news details |
|
|
| Fear stalks north Kashmir mountains | | |
Praveen Swami
Dentist's murder points to continued Lashkar presence — and power.
AT LUNCHTIME on Sunday, Handwara-based dental surgeon Mushtaq Ahmad Shah was tied to a tree, tortured, and finally beheaded with an old-fashioned barber's razor. Villagers working in the cornfields around Naupora Kalan, near Sopore, pleaded for Dr. Shah's life but were shooed away at gunpoint.
Even as cities across the country grapple with the worst year of Islamist terrorism India has ever faced, residents of Jammu and Kashmir continue to face sustained assault from groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. For the most part unreported, the killings in north Kashmir are directed at ideological enemies, alleged traitors, and personal enemies alike.
Dr. Shah's murder is just the latest of a string of vicious killings in north Kashmir — the consequence of the abiding influence of Islamist terror groups in the forests that stretch from Bandipora to the Line of Control; or in Rajwar near Kupwara. Despite their diminishing numerical strength, terrorist groups have successfully used terror to broadcast their presence within, and power over, civilian society.
A day before Dr. Shah's killing, for example, terrorists murdered Mohammad Shafi — a local resident who had joined the Territorial Army, defying terrorist orders not to participate in Indian military recruitment drives. Shafi's severed head was dumped in the main market square in Sopore, where it lay for over half an hour. At least four other soldiers have faced similar attacks this year.
Children run past the burnt-out ruins on the main street of the village of Sumlar, as if afraid even a glance might re-ignite the massive mid-September firefight that claimed three lives — and the homes and shops of seven local families. It isn't an idle fear. Home to the largest concentration of Lashkar cadre in Jammu and Kashmir, the Bandipora forests lie just a hundred metres or so beyond the ruins.
Terrorists often stop at the village, and demand food, shelter, and labourers to help haul supplies into mountain hideouts. Without either a permanent military or police post to protect its citizens, there is little the villagers can do to resist the pressure.
Those who do often face punishment. A day after Dr. Shah's murder, terrorists shot dead Bashir Ahmad Wani, the man the Lashkar believed had told Indian forces that their cadre were hiding out at his Sumlar home.
Such killings have long been common. In 2002, soon after he defied a Lashkar fiat to become the elected Sarpanch of Sonarwani village, Ghulam Hassan Khan received a bullet through the arm. Ghulam Ahmad Wani, who refused to conduct the marriage rites needed to wed a Lashkar operative to an unwilling local woman, was tortured to death in the forests. Bashir `Lala' Wani, a small-time politician, was beheaded in the middle of the village. "We could all hear him screaming," recalls Mr. Khan, "but no one said a word."
Brutal retribution
Defiance is punished brutally. In June, Naima Waza, 21, and her sister Salima, 23, were tonsured in full public view for having defied a Lashkar ban on the use of cellular phones. Their father, Abdul Aziz Waza, was shot through the legs. According to the Lashkar, mobile phones encouraged immorality. A powerful Sopore religious figure, Ahad Ba'b Sopore, was targeted for assassination by the Lashkar earlier this year, on the grounds that his syncretic religious practices constituted heresy.
At the same time, the Lashkar's field commanders made adroit use of patronage to draw new recruits. Some were won over with cash. Top Lashkar commander `Bilal,' who investigators believe helped organise last year's serial bombings in New Delhi, would often hand out small amounts of cash to poor villagers to celebrate births and weddings, or in times of hardship. `Bilal' ensured that his men paid for accommodation and food — and handed out compensation for homes burned down in encounters with Indian forces.
Mohammad Isaak, one of the Lashkar's top ethnic-Kashmiri operatives, joined the organisation because of such assistance. "Isaak wanted to be paid compensation of Rs.20,000 after his wife eloped with a pro-India militia member," recalls Arigam villager Noor Alam Mir. "Sher Khan," Mr. Mir says, "wouldn't pay. He had a gun — so, Isaak got one of his own from the Lashkar." Sher Khan was shot dead by the Lashkar in 2003, while he was playing cricket with children in the village field.
Military officials point to the successes of their counter-terrorism efforts in the Bandipora area to refute claims that the situation is deteriorating. "We've succeeded in halving the Lashkar's cadre strength in Bandipora over the last year," argues the 81 Brigade's commander, Sashi Nair. Offensive operations, Brigadier Nair points out, have claimed several key terrorist leaders in the area, including the Lashkar's Deputy Division Commander, a Pakistani national who used the alias `Abdullah Bhai.'
Yet, counter-terrorism successes mean nothing if ordinary people aren't free of fear. Figures make clear that violence in north Kashmir, as elsewhere in the State, has been in decline since 2001, but figures mean nothing to people who face the wrong end of a Kalashnikov — or razor blade.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
