India's War at Home

By Jyoti Thottam / Srinagar

A rock and a hard place - A Srinagar youth readies his slingshot during protests in May
Keith Bedford / Atlas Press

Abid Baig is a salesman in a dried-fruits shop in Lal Chowk, the central shopping district of Srinagar, Indian Kashmir's capital. But Baig's real calling is as a stone thrower. A familiar figure at protests for azadi, or freedom, that regularly clog Srinagar's streets, 21-year-old Baig is angry, blaming the pervasive Indian security presence for choking off his chance at a decent life. His parents pulled him out of school when he was just in 10th grade because they worried that their only child would be picked up by police trolling for militants. Baig speaks intensely and deliberately, looking down at his hands, so an arc of black hair droops over his forehead. "Everybody wants to be something," he says. "I wanted to be a doctor." Instead, he hurls stones to vent his frustration. "They don't allow us to live in peace."

Peace in Kashmir - as in Afghanistan, Iraq and much of the Middle East - has long seemed out of reach, but it is just as urgent. India and Pakistan have fought three wars over the territory since 1947, when Muslim-majority Kashmir acceded to mostly Hindu India, over Pakistan's objections. Kashmir is much more than an unresolved border dispute, however. To Pakistan, it is an endless grudge against an old enemy that seems to supersede even its own war against the Taliban. To India, Kashmir is the most potent reminder of the violence it has been unable to escape while aspiring to a more prosperous future. (Read "A Violent Crime Resurrects Kashmir's Call for Freedom.")

The two countries negotiated a Line of Control dividing Indian and Pakistani Kashmir in 1971, but that unofficial border has been a source of constant conflict and tension. In 1989, a homegrown movement of Kashmiri separatists rose up against India; Islamabad supported some of them, as well as groups of cross-border militants. To put down this multiheaded insurgency, New Delhi sent in what amounts now to a presence of 700,000 troops (among a civilian population of just 5 million). The military's hard-line tactics have sparked considerable anger among the local populace. The presence of those troops - despite the decline of the separatist movement - is the core complaint for ordinary Kashmiris like Baig. India ignores the rage of these young men at its peril. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, head of Srinagar's central mosque and chairman of the moderate faction of the Hurriyat group of separatists, warned in a recent speech that if the concerns of the Kashmiri people are not heard, "the mind-set of those individuals, particularly youth, will likely deteriorate into a continuous feeling of occupation and endangerment, leading them to pick up arms again."

Baig and his friends are the new icons of Kashmiri hostility toward the Indian state. The stone throwers are often photographed in action, yet little is known about them. On a recent afternoon, however, I actually met several. There was Amir, a reedy 17-year-old who sneaks out to the protests without telling his parents; Asif, a muscular 24-year-old rickshaw driver; and Muddasar, 20, with soft blue eyes and a dark red bullet wound in his left shin. Their de facto leader is Imran Zargar, 24, who spent 11/2 years in jail after one ugly clash. His police record then disqualified him from any job with the government, by far Kashmir's largest employer. Says Zargar: "I found that I had no future."

Will such disillusionment evolve into a more serious threat against the Indian state? In their jeans and Nikes, the resentful young men of Srinagar identify most closely with youths on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank, not those in jihadist training camps. But they also insist that religious heads support what they do, and that if they die in a protest, they will be considered martyrs. A military intelligence official in New Delhi who has served in Kashmir worries, "Many young Kashmiris have taken arms and embraced radical Islam because there is no hope of a good life."

Indian forces in Kashmir have traditionally been more focused on jihadists based in Pakistan, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group that Indian and U.S. authorities blame for last November's terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Indian officials say that Pakistan has not only failed to prosecute any top LeT leaders, it has continued to support their incursions into Indian Kashmir. They hold up as evidence several recent incidents, including a Sept. 12 car bomb set off next to a police bus in Srinagar. "Two Lashkar commanders masterminded the attack," claims Farooq Ahmed, inspector general of police for Kashmir. Ahmed says that one of them, Abdur Rehman, "is hiding somewhere in south Kashmir."

In this climate, resolving Kashmir may seem to have little chance, yet diplomacy has picked up a bit of pace. Over the past few months, there have been signs of a thaw and hints that the two countries, prodded by Washington, would reopen a dialogue that has been stalled since the Mumbai terror attacks last year. On June 16, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari shook hands at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Russia, where Zardari acknowledged that Pakistan's greatest threat was the Taliban - a remarkable admission for a country that has long considered India its most dangerous neighbor. Indian authorities, meanwhile, may soon start talks with the Hurriyat separatists. But every gesture of reconciliation - most recently, meetings between top diplomats on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City - has been followed by tough talk and accusations from both sides.

A Spreading Rage

The formative event for Kashmir's angry youth was the August 2008 protests over Amarnath, a Hindu shrine about 88 miles (141 km) from Srinagar. A massive movement opposed the Kashmir state government's controversial decision to allocate 100 acres (40 hectares) of land to a local Hindu pilgrimage group, and drew as many as 500,000 protesters on one day. The police fired on the crowds (Muddasar, the young stone thrower, was among those injured) and as many as 20 people were killed in the most intense week of protests. For Basharat, just 14, Amarnath was his initiation. I asked him what he felt the first time he threw a stone. "Anger," he says. But throwing wasn't enough. "It has to hit its target."