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001 – phoned the BBC’s office in Srinagar and claimed responsibility. The caller told the BBC that the dead woman was Yasmeena Akhter, a member of Jaish’s Banaat-e-Ayesha (Daughters of Ayesha, the wife of Prophet Mohammed) regiment. He claimed that she was their first female suicide bomber, that she had attacked an Indian army convoy and had killed six soldiers. Militant groups routinely claim responsibility for attacks on Indian troops in Kashmir and give exaggerated accounts of casualties. In fact, Yasmeena was the only casualty of the explosion.

By the mid-June afternoon when I met Nabi and other townspeople in Avantipura, the 22-year-old Yasmeena and her last moments had already become myth. Some said that she had been begging in the marketplace and planned to enter the police and paramilitary camp as a beggar woman. Others told me that she saw a group of soldiers frisking men and women on the highway, escaped into the lane, and a few seconds later the bomb exploded. It went off outside the house of Ghulam Mohammed, a retired government officer: he told me he’d been asleep at the time and thought the earthquake had struck again. His son pointed towards a poplar rising over the rebuilt boundary wall – it was still covered with a thick layer of soot.

I walked to the police and paramilitary HQ, ringed with razor wire and heavily guarded. Some officers believe their camp was Yasmeena’s target and the explosives went off accidentally. At the blast site they had found three live hand grenades and pieces of a torn combat pouch – a belt with big pockets, that’s tied around the chest. “A person wearing a body belt tends to itch and adjust it frequently,” said Mumtaz Ahmad, a police superintendent, by way of explanation.

At the district court in Pulwama, 20 miles away, a clerk showed me the records of the investigation and pictures of the explosion. The file describes Yasmeena as a girl who “wore explosives on her body for the purpose of a terrorist suicide attack aimed at hurting the security forces and the police. She killed herself when the explosives went off accidentally near the Avantipura police headquarters.” I looked at the pictures: a dust-covered shoe on a leg torn away at the thigh; lifeless eyes staring out of the partial remains of the face; remnants of her body placed in a white cotton shroud.

Women combatants are not part of Kashmiri tradition. Reporting on Kashmir, I have met several women who have suffered physical and psychological abuse at the hands of Indian troops and police officers, as well as the Kashmiri and Pakistani militants fighting them. The latest of such brutalities came to public attention in May this year when it was revealed that scores of teenage girls and young women had been blackmailed into becoming “comfort women” for politicians, police and bureaucrats.

The girls had been lured by interviews for government jobs; they were raped after being given sedatives with tea and filmed. Following determined protests by Kashmiris, the Indian government ordered an investigation and many leading figures in the administration were arrested. But no female victim has chosen violent means to seek revenge; instead, they have tried, with resignation, to rebuild their lives.

I wondered what motivated Yasmeena. Was she really a suicide bomber? I drove to Samboora, her native village half an hour from Avantipura, to find her mother and the people who had known her when she was growing up. The village, a cluster of old mud brick dwellings and new baked brick and concrete houses, stretches between a plateau of saffron and paddy fields. Rows of women and men were planting paddy seedlings in the fields and singing traditional love songs. On the verandah of an austere brick house near the fields, a woman pruned vegetables in a wicker basket. This was Mughli, Yasmeena’s mother. Yasmeena was the third of her four daughters. She and her husband Yusuf farmed and, after the agricultural season, Yusuf worked as a carpenter. When the armed rebellion against Indian rule began in 1990, their austere but contented lives began to change.

Separatist militants had a big presence in Samboora village – Yusuf became enamoured and joined them, Mughli told me. In 1993, he was arrested by Indian troops and taken away. Mughli supported her daughters, working as a daily-wage labourer in the village fields and spinning wool. Yasmeena was 10 and her sister, Roheena, 12. During the three years Yusuf was in prison, the Indian army began funding a group of counter-insurgent militants called Ikhwanis, who murdered anyone they suspected of being sympathetic to the separatist militants.

One of the most notorious, Papa Kishtwari, operated in the Samboora area. “He sent a letter to Yusuf ordering him to work in his house as a carpenter,” Mughli recalled. Yusuf complied and in return Kishtwari escorted Yusuf to the local sufi shrine, the social centre of the village, where they would be sure to be seen together. Villagers and militants from the biggest Kashmiri group, Hizbul Mujahideen, began seeing Yusuf as a collaborator. Young men with guns began lurking near their house, and when Mughli saw them off with an axe, letters containing death threats followed. And so did raids by Indian troops and counter-insurgency police, who routinely pursue militants released from prison and keep the pressure on them to provide information about their militant associates.

The family lived an uneasy, anxiety-filled life. Yasmeena and Roheena dropped out of school in the late 1990s. In early 2002, Yusuf was abducted by unknown gunmen and found tortured and bleeding almost to death in the saffron fields near his village. Yasmeena and Mughli carried him to a Srinagar hospital and spent the next few months nursing him.

On his return from hospital, Yusuf looked to the Pakistan-based militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, for help. A commander of the group, Abu Hafiz, and his bodyguard, Adnan, offered Yusuf protection if he built an underground hideout in his house where they could live. Yusuf agreed to the barter, and the two moved in.

“Hafiz was against any romantic involvement with the women of the family sheltering them, but Adnan was attracted to Yasmeena,” said a senior Kashmir police officer, who followed the family for years. Around a year later, Hafiz was killed in a gun battle with Indian troops. Adnan stayed on in the hideout. His romance with Yasmeena continued and they married in September 2004. “A secret marriage was performed without any social ceremony. Our informers saw Yasmeena and Adnan together at various places. She began helping him with transporting explosives and weapons,” said the officer, whom Mughli had described as a “decent” man.

Still a target for the authorities, Yusuf left home and began living as a fugitive with Pakistani militants. “Mother and I would be scared but Yasmeena looked the soldiers and policemen in the eye and shouted that we did not know where Father was,” said Roheena, now aged 24. In December 2004, a few months after Yasmeena and Adnan married, a joint team of the Indian army and a police special operations group raided her house. The underground hideout was discovered; explosives and ammunition recovered. “They broke the window panes, pulled apart the doors and dug up the house. They abused and beat us up and interrogated Yasmeena throughout the day. That evening she left home and never returned,” said Roheena.

Roheena was suspicious and fearful of the repercussions of what she might say – the conflict has made Kashmir a paranoid valley – but she did add: “Yasmeena was afraid that the army and the police would come again. We realised that she had joined the militants.”

“She just left and never came back,” said Mughli, breaking down and crying inconsolably. There was no search, no contacting of relatives – they knew she must be with her husband Adnan.

Mughli and Roheena clammed up when I mentioned Yasmeena’s marriage. Many villagers had mentioned the humiliation of the family after rumours and gossip about Yasmeena’s affair with a militant. How could a girl marry a man who was bound to be killed or arrested sooner or later?

She was not the first. I thought of Asiya Andrabi, who had married a militant commander, now in prison. She founded and heads the puritanical Islamist women’s group Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Muslim Community), that supports the armed militancy and ran a failed campaign to make Kashmiri women wear veils in 1990. Andrabi resurfaced in the public sphere in the summer of 2004, when she and her activists harassed young couples catching a few moments of intimacy in the claustrophobic cabins of internet cafes or sharing lunch in dimly-lit restaurants.

In newspaper photographs, Andrabi looked like a female Zorro, a veiled woman raising fists covered in white gloves. She had become a born-again Muslim in 1986, a time when she’d been feeling depressed and thwarted because her family forbade her from pursuing postgraduate studies in biochemistry in the distant Indian city of Pune. I met her in her Srinagar house in mid-June; she was barely four and a half feet tall and covered in her signature veil from head to toe. Andrabi was not surprised by Yasmeena’s decision to marry an Islamic militant from Pakistan, and considered it an honour for any Kashmiri woman to do so.

I was sceptical whether Yasmeena would have shared Andrabi’s viewpoint. Yasmeena’s mother Mughli and sister Roheena didn’t wear a veil or seem to espouse Andrabi’s zealous attitude towards Islam. When I first visited, the family invited me for tea inside their tiny kitchen-cum-living room. I was struck by a framed picture hanging above their television set. “It is the only picture of Yasmeena left with us,” said Roheena. A girl with stern black eyes stared from the brightly tinted collage, a thick lock of hair falling on her right cheek, in the style of a Bollywood actress.

On my way back I met Inspector Manzoor Lone, the police officer heading the counter-insurgency operations around Yasmeena’s village. He had just returned to his fortess-like office in Pampore town after a gun battle in which two militants were killed. On a chart pasted on a wall in his office, the names of the slain militants are crossed out in red ink. Lone had raided Yasmeena’s house on various occasions. “I don’t think she was an ideologically motivated militant. It was simply a love story,” he said.

Even Asiya Andrabi opposed the involvement of women in militancy. She argued that Islam did not allow women to be combatants, especially suicide bombers. “It is against the dignity of a Muslim woman that the parts of her body be strewn in a public place. If a combatant or a suicide bomber is a woman, her dead body is bound to fall or be scattered in a place full of men,” she told me. She supported suicide bombing by men; her objection to suicide attacks by women seemed to rest on the notion that a woman’s modesty must be preserved even in death.

Andrabi was critical of the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed for allowing Yasmeena to play an active role. “They use girls as couriers for explosives because girls can easily pass through check posts. I think Yasmeena was a courier and the explosives went off accidentally. Later, they glorified her death and claimed her as a suicide bomber. It was shocking for me,” she said. Strangely, some senior officers in the counter-insurgency police agreed with her assessment. In another rare accord, both Jaish-e-Mohammed and police records in the district court described Yasmeena as a suicide bomber. Who was right? Was an explosion planned or was Yasmeena a courier so desperate to avoid detection that she had strapped the lethal cargo to her chest?

I went back to the police officers who had followed the tragic journey of her fa~mily. Some months after the December 2004 raid on Yasmeena’s house, her husband Adnan had been arrested by police in the Indian capital, New Delhi. “He was in Delhi to receive cash for his group from a contact. The contact had already been arrested by the Delhi police and had called Adnan at their behest. After Adnan was tortured, he provided us with information about his militant group.

With his help, we were able to arrest and kill a number of militants in southern Kashmir, where he used to operate,” said a senior officer. How would a 21-year-old girl, who had married a militant, joined his organisation, and lived the life of a fugitive, react to her husband’s arrest and the prospect of him spending an unknown number of years in some Indian prison, or a brief report describing his death under police fire while trying to “escape”?

In the overworked Psychiatric Diseases Hospital of Srinagar, I met Mushtaq Margoob, the foremost psychiatrist of Kashmir, who has spent the past 16 years – all the years of Kashmir’s armed conflict – treating people with post-traumatic stress. In his research on post-conflict suicide, he found that the age group most inclined towards suicide was 20-25. “Leaving home and working as a militant, Yasmeena would have lived with the constant fear of a raid by troops.

She and her husband and others of the group would have constantly changed hideouts. It’s bound to lead to severe adjustment problems,” he said. Yasmeena’s father had been in prison when she was an adolescent, and she had married a militant at 20. “A girl like Yasmeena, who lacked paternal love, would have had a strong emotional attachment to her husband. And if he was arrested and she continued to be a militant without any emotional support or security, she was bound to become suicidal,” Margoob added.

Was being a suicide bomber or a courier of explosives (which also exposes one to the risk of certain death at the smallest mistake), the only way out for Yasmeena? Could she not have surrendered, spent some time in jail, and returned to lead a “normal” life in her village?

I recalled Firdausa, a girl from the south Kashmir town of Shopian, who loved and secretly married a Pakistani militant. They tried leaving for Pakistan after securing fake Indian passports, but were arrested by the police in January 2006 after the news of their marriage spread. Firdausa was released after a month and returned to live with her parents in Shopian town, around 50km south of Srinagar. Most people I met in Shopian advised me against meeting her. “Militants still visit her place and you never know when the army raids,” said Rashid, an elderly teacher. He was uncomfortable with a Kashmiri girl marrying a Pakistani militant who might have chosen to call Kashmir his war but was not accepted as part of Kashmiri society.

The younger men I met were harsher. “If a Pakistani militant dies in a battle with Indian troops, we would give him a Muslim burial, but he is not one of us. Firdausa has come back to live with her parents, but our town sees her as a wayward woman, a prostitute. No man here will be ready to marry her,” said Manzoor Ahmad, a young student. Firdausa’s town, Shopian, and Yasmeena’s village, Samboora, are an hour apart and alike in all respects. It seemed unlikely that Yasmeena would have been able to return to a normal life.

I revisited Yasmeena’s family to inquire whether she had talked about being a militant. This time I met her mother Mughli and Yasmeena’s eldest sister, who is married and lives in a distant village. “She never visited me at my in-laws’ place as we live near an army camp,” the sister said. I was struck when she told me her husband was a soldier in the Indian army, which is rare among Kashmiris. It seemed all the stranger considering two family members, father and daughter, were militants. “Her husband joined the army because that was the only job available, and we got them married because he is my brother’s son,” Mughli explained.

I asked her whether Yasmeena talked about martyrdom after the troops raided their house, when her father was in prison or when he was forced to work for counter-insurgents. “No! Never! She did the household chores and worked in the fields. She loved eating, attended all marriages we were invited to, and sang marriage songs. She never spoke about wanting to fight or being a martyr.” Mughli held my arm and broke down. “I will tell you why she died like that,” she said, pausing between sobs. “A martyr’s death was the only honourable option for my daughter. Thousands came here to congratulate me on her martyrdom.” Then she fell silent and sobbed.

I walked to the local graveyard on the main road, where around 20 people killed in the conflict were buried. The marble tombstones had names of the dead, dates of their deaths, and verses expressing longing for independence from India, calligraphed in different styles. In a corner I found Yasmeena’s grave; someone had showered rose petals around it. I was struck by the verse on her tombstone:

This generous soil sheltered me

After the suspicions of a heartless world

The lament against the censure of a conservative rural society spoke of the despair of a young woman whose tragic family history and reckless heart had pushed her into dangerous militant terrain, and further. Standing beside her grave I watched a torrent of young girls rush out of the school adjacent to the graveyard and head home along the dusty road. Seven years back Yasmeena had been one of them. I hoped that none of them ever has a life like hers.

Courtesy and Copyright of The Guardian (Link)
Copyright concern? email: media.kashmir [at] gmail.com

He Was Just 14!

Valley’s youngest missing in custody still untraceable

Govt says he was killed; family demands body

Arif Shafi Wani

(from greaterkashmir.com)

Srinagar, Mar 7: Muhammad Iqbal Shah holds an unenviable distinction in the Valley of woes: he was 14 when BSF soldiers arrested him, never to return. Thus, he’s the youngest among thousands of Kashmiris who disappeared in custody.

Iqbal, a student of Wagoora Varmul, was working hard to pass his matriculation examination when troops of 163 battalion of paramilitary Border Security Force arrested him on March 13, 1995. “He was brutally tortured and all our attempts to rescue him proved futile,” his father Muhammad Yousuf said.

Though troops released his two classmates who were arrested a day before him, but there was no trace of Iqbal. The family approached the BSF camp but they denied his arrest.

“The assurances of the then Senior Superintendent of Police Muneer Khan, Deputy Commissioner and Lt. Gen M A Zaki, advisor to Governor, too proved futile,” Yousuf said.

Shattered, the family filed a Habeas Corpus petition in the High Court for locating the Iqbal’s whereabouts. On July 16, 1996, it directed the District and Sessions Judge Varmul to hold an inquiry.

After receiving the report, which confirmed the arrest of Iqbal, the Court finally disposed off the case on April 6 1999, with the direction to conduct an investigation and conclude the same in accordance with the law.

On Court directions a case under FIR no 88/99 under sections 346 RPC was registered at Police Station Varmul. Acting on court directions, District Magistrate Varmul formed a four-member committee comprising Additional District Magistrate Varmul as its Chairman, Deputy Superintendent of Police Varmul, Tehsildar and SHO Police Station Varmul as members.

“During the course of investigation all the legal formalities were completed, statements of witnesses were recorded and it was established that M C Heldar Deputy Commandant and J N Singh Assistant Commandant of 163 Battalion BSF are involved in the case and offence Sec 346 (abduction) has been proved against them,” the committee in its report said.

The Committee quoting a report of Director General of Police addressed to Principal Secretary on September 8, 2000 said, “On March 1995 personnel of BSF’s 163 battalion raided the house of Muhammad Iqbal, Muhammad Ibrahim and Ghulam Mohiuddin Mir of Wagoora. All of them were ruthlessly beaten in BSF vehicles towards Anantnag (Islamabad). Two of them namely Muhammad Ibrahim and Ghulam Muhammad were left in serious condition at unknown places whereas whereabouts of Muhammad Iqbal were not known.”

“After taking into consideration all aspects and reports received from different headquarters, we reached at the conclusion that Muhammad Iqbal Shah son of Muhammad Yousuf Shah of Wagoora, who was a student of 10th class is presumed to be killed and his dead body has been disposed off somewhere,” the report said.

“Despite the declaration that my son was killed by the BSF men, neither has his body been handed over to me nor the accused punished,” his father said.

“We have suffered enough for the past seven years, now we want justice,” he said.

Copyright and courtesy of Greater Kashmir. com [link]
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Tags: Custodial Killing, Enforced Disappearance, Human Rights, Indian Army, Innocent Killings, Kashmir, Kilings, Terrorism, Terrorism in Kashmir

Indian Forces Worst Massacres In Kashmir’s History

Jan 6, ‘93 when 57 people were massacred in Sopur

Ghulam Muhammad

(from greaterkashmir.com)

Sopur, Jan 5: Massacre of 57 unarmed civilians in Sopur town 14 years back is one of the few massacres that got a few columns of space in prestigious TIME magazine. The magazine described the massacre, and the protests that ensued thus:

“Perhaps there is a special corner in hell reserved for troopers who fire their weapons indiscriminately into a crowd of unarmed civilians. That, at least, must have been the hope of every resident who defied an army-enforced curfew in the Kashmiri town of Sopur to protest a massacre that left 55 people dead and scores injured.”

“It was India’s latest blow in a three-year campaign to crush the predominantly Muslim state’s bid for independence. In retaliation for the killing of one soldier, paramilitary forces rampaged through Sopur’s market setting buildings ablaze and shooting bystanders. The Indian government pronounced the event “unfortunate” and claimed that an ammunition dump had been hit by gunfire, setting off fires that killed most of the victims.”

The magazine had titled the news report (on January 18, 1993) “Blood tide rising: Indian forces carry out one of the worst massacres in Kashmir’s history.”

In the reconstructed Iqbal Market it is hard to find the traces of the carnage the Border Security Force troopers carried out on January 6, 1993, killing 57 persons, most of them roasted alive in shops, buses, and houses. The troopers set about 100 houses and 300 shops on fire after dousing them with gunpowder, the local residents recall.

It was the chilly morning of January 6, 1993 when militants attacked the troopers of BSF at Baba Younis Lane near the Sopur town’s main street, killing two of them. The militants also took away the rifles of the slain troopers. The troopers went berserk and opened indiscriminate fire on unarmed civilians and set on fire markets, mainly Iqbal Market, and Women’s Degree College.

The local residents regard the incident as one of the worst massacres in the history of Kashmir.

“I cannot forget that horrendous incident till I am alive; the troops were on rampage; I lost two relatives in the incident,” said Ali Muhammad, an eyewitness and survivor of the carnage. “I wonder can doomsday be worse,” he says.

The mayhem continued for more than 2 hours with people—helpless and hopeless—watching the devastation from a distance. None from the civil administration or Fire Service Department came to the rescue of the hapless people. Only the valor and heroism of the local populace made its appearance, helping each other. In one hour, the locals recovered the dead bodies of more than 50 civilians and miraculously rescued many more.

Some fifteen civilians who tired to rescue their brethren were also shot dead by the troopers, said Abdul Majid, a survivor. Ghulam Nabi Bhat of New Light Hotel shouldered 11 dead bodies and before he could carry the 12th, he too was shot dead.

For three days people rummaged the debris for dead bodies. Strong protests rocked the town for many days continuously. Many charities came up but soon vanished. The insurance companies refused to give any compensation to the victims. The victims knocked the doors of government offices but to no avail.

“The massacre would haunt us as long as we are alive,” said Muhammad Abbas of Sopur.

Names of few slain:

• Abdul Majid Sofi, 35, s/o Muhammad Shafi r/o Krankshiwan
• Abdur Rashid War s/o Ghulam Muhammad War r/o Tujarsherief, Sopur
• Abdul. Khaliq Malik s/o Ghulam Mohi-ud-Din r/o Arampora
• Abdul Ahad Kanjwal r/o Muslimpeer
• Abdul Ahad Shalla r/o Shallapora
• Abdur Rashid Sofi s/o Abdul Jabbar r/o Wanagam, Bandipora
• Abdul Ahad Liloo,70, r/o Bba Yousu, Sopur
• Abdur Razaq Chalkoo s/o Ghulam Muhammad
• Bashir Ahmad Shalla s/o Ghulam Rasool r/o Shallapora, Sopur
• Farooq Ahmad Banday s/o Abdur Rashid r/o Sangrampora, Sopur
• Ghulam Nabi Zargar alias Shaheen s/o Qadir Joo r/o Badamibagh Sopur
• Ghulam Muhammad War s/o Muhammad Sultan r/o Tujarshrief
• Ghulam Nabi Bhat s/o Haji Abdullah r/o Sangrampora
• Gulzar Ahmad Sheikh s/o Muhammad Abdullah r/o Shahabad Sopur
• Ghulam Mohi-Ud-Din s/o Assadullah r/o Nathpora, Bandipora
• Ghulam Rasool Sofi s/o Muhammad. Sultan r/o Langate
• Ghulam Muhammad Khan r/o Bandipora and
• Ghulam Muhammad Hajam s/o Abdul Gaffar r/o Mohallah Hajampora, Sopur.

Copyright and courtesy of Greater Kashmir. com [link]
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The Less Known Paradise

Paradise on earth!

Is it really a piece of land which the Emperor had lavished all praise on, Naseer A Ganai comments on the other side of beauty and tourism which Kashmir is known for the worldover

(from greaterkashmir.com)

Crores of rupees are being spent on propaganda that the Kashmir is paradise on earth. That Dal is the World famous. That Lake Geneva is nothing before it. That Mughal Gardens have no parallel in the world. So the tourists should come here to have feel of paradise. This propaganda is going on for several years and it is gaining momentum with every passing day. To give credence to their claim that there is no place like Kashmir in the world, some verses of poets are being quoted. That Aghar Firdous Bar Rooye Zameen Ast, Hameen Ast-o-Hameen As-o-Astt. It might have been true some 300 years ago, but the Persian couplet is not reflection of today’s Kashmir. Today’s Kashmir is an insult to couplet itself and those who utter it.

Is Kashmir really a world class destination and tourism is only sector here which requires development. Or was Kashmir a world class tourist destination where lakhs of people were visiting before the inception of the present movement in 1990. In 1988-89 only 60,000 foreigners visited ‘paradise on earth’ and this is the highest number of foreigners who ever visited Kashmir in such a ‘huge’ number. Compare these figures with Bali, Vienna and other place where Governments never claimed of having places in their country, which resemble paradise. Over 1,247,867 tourists visited Bali from January to October 2005. 21 million tourists visited Prague since April 2005 until March 2006. Ironically, the Government’s of these places never claimed that they are in possession of paradise on earth.

An overview of the ‘paradise’

Last year in this paradise, officials figures say, 1620 incidents took place killing 911 civilians, injuring 1018 others. In six months of this year over 500 persons were booked under Public Safety Act. And there might be no record available of those who were picked up for questioning by police and other agencies and later released after seven, eight days or a month.
But ironically there are voices in Kashmir, which accuse media of blowing small incidents taking place in Kashmir out of proportion. The pro-India politicians including present and former chief minister have been on forefront to criticize media when it highlights incidents. Last year former Deputy Chief Minister Muzaffer Hussein Baig while addressing tour and travel agents in Mumbai cited an incident, which took place in Pahalgam and said media presented the incident in such a manner as if whole Kashmir was burning.

But is not Kashmir burning? Are not 1620 incidents and killings of 911 civilians or killing of 576 militants and 175 police and force personnel indication that Kashmir is burning. That situation in Kashmir is not normal. Last year tourism and tour operators invited journalists asking them they were projecting violence in Kashmir, which affects tourism. And asked journalists to present actual view of what is happening in the State. The actual view to them is not to highlight when someone gets killed or injured. They forget Kashmir is internationally recognized dispute and office of United Nations Militarily Observers Group at Sonwar is small example of it. So any incident howsoever small should have space in BBC, CNN, Newyork Times, The Guardian, Le Monde and all other media organizations of the world. It should have favored everyone and it could have brought pressure on parties of the dispute to solve Kashmir issue once and forever. These people who come up with these facile arguments should understand that ignorance by media leads the State into complacency and people into desperation and it benefits no one. Here media does not project or report five per cent of what is happening in Jammu and Kashmir and by telling it ignore this five per cent could bring disaster. A mere look at Doordarshan gives impression to viewers that Kashmir is a fairyland where every youth is bothered about why his or her beloved is unhappy with her or him. Though Kashmir is burning, the ‘singers,’ ‘poets’ and ‘artists’ here never came out of Zulfi Shamar and Chasmi Badam.

How to attract tourists?

Instead of persisting with paradise rhetoric, showing tourists wandering in Shikars in polluted waters infamous Dal Lake and projecting number of visiting tourists as sign of normalcy, Government could act honestly and portray the right picture. Because portrayal of visit of tourists as sign of normalcy is more of a political statement indicating Kashmir no longer is the dispute. That is the reason that pro-India parties accuse each other of sexing up figures of tourists to show Kashmir was normal in their regimes.

The honest way is that Kashmir be declared fit for adventure tourism. The State should advertise outside that it is unique paradise where facelift is being given to bunkers, though bunker is bunker even if it gets facelift from the best of the painters. In advertisement should read that in Kashmir you have look at ruined buildings, gutted houses, encounter sites, jails where youth of Kashmir are rotting. The place, where Armed Forces Special Powers Act, Disturbed Areas Act, and scores of other acts in vogue. It should welcome people to this human zoo and in Western countries there are lakhs of people who love human zoos.

Is tourism indispensable for economy

Just have look at a newspaper report (Greater Kashmir Dec 31): “The valley received 4,84,000 poultry birds from December 29 to December 31. The highest number of poultry imported to valley was on December 29. The valley received a record number of 3.72 lakh birds through 120 vehicles on the day and 3 lakh broiler were carried in 100 vehicles while as 15 vehicles carried 37,500 layer birds. The estimated cost of the imported poultry was put by the report as Rs 24200000.” Here eggs, poultry, sheep, and everything goes from Srinagar to villages, which are being imported from Punjab, Haryana, Rajisthan and other States. Earlier in 2006, when the State Government banned the import of poultry, there was strong reaction from Punjab. They forced the Government to revoke the ban. In Kashmir, Rs 700 crore is poultry consumption only and all this is coming from Punjab and Haryana. Economist here say the State of Jammu and Kashmir is feeding six States. Still Kashmiris have notion that Government of India is feeding them. The State suffer loss of Rs 6000 crore on account of Indus Water Treaty. The loss is neither compensated by India nor by Pakistan. The people who deserve free electricity because their resources are exploited are being taxed.

The agriculture and the horticulture were two important pillars of Kashmir economy and no one talks about them. The decreasing of agriculture land and problems of those people dealing with horticulture sectors were never addressed by the mainstream politicians. Tourism remained always on their agenda because it was New Delhi’s agenda.

Roads

The Doda-Kapran road has not been completed for last 30 years, which could have, reduced distance between Doda district and Kashmir Valley to few hours. The road requires only 46 crores. Mughal road always remained a slogan and it has been never allowed to complete. It requires only Rs 150 crore and it is only 84 kms long reducing distance between Poonch, Rajouri to Kashmir valley to few hours.

But Gondola project could be completed within few years. And work on 350 kms railwayline, which would join Kashmir valley to the Indian Railways Network is a Rs 10,000 crore project (Indian Express December 31). And work on the project is going on. Why New Delhi is prompt on these projects and why it is slow on the road projects for last 50 years. Any answers.

Copyright and courtesy of Greater Kashmir. com [link]
Copyright concern? email: media.kashmir [at] gmail.com

Yes, Your Son Died During Torture

 

‘My death will take me to my missing son’
Zahir-ud-Din

(from greaterkashmir.com)

Srinagar, Dec 9: Suddenly her wrinkled face turned pale. All hopes of tracing out her missing son faded the moment she entered the office of the police officer who had called her on that fateful morning. She could not believe her ears. She requested the officer to repeat what was conveyed to her a short while ago. “Yes, your son died during torture. He was involved in the elimination of a senior army officer,” the officer said harshly.

Walking out of the officer’s chamber was as difficult for her as hearing the news of her beloved son’s death. Without crying, she looked around with her moist eyes to find her son’s hand. He was nowhere. A harsh reality dawned on her. She screamed as her trembling legs gave way.

The woman was taken home by an acquaintance where she lives to this day.

Unfortunately the only photo of her missing son, Muhammad Ashraf Lone was taken by a human rights activist who misplaced it. But Aisha is not worried. “Do I need his photograph? He lives in my heart all the time. People say he is dead but being his mother, I feel his presence around me all the time. When tears trickle down my eyes, he comes, pats my shoulder and consoles me. I am looking forward to meet my son on the day of resurrection. Nobody can separate us then.”

Renowned rights activist, Pervez Imroz while commenting on Aisha’s statement said, “The old woman is waiting for her death which, according to her is the only door that would take her to her missing son. How ironical! But this is how life moves in this beautiful prison.”

Aisha narrates Ashraf’s tragic story calmly. “My son was abducted by Ikhwanies (renegades) on May 29, 2001 from his shop. Later he was handed over to soldiers stationed at Krusan (Lolab, Kupwara) camp. He never returned.”

The old woman sighed and could not utter a word for some time. She did not allow her tears to strangulate her voice. “The villagers identified the renegades as Akbar Beig, Nazir Bhat and Reyaz Lone. The trio stormed my son’s shop on May 29,2001 and took him to some unknown destination. Later we learnt about his hand over to the soldiers. However, a senior officer at the camp told me he had no information about Ashraf. I called on the concerned Superintendent of Police (SP) who told me to come after three days. After three days when I went to meet him, he shocked me by saying my son was involved in the murder of an army officer. He also told me my son had succumbed to torture in the camp.”

The police arrested Akbar and Nazir in connection with FIR No 42/2001 for abducting Ashraf. Reyaz escaped arrest and the police launched a massive manhunt for him. The aged woman is not aware of the progress of police investigation.

Aisha also knocked at the doors of the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) but the “toothless tiger” could not bring the much needed solace to her. Finally she was advised to seek judicial recourse. But will it serve any purpose?

Copyright and courtesy of Greater Kashmir. com [link]
Copyright concern? email: media.kashmir [at] gmail.com