India's new foe in Kashmir: Peaceful campaigners for self-determination

NEW YORK: - India now largely faces a different, and potentially more challenging foe in occupied Kashmir -- peaceful campaigners for self-determination -- instead of the militant Lashkr-e-Taiba, according to a disaptch published in a leading U.S. newspaper Monday.
The Wall Street Journal correspondent, Yaroslav Trofimov, wrote from Srinagar that he changing nature of the separatist struggle in Kashmir -- from armed fight to peaceful campaign for self-determination -- "makes it increasingly difficult for India to portray the conflict over Kashmir as a clear-cut fight between the world's largest democracy and murderous terrorists".
"Unlike (Lashkar-e-Taiba's) jihadis, unarmed protesters in Kashmir can muster sympathy from sections of Western, and Indian, public opinion," the detailed dispatch said, noting that the decades-long armed struggle is waning in the disputed state.
"India is not scared of the guns here in Kashmir -- it has a thousand times more guns. What it is scared of is people coming out in the streets, people seeing the power of nonviolent struggle," Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the Kashmiris' spiritual leader and a key organizer of the civil disobedience campaign that began earlier this year, was quoted as saying.
Even Kashmir's leading pro-Indian politician Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, who was India's home minister at the peak of the Kashmiri insurgency and Kashmir's chief minister in 2002-2005, agreed with the point made by Farooq, who remains under house arrest. "It's justified when you kill a militant, but it's not justified when you kill a demonstrator," Sayeed was quoted as saying.
"Many among the new generation of Kashmiri protesters say they are happy that the insurgents no longer prowl the streets, demanding shelter and food from civilians, enforcing rigid Islamic observance -- and attracting army reprisals," the dispatch said, citing the views expressed by some demonstrators.
"Some half a million Indian soldiers and policemen remain deployed in the Indian-administered part of Jammu and Kashmir, home to 10 million people," the dispatch said, adding:
"Indian laws grant troops in Kashmir almost total immunity from prosecution, including in cases of civilian deaths. Srinagar, once India's prime tourist destination, is dotted by checkpoints, its indoor stadium, cinemas and hotels surrounded by sandbags and converted into military camps. Broadcast media are censored.
"New restrictions have been added in recent months, such as an order to disable mobile-phone text messaging -- a key method of mobilizing protesters -- on cellphone networks that operate in Kashmir".
The current unrest was sparked off by a decision last May by the state's puppet government to transfer land near the Amarnath to a Hindu religious organization. "This land near the shrine -- a cave in which an ice stalagmite forms every winter -- has been used for years to shelter pilgrims. But large tracts of the region already are requisitioned for army and police use, and the formal transfer stoked fears of a widespread land grab", the dispatch said.
After Hindu protesters in Jammu blocked the only highway linking the valley with the rest of India at the peak of fruit sseason, Kashmir's fruit growers' union called for opening an alternative trade route -- through Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.
"Defying curfew orders, on Aug. 10 thousands of fruit growers and separatist activists marched towards the cease-fire line. The protest column was met with gunfire from Indian forces. Fifteen marchers were shot dead, including a prominent separatist," it said.
"As Kashmir descended into chaos after these killings, India responded with increasingly severe curfews and lockdowns that continue. Often they come without prior warning or formal announcement, as in Srinagar over the past weekend," WSJ's correspondent said, detailing the grievances of the the Kashmiris hard-hit by the tough Indian measures, whom he interviewed.
Some pro-Indian Kashmiri politicians have been angered by the disparity they say security forces have shown when dealing with Hindu protests in Jammu and the Muslim demonstrations in Kashmir, the dispatch said. "Lives are cheap in Kashmir," says Omar Abdullah, president of the National Conference party and India's former federal minister of state for external affairs. "I'm still struggling to understand how the same chain of command had two completely different approaches to crowd control."
Abdullah's party is currently battling for the right to form the next state government in elections that began last month and end on Dec. 24. Separatist parties have called for a boycott, but Indian officials claim the turnout so far is among the highest on record, according to the dispatch.
"But many voters who lined up at the polls Saturday in south Kashmir, for example, also turned out at anti-Indian protest marches weeks earlier," correspondent Trofimov wrote.
Here is how the correspondent records his observations:
"In the town of Tral, 20-year-old student Manzur Ahmad said that he was voting for an incumbent candidate because, in recent years, the lawmaker had managed to curb the harassment of local youths by government forces. 'We vote because this makes our lives easier - but this doesn't mean we don't want freedom,' he said.
"In the village of Samboora, residents said that Indian Army troops went from house to house on Saturday morning, rounding up families and taking them to a polling station. As a reporter drove into the village Saturday afternoon, an army vehicle with several soldiers stopped by the walled compound of Ghulam Mohammad, pulling the 59-year-old retiree onto the road. Seeing a foreign reporter, the soldiers jumped into their vehicle and quickly drove off. 'They asked me why I'm not voting, and I said that's because I don't like any of the candidates,' Mohammad said moments later. 'They said, if I don't vote, I'll be sorry later.'"
"In another south Kashmiri village, Koeil, a similar police effort to round up voters degenerated into clashes with stone-throwing youths. As a reporter arrived on the scene, dozens of police officers charged along the main street, firing tear-gas volleys. Many policemen also picked up rocks and hurled them into villagers' homes, breaking windows.
"Half an hour later, Indian forces in the village opened fire at the protesters, killing a 20-year-old student and seriously injuring three others, including a 14-year-old boy whose arm and intestines were pierced by high-velocity Kalashnikov bullets.
"Continuing bloodshed may end up reversing Kashmir's recent shift towards unarmed campaigning. Sitting on the porch of a shuttered store near Srinagar's Grand Mosque, two former insurgents bristled with anger this weekend. Then, one of them, Iqbal Sheikh, spat on the ground and said: 'When the small kids who throw stones are met with bullets, many people want to take up guns again'."