by Anam Zakaria
To my husband Haroon and my friend Sharjeel, without whom none of the research would have been possible
CONTENTS
Preface
PART ONE: CONFLICT
1. THE BEGINNINGS
When Kishanganga became Neelum
2. A SIKH’S LOST HERITAGE
‘To save everyone, my bua… threw her baby into the river’
3. HURRIYAT’S MAN IN PAKISTAN
Musings of a retired mujahid
4. A PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT
Refugees who yearn to go back, but can’t
5. THE WOMEN HAVE HAD ENOUGH
‘If we don’t have people left alive, what is the need for Kashmir?’
PART TWO: STATE POLICIES
6. FIGHT TO THE FINISH
The army in Kashmir
7. WATERMELON WITH THE PRESIDENT
An encore of a core issue
PART THREE: BEYOND THE CEASEFIRE
8. JIHADIS, FAUJIS AND CHINESE…
…and a corridor of uncertainty
9. WHERE THE MIND IS NOT WITHOUT FEAR
‘If you tie someone’s ankle with a chain and allow them to dance, it does not mean they are free’
10. NEITHER PUNJABI NOR KASHMIRI
Mirpur, Kotli and other journeys
Footnotes
Photographic Inserts
Acknowledgements
About the Book
About the Author
Advance Praise for the Book
Copyright
AUTHOR’S DISCLAIMER
This book is an attempt to study a region—‘Azad’ Kashmir—that has often been neglected in conversations about the present and future of Jammu and Kashmir. I have used interviews with locals and various stakeholders in ‘Azad’ Kashmir to explore the Kashmir conflict through their eyes. In most cases, I have chosen to present the terms and statements as conveyed by my interviewees to me to provide readers with a better understanding of how ‘Azad’ Kashmiris experience the ongoing conflict. These statements and terms do not necessarily reflect my views or those of the publisher.
I also recognize that Kashmir is referred to with different names and titles both locally and internationally, some acceptable in India and others in Pakistan. While India refers to Pakistan-administered Kashmir, which comprises ‘Azad’ Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan (formerly known as Northern Areas), as ‘Pakistan-occupied Kashmir’, Pakistan refers to Indian-administered Kashmir, known as the state of Jammu and Kashmir in India (constituting Jammu, Kashmir Valley and Ladakh), as ‘makbooza (occupied) Kashmir’.
In the popular parlance, however, when people in Pakistan say ‘makbooza Kashmir’, they are often mainly referring to the Kashmir Valley, not Jammu and Ladakh. Similarly, in India, when people say ‘Pakistan-occupied Kashmir’, they sometimes mean only ‘Azad’ Kashmir, treating Gilgit-Baltistan separately but still seeing it as a part of India.
‘Occupied’ and ‘azad’ are both loaded terms and as the author, my hope is to understand what constitutes ‘freedom’ and ‘occupation’ for Kashmiris, without imposing my labels. I have thus chosen to use the terms Pakistan-administered and Indian-administered Kashmir to explore what freedom and occupation mean for Kashmiris.
However, while I have employed the term Pakistan-administered Kashmir in parts of the book, ‘Azad’ Kashmir has been used more frequently to distinguish it from Gilgit-Baltistan. The two regions have unique histories, politics and cultural realities. While the book makes certain references to Gilgit-Baltistan, the region is not the book’s focus, which remains firmly on ‘Azad’ Kashmir.
Further, ‘Azad Kashmir’ is how the people of the region commonly refer to the area and it is their voice that the book seeks to highlight.
Where I have used the term ‘Azad’ Kashmir or ‘Azad’ Kashmiris, I have placed ‘Azad’ within inverted commas (unless I am quoting someone or using an excerpt which implies otherwise) to denote that the label of freedom—like that of occupation—in itself needs to be deconstructed to fully explore people’s experiences in the region.
I take full responsibility for the nomenclature used in the book.
PREFACE
‘Jang ho gayee?’ (Are we at war?), I asked my mother as she wrapped me in her arms and ran down the stairs. I had been shaken awake from deep slumber in the middle of the night. I was only three years old but three is old enough to register tension in the air. Three is old enough to understand that the all-too-frequently uttered word, ‘war’, did not mean anything positive.
It was the early 1990s, the decade in which India-Pakistan relations had hit a new low. India alleged that Pakistan-backed militants had been launched across the Line of Control (LoC)—the line that divides Kashmir into two hostile parts—1in the deeply contested territory that both India and Pakistan continue to claim since the 1947 partition of the subcontinent. As attacks against the Indian state escalated in Indian-administered2 Kashmir, India accused Pakistan of ‘supporting the insurgency by providing weapons and training to fighters, terming attacks against it in Kashmir “crossborder terrorism”’.3 Though Pakistan denied the claim, relations plummeted. The decade of the 1990s also witnessed the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992, which resulted in deadly Hindu-Muslim riots in several parts of India and attacks on Hindu temples and religious minorities in Pakistan; the Mumbai blasts in 1993, which India claimed were sponsored by Pakistan,4 and the Kargil conflict in 1999, which brought both nations to the brink of nuclear war5. Talk of war was rampant across Pakistani media channels and TV lounge discussions during the 1990s. We were told that India, the historic foe, could launch an attack anytime.
As we stood under the open sky that night, I could only imagine that war meant being pushed out of warm beds, it meant being thrust out of one’s home. But that night it turned out to be a false alarm. It was not war but an earthquake that had jolted my family. The border continued to be more or less peaceful despite clashes across the LoC. And so, tucked away in Lahore, miles away from the LoC, we remained safe, removed from the conflict in many ways.
For thousands of Kashmiris on both sides of the LoC, however, a state of war was a harrowing reality during the 1990s. The villages scattered across the LoC were rocked by mortar shelling and firing, often hour after hour. As India claimed that armed militants crossed the LoC—allegedly backed by the Pakistani state—to fight the Indian regime, the Indian Army responded with heavy shelling, which was in turn met with shelling by the Pakistani forces. Stranded in between the tit-for-tat battle were the Kashmiris.
It is estimated that there are nearly 285 villages along the LoC in the part of Kashmir administered by Pakistan6 (popularly called ‘Azad Kashmir’ in Pakistan and ‘Pakistan-occupied Kashmir’ in India).7 In comparison to the population living on the other side of the LoC—which is smaller and more dispersed8—these villages are heavily populated and face the brunt of escalated Indo-Pak tensions. An untold number of these ‘Azad’ Kashmiris lost their lives during the 1990s, while others suffered life-altering injuries and deep psychological scars. The state-run news channel in Pakistan, PTV, would often broadcast news of ‘Muslim persecution’ in Indian-administered Kashmir and the damage caused by Indian shelling in ‘Azad’ Kashmir. As a toddler and then a young child, I came to absorb these violent stories.
But the war was more than television news for me. The family of my cook, who had lived with me since I was three, and whose children I had played with throughout my childhood, were Kashmiri. Every summer, they would return home to visit their grandparents in ‘Azad’ Jammu and Kashmir, more commonly abbreviated as AJK. (The term ‘azad’ is used in direct opposition to ‘makbooza’9 [‘Indianoccupied’] Kashmir, a common expression among �
�Azad’ Kashmiris and Pakistanis alike.)
During the nineties, my mother would plead with our cook and his family not to go. She would tell them of the news coming in, of blocked roads and continuous firing. My cook would argue that it was his home; he would say he had to go back no matter what the conditions were like. Telephone lines would not work and I remember having to wait for several weeks to hear that they had reached safely. When they would return, the children would tell me of hiding behind mountains and in the middle of forests, of only being able to travel at night for fear of being seen by the Indian forces, which allegedly indiscriminately targeted army posts and civilians. As a child I recall feeling the fear of losing my friends to this ‘enemy’. I also recall imagining Kashmir as a dark and gloomy place, a place that reminded me of death. But alongside the frightening stories, my cook’s children would tell me of how beautiful ‘Azad’ Kashmir was. They would return with walnuts and apples and tales of the magnificence of ‘Azad’ J&K. My father, who served in the Pakistan Army and had been posted in AJK in the 1980s, would also speak of the towering mountain peaks and flowing rivers. AJK became a strange point of fascination for me in my childhood. I told myself that I would visit whenever the war would end, whenever it would be safe to go.
Through the nineties, India continued to claim that Pakistan-backed militants were infiltrating the LoC to wage attacks against the Indian state. Though Pakistan denied the allegations, India-Pakistan relations remained strained. It was the 2003 ceasefire between India and Pakistan that brought relative peace to the region.10 The reasons for the ceasefire will be discussed during the course of this book, with a focus on the role the US played in the post-9/11 era, Pakistan’s own participation in the War on Terror as a US ally in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and other internal factors within Pakistan and India that prompted state officials to engage in peace talks.
For the locals, the 2003 ceasefire meant that, ‘For the first time in several decades, the guns along this frontier went silent, bringing much needed respite to the shell-shocked lives of people in hamlets across the LoC and to soldiers guarding the border posts. It facilitated the opening of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad and Poonch-Rawalkot routes, paving the way for bus and truck services linking the two Kashmirs for the first time in six decades, and encouraging cross-LoC contacts, exchanges, travel and trade.’11 (Barely two years later, however, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake devastated Kashmir. It is estimated that 75,000 people were killed in the 2005 earthquake, mostly in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.12 Death, destruction and tragedy had become the norm in the region.)
Still reeling from the after-effects of war and natural disaster, Kashmiris in ‘Azad’ Kashmir slowly started to rebuild their homes and lives. As the region opened up to tourists (due to the heavy shelling for years, few had considered it safe to venture into the region, particularly in areas close to the LoC, until the 2003 ceasefire), thousands of Pakistanis flocked to ‘Azad’ Kashmir, in awe of its beauty. The 200-kilometre-long Neelum Valley, where the clear blue Neelum river (called Kishanganga in India) flows, became a particular point of attraction. In 2017, it was reported that over 312 guesthouses had cropped up in Neelum Valley over the past five years13 and that tourism now made up 40 per cent of the local economy.14 Overall, more than 500 hotels, motels and guesthouses have opened up in the region since 2003.15 Tall mountain peaks, riverside activities and fascination with the area’s proximity to the LoC lured in more than one-and-a-half million tourists to ‘Azad’ Kashmir in 2016,16 with 500,000 tourists coming to Neelum Valley alone, the highest number in history, according to official records.17 My husband Haroon and I visited ‘Azad’ J&K as tourists to celebrate our first wedding anniversary in 2014.
Until this trip, I didn’t know the extent of the devastation that ‘Azad’ Kashmir had seen. Minimal literature is available on the region. State narratives, bent upon juxtaposing this side of the LoC as the heaven across the hell, had silenced the voices of the locals. It was only through my visits that I learnt from ordinary Kashmiris what they had been through.
It is believed that at least 2,500 people died in Neelum Valley alone between 1989 and the 2003 ceasefire.18 Locals who I interviewed quoted a higher figure of about 3,000 people killed.19 Infrastructure, including schools and hospitals, was destroyed in the decade-long shelling, leaving behind a generation of uneducated, ailing Kashmiris. (While the book’s focus remains on ‘Azad’ Kashmir, it must be mentioned that Kashmiris living close to the LoC in Indian-administered Kashmir are also killed and injured in Pakistani shelling. Villagers living by the LoC in Indian-administered Kashmir are particularly vulnerable and have to resort to building bunkers like ‘Azad’ Kashmiris have to in order to save their lives each time India-Pakistan tensions escalate. Education of children is disrupted, as is normal life. While I would be unable to visit these villages in Indian-administered Kashmir and speak to the residents myself, Kashmiri and Indian news reports and my conversations with people would give me insights into the hardships they faced, caught in the crossfire. It is noteworthy, however, that both India and Pakistan only tend to report on the losses on the sides administered by them. The casualties on the other side are frequently ignored. While I will only be exploring the impact of shelling in ‘Azad’ Kashmir, the experiences of villagers on the other side mirror the victims’ narratives of shelling in ‘Azad’ Kashmir.)20
Disturbed to find that hardly any work had been done to document the devastation on this side of the LoC, I began to dig deeper. I spoke to women and children who had spent years living inside bunkers to escape Indian shelling. I spoke to refugees who had crossed over from Indian-administered Kashmir to escape crackdowns by the state, only to find themselves in ice-cold, cramped shelters even decades later. I spoke to former militants who had come to Pakistan for training and picked up arms to fight the Indian state. And I spoke to Kashmiri nationalists in ‘Azad’ Kashmir who sought equal distance from India and Pakistan but had had their demands silenced over the years.
I returned to Islamabad, seeking to find these stories documented somewhere in mainstream media and literature, but was disappointed. Though there are a number of books written by ‘Azad’ Kashmiris, literature that goes against the dominant Pakistani narrative on Kashmir has largely been banned by the state on the grounds of promoting anti-establishment agendas. In 2016, sixteen books, authored mostly by pro-freedom writers, were banned by the AJK government.21
I also found that in Pakistan at large, any discussion on ‘Azad’ Kashmir only took place in the context of Indian-administered Kashmir. It was as if ‘Azad’ Kashmiris did not have their own identity, their own politics. Rather they were only worthy of mention if the Indian state had shelled or fired at them. They seldom made it to the news otherwise. Meanwhile, when I asked some of my Kashmiri friends in India if they knew about the bloodshed in ‘Azad’ Kashmir, one of them laughed and said, ‘We have lost countless people and you’re talking about a few thousand. We don’t even consider that part of Kashmir as real Kashmir. It’s just an extension of Punjab.’ When I turned towards the political establishment in Pakistan to ask if they would be willing to talk to me about this part of Kashmir, one of the seniormost officials in the incumbent government asked, ‘Why are you writing about Azad Kashmir? If you want to write about the topic, write about the brutality of the Indian forces.’
These reactions, and the silences, made me realize that it was all the more important to write this book. I decided to return to ‘Azad’ Kashmir again and again to document the voices of the people. Between 2014 and 2017, I made eight such detailed trips, each time carrying out interviews with ordinary men, women and children from the region for hours on end.
While the 1990s form the core of this book due to the heightened militancy and crackdowns and violence during that decade, it attempts to explore the larger Kashmir conflict through the lens of ‘Azad’ Kashmiris.
The book is divided into three parts, with the first seeking to understand the ori
gins of the conflict at the time of Partition through the voices of Kashmiris. While focusing on the events prior to accession (which Pakistan contests),22 the book also aims to explore what the ‘tribal’ raids meant for Kashmiris, both Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The raids particularly targeted Hindus and Sikhs, many of whom were butchered. Those who survived had to flee the only home they knew, to find refuge in what was to become Indian-administered Kashmir. Some Hindus and Sikhs who stayed back had to convert to Islam to save their skin. Alongside those of secondary sources, interviews of Muslim Partition survivors and stories of non-Muslims shape the initial part of the book. This is followed by interviews of militants and refugees created as a result of the conflict, and of women and children affected by the dispute.
The second part of the book studies the conflict from the perspective of the state, in order to deconstruct official narratives. Interviews with military and government officials, including Pakistan’s former chief of army staff, Jahangir Karamat, and the former president of AJK, Sardar Muhammad Yaqoob Khan, make up this part of the book.
The last part of the book looks beyond the 2003 ceasefire to understand the role of state and non-state actors in Kashmir today, and explores the current grievances of ‘Azad’ Kashmiris through the narratives of nationalists as well as pro-Pakistan supporters. It seeks to understand what peace and freedom mean in ‘Azad’ Kashmir.
The majority of the field research for this book was conducted between 2014 and 2016, mostly in Muzaffarabad, the capital of ‘Azad’ Kashmir, and in villages by the LoC in Neelum Valley. Neelum Valley begins at the Chela Bandi Bridge, north of Muzaffarabad, and extends for more than 200 kilometres;23 many of the villages in Neelum Valley are situated right by the LoC. The 2014-16 period was one of relative calm in these areas. I did, however, travel to other districts such as Kotli, located in Jammu in ‘Azad’ Kashmir, where ceasefire violations have been more common, and to Mirpur district, where the famous Mangla dam had been constructed in the 1960s, leading to a mass displacement of the local population.
