[The killings marked the deadliest single encounter this year between security forces and civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir, part of India’s only Muslim-majority state where for three decades militants have fought either for independence or to join Pakistan. The deaths also form part of a grim trend: Violence is increasing in Kashmir as India’s ruthless pursuit of militants generates alienation and anger among Kashmiri youth.]
By Joanna Slater and Ishfaq
Naseem
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Kashmiri
villagers comfort the grieving mother of a 14-year-old boy during his
funeral in
Pulwama, south of Srinagar, on Dec. 15. (Dar Yasin/AP)
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NEW
DELHI — The security forces
arrived in the Kashmiri village of Sirnoo in the middle of the night and
surrounded their targets: three separatist militants fighting Indian rule.
Early on the morning of Dec. 15, locals
awakened to the sound of gunfire. As word of the clash spread, hundreds of
young people converged on the area, throwing stones in an attempt to help the
militants escape. Then the security forces opened fire on the crowd, killing
seven and wounding dozens more. One of those killed was a 14-year-old boy.
The killings marked the deadliest single
encounter this year between security forces and civilians in
Indian-administered Kashmir, part of India’s only Muslim-majority state where
for three decades militants have fought either for independence or to join Pakistan.
The deaths also form part of a grim trend: Violence is increasing in Kashmir as
India’s ruthless pursuit of militants generates alienation and anger among
Kashmiri youth.
In 2018, the death toll for militants and
security forces in Kashmir touched the highest point in a decade, according to
official figures, with more than 324 killed. Human rights groups put the
civilian fatalities at over 100. Almost no experts believe the situation will
improve in the short term.
The incident in Sirnoo, in the district of
Pulwama, illustrates the turn for the worse. As security forces carry out
operations, they are frequently confronted by crowds of people who, rather than
scattering, try to block their way.
There is now a “generation of people whose
only encounter with India seems to be through the prism of the security
forces,” said Amitabh Mattoo, a professor of international relations at
Jawaharlal Nehru University and a longtime observer of the Kashmir conflict.
A Himalayan region claimed by both India and
Pakistan, Kashmir is divided by a heavily militarized frontier. The insurgency
in Jammu and Kashmir began in 1989 and has ebbed and flowed in the intervening
years. Pakistan has lent active support to the militancy, much to India’s fury.
The number of militants is thought to be only a few hundred today, far less
than at the insurgency’s peak in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Still, recruitment by militant groups is on
the rise.
“The militancy is becoming much more
homegrown now,” said Ayjaz Ahmad Wani, a fellow at the Observer Research
Foundation, a think tank based in Delhi. “The coming year may be more violent.”
Experts point to the 2016 killing of Burhan
Wani, a 22-year-old militant commander who built a devoted following on social
media, as a crucial turning point. In the weeks after Wani’s death, huge
protests broke out across Kashmir.
In response, India used “excessive force that
led to unlawful killings and a very high number of injuries,” according to a
report released in June by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human
Rights. The report also cited India’s use of “inherently inaccurate and
indiscriminate” pellet-firing shotguns as a means of crowd dispersal, which
left hundreds blinded. India rejected the report’s findings.
The upturn in violence coincided with the
absence of any meaningful political process to address Kashmiri grievances on
the part of the federal government, whose embrace of Hindu chauvinism has
distressed Muslims across India.
“New Delhi has created the opportunity for
the escalation, which has been taken advantage of by Pakistan [and] by the
separatists,” said Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict
Management in Delhi.
Security officials in Kashmir say the
increasing number of militants being killed is a sign of success. “We have
launched more anti-militancy operations this year,” said Ravideep Sahai, a
senior officer in the Central Reserve Police Force based in Srinagar. That also
increases the risk to security personnel, he said: More operations lead to
greater chances of fatal encounters.
Meanwhile, there are signs that militants are
also changing their tactics. In recent months, they have abducted and killed
police officers. In November, the Hizbul Mujahideen, a local militant group,
circulated videos on social media showing the executions of alleged informers —
a brutal move not seen before in Kashmir.
In the village of Sirnoo, members of Hizb
ul-Mujahideen dug a trench in a nearby orchard, covered it with sheets of
corrugated metal and used it as a hideout. The gun battle between the militants
and the security forces lasted an hour, villagers said. When it was over, three
militants and one soldier were dead.
“There was a hideout inside the orchard from
which the militants came out to fire at the security forces. Why would the
crowd go to the encounter site? They wanted to disrupt the operations,” said
Muneer Ahmad Khan, a senior police officer. A police statement said that “a
crowd came dangerously close” to the site of the encounter with militants and
expressed regret at the civilian deaths.
As the security forces retreated, groups of
young men began to pelt them with stones, said Mushtaq Ahmad Wani, 28, who saw
the clash move from the site of the gun battle with the militants to the
village itself.
Ghulam Mohidin Lone, 80, said the security
forces fired into the air to disperse the crowds. Then a vehicle stopped
outside his house, and soldiers began shooting. One bullet hit 18-year-old
Owais Yusuf Najar, who Lone said was tending to another injured person. “He
died on the spot,” Lone said. “His brain spilled out.”
Owais’s father, Mohammad Yusuf Najar, said
his son was working as an auto mechanic and planned to continue his studies.
“He was not a stone-thrower; he was not a militant. He had just gone to fetch
water for an injured boy before he was killed,” Najar said. His death “is a
wound which will never heal.”
Naseem reported from Sirnoo.
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To control crowds in Kashmir, police fired pellets. Now this 16-year-old will never see fully again.
