{"id":47278,"date":"2009-12-12T23:07:29","date_gmt":"2009-12-12T23:07:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/test.tehelka.com\/?p=47278"},"modified":"2009-12-12T23:07:29","modified_gmt":"2009-12-12T23:07:29","slug":"prisoners-of-a-long-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/prisoners-of-a-long-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Prisoners of a Long War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kashmir: 20 Years Later<\/span><\/strong>
\nNormalcy is a dangerous smokescreen. Beneath it, the valley is in the grip 0f a psychological siege. It needs political balm, not military might, says<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>Harinder Baweja.\u00a0<\/strong>Photographs by<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>Abid Bhat<\/strong>
\n

\"Cordoned<\/a>
Cordoned off Armed forces guard the street during a shutdown in Srinagar<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nSOON, DECEMBER 8, 2009, will be a date in the past \u2014 another reminder of Kashmir\u2019s long history of violence. For the record, it marks 20 years of insurgency. It was on this day, two decades ago, that Rubaiya Sayeed \u2014 daughter of the then home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed \u2013 was kidnapped. It was also the day when tens of thousands of ordinary Kashmiris took to the streets, shouting\u00a0azadi.\u00a0<\/em>A day when the youth openly brandished their Kalashnikovs and mothers took pride in putting\u00a0mehendi\u00a0<\/em>(henna) on their sons\u2019 hands, kissing them on their foreheads and sending them\u00a0paar\u00a0<\/em>(across the border into Pakistan) for training.<\/span>
\nTwenty years ago, young Kashmiri boys were garlanded and feted when they returned as trained warriors; warriors who everyone thought would help \u2018liberate\u2019 them from India, then seen only as a brutal occupational force. In those heady, romantic days, Jawaharlal Nehru\u2019s unkept promise of a plebiscite took centrestage and the Valley began its long tryst with violence; mass-backed violence that took the state government headed by Farooq Abdullah and the Central government by VP Singh by total surprise.<\/span>
\nBut this piece is not about the past. It is about the present. It is about the deep psychological siege that envelopes the Valley like a shroud. Death, destruction, unending periods of curfew and\u00a0hartals<\/em>\u00a0have transformed what was once\u00a0jannat<\/em>\u00a0into a place that now boasts of a vocabulary unknown to other parts of the country. The administration and the large security apparatus describe it variously as having \u201csurface normalcy\u201d and a conflict zone that has been \u201ccontained\u201d.<\/span>
\nOn the surface \u2013 20 years later \u2013 Srinagar can well pass off for any other city. Fortified bunkers still dot the landscape and armed jawans, their fingers always on the trigger, are a common sight. But the state capital appears to have fought its way out of its cold and bare look. A new visitor or a first-time tourist can well be taken in by the traffic snarls, the stark beauty of multi-coloured chinar leaves that are so a part of Kashmir\u2019s early winter and the busy look that the boulevard facing the weed-laden Dal lake wears \u2013 but it all fits into the \u2018containment\u2019 that the\u00a0babus<\/em>\u00a0in North Block pat themselves for.<\/span>
\nScratch the surface and, for a moment, forget the images of the saffron fields, the majestic mountains that ring the Dal lake, the early snowfall over Gulmarg\u2019s meadow, and a whole new reality will stare you in the face. Try and make sense of this reality and you will see what 20 years of violence have done to an entire population of five million. Every family in this large conflict zone is an example of collateral damage. Every member carries scars of being an endless prisoner of war. Everyone\u2019s speech is littered with words like\u00a0mujahid, bandook<\/em>\u00a0(gun), graves,\u00a0yateem<\/em>\u00a0(orphan) and bloodshed.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the surface, Srinagar can pass off for any other city. But this fits into the \u2018containment\u2019 policy that North Block\u00a0babus<\/em>\u00a0now pat themselves for<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The words come easy. They are a part of the local vocabulary. Meet young Ashfaq Mir. He is only 11 years old and now lives in Raahat Manzil, an orphanage on the outskirts of Srinagar. Most part of his day is now spent in the company of 460 boys \u2014 all orphans of violence; all bound by a common sense of fear and grief. And listen to Ashfaq talk: \u201cThey came through the forest holding Kalashnikovs. They stood in the street near our home and asked my father for directions. Abbu didn\u2019t want to go with them but they forced him. You can\u2019t argue with them, not when they are wielding Kalashnikovs. There is an army camp around our house because it is not far from the border with Pakistan. The\u00a0mujahideen<\/em>\u00a0were not scared that an army camp was nearby.Mujahideen<\/em>\u00a0ne fire mara (the militants opened fire) and killed my abbu. I don\u2019t know why he was killed but others near my house said he was killed because the\u00a0mujahid<\/em>\u00a0said he was a\u00a0mukhbir<\/em>\u00a0(informer). My mother goes to his grave and cries. She has now started teaching drawing. She comes here sometimes to meet me and says I am better off here because she also has a sister and brother to look after. I get free education and food here. The day passes easily but at night I feel scared and have bad dreams. A djinn kills a man and I can see blood all over this man. I have spoken to a doctor and he has given me some medicines but the dream persists\u2026\u201d<\/span>
\n

\"Wailing<\/a>
Wailing wall A mother breaks down as she looks at the photograph of her son among the missing<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nNotice the choice of words. It is not just that the vocabulary of young Ashfaq is striking or that it is littered with words like guns, firing, crackdown, death and graves. It is the ease, the matter-of-fact manner in which these words are delivered that is stunning. Ashfaq was only seven when his father was killed. He hails from Karna in Tangdhar, a 90-minute drive from Srinagar, but he could have been from anywhere in the Valley. From a remote village in Kupwara, four hours from Srinagar, or from Anantnag, 50 km from the state capital. There is no town or village in Kashmir that hasn\u2019t been touched by violence; no child whose young mind has not been scarred.<\/span>
\nAshfaq is not the only midnight\u2019s child. Nor the only one who has dropped out of childhood and grown up in quick time, mostly to personal brushes with violence and its consequences. Shakib Dar, a friend of Ashfaq\u2019s, speaks in a language that breaks your heart. He is only six and when asked about his father, he says, \u201cThey have kept a big stone, a very big stone slab on top of my father so he can\u2019t come home from the Idgah. I keep telling my mother to remove that slab but she doesn\u2019t listen. She just cries.\u201d His mother lives in one of Srinagar\u2019s downtown localities, which was home to scores of Kashmiri Pandit families. When Ashfaq goes to visit his mother, he plays in the ruins of homes that once belonged to these Pandit families, but he is unaware about the original occupants of these homes. Once it was impossible to think of a Kashmir without Pandits. Today, it is difficult to find one there.<\/span>
\nONE MILLION children \u2014 20 per cent of the Valley\u2019s total population \u2014 are growing up hearing such stories; narrating such stories. This generation has seen Kashmir only as a war zone. Children all over the world are living through conflicts \u2014 in Sierra Leone, Sarajevo, Bosnia, Iraq or earlier in Vietnam \u2014 and growing up confused. But unlike those battlegrounds, where United Nations agencies are able to assess the damage and provide relief to the children, in Kashmir there are but a few NGOs working in the field of mental health. The government has a relief committee but its role is limited to doling out Rs 1 lakh each to the affected families. Monetary aid is not what the children need. What they require is medical help to deal with problems like recurring nightmares, depression and, most of all, a sense of hopelessness. Most of all, they need help to understand that what they think is normal is actually something abnormal. \u201cKashmir\u2019s social fabric is badly torn and needs urgent repair,\u201d says Farooq Abdullah, Union minister and former chief minister.<\/span>
\nThe magnitude \u2013 in depth and breadth \u2013 is so vast, it needs more than just lip service. Listen to Ashfaq again. At 11, he gives you his own interpretation of words just as his younger friend, the six-yearold Shakib, likens the stone slab to his father\u2019s tombstone.Mujahideen,<\/em>\u00a0Ashfaq says are those who train in Pakistan to kill the Indian military. The\u00a0fauj,<\/em>\u00a0he says, are men in uniform who are not letting the militants attain the goal of\u00a0azadi.<\/em><\/span>
\nThese are not mere stories. Listen to what Dr Mushtaq Margoob, one of the Valley\u2019s leading psychiatrists, has to say. \u201cPsychological disorders have hit Kashmiri society like an epidemic,\u201d he says, adding, \u201cWhile in 1980 only 14 percent suffered from depressive disorders, this figure shot up to 32 percent in 1989 and has now risen to almost 80 percent. According to Margoob: \u201cThe number of patients in the 20-25 age group is double that of any other group. It\u2019s the age when children are shifting from the stage of dependence to independence. They are conscious of their problems and can articulate them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mothers are no longer sending their sons to Pakistan with henna on their hands. Having rejected violence, they are now looking to \u2018India\u2019<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s another alarming trend. Earlier his patients use to tell Margoob that they would have committed suicide if not for the fact that their faith did not allow it. But a study conducted by the doctor revealed that of the 23 suicide attempts reported in the general hospital\u2019s psychiatric clinic, the majority belonged to the younger age group. Another well-known psychologist, Dr Arshad Hussain, quotes a study to say, \u201cAs a predominantly Muslim society, Kashmir had the lowest suicide rate but that has now changed. On an average, 3.5 persons report to the SMHS hospital\u2019s casualty ward with suicidal behaviour every day. Of the people who contemplate suicide, most are males aged between 25 and 35 and most of those who attempt suicide are females.\u201d<\/span>
\n

\"Alone
Alone together Children at Srinagar\u2019s Raahat Manzil orphanage<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nTwenty prolonged years of violence have impacted Kashmiri women the most. They have borne the brunt of violent loss and are caught in the middle of Kashmir\u2019s psychological legacy. Each of the 70,000 deaths \u2013 the official toll for the last 20 years \u2013 has left women without husbands or sons. Forced to bear the burden of running homes, they have also become patients. And according to Margoob, \u201cThe number of patients seeking mental health services has grown dramatically from 1,700 in the early days of the insurgency to more than 100,000 now. Women are a majority because they are biologically and psychologically prone.\u201d Margoob points to another disturbing trend \u2014 women are hooked to opiates, available over the counter at pharmacies.
\nParveena Ahanger is probably among the few who is not hooked to opiates. She has come to symbolise the face of mothers who are still hoping their sons will return home even though they went missing in the early 90s. Parveena\u2019s son Javed disappeared in 1990 and for 19 years she has been waging a silent, poignant battle \u2013 sitting in Srinagar\u2019s Iqbal Park, near the city\u2019s main square, once a month, to draw attention to their plight. Ask her if she sometimes feels it\u2019s a futile struggle and she says, \u201cI\u2019ve given up on all my relationships. I can\u2019t give up on my son.\u201d Last month, she lost a friend who was a member of the Association of Parents for Disappeared Persons (APDP). The only promise the friend extracted from her before she died was this: Don\u2019t give up the search for my son. The search that continues even after 19 long years has for Parveena been marked mostly by political betrayal. Hear it in her own words, \u201cDuring Governor\u2019s rule, nobody listened. In 1996 when Farooq Abdullah became chief minister, he promised to look into it but nothing happened. Six years later, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed said vote for me and it will be the first case I take up. When Ghulam Nabi Azad became chief minister he said the case was too old and my son had not disappeared during his tenure. Now, we have spoken once again to Omar Abdullah\u2019s home minister, but we are still waiting\u2026\u201d<\/span>
\nIT IS not just the successive state governments that the ordinary Kashmiri feels most betrayed by. They nurture a deep grouse against New Delhi for looking at the border state as a piece of real estate, the crown on India\u2019s head that must be held at all cost. If they feel that the Centre has reacted only by flying in more and more troops, it is because the one policy that has marked its approach is that of containment. All governments have preferred the military option over a political solution. Over the last 20 years, various prime ministers have only made tall promises of granting maximum autonomy to the beleaguered state. Remember PV Narasimha Rao\u2019s words \u2013 the sky is the limit; and Deve Gowda\u2019s promise of \u2018anything short of\u00a0azadi\u2019<\/em>?<\/span>
\nApart from one feeble attempt during the NDA regime when the then home secretary Kamal Pande flew to Srinagar to begin a dialogue with the Hizbul Mujahideen, most political endeavours have revolved around aborted round table discussion with the Hurriyat Conference. In the 20th year since the insurgency began, Home Minister P Chidambaram is once again in secret parleys with the separatists. Will New Delhi ever muster the courage to move away from \u2018containment\u2019 and look at autonomy as a serious solution? The NDA did not because of the BJP\u2019s own stand on scrapping Article 370, which vests Kashmir with special powers, and the UPA will not because it does not want to gift the BJP an emotive issue.<\/span>
\nIn two decades, various governments have also ignored advice coming out of the army headquarters in South Block and the BSF headquarters in Lodhi Estate. When battle-fatigued soldiers started committing suicide and shooting their own officers, the generals woke up to a simple fact \u2013 the solution to Kashmir would not come from military might. Ask army commanders, perplexed by the numbers of jawans killing themselves and their officers, and they will tell you that in Kashmir they are at best tolerated and at worst seen as an occupational force. Indeed, in an ironical twist, the army was forced to recruit 400 psychiatrists after 100 jawans and soldiers killed themselves in a little over a year. Internal introspections have centered on the lack of motivational leadership amongst officers. Several suicides have coincided with jawans not being able to get leave when they want to and prolonged separation from families wherein they have to serve in a hostile zone. The men in olive have got looped in the same vicious cycle of violence as the population they have been tasked to protect.<\/span>
\nIf there is one urgent message the Centre needs to wake up to, it is this \u2013 the surface normalcy is a dangerous smokescreen. The Amarnath Yatra crisis that brought the state \u2013 both Jammu and Srinagar \u2013 to a boil was symptomatic of various faultlines. The graph of militant violence is down, yes, and so are the numbers of trained militants being infiltrated from across the border, but Kashmir is capable of slipping from the precarious precipice on which it is perched at a moment\u2019s notice. In other words, the alienation that runs so deep, awaits political balm from New Delhi. So do the Pandits, who continue to languish in migrant camps nearly 20 years after they were forced to flee in the dead of night. Last year, when the state burned across both sides of the Pir Panjal, the question that stood out was this: When peaceful protests fail, what next? The same question still remains.<\/span>
\nThe deep psychological siege is claiming new recruits every day. Ask Dr Surrayah Qadeem, a young doctor who has turned to counselling patients after losing her own brother. Her patients today come from Shopian where Asiya Jan and her sister-in-law Nilofar were allegedly raped and killed. Says Qadeem, \u201cOne of the girls used to sit on the same bench as Asiya in school. She now has a constant dream in which Asiya is telling her that she too will be killed like she was killed. Another young girl from Shopian has dropped out of school because she has to cross an army camp to reach there and is too scared of doing that.\u201d<\/span>
\nShopian is only the latest address in Kashmir\u2019s long history of violence. It most certainly is not the last. And yes, mothers are no longer putting\u00a0mehendi<\/em>\u00a0on the hands of their sons and sending them to Pakistan. They have rejected violence as the vehicle for greater autonomy. It is \u2018India\u2019 that they are looking to. Will somebody in New Delhi\u2019s power corridor please stand up and listen to these prisoners of a long war.<\/span>
\nWRITER\u2019S EMAIL<\/strong>
\nshammy@tehelka.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Normalcy is a dangerous smokescreen. Beneath it, the valley is in the grip 0f a psychological siege. It needs political balm, not military might, says Harinder baweja photographs by Abid Bhat<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":47283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[56],"tags":[3454,6777,6778,6779,6780,5482,6744,6781,6782,43,2017,6783,6784,868,48,6785,6786,2018,472,6787],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47278"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}