Between the Great Divide

by Anam Zakaria

  Soon after the move, Neelum Valley was going to be shaken up by continuous mortar shelling. The Indian forces would fire towards Pakistan-administered Kashmir and the Pakistani forces would fire into Indian-administered Kashmir. Both sides would claim that they were forced to respond in the face of unprovoked firing and meddling from the other side. Ordinary Kashmiris on both sides of the LoC would find themselves squeezed in the middle of the battlefield. Anwar would bear witness to this but not for a while longer.

  ‘Then all of us eighty or so families got our refugee cards made,’ he continues. ‘We were given Rs 300 to buy basic necessities like cooking utensils, etc. We stayed in that camp for two to three months. But when the winter came, we had to move to a place called Kundal Shahi, another village on the banks of the Neelum river. Many of us lived there for more than a year, while others moved into the homes of the locals. Later, I helped set up another camp called the Karka camp (about 16 kilometres from Muzaffarabad city), but that was damaged in the 1992 floods. After that too, we had to move twice more until we finally came to this present camp. There are many refugees here, from our village but also from places like Srinagar, Uri, Baramulla, Jammu. Let’s see how long we stay here for. Who knows when we have to move again?’

  ‘Did your entire family come with you?’

  ‘No, only my brothers came with me. I had to leave my mother and sisters behind.’ When I ask him why he had to do that, he explains, ‘We were living in two different villages. My mother and sisters lived in our ancestral village, which was at a certain height, while my brothers and I lived in a village below them because it was easier to travel and work from there. When we decided to leave, my mother’s village was surrounded by the army from all sides. It just wasn’t possible to go there. If we had, we would have all been caught. I had to leave them behind. I had no choice. They are still there, even today.’

  ‘How many sisters do you have?’ I ask, ‘and was there any way to keep in touch with them?’

  ‘I have three younger sisters… they were all left behind. There was no phone or connection at that time but I would hear about how they were persecuted after we left. We would get news about them from people who came from that side. They (the army) would even lock up my sisters,’ he shakes his head in sorrow and sighs. We are quiet for a moment before I ask him when he was first able to get in touch with them. When he speaks again, his voice is lower than it has been the whole afternoon. He seems to be in a far, distant place, as if caught up in memories of the family he continues to be separated from. ‘The first time I spoke to my mother directly was in 2005, over ten years after I left. When she told me that my sisters had been married off, my brothers and I began to cry. We asked, Who would have carried their doli? That was our job as brothers and yet we couldn’t be there. We’ve lived through awful times. Main apko bata bhi nahi sakta ke woh kya manzar tha (I cannot even begin to describe those times).’ Later, Anwar would tell me how, in the years after the 2003 ceasefire, when tensions between India and Pakistan de-escalated and the LoC became relatively calm, divided families would converge by the Neelum river to catch a glimpse of each other. He too saw his mother across the water, and felt desperate to plunge in and swim to her. Such riverside visits continued for some time, slowly replaced by other modes of communication with the advent of social media and Skype.

  ‘Did you ever think of picking up arms? Was that ever an option for you?’ I ask Anwar. I had heard that many young boys turned towards militancy as a response to the interrogations Anwar described.

  ‘At that time, I had nothing on me to fight back with. While I was in the jungle, I’d hit them with knives and stones but what real damage could that do? But today, if someone asks me to join the movement, I would.’ He looks at me to see my reaction and then, as more of an afterthought, adds, ‘Of course, we will always want dialogue to be the way forward but if that doesn’t work we will have to take up some other way and I’d fully support that. If anyone starts the movement again from this side, I’d become a mujahid in a heartbeat.’

  Our conversation reminds me of my discussion with my friend from ‘Azad’ Kashmir, Waqar (who had introduced me to Sharjeel {Chapter 1}), from whom I had heard about the refugees for the first time. He had told me, ‘You know, during the 1990s there was a lot of migration. So many refugees came and settled in places like Muzaffarabad, Bagh, even Islamabad. The government gives them Rs 1,500 per month,28 but that doesn’t take away the emotional pain of being separated from their home. Most of us local Kashmiris are okay with the status quo because our families are here, our homes are here, but for these people, life is very difficult. Many of them had come as young boys to learn how to fight, and several of them had some affiliation with militant organizations, but the majority of them had never picked up arms. Because of the militant label, though, they can never go back. They are young, full of energy, and yet they cannot unite with their family members, with their homes. You can make calls from here to makbooza Kashmir but from there you cannot even do that because calls are barred to Azad Kashmir. Then, during special events, the Indian government sometimes shuts the internet and all connection on that side of Kashmir so the people cannot even wish each other.29 Through Facebook, through Skype, they get a glimpse of their home and they want to go back, and yet they cannot. They are stuck here, living in poor health and unhygienic conditions, separated from their families. The anger is building up and it has to come out somehow. If you ask me, I’d say a whole battalion among them is getting ready to fight. They are like zinda lashein (zombies), psychologically disturbed and easy to brainwash. I would say the refugee camps are the perfect places for militant organizations to recruit from. If the conflict gets reactivated, it will breed and be nurtured from here. The locals have stopped supporting the militancy after losing so much but the refugees have too much at stake across the LoC. They are ready to fight, ready to take up arms. They are like walking, talking suicide bombs, waiting to explode.’

  In April 2017, the Indian government announced that it was banning twenty-two social media sites, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter, in the Valley for one month, because they were apparently being ‘misused by anti-national and anti-social elements’.30 Critics saw the ban as a response to videos and social media posts by Kashmiris depicting persecution at the hands of Indian security forces. In the same month (April 2017) it was also reported that 3G and 4G cellphone services had also been suspended for more than a week.31 Divided families like Anwar’s have to bear the brunt of such state actions.

  India’s social media ban evoked strong reactions in ‘Azad’ Kashmir. Jamaat-e-Islami and other political parties staged a protest outside the Press Club in Muzaffarabad in April 2017. This was followed by protests by refugees who came out to rally against the ban. The disconnection from mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers only exacerbates their frustration and their sense of loneliness. For Kashmiris like Waqar, this poses the danger of pushing divided families further towards violence and militancy.

  ***

  During my initial few visits to the region, I had been hesitant to bring up the subject of mujahideen with the locals. But eventually, when I began to broach the topic, I realized that just as firing across the LoC was an everyday reality for so many of the ‘Azad’ Kashmiris I spoke with, and which I’ll delve into great detail in the next chapter, so was the training, arrival and departure of the mujahideen to and from Indian-administered Kashmir. Tea-sellers and ordinary people on the street knew where the training camps had been in the 1990s, how people had been trained, what routes they had used to cross over. What I found particularly intriguing during these conversations was that there was absolutely no judgement in their voice as they related these details to me. There was an explicit understanding that it had to be done. Militant outfit names like Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) were not alien to them. When I began to dig deeper, I started to understand that the people of ‘Azad’ Kashmir had felt this tacit and overt acce
ptance of militancy as a reaction to the bloodshed they had seen. At tender ages, they told me, they had witnessed dead bodies floating in the Jhelum, they had seen children being killed while sitting securely in their school chairs, they had seen their homes demolished by mortar shells. And these were all narratives and eyewitness accounts from Pakistan-administered Kashmir, which is often perceived to have suffered far less as compared to people in Indian-administered Kashmir. Yet, there was so much anger in them. They were not so pre-occupied with who had started the violence, Pakistan or India, but with how it was affecting ordinary civilians who had nothing to do with the militancy. They did not see Indian firing as justified retaliation to infiltration, for their earliest memories of that time were formed not of militants crossing over but of bloodshed caused by the Indian Army. It was this bloodshed that slowly helped raise support for militancy, not in terms of active involvement of people but in terms of ideology. (However, this support would begin to wane towards the turn of the century, as I shall explain later in the book.)

  Sharjeel had told me during one of our earlier conversations that by the early- to mid-1990s, the militancy movement had gained significant support in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Young boys shared the desire to join the movement and while for most of them, this only remained a wish—they were either stopped from doing so by their families, which only wanted peace, or by the boys’ own reluctance to take up arms—the mujahideen came to hold new respect in their eyes. There was an understanding in society then that the mujahids were ‘holy warriors’, dedicated to the freedom and protection of Muslims. In all likelihood, this was the case with Anwar as well.

  Back in the room, it is time to bring the women back into the conversation. I turn to Nusrat Jan (the name has been changed to protect her identity), whose husband, Anwar says, was a mujahid. Half of Nusrat’s face is covered by her light orange dupatta. She bites on it with her teeth and I can tell she is very shy. Gently, I ask her about her husband. ‘Yes, he was a mujahid. They killed his brother and sister in front of him, so he joined the mujahideen. He had been a mujahid for ten years before the army caught him. One day, as they were transporting him from one jail to another, the mujahideen attacked the bus and he managed to get away,’ she utters quietly, her voice quivering.

  ‘Did he come back to you?’

  ‘No, he couldn’t come home even then,’ she pauses and wipes her nose with the corner of her dupatta before continuing. ‘He had to hide for days or else they would’ve found him. One night though, he sneaked in. I saw him after a long time that night. They had peeled off the flesh from his arms and legs and had rubbed spices over the raw skin. He came home in a terrible condition but I couldn’t look after him. He had to leave again so that they wouldn’t catch him. You see, they used to come to our house a lot and interrogate me. They would harass me, humiliate me. Eventually, I had to run away too with my son, who was six months old. But as I was running through the jungle, my son got hurt. I couldn’t carry him any further like that. So I had to ask one of the families in the jungle to keep him. I left him there with them and ran further up. I had to spend one whole year in the jungle. I cannot even tell you what that was like.’

  As we talk more, I notice that her voice becomes firmer. The quiver has given way to a detached tone. As she recalls some of the most difficult years of her life, she speaks in a matter-of-fact way, almost as if it isn’t even her story. Perhaps she needs to feel numb, she needs to be desensitized, for there is too much to feel. That is the only way to go on, to not be crushed under the weight of those traumatic memories.

  ‘What happened then? How did you make it to “Azad” Kashmir?’ I ask.

  ‘We eventually came to Azad Kashmir in 1994 to save our lives. But in 1999 my husband died due to shelling in Athmuqam by the Indian forces. He became a martyr. My son had already lost his eyesight due to injuries in the jungle. After his father’s death, he lost his mental sanity too. He likes to be left alone now, he lives in his own world. I seem to have not only lost my husband but my son too. I now have three daughters, whom I gave birth to after coming here. I’m a widow trying to put them through school. My son is not functional enough to help us.’ She allows herself to sigh heavily. That is the only relief she is willing to give herself. She does not dwell any further in her miseries; there is no space for self-pity. She has a family to raise.

  I turn to a boy, Mumtaz (the name has been changed to protect his identity), who has been listening to us all this while in the room. ‘Tell me a little about yourself. You’re a young Kashmiri, what are your aspirations?’ I ask him. I’m interested in knowing more about the experiences of the youth in the refugee camps. What are their politics like? Are they really all walking, talking suicide bombs ready to explode, like my friend Waqar had described?

  ‘I study in Boys’ High School, in Class 10. After I complete my studies, I just want to help my mohajir (refugee) brothers. I want to open a clinic, give free medical aid. It costs so much to go to the clinic outside the camp… Our tuition fees are Rs 1,500-2,000. How can we afford everything in our 1,500 stipend from the government? Before, they had a 6 per cent quota for us (for government jobs) but even that is no longer implemented.32 And then there is no road here ever since the 2005 earthquake. Twenty people died in our camp during that earthquake, 150 people died in another camp. There is also no sewerage system, no dispensary, no proper water supply. At the end of the day this is a ghair ilaaka (foreign land). It can never be home. I want to go back to my house, to my village, even though I have never seen it.’

  Though the AJK government has allocated a 6 per cent quota for government jobs to the refugees, many of them claim that such policies are not properly executed, nor do they suffice. In 2014, The Express Tribune published an article in which the refugees accused the AJK government of ‘accommodating political workers on the 6 per cent quota reserved for Kashmiri refugees, in violation of merit and the constitution’.33 They further complained, ‘For the last eight years, the AJK government has not increased the allowance of refugees. How can a person survive on Rs 1,500 a month?’34

  The freedom and good fortune that ‘Azad’ Kashmir had once symbolized for people like Anwar has given way to the sombre realization that even basic rights are being denied to them, let alone azadi. Today, it is seen as a place one has to make do with, for there is no other choice. Frustration amongst the people is growing. They are tired of waiting, of hoping. The grass doesn’t seem all that green any longer.

  ‘And how do you think the Kashmir issue can be resolved?’ I ask Mumtaz.

  ‘Well, there can be no azadi without dialogue. War will hurt both sides. In fact, this side will suffer more because our villages are closer to the LoC. People will die, children will die. Wars have not helped. Look at 1965, 1971, Kargil. Nothing came out of those.’

  I am impressed by Mumtaz’s seasoned and mature understanding of the events and want to ask him more questions but just then, two of Mumtaz’s elder brothers, who have also walked in during the conversation, speak up. One of them, Altaf (the name has been changed to protect his identity), starts off by telling me a story about Mahmud Ghaznavi, the Afghan king who raided India several times. Ghaznavi holds a special place in both Indian and Pakistani historiography and continues to play a role in the nation-making process. Whereas in India he is used as an example of barbarism and is seen as an idol breaker and plunderer, in Pakistan he is celebrated as a hero who rid the land of ‘impure’ and ‘infidel’ practices.35 He is glorified as the leader who sowed the seeds of the pure nation, its literal translation being pak(pure)istan. He seems to be Altaf’s inspiration, who declares that he wants to be a mujahid, for he sees no other way of securing freedom ‘for Kashmir from Indian occupation’.

  ‘Do you also want to be a mujahid?’ Haroon asks the third brother, Ahmed (the name has been changed to protect his identity).

  ‘We are already mujahideen,’ he replies without hesitation, ‘but not because we necessarily pick u
p arms. I haven’t ever picked up arms, neither have my brothers. But yet that is how people see us and that is also how we see ourselves. Mohajirs and mujahids are viewed as the same because people know we have come here to escape the persecution and fight for our azadi.’

  ***

  As I sit across them, my heart heavy with the stories I have heard, I think of the psychological damage the refugees must endure, day in and day out. A Kashmiri psychologist I had spoken to in Muzaffarabad had told me how many people in ‘Azad’ Kashmir seemed to suffer from psychological disorders—phobias, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder. ‘The children are much more mature than normal children their age and almost all of them have a severe phobia of death. A couple of years ago, there was celebratory firing at a wedding and all the children fell to the floor and just lay down flat. When we asked them what happened, they said they thought the Indian forces were attacking. So many children suffer from behavioural issues, sexual issues, especially in the refugee camps. When I do art therapy with them, most of the refugee children end up drawing guns rather than flowers or homes, like ordinary children would. Many of the adults, meanwhile, keep having flashbacks of what they have been through. They keep revisiting traumatic memories, of firing across the LoC, of lost family members, or fighting, blood and suffering in interrogation cells. They begin to sweat, to suffer from panic attacks.’