Army ignores CM’s plea to stop anti-militancy operations in Kashmir

Ladakh is witnessing a tourism boom, with more than 1,200 hotels in Leh catering to tourists this summer. However, with groundwater levels getting depleted, and with hundreds of new hotels coming up, fears are rising that Leh may soon be without water and will have to regulate tourist traffic.

“Very soon the government will have to intervene and do something about these hotels, as they are using up the groundwater to cater to tourists. If there is no immediate intervention, the hotels and Leh’s residents will have to rely on bottled water for daily use,” Tundup Angmo told this reporter over telephone. Angmo has been working on water shortage in Ladakh and her study, “Impacts of Climate Change” has caused much alarm among environmentalists. Angmo said that the vanishing glaciers and depleting groundwater levels are responsible for the acute drinking water shortage in Leh. She said that because of less snow and low rainfall, groundwater is not getting replenished and many natural springs have dried up. Ladakh gets 95% of its water from the melting glaciers in summer, but glaciers such as Khardungla have melted completely and dozens of small glaciers have vanished. Leh is already witnessing a scarcity of drinking water. “We are buying drinking water for daily use from Leh’s growing water market,” Ahsan Ali, a tourist taxi operator in Kargil told this newspaper. The sinking of new tube-wells to tap into the groundwater is posing another challenge.

The streams around Leh are polluted and cannot be used to get drinking water. Yangchan Dolma, a lady known to work for the environment, told this newspaper, “The traditional Ladakhi dry compost toilets should be revived, as the modern flush toilets are draining whatever little water resources are left in Leh.” Dolma says that the accumulation of garbage is also posing a problem for the villages in Leh’s neighbourhood.

When asked, Sonam Dava, the CEO of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC) said, “We are aware of the problems including the drinking water shortage. We have to divert the tourist rush to unexplored places in Ladakh to save Leh and Pangong Lake.” Speculation is rife in Kashmir about the possibility of Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s tenure being cut short, as the Army goes ahead with its anti-militancy operations in the valley, ignoring the CM’s appeal to halt such operations during Ramzan. “We came to know about the Army setting up new camps in South Kashmir, from the local media. We are trying to create an atmosphere for ‘ceasefire’, but, unfortunately, things are not working”, a senior PDP leader told this reporter. The Army has already moved 2,000 additional troops to the valley in June. They have re- established many old camps and have started massive anti- militancy operations across South Kashmir. The Army has also killed many wanted militants in South Kashmir, with an eye on clearing the villages of all militants.

Sources close to the PDP government say that the Army operations have inflicted a body-blow to Mehbooba Mufti’s initiative to motivate young militants to surrender. “In June, the Army and the security forces killed even those militants who were being motivated to surrender,” a police officer who was in touch with the militants’ families, claimed to the media. Police officers said that among those killed were youngsters who had joined the militan- cy recently, and were apparently on the verge of returning to their homes. Earlier, the J&K Police had claimed that they were able to bring back to the mainstream 32 youths who had become militants.

With the Central government and the Army deciding to crush militancy with a heavy hand, Mehbooba Mufti and her PDP are feeling marginalised. The participation of thousands of people at the funerals of slain militants has eroded PDP’s public base in South Kashmir. With voices growing louder in New Delhi and within the state BJP to give a freer hand to the Army and the security forces, Mufti is left with very little room to manoeuvre. Kashmir is witnessing a manifold increase in protests and violence, with as many as 43 people, including 27 militants and two police officers, killed in the month of June. Around a dozen civilians got killed as they gathered at encounter sites to save the militants under siege. Fears are rising that post Monday’s Eid, Kashmir will witness another spell of unrest.

It was perhaps for the first time after 1947 that prayers were not held at Srinagar’s Jamia Masjid on the last Friday of Ramzan. However, the previous night’s violence forced the government to impose a curfew around Jamia Masjid and in other downtown localities. The night before, a DSP of J&K police, Mohammed Ayub Pandith, who was in civilian clothes, was lynched by a slogan-shouting mob which suspected him to be an “IB and RAW agent”, as he was shooting a video. He tried to save himself by opening fire, but was lynched by the mob. This barbaric act made Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti warn the people not to test the patience of the police and the security forces. Earlier on Thursday, three Lashkar-e-Tayyaba militants were killed in Kakapora village of Pulwama in South Kashmir in a fierce gun battle.

With the separatists adding fuel to the fire, speculation is rife that post Eid-ul-Fitr, the conflagration will only get bigger.