Kashmir paralysed by adored militants
THEY hide in the forest, emerging occasionally to lure police into villages where they try to kill them with explosive devices. They steal weapons from the security forces. Then they disappear back among the trees.
They are members of Hizbul Mujahedeen, a militant group that has emerged as the face of the independence movement in Kashmir, the Himalayan region that was subsumed into India when it shook off colonial rule in 1947 and that remains at the centre of the country’s 70-year dispute with neighbouring Pakistan.
Relatively few in number, about 200, half of them from local villages, Hizbul Mujahedeen is the larger of two militant organisations and has widespread support from a populace that has lost faith in dialogue to resolve differences with the Indian government.
“They are adored,” said Srid- har Patil, head of the regional police in Kulgam district, where crowds have burned a courthouse and a police station. “The younger generation of Kashmir is searching for a good leader, a good role model,” he said, and they have settled, for better or worse, on these young men.
Daily life in Kashmir has come close to a standstill since July, when Indian security forces killed the 22-year-old leader of the local militancy, Burhan Muzaffar Wani, who had attracted a broad following through videos he posted on Facebook and WhatsApp. He started the trend of young, charismatic militants, dressed in military fatigues and carrying assault weapons, revealing their names and faces on social media in efforts to spread their message to a wide audience.
The killing of Wani touched off four months of violence, including bombings, shootouts and attacks by stone-pelting youths, as well as protests by tens of thousands of people.
In a lengthy interview, the young man’s father, Mohammad Muzafar Wani, said he had tried hard to influence the path of his son, a handsome youth who gelled his hair and changed his outfits twice a day, preferring Western-style Tshirts to traditional kurtas.
But in 2010, three weeks after Burhan and his older brother were beaten up by security forces, the brainy boy who earned top grades at school dropped the original plan to train as a doctor and instead joined Hizbul Mujahedeen.
“He was not a small child, I couldn’t have confined him to home,” his father said. “I could have stopped him for a day or two, but not all days.”
The Kashmir police have counted 2,400 clashes since July. Schools remain closed, more than 30 of them burned, and public transportation is almost entirely shut down. The state’s education minister was holed up in his home for days after receiving a threat.
Seventy-six people have been killed in the violence, the police in Kashmir say, while local activists put the toll at closer to 100. At least a thousand protesters have been struck in the eyes by pellets fired by police officers, and some have been blinded.
Kashmir, part of India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, was promised some measure of self-determination and autonomy after India was partitioned and Pakistan was formed. That promise was not fulfilled, and since then, India and Pakistan have fought two border wars over the region and have assembled nuclear arsenals.
A violent secession movement arose in Kashmir in the late 1980s, as thousands of militants spilled over the border from Pakistan. India responded by moving tens of thousands of troops into the scenic Kashmir valley and slowly crushing the uprising.
Still, the independence movement persisted, giving rise every few years to violence and protests. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India made overtures to Pakistan early in his tenure that rekindled hopes for a resolution of Kashmir’s future. But he has made no public moves to restart discussions over the region.
“Is people’s confidence in dialogue shaken? Yes it is,” said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a founder of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a coalition of separatist groups.
The young men who have joined the Kashmir militancy grew up in a militarised land where they were routinely stopped and searched by security forces, and at times brutally beaten, their families say.
Wani’s older brother, Khalid, did not join the insurgency, even after the two were beaten by the security forces.
Nevertheless, he was the first to be killed. In 2015, he was shot after delivering a meal to his brother and his comrades, his father said.
The current rebel commander, Zakir Rashid Bhat, 22, went through many of the same experiences as his predecessor, said his father, Abdul Rashid Bhat, 56, an assistant government engineer.
Bhat said his son was arrested and jailed in 2010 for pelting security forces with stones. Bhat said that he had tried to broker a deal with the police to bring back his son, then 16, who was hiding in another part of the state, in return for leniency.
But not only did the police throw the son in jail for several days until a court granted him bail, they also opened several criminal cases, accusing him of violence and of destroying government property, his father and the Kashmir police say.
The rebel commander’s older brother, Dr Shakir Rashid Bhat, 32, an orthopedic surgeon in the Kashmiri city of Srinagar, tried to explain why his sibling had joined the militancy. “The experience of seeing his father begging police for mercy changed him,” he said. “It was humiliating.”
A few kilometres away, in another village in the Tral area, dozens children and young men played cricket in a field adjoining the graveyard where Wani is buried. They stopped playing when visitors arrived.
A 6-year-old boy in a blue cape, Muneeb Shah, began leading the crowd in a cheer, egged on by his father, a shawl merchant. “What do we want?” the boy shouted. “Azaadi,” the group responded, using the Urdu word for freedom. “For the sake of Burhan,” the boy called out next, going down the list of dead militants, one by one.
Local people say dozens show up at the graveyard each day to pay tribute to Wani, some carrying away clumps of mud from the mound of grass covering his grave.
Security officials worry that the glamourisation of militant leaders might draw a larger number of young people into the fold.
They are adored. The younger generation of Kashmir is searching for a good leader, a good role model