Growing local support for militancy has J&K cops worried

SRINAGAR: Two months ago in the February chill, when most people usually stay warm inside with their kangris, a group of Kalashnikov wielding militants on motor bicycles stomped through a massive funeral for a Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist in a village graveyard of Pulwama in south Kashmir. They fired several rounds in the air and left the venue immediately, leaving many in the funeral enthralled and chattering about it for several days.Just like their predecessors in 1990, the new generation militants have come to be seen as heroes with a cult following in Kashmir.
“A girl, who seemed to be enamoured by the militants at the funeral, looked at my camera and had the gall to ask me if I were a mukhbir (informer) working for the government agencies,” a photographer who works for Kashmiri newspapers told the TOI last week. He didn’t take any pictures of the militants following the sly threat.
Two weeks later, defying police restrictions, thousands swarmed to another funeral of a Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist in Kulgam, another district of south Kashmir. There was such outpour of attendants that the funeral prayers were held six times. Next day, during an encounter, a top Lashkar-e-Taiba commander along with four other militants managed to flee because local residents started pelting stones on the security forces from the other side. Such incidents are rapidly becoming a norm in Kashmir.
Although there are only 200 active militants, most of them concentrated in south Kashmir, security agencies acknowledge that for the last one year, they are confronting a new face of militancy that has an appearance of being benign but poses a more dangerous challenge than it was earlier. “If there is a militant holed up in congested parts of the city today, I will think several times before taking any action against him. Most likely, I will just let it go. That is because I know that the scene today is different from a few years ago. Today, I have to deal not only with the militant in a hideout but local residents who will come out cheering for him or pelting stones on my men,” a senior police officer in Srinagar said.
Highly demoralized by media’s constant criticism over human rights violations, the Army finds itself in a precarious situation too. “We are now in a phase where we end up being in both a counter-insurgency operation and a law and order scene as well. The line between the two is disappearing,” an Army officer told the TOI in Srinagar.
Due to a major plug in infiltration, militancy in Kashmir is mostly home grown now. Of the 200 militants, sources said, only 30 odd may be Pakistanis. The foreign mercenaries, police sources said, are mostly in north Kashmir. But what worries the security forces more is the “unarmed militant” and his supporters in Kashmir. “An armed militant is a visible and known threat and we know how to fight him. But an unarmed militant is camouflaged in public. We don’t know who he is and what threat he and his supporters can pose,” a police officer lamented.
The counter-insurgency specialists in Kashmir attribute this growing discontent to various processes in Kashmir. For example, the 1990s born children, who grew up in violent conflict, a highly homogenized, Islamized society and a repressive state, have come of age. “They didn’t see anything better. They haven’t seen peace and co-existence. So they are spontaneously, on their own, at the forefront of mob violence. They need just a small trigger,” a civil servant told the TOI.
Police officials see these new trends as “a portent of a new indigenous warfare”. Stone-pelting, protests, and mass participation in militant funerals is a very cost-effective way of thumbing their nose at India, an officer said. Greater number of people show willingness to participate in such acts of defiance because it is relatively innocuous. “You see, what can we do if people go to funerals of militants? Nothing. We respect the sentiments of people because it is not a matter of celebration for us if a local militant is killed. After all, he is one among us, one of our own kids,” an Army officer said.
Police pointed out that people don’t mind getting associated with stone-pelting either. “There are hardly any societal consequences attached to it. There was a stigma attached to militancy; it was difficult for militants to find a match in marriage. Stone-pelting protests and funeral participation are not stigmatized because we (Army and police) show restraint. At the most, we pick up a few stone-pelters, counsel them and then let them go. So it is quite convenient to support it,” said a senior cop who deals with stone-pelting quite often in the city.
“Look, all this unrest is essentially conveying the same old message of 1990—they want separation. They don’t want to be part of India,” a lawyer sitting at a police station said.