[The
clash on Monday came three days after a similar attack on a squad of police
officers patrolling streets in northern Kashmir left two of its men dead.]
Kashmir,
disputed between India and Pakistan, has long endured clashes between
separatist insurgents and government forces, and the violence has escalated
recently as strict
security protocols imposed in 2019 and pandemic restrictions have been
lifted. Pakistan, which contains a part of Kashmir, also claims the Indian
portion, and there have been repeated conflicts along the boundary separating
them.
The
attack on Monday, on the outskirts of the largest Kashmiri city, Srinagar, took
place in a highly guarded area home to major Indian security establishments
operating in the region. In the attack three days earlier, gunmen fired on a
squad of officers patrolling streets in northern Kashmir.
Jammu
and Kashmir was India’s only Muslim-majority state, with a degree of autonomy,
until August 2019, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government drastically
changed the region’s political status. It stripped the region of its
autonomy and its status as a state, and placed it under the direct control of
New Delhi.
Mr.
Modi’s government sent
in thousands of troops, detained many people without charges, cut off
Kashmir’s internet and phone access to the outside and imposed a kind of
lockdown. The moves were meant to smother militancy in Kashmir, but critics
feared it would only heighten the region’s troubles.
“I
think the question has been since August 2019 when things would go bad again,”
said Daniel Markey, a South Asia expert at the United States Institute of
Peace, a U.S. government agency.
“There
has been an assumption that the Indian government would have a perpetual
capacity to maintain a security crackdown such that you wouldn’t see this kind
of violence happen again, but that is a challenging and very costly thing to
do,” he added. “You let up a little bit, that creates openings. That’s why
critics thought it was ill-advised to begin with.”
Rather
than a changed political landscape in Kashmir, Monday's attack highlighted old,
lingering tensions, experts said.
Police
officials at the scene said the assailants tried to board the bus carrying
about two dozen policemen returning to their base Monday evening. Unable to get
on the bus, the attackers sprayed it with gunfire and fled.
Mr.
Modi was seeking more information and had expressed condolences to the
officers’ families, the prime minister’s office said
on Twitter.
Protests
and bouts of violence have erupted across Kashmir in recent months. The Indian
government’s move in 2019 split the region into two federally controlled
territories. One of those territories, Ladakh, perched high in the Himalayas on
the Chinese border, observed a complete shutdown on Monday, demanding full
statehood.
India
has deployed additional paramilitary soldiers to try to tamp down the violence.
Observers say the fresh attack is likely to increase tensions between the
residents and the police, hundreds of whom have lost their lives fighting the
insurgency since it erupted in the late 1980s.
Mehbooba
Mufti, a former top elected official who governed the region in a coalition
with Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party — a partnership that ended
abruptly in 2018 — said on Twitter that the attack on Monday belied the
government’s claims of having restored control and calm.
“Terribly
sad to hear about the Srinagar attack in which two policemen were killed,” Ms.
Mufti wrote. The “false narrative of normalcy in Kashmir stands exposed yet
there has been no course correction,” she added.
Government
forces reported killing two insurgents earlier on Monday, and there was
speculation that the attack on the police bus could have been in retaliation.
Officials
said they had received a tip about militants moving around Srinagar. They set
up checkpoints to frisk travelers.
“Two
suspected persons on noticing the police party fired indiscriminately upon
them. In the ensuing encounter, two terrorists were neutralized on spot,” the
police said in a statement.
Minutes
after that shootout, protests and clashes broke out in the area and angry
residents, including women, threw rocks at the police vehicles and chanted
anti-India slogans. Security forces dispersed the crowds with tear gas.
As
the clashes continued, a resident, Arshid Malik, splashed the blood of the
killed militants with water.
“They
are killing people on the streets here everyday,” he said. “And the world is
watching.”
Emily
Schmall contributed reporting from Chicago.
