Government places tariff on imports while
revenge attacks against Kashmiris have been reported
By Michael
Safi in Delhi and Azhar Farooq in Srinagar
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People
shout anti-Pakistan slogans as they burn Pakistani flags and kites following
the
Kashmir bombing. Photograph: Raminder Pal Singh/EPA
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India has announced reprisals against
Pakistan for a suicide bombing that killed at least 40 paramilitaries in the
disputed region of Kashmir.
India’s finance minister, Arun Jaitley, has
placed a 200% tariff on Pakistani imports and the home ministry announced on
Sunday it was withdrawing the security details of a several Kashmiri separatist
leaders.
A car laden with explosives driven by a
member of the Pakistan-based militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, is believed to
have been responsible for the deadliest attack in the history of Kashmir’s
30-year insurgency on Thursday.
Ceremonies have been held in the capital,
Delhi, and across the country to farewell the dead as public anger continues to
boil. “The fire that is raging in your hearts, is in my heart too,” the prime
minister, Narendra Modi, told an audience in Bihar state on Sunday.
India’s home ministry has also directed
police to protect Kashmiris studying or working in states across India
following reports of revenge attacks including attempts to storm a female
students’ hostel in the northern city of Dehradun.
Authorities cut mobile internet in Kashmir
and roads and markets were deserted on Sunday as residents observed a general
strike to protest the vigilante violence.
Soldiers and paramilitaries stationed in the
region were on high alert and a new protocol was in force banning civilian cars
from driving near convoys of security personnel.
In Jammu, the region adjacent to Kashmir,
several thousand people have been stranded for the past four days and been
placed in a relief camp. A curfew has been established in the area after arson
attacks on Kashmiri homes. Mohammad Akram, a volunteer at a relief camp in
Jammu, said more than 3,000 Kashmiri Muslims were being provided shelter and
food.
“More people who were stranded at hotels are
coming and some are leaving for Kashmir during the night,” he told the
Guardian.
At a cricket club in Mumbai, a portrait of
Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan – one of several pictures of cricketers
hanging in the premises – was covered “as a mark of protest”, the club
president told India’s Press Trust International.
Thursday’s bombing has raised tensions
between the nuclear-armed neighbours to their highest point since the September
2016 attack by Jaish-e-Mohammed on an army camp in Uri, a town near Kashmir’s
ceasefire border.
That incident killed 19 people and led India
to announce it had sent army teams into Pakistani-held territory to destroy
militant camps, an operation labelled the “surgical strikes” and celebrated in
a blockbuster film released this year.
Modi has promised to avenge the suicide
attack and says his security forces have been given full freedom to respond.
But despite the strong rhetoric, India’s options are limited, said Paul
Staniland, an associate professor in political science at the University of
Chicago.
Sending troops deep into Pakistani-held
territory would risk escalating a conflict where nuclear weapons have been in
play on both sides since 1998, as well exposing Indian soldiers to capture or
warplanes to being shot down.
More likely, he said, was a similar
small-scale attack along the lines of the 2016 surgical strikes, but this time
accompanied something like a precision-guided munition attack.
“It moves slightly beyond the response to Uri
and lets Modi say he’s not just doing the exact same thing again, but doesn’t
open the door to hard-to-predict escalation dynamics,” Staniland said.
But such an attack would be unlikely dissuade
Pakistan from continuing to allow armed groups to operate on its territory, he
added. “India might need to really move up the escalation ladder to impose costs,
but that in turn creates bigger risks that Indian governments thus far have
decided were ultimately not worth it.”
