by Anam Zakaria
‘Everyone who was born in that generation, who lived through that time, is psychologically impaired,’ adds another woman. ‘When we hear any kind of noise, firecrackers at a wedding or something else, we panic. During shelling, even if a person died in firing right in front of us, we could not come out. There was no one to cover his or her face, to read the kalma. Often we’d hear that a mortar had hit another house but we wouldn’t go there because the minute a couple of people gathered, they would fire again. Once, I remember fifteen to twenty of us hid in an animal shelter all night. It was Ramzan, we hadn’t eaten, the children were wailing. A mortar exploded nearby and my uncle… who was still outside… his eyes burst. He was screaming, blood was flowing everywhere but no one had the courage to go out and help him. For two days, no one could go near him.’
‘There are so many cases like this,’ Ayesha’s mother adds. ‘My mamu’s (maternal uncle) son had just given his FSc (Class 12) examinations when he became a martyr. There was firing going on and since they didn’t have a bunker, they were hiding inside the house. A splinter hit him directly. We couldn’t even bury him as we were scared that if too many of us collected in a place, the Indians might fire again. He lay there for two days. His result was released later but what’s the point? He was already in his grave.’
According to Ayesha, ‘With the mortars, they would also throw toys with some explosives attached to them.’6 While driving into the valley, I had seen posters and boards warning people, especially children, against touching such toys. The public message stated that it was a treacherous plot by the ‘enemy’ to endanger innocent boys and girls. Ayesha claims there have been several such cases of explosions, with children dying as a result.7
***
‘Our men never had the jihad fever in them,’ says the lady dressed in the blue shalwar kameez, the one who had told me about the incident at the school where twenty-eight students were killed, ‘but in the beginning, when the conflict started in the late eighties, when there was a fire burning in Indian Kashmir, we all sympathized with the mujahideen. They would come in the middle of the night, in the freezing cold, many of them with their families. We felt bad for them; after all, they were Muslims, they were like our brothers and sisters. In the winters we would light fire for them, give them warm beds, give them food. If they stayed for one or two days, we would empty one home and give it to them to live in.’
‘They stayed in our homes, we took care of them,’ the other women chime in, shaking their heads in disappointment, ‘and for what? They all left and made big homes while we continued to suffer the repercussions of their actions.’
The women are referring to the refugees I had spoken to earlier, those who had crossed over into ‘Azad’ Kashmir in the 1990s, many for militant training, others as a respite from crackdowns and arrests.
‘We didn’t know what they were going to do. We felt bad that they were being persecuted. We didn’t know they would go back to that side of Kashmir as mujahids and then we would have to suffer the consequences of Indian retaliation, that we would lose our homes, our children, our livelihood. The people who came then are now well-settled. If you look for them in Muzaffarabad, you’ll see that they have become big people now. They get money from that side and this side; they’ve had two marriages, with one family there, one here. They are having the best of both worlds.’
I think back to the cramped situations I had found the refugees in and wonder if there is any truth to this. Were the locals simply resentful of the government catering to the ‘outsiders’ who had created havoc in their homes? Perhaps the Rs 1,500 quota for the refugees pinched them, perhaps it would pinch me too if my life had been destroyed as theirs had been, with nothing to gain in return. I had certainly heard about the mujahideen who had come as part of the refugee influx, and had moved out of the camps and into far better living conditions. Ashfaq, the former militant group commander I had spoken to in Islamabad, was a case in point. He sat in the posh F-8 sector of Islamabad while these locals lived without proper electricity or water supply, without sewage systems and heating. But not everyone was so lucky. As I had seen with my own eyes, there were thousands of refugees who continued to live in unhygienic, suffocating dwellings, without a concrete source of livelihood. They suffered from psychological scars as severe as the locals did here in Athmuqam. Many of them also lived near the LoC, vulnerable to mortar shelling and firing. But for these women, the refugees were synonymous with the militants and hence, responsible for everything they had lost.
‘These Kashmiris, from that side, should keep their Kashmir to themselves,’ one woman says, letting out a haughty laugh. ‘Those who have instigated all of this conflict live in peace while we live in a state of war. We are not hungry for Kashmir. There is no “Azad” Kashmir, there will be no “Azad” Kashmir. All of this is just a façade for the Pakistani establishment and a handful of mujahideen to gain power, money. What do we get out of it? We don’t want to be a part of it anymore. We just want peace.’
Ayesha’s dadi (paternal grandmother) extends a trembling hand to me from the corner, as the lady speaks. She had entered the room a while ago. Passing her hand over my head to bless me with a long life, she had quietly seated herself on a stool beside me. In her late eighties, she seemed to have a bad cough and let out a hollow wheeze with each breath. As I hold her hand, she says, ‘I remember once, in 1991, there was a skirmish and we went inside the bunker at 2 pm and could only come out at 1 am. It was the month of Ramzan. We couldn’t even break our fast, we couldn’t even drink a sip of water. We eventually drank dirty water to break our fast. We don’t get any benefit whether makbooza Kashmir comes here or not. The public doesn’t want Kashmir. We just want to live in peace. We are not greedy for Kashmir. We are tired of living in stress. We need a moment of peace. At least you came and listened to us. It gives us hope. May God bless you, give you a long life, you cared to come and ask about us. The government has forgotten us,’ dadi finishes off, again caressing my head with her frail hands. Ayesha tells me it’s time for her to rest and takes her out of the room.
‘The establishment is behind everything. They eat our money and we suffer the consequences. Are we supposed to feed our children with empty “azadi” slogans? How is this “azad” Kashmir? What benefit do we get from this “azadi”?’ says Ayesha’s tai, taking a break from her mantra of no mortars, no war that she has been repeating all this while. ‘We want peace but these people want the conflict to continue, night and day, so that the money keeps flowing in. They want to eat us poor people alive, take away everything from us. Neelum is incredibly rich in natural resources, we have stones, guchi (morel mushrooms), giri (walnuts), rubies8 … Neelum is heaven. You see those pine trees outside? The wood is worth more than gold but we had to cut down so many trees to make bunkers. What are we to eat if we use all our resources in the war? We have destroyed our jungles, our minerals, and despite all of that, we didn’t get Kashmir. You should’ve seen our state in the 1990s. All the homes you see now have been rebuilt. Everything was destroyed. We spent fourteen to fifteen years living in bunkers. Our children grew beards and moustaches in bunkers. All our money, resources have been taken away. Our children cannot go to school while the establishment’s children are studying in colleges in America, Australia, England. They have eaten our money. What kind of justice is this that their children prosper from the money made from this conflict while our children have to beg? Neelum was a place where everyone came happily, people would come from far away to see the beauty here. But then the mujahideen came and ruined it all. Everything was destroyed. If we don’t have people left alive, what is the need for Kashmir? We don’t need any mujahids to cross over. We just want peace.’ The other women nod in agreement, ‘We just want peace. What’s the point of Kashmir if it means this?’
‘After the 2003 ceasefire though, the Pakistan Army has curbed infiltration, right?’ I ask. Though ceasefire violations have been common, especially in parts of the Sialkot-Ja
mmu working boundary (referred to as the international border by India) in Punjab and Nakyal Sector in Kotli (one of the districts in ‘Azad’ Jammu & Kashmir), I had been told that there has been relative peace in Athmuqam and surrounding areas.
The women reaffirm this. ‘Jee, Allah ka shukar hai (yes, thank God).’ Just then, Ayesha speaks up. She has returned after taking her dadi to another room. ‘Yes, it has been peaceful but a while ago—in 2013-14—hype was again created that firing was about to restart. There have been many skirmishes on the LoC. Incidents of firing also took place in Leepa Valley (another valley in ‘Azad’ Kashmir) … you must have seen it on TV. There was fear that the same thing would happen here. Firing had already started on army posts. But the women are so aware here that the minute we all heard this, we went on strike! The rumours of firing affected us so much that we got together—a group of eighty to ninety women—and we marched up to the CO, the commanding officer in the area. We said that an entire generation had been left illiterate in the valley, that we had only just raised our heads again… for God’s sake, don’t let this happen to us again.’
Another woman tells me, ‘The mujahideen had come and set up their camps here about two years ago. Firing had started at night. It wasn’t much, it was just between the armies, but it was terribly frightening for us. We had been told to make our bunkers and prepare for shelling. But of course, only those who are at home can go to bunkers. Children are at school, men are at work, they cannot carry bunkers with them. What were they to do? We were always so worried for them. So we pleaded and pleaded with the CO, we told him we know mujahideen are in the area and that it was the army’s job to stop them from infiltrating or else the Indian forces would start firing again.’
In 2013, BBC published an article titled, ‘The housewives taking on militants in Kashmir.’ The article particularly covered housewives from Athmuqam, some of whom I’m sitting with today. The report read: ‘During the last three years, these women have conducted a sustained and vociferous street campaign to shun militants from their native district of Neelum… in mid-August, the police stopped a busload of these housewives at the main road of Athmuqam, the headquarters of Neelum district.’ The report went on to say that the angry women descended from the bus, brushed aside some policemen attempting to stop them, and started to walk on foot to their destination—the nearby army camp, some 6 kilometres from the LoC. They were carrying handwritten placards demanding an end to militant activity in the area, which they said provoked Indian firing on their towns and villages. The report quoted one of the women among the protestors as saying, ‘In recent weeks the (Pakistan) Army had been telling people to build bunkers, which amounts to telling us that bad times are about to return… there was also increased visibility of militants in our area. We were afraid that an attempt by them to infiltrate the LoC would invite Indian fire into our area. We had to do something.’9
For several people in Neelum Valley—and outside of it—it is because of these women and their protests that relative peace has been maintained here so far. A Kashmiri woman I had spoken to in Islamabad, who led a women’s rights organization in ‘Azad’ Kashmir, had told me that she believes these women serve as a force for peace in the valley. Looking around me, I see fierce expressions, a burning intensity, a dedication to maintain the fragile peace in the region. I do not know whether they are the sole reason why Neelum Valley has been calmer than other areas since 2003, but it certainly could be a plausible explanation.
‘What does the CO say to you, when you protest? What is the army’s response like?’ I ask. I am still astonished that these women have the resolve to march up to an army camp to demand peace and a crackdown on infiltration. Women from rural areas are often stereotyped as backward, illiterate and disempowered. However, I have seldom come across anyone in a rural or urban area—from either gender—possessing as much courage as the women in front of me today. Not many people in Pakistan have the audacity to speak up against the establishment. It can be risky business. In 2017-18, even social media posts criticizing defence policies have been curbed in the country. Protests are another matter altogether. In May 2017, a number of people in Pakistan were questioned by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for posts against the armed forces. ‘While issuing directives in this respect on May 14, the interior minister stated that the constitution, while guaranteeing freedom of expression, makes it clear that security and defence-related issues and relevant organizations would not be subject to criticism and no citizen would indulge in any such activity that negatively impacts the prestige, repute and respect of the armed forces.’10 An area, a community which was besieged with terror in the 1990s, seems to have relinquished all fear.
‘The army says, we don’t like talking to you women,’ Ayesha’s tai replies haughtily. ‘They say, tell your men to come talk to us, but we know why they say that, so that they can arrest them. We told the CO that if you don’t listen to our demands, we will go to India. We will go to Keran (a village by the LoC) and raise the Indian flag and ask them to take this part of Kashmir too. Then they get scared,’ she laughs loudly. It is the first time I’ve seen her smile or heard her laugh this afternoon. Other women begin to chuckle too. The air is lighter all of a sudden; we are no longer speaking about situations where the women were left helpless, without food, without a sip of water. We are speaking of their struggle, their fight, of them reclaiming some control, some sense of normality, accountability. The laughter is like music to my ears, a sigh of relief, a moment of respite between all the narratives of bloodshed and violence. A second round of tea is brought in by Ayesha and poured into our cups. She insists that we eat and pushes several different plates of food in front of us: biscuits, plain cake, chicken wings and chicken patties tempt me. I reach for some cake and only then do the women take their share. There is a buzz in the room, with the women chattering away with each other, in a mix of Koshur, Pahaari and Urdu.
For a couple of minutes I sit back and watch the room come alive. These are the survivors of fifteen years of war. Slowly, the chatter and laughter starts to subside and a third cup of tea is served to us. It is a respite on this cold winter afternoon. The lady dressed in the blue shalwar kameez speaks up. She picks up the thread from where the others left off.
‘Madam, our demand from the army is simply to stop mortar shelling and stop the mujahideen. But the army doesn’t take responsibility. They say the mujahideen hide from them and cross over. Of course, the army has helped control the mujahideen to some extent too. They pressured them to stop after the 2003 ceasefire and that’s why the firing halted. But today, they tell us infiltration is no longer happening and we see it as a lie. After magrib (sunset), we see their vehicles. The road is very close to us, so we can see it all happening in front of our eyes. We hear rumours that they continue to go across the LoC even today, from Bhimber, from Nakyal (in Jammu, ‘‘Azad’’ Kashmir). The army denies it but we know it’s happening. And when the Indians see them crossing over, they fire on them and the mujahideen also fire back. Then there is also retaliatory fire from Pakistan. That’s the excuse the Indian Army needs to open fire on our homes. Then they don’t see who they are firing on, whether it is the army, the mujahideen or civilians. They hit our village, destroy our fields, our homes. We cannot let that happen again.’
Adds Ayesha: ‘They (India) are our dushman (enemy), so they don’t see what they are hitting. They want to create loss in Pakistan, so they hit people, animals, homes, they try to hit government buildings. So many government schools and hospitals have been destroyed. But if the mujahideen stop crossing over, the firing will stop also. So we protest all the time, whenever we hear of any mujahid in the area, or of any threat of firing. The mujahideen are still a problem in Neelum Valley but not like before. Before, we could see the camps everywhere, now the activities are much more hidden, they are underground, but it still happens. We can still see Hizbul Mujahideen work in the open (Hizbul Mujahideen was labelled as a terrorist group by
the US in August 2017,11 almost two years after this interview. Supporters of the organization, particularly those belonging to the United Jihad Council (UJC), a conglomeration of groups that are against Indian rule in Kashmir, responded by holding rallies in ‘Azad’ Kashmir against the decision and asserted that Hizbul Mujahideen was not a terrorist organization but an indigenous group which represented the ‘sentiments and aspirations of Kashmiris’).12
Ayesha resumes: ‘The men of Sayeed Salahuddin (head of Hizbul Mujahideen, who was also labelled as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the US in 2017),13 also have their programmes. And then we see the mujahideen walking around in our area, even if they don’t cross over from here. Just as you would know if there was a stranger in your neighbourhood, we also know when we see someone from the outside. Most of them are Punjabis. Their clothes, their way of talking, give them away. They try to recruit the locals too, in an inviting manner. They say, Come let me take you to meet my friends, my colleagues. They speak to them in a sweet manner and then start brainwashing them. The young boys in the area have grown up uneducated and it’s very easy to misguide them. They think they have lost so much due to the firing, that they will never be able to get a good job, so why not take up the lucrative packages the mujahideen offer and try their luck. Two local boys from our area, from Athmuqam, also joined the mujahideen. The first was the son of Ruqaiya aunty (the name has been changed to protect her identity) and Yousuf uncle (the name has been changed to protect his identity). He went to the other side of Kashmir a few years ago. He got Rs 3 to 4 lakhs for one trip. When he came back, he bought a car; he had so much money. But he was also badly injured, his feet were full of blisters.’
