Geography, Politics and the Fighters of Kashmir: An Eyewitness Account
Jammu and Kashmir consists of three distinct geographical regions. When armed insurgency erupted in the territory in 1990, it was initially confined largely to the Kashmir Valley, a compact area centred on the capital Srinagar. The Valley is overwhelmingly Muslim and barring a few enclaves, Kashmiri speaking. Its population in 2000 was estimated at 4.5 million. Jammu, the considerably larger and socially much more heterogeneous region to the south of the Valley, was by and large unaffected (Jammu has a confusing mix of religious, ethnic, language and caste groups in its population of approximately 4 million). ![[image]](106_doda.jpg)
Sumantra Bose | This is an image of Doda town in the Jammu region. It is typical of most Kashmiri towns with the handsome mosque dominating the landscape. The town is 80 percent Kashmiri Muslim and approximately 20 percent Hindu. Within the last decade it has suffered a number of setbacks including a fire, which ravaged most of the town centre. By the time this photograph was taken, the majority of the small town had been rebuilt. Many of the shops fronts visible in the picture are manned by Hindu merchants and traders. Doda town is not to be confused with Doda region, which has a more sizeable Hindu population. |
By 1992, however, guerrilla operations had spread to one district in the Jammu region, Doda, which happens to have a Kashmiri-speaking Muslim majority although Hindus still constitute a sizeable 40 per cent of Doda's population. By contrast, two other districts in the Jammu region with Muslim-majority populations, Rajouri and Poonch remained fairly quiet, even though both are border districts adjoining the Line of Control (LOC) with Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, known as Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Unlike the Kashmir Valley and Doda, the Muslim majorities in Rajouri and Poonch are largely not Kashmiri. These Muslims mostly belong to other communities such as Gujjars and Bakerwals (nomadic pastoralists), Rajputs and other smaller ethnic groups. The predominant language in the mountain tracts of Poonch and Rajouri is not Kashmiri but Pahadi, a dialect of Punjabi. The failure of the armed struggle to put down solid roots in the Muslim-dominated border areas of Poonch and Rajouri, as opposed to its influence in the Valley and Doda, reveals a very important fact: the core base of the movement for azaadi (freedom) in Jammu and Kashmir is ethnolinguistic rather than pan-Muslim. Jammu and Kashmir's third constituent region, a vast but sparsely populated high-altitude area called Ladakh, also remained largely peaceful until the summer of 1999, when a localised war between Indian and Pakistani forces erupted along the LOC in one of its two districts, Kargil. Since 1998, however, the sleepy hills and forests of Poonch and Rajouri have been transformed into the most active zone of insurgency and counter-insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir. During earlier travels in Jammu and Kashmir in 1995 and 1996, I had toured the Kashmir Valley and Jammu's Doda district extensively, but had neglected to visit Poonch and Rajouri since these were considered to be nonhappening districts at the time. The apparent transformation of the Poonch-Rajouri sector into the new frontier of the Kashmir conflict is, however, no accident, coincidence or aberration. This is a remote, mountainous border belt, where religion, ethnicity and interstate rivalry over territory and the allegiance of people come together in an incendiary mix. The area is a microcosm of the complex and fluid character of the war in Jammu and Kashmir. A trip to the battle zone involves a long, hard drive from the city of Jammu, located in the plains to the south. The Jammu-Rajouri-Poonch road, going in a northwesterly direction, traverses 250 kilometres in all, running just alongside the de jure and de facto borders between India and Pakistan. This is a classic borderland, where no magnitude of manpower and firepower can assure secure control, and where the allegiances of much of the local population are at least slightly suspect. Before the division of Jammu and Kashmir into Indian and Pakistani portions in 1947-8, Rajouri and Poonch formed part of a common linguistic, cultural and economic zone with the Azad Kashmir districts of Mirpur and Muzaffarabad, the western (Pakistani) Punjab districts of Rawalpindi, Jhelum, Campbellpur and Mianwali, and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) districts of Abbottabad and Mansehra. Fifty years later, many Muslim families living on the Indian side of the LOC in the border villages of Poonch and Rajouri still have relations on the Pakistani side. Indeed, there are villages which are neatly bisected by the LOC, an arbitrary line drawn in Indian and Pakistani blood a half-century ago. While Rajouri and Poonch are both Muslim-majority districts, the towns of Rajouri and Poonch--which serve as the districts' centres of administration, trade and commerce, and education--both have a majority of Hindu and Sikh residents. It is the countryside that is largely Muslim, overwhelmingly so in the case of Poonch. Most of the Hindus and Sikhs settled in the townships of Rajouri and Poonch are, moreover, refugees or descendants of refugees from Pakistani Kashmir. In fact, the historical district of Poonch, which formed an autonomous principality within the pre-1947 kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir, has been divided between Jammu and Kashmir and Azad Jammu and Kashmir since the end of the first Indo-Pakistani war over Kashmir in January 1949. Contested in subsequent wars in 1965 and 1971, the area has a reputation for producing hardline nationalists on both sides of the dividing line. The Hindu (and Sikh) minorities of Rajouri and Poonch naturally feel deeply threatened by the upsurge of guerrilla activity in their immediate neighbourhood. In the southern hills of the Rajouri district (closer to the Hindu-dominated areas of the Jammu plains), where the population is evenly balanced between Hindus and Muslims and includes a strong sprinkling of Sikhs, I met a group of about 20 Hindu villagers who have been organised by the government into a Village Defence Committee (VDC). A network of these VDCs--"self-defence" militia--exists throughout the confessionally-mixed, insurgency-prone areas of the Jammu region, and usually comprises only Hindus, although there are local Sikhs in some cases. Muslims, obviously, do not wish to join or are regarded as unreliable by the organisers--practically no operational VDCs exist in Muslim-populated rural areas of Poonch, for example. The VDCs are frequently valorised in the Indian media as the vanguard of patriotic resistance to Pakistan and its agents, and vilified by pro-Pakistan and pro-independence elements in Jammu and Kashmir as unsavoury auxiliaries of a repressive Indian occupation. The VDC members I met matched neither of the two caricatures. They were poor, simple villagers, dressed in soiled, tattered clothes and scuffed shoes, clutching antiquated .303 rifles with a self-consciousness that bordered on the comical. They had many complaints--poor and irregular pay for their services from the authorities, a strictly rationed supply of bullets, and above all, the ridiculously inadequate calibre of their weapons. The .303 rifle, they explained, can fire only one bullet at a time, and it takes quite a bit of time to reload and fire again. The standard firearm of the "militants" (as the guerrillas are known in Jammu and Kashmir) is, of course, the AK-47 automatic assault rifle. They had nothing but contempt for the authorities who had equipped them with such substandard weaponry, and they were visibly apprehensive about the dangerous conditions in the area. When I enquired as to what motivated them to enrol as VDC members at all if the terms were so poor and the treatment of the authorities so callous, they replied, "We have to be prepared to defend our village to the best of our ability if the need arises". In other words, a minimum guarantee of survival and security, rather than a patriotic resolve to defend India's frontiers against external and internal foes, was what motivated these ragged-looking but curiously gallant grassroots warriors. 
Sumantra Bose | An Indian army roadblock, in a disturbed area of Jammu and Kashmir, Surankote, Poonch district. These soldiers are part of the Romeo force. "I ran into a ROP-BDS of the Indian army in a small valley a few kilometres before Surankote early one morning. This stands for Road Opening Party-Bomb Disposal Squad. Their task is to check the road every morning for mines that may have been planted by guerrillas hiding in the surrounding mountains during the previous night. These soldiers are an elite unit raised for counter-insurgency in Rajouri and Poonch. The soldiers I met were from all over India--Rajasthan, Gujarat, West Bengal, Nagaland. These Romeos are constrained to lead distinctly unromantic lives, however. They are also the most nervous individuals I have ever encountered." |
They are not the only reluctant warriors in Jammu and Kashmir today. Beyond a small, tense town called Surankote, the Rajouri-Poonch road no longer has a paved surface. It becomes a glorified dirt-track, barely motorable even by jeep-type vehicles. These 30 or so kilometres from Surankote to Poonch, running through meandering mountains and across decrepit bridges over dried-up streams with occasional deserted hamlets along the way, is the most dangerous stretch of road in Jammu and Kashmir at the moment. No one--not even the military--moves on this road after dusk. I ran into a ROP-BDS of the Indian army in a small valley a few kilometres before Surankote early one morning. In the peculiar acronym-laden language spoken by combatants and civilians alike in this war-zone, this stands for Road Opening Party-Bomb Disposal Squad. Their task is to check the road every morning for mines and IEDs that may have been planted by guerrillas hiding in the surrounding mountains during the previous night, enabling military convoys to then pass in relative safety during daylight hours. These soldiers, with their complement of jeeps, trucks and one imposing-looking "mine-proof" armoured patrol vehicle, were members of the Romeo Force, an elite unit raised for counter-insurgency in Rajouri and Poonch. The soldiers I met were from all over India--Rajasthan, Gujarat, West Bengal, Nagaland. These Romeos are constrained to lead distinctly unromantic lives, however. They are also the most nervous individuals I have ever encountered. "I have to do this just to feed my family, sir," one soldier from Gujarat muttered through clenched teeth as a gunshot--later found to have been fired as a "warning shot" by the next army picket--sounded from across the valley. "Sir, I think even a stray dog has a better life than we do," one of his colleagues averred. He was about to elaborate on this theme when something exploded with a loud noise close by in the surrounding hills. The unit immediately took up combat positions and asked us to drive away from the scene as quickly as possible. The faceless adversaries who keep the Romeo Force in a permanent state of jitters are the feared "Jihadi" fighters--transnational Islamist militants--whose activities have aroused anxiety bordering on panic across three continents, from New Delhi to Washington. However, according to the estimates of both counter-insurgency sources and local community leaders and journalists, the number of active "foreign militants," as they are known, is surprisingly small. For example, only 250-300 "foreigners," operating in numerous small groups, are estimated to be active in the district of Poonch, whose population is over 350,000. In this district alone, they face five brigades (at least 15,000 soldiers) deployed for internal counter-insurgency, in addition to heavy Indian troop deployment along the LOC itself. Moreover, these small numbers have, according to local sources, remained constant over the last four or five years--while infiltration from across the LOC is a regular phenomenon, the infiltrators also suffer high casualty rates at the hands of the army both during and after infiltration. Most of the "Jihadis" who have been killed in action have been Pakistanis, many from Azad Kashmir districts across the border, some from Pakistan proper. Those in the latter category tend to be from provincial towns in Pakistani Punjab. There is a sprinkling of ethnic Pathans as well, mainly from Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province but also from Afghanistan, and the occasional fighter from further afield. All the prominent Pakistan-based "Jihadi" groups--Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), Al-Badr, Harkat-ul-Jehad-I-Islami, etc.--have fighters in the area, and they often pool their resources for operations against military targets. In addition, there is the more indigenously-based Hizb'ul Muja hideen's fighting force, which in the Poonch-Rajouri belt is known as HMPPR (Hizb'ul Muja hideen Pir Panjal Regiment), a reference to the Pir Panjal massif that cuts through the region in an east-west arc. How is it possible for such small numbers of insurgents to sustain effective operations across a large area and transform Poonch and Rajouri into the most happening theatre of war in Jammu and Kashmir? One part of the answer was provided to me by a young Kashmiri Muslim police officer fighting against the guerrillas, with whom I had a long and candid conversation during my visit. A Kashmiri-speaking Muslim from Doda district, also in the Jammu region, he spoke with evident frustration of what he regards as the Indian state's unsympathetic attitude towards the rights and grievances of Kashmiris and he recounted how the army frequently mistreats local people and mishandles local situations. But he also spoke with pride of how his special police unit had "eliminated" eight recently infiltrated Jaish-e-Mohammad fighters in a fierce encounter in late August, after receiving a tip-off about their presence from local villagers. Clearly, he had chosen to make his career with the side he regards as the lesser devil. I have nothing but admiration for them [the 'Jihadi' infiltrators]," he told me. "They are incredibly well -organized, rigorously trained, superbly equipped and above all, highly determined and motivated. Very brave, very tough people." He showed me an inventory of weapons and equipment seized from eliminated guerrillas since the beginning of the year: RPG-7 rocket launchers, a long-range light machine-gun known as the PIKA gun, AK-47 assault rifles, 7.62 mm Dragunov sniper rifles, 40 mm BG-15 rifle-mounted grenade launchers (first used in Afghanistan in 1984, he volunteered), Chinese pistols, Chinese anti-tank rockets, 82 mm. mortar bombs, high-explosive hand grenades, anti-tank mines, anti-personnel mines, IEDs of various types, remote-controls used to detonate mines and IEDs, programmed timer devices, huge quantities of RDX explosive, heat-seeking RPG-7 rockets, flame throwers, night-vision devices, binoculars, PIKA and AK-series ammunition, the latest Kenwood and Yaesu radio sets for high-frequency communication with other units and with bases across the LOC, decoding sheets for coded communications. As I inspected this arsenal and listened on the officer's own radio set to two nearby guerrilla units bantering with each other in Punjabi, I realised that this "Jihad" is actually a full-fledged military operation organised and operated by professionals. Advanced equipment, greater mobility and superior grit and determination are obviously factors crucial to the guerrillas' success in pinning down entire brigades and divisions of the Indian army. But what of local fighters in the militants' ranks? At the least, was it possible for a relative handful of "foreigners" to generate this level of disturbance without various forms of support and assistance from elements of the local population? As soon as I broached these questions, my informant turned noticeably taciturn. When I asked him specifically whether the Hizb'ul Muja hideen's PPR (Pir Panjal Regiment), active in the area, was composed mainly of foreigners or local fighters, he became visibly uncomfortable and ended the interview. I found tentative answers to my unresolved questions elsewhere, however. In a village called Lassana, I met Chaudhary Mohammad Aslam, a local notable and prominent "pro-India" politician, in his heavily fortified hilltop home. Aslam has had a distinguished career in Jammu and Kashmir's Indian-sponsored political establishment. Over the past 20 years, he has at various times been education minister, agriculture minister, speaker of the Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly and president of the Congress party in Jammu and Kashmir. He is also the traditional leader of the Gujjar community in Rajouri and Poonch. The Gujjars, a nomadic people, are usually herdsmen living in remote mountain areas and suffer from above-average levels of poverty and illiteracy. However, they constitute the single largest ethnic group in many areas of Rajouri and Poonch and their loyalty is therefore a crucial determinant of who has the upper hand in these contested borderlands.  | | Sumantra Bose | | A view in the Baramulla district, Kashmir valley. A Sikh shrine (gurdwara) in a picturesque setting by the Jhellum river. A symbol of the multi-confessional nature of Kashmir. |
"Nobody wants Pakistan here," Chaudhary Aslam assured me confidently. If any Gujjars provide food, shelter or intelligence to insurgents, or act as their guides and couriers, it is, he claimed, majboori se (because they are threatened into doing so) or else garibi se (because of acute poverty, they give some assistance in exchange for money). This was plausible, but not entirely convincing. "Isn't it a fact that some local Gujjar youths have actually joined the insurgents," I asked. "Yes," he admitted, with such a pained look on his face that I felt like a dentist extracting a rotten tooth. "The rhetoric of jihad has had some effect unfortunately." It was only after the interview was over that I found out that Chaudhary Aslam's own antecedents are much more fluid than he would like to acknowledge. During the fighting between Indian and Pakistani forces in Poonch and Rajouri in 1947-8, Aslam's father, Chaudhary Ghulam Hussein, had sided with Pakistan and had migrated to the Pakistani side of the cease-fire line that came into existence in January 1949 and was renamed the LOC by Indo-Pakistani agreement in 1972. Ghulam Hussein returned from the other side only in 1954, after which his son embarked on his career as an Indian politician. But the allegiances of the next generation of Gujjars had, apparently, once again become indeterminate. Aslam's own nephew, I later learned, was a leading guerrilla in the area.  | |
| Thinking Point | | | Do you think religion is the best way of viewing the divide in Kashmir? If not, describe in your own words the various divisions that currently exist in the region. | | |
This, then, is the convoluted reality of the Kashmir conflict, far removed from the tendentious, caricatured, black-and-white accounts of the parties to the dispute. Overlapping layers of group identity--ethnic, confessional, local--come together in a fluid mix in a context of intense interstate rivalry over territory and the allegiance of people, and there are significant variations in patterns of politics across different communities and regional locales of Jammu and Kashmir. A cacophony of competing tunes, rather than a single melody, emerges from the texture of this richly diverse, plural society. Recognition of these multiple layers of ambiguity, fluidity and complexity is essential to any informed understanding of the Kashmir problem, and to any policy designed to address this complicated crisis.
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