Homes with large, south-facing windows harness the winter sunlight, naturally warming interior spaces throughout the day. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India, Jan 20 2025 (IPS)

India’s average temperature has risen by 0.7°C since 1901, bringing more frequent and intense heat waves, erratic rainfall patterns, and a marked decline in monsoon consistency since the 1950s.

With projections suggesting a 2°C global temperature increase, India faces the risk of even greater instability in summer monsoon patterns. Extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, and cyclones are already becoming more common, placing the country as the seventh most affected globally by climate change-related weather events in 2019.

In Kashmir, the impacts are just as stark; the average maximum temperature in Srinagar rose by 1.05°C between 1980–1999 and 2000–2019, and the winter of 2023–2024 was the driest on record, marking the hottest winter in 18 years.

With climate change reshaping the region, the importance of climate-resilient architecture has become crucial.

In this photo essay, IPS explores the ingenious climate-responsive architecture of Kashmir, developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries, which showcases how traditional techniques created structures capable of withstanding the region’s extreme weather patterns.

Deodar wood, locally sourced and resistant to cold and moisture, is the backbone of Kashmir’s climate-resilient architecture. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

Double-glazed windows trap warmth indoors while letting sunlight in, making them a modern staple in Kashmir’s evolving architecture. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

Older homes in Srinagar’s downtown demonstrate the success of traditional design, staying warm and cozy even in mid-winter. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

Thick layers of mud plaster cover many homes, trapping warmth inside and blocking the winter cold from entering. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

Using stone or concrete, modern designs absorb daytime heat and release it gradually at night, enhancing comfort. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

Verandas and balconies, or Deodis, act as barriers against the cold, helping maintain warmth inside. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

Hakim Sameer Hamdani, senior architect and project coordinator with the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage. Hamdani is the author of Syncretic Traditions of Islamic Religious Architecture of Kashmir. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

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Four-fifths of Kashmir’s population depends on agriculture. Yet, this heatwave is devastating crops, including the famed saffron. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India, Sep 26 2024 (IPS)

Abdul Hameed Sheikh sowed his crop, working tirelessly for days in his paddy field.

The 52-year-old farmer, from central Kashmir’s Budgam area, religiously irrigated his 3-acre plot to keep the soil well hydrated. He waited for the rain, but days passed and it didn’t come.

What did, though, was scorching heat—temperatures surged like never before.

Every morning, Sheikh would walk his paddy field, noticing how the saplings had begun to turn into dry, dead twigs—slowly and definitively. As days passed, he noticed another worrisome trend. The land had developed cracks, generating dust as he passed by. 

“It was at that time when I was sure that the harvest wasn’t going to be as expected. The yearlong hard work is going to get wasted and I am completely helpless in such a scenario. This is utterly worrisome,” Sheikh told IPS.

This farmer was not alone in his worries. People in this farming district in the Himalayan region complained of extreme heat waves never before witnessed in Kashmir’s living memory.

“The temperatures touched even 40 °C here. In previous years, it would not cross even 32 °C,” says Abdul Salaam Malik, a farmer hailing from south Kashmir’s Shopian.

The protracted dry weather has stressed plants, said Professor Raihana Habib Kanth, Chief Scientist at the Faculty of Agriculture at Sheri Kashmir University of Agriculture Science and Technology (SKUAST) in Kashmir. “The prolonged dry weather has caused paddy crop tips to burn and vegetable plant leaves to dry,” she told IPS, noting that 3–5 liters of water are needed to produce 1 kg of rice.

A recent study published in Science Direct, ‘Time series analysis of climate variability and trends in Kashmir Himalaya,’ notes the region is extremely sensitive to “even small perturbations in climate” and the “shifting pattern in precipitation could have serious environmental implications that will greatly influence the food security and ecological sustainability of the region if the same trends persist.”

According to the meteorological office, the region’s capital, Srinagar, recorded a high of 36.2 °C on July 28 this year. This was the hottest July day since July 9, 1999, when the mercury had settled at 37 °C.

Government records show that 60 percent of agriculture in Kashmir depends on rainwater. However, recent years have seen some of the driest seasons on record. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

A study conducted in the year 2019 revealed that Kashmir’s average annual temperature has increased by 0.8˚C over 37 years (1980-2016), with recent summers breaking temperature records.

As per the government data, on August 17, 2020, the valley experienced its hottest August in 39 years, reaching 35.7˚C. The following year, on July 18, 2021, Srinagar saw its hottest July day in eight years, with temperatures hitting 35˚C.

The summer of 2022 was even hotter, with temperatures surpassing 35˚C in some areas, and March of that year was the hottest in 131 years. In September 2023, Srinagar recorded its hottest September day in 53 years at 34.2˚C.

This warming trend persisted into 2024, marked by an unusually dry and warm winter. January 2024, according to meteorological reports, was among the driest and warmest in the last 43 years. On May 23, Srinagar recorded the highest May temperature in at least a decade.

Apple growers in Kashmir are facing heavy losses due to the lack of rainfall and extreme heat. The deficit in rainfall and persistent heat waves threaten the livelihoods of those dependent on this vital crop. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

The Himalayan region has long been known to warm faster than the global average. The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) noted in its first comprehensive report on the region, published in 2019, that even if global warming is limited to 1.5˚C, the Hindu Kush Himalayas (HKH) could see warming of at least 0.3˚C above this threshold.

A study published 2020 in Research Gate, ’21st Century-end Climate Scenario of Jammu and Kashmir Himalaya, India using Ensemble Climate Models,’ predicted that annual temperatures in Kashmir could rise by 4–7˚C by the end of the century, depending on future emissions.

The study noted that urbanization in Srinagar and other mountain settlements exacerbates heat, broader climatic changes remain the primary driver of rising temperatures.

Jasia Bashir, a research scholar at the University of Kashmir’s Centre of Excellence for Glacial Studies, told Dialogue Earth: “Urban areas feel intensified heat due to dense construction and reduced vegetation, but the entire region, including rural areas, is affected by the general [global] warming trend.”

Four fifths of Kashmir’s population is directly dependent on agriculture. The heat spell has left the farmers, including saffron farmers, wrecked.

Mohammad Ashraf Mir from Kashmir’s Pampore area shares his predicament, highlighting how the less rainfall and surging temperatures are compelling saffron farmers, including himself, to abandon farming forever.

Jehlum River in Kashmir shows drastically receding water. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

“The irrigation facilities are nowhere. The land has become parched to the core. We have invested much in this crop and what we are getting in return is an insurmountable predicament. The time is coming when we will have to abandon this farming and do something else for a living,” Mir told IPS.

According to government records, approximately 60 percent of Kashmir’s agriculture relies on rainwater for irrigation. However, in recent years, the Kashmir Valley has experienced some of the driest seasons on record. The Meteorological Department reports that, over the past three years, the region’s mountain ranges received just 172 mm of snow, a significant drop from the average of 622 mm.

One in a hundred irrigation schemes have been impacted by the dry weather, according to government officials in the Irrigation and Flood Control (I&FC) department. The Jhelum River’s water level has decreased as a result. According to them, the Jhelum River’s overall water capacity has dropped by 30 percent.

So what of the future?

According to a detailed report prepared by Indian Network for Climate Change Assessment (INCCA) released in 2023, the two biggest issues facing Kashmir in the coming decades will be water stress and biodiversity loss brought on by climate change. It says that the region’s fisheries, forests, animals, species richness and water resources are all seriously threatened by climate change. Twenty percent of the region’s recognized biodiversity is supported by the numerous wetlands in Jammu and Kashmir, which are negatively impacted.

Among other farmers feeling the heat are the apple growers of Kashmir.

Several apple growers told IPS that the rainfall deficit and heat wave conditions are wreaking havoc on apple production and will cause heavy losses to the people associated with the apple trade.

Fayaz Ahmad Malik, President of the North Kashmir Apple Growers Association, calls the situation “alarming.”

He explains that the ongoing heat wave not only hampers fruit growth but also heightens the risk of pest and insect infestations.

“Dry weather can cause an increase in pest populations, which is a major threat to our apple orchards. The lack of sufficient moisture impacts fruit development and makes the orchards more susceptible to various diseases,” Malik stated.

Agricultural experts stress the importance of timely irrigation and effective water management to counter the negative effects of the dry spell.

“In these conditions, it becomes crucial for growers to manage orchard irrigation. Farmers should prioritize constructing borewells in their orchards to ensure adequate water supply,” they advised.

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Local Muslims held special prayer ceremonies in January for snowfall. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India, Feb 20 2024 (IPS)

Abdul Gani Malik, a 75-year-old goldsmith living in Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, has witnessed eras of tranquility and turbulence in the Himalayan region. What he has not seen, however, is a snowless Kashmir during the winter.

Malik still works at his shop, located in one of the jam-packed markets of the old city area of Kashmir’s capital, intricately lacing colorful emeralds on dazzling gold necklaces. While conversing with IPS, he mentions that the winter in Kashmir has never been so terrible and terrifying as it has been this year.

He recalls how, during the 40-day harshest winter period from December 21 to January 30, snow would accumulate to about six or seven feet, freezing and making pathways treacherous even for city dwellers. In the mountainous region, according to Malik, the snow would last for several months, regulating temperatures during the summer and providing water and food.

“Now is a different tale. The mountains appear dry and dead. The rivers are carrying no water, and our woods are bereft of life. This is an absolute apocalypse,” Malik said.

The region of Kashmir is located in the north-western complex of the Himalayan ranges, with marked relief variation, snow-capped summits, antecedent drainage, complex geological structure, and rich temperate vegetation and fauna.

Kashmir’s winter is traditionally divided into three parts: Chilay Kalan (old man winter), Chilay Khuarud (young winter), and Chilay Bacha (kiddy winter). The coldest part, called Chilay Kalan, starts on December 21 and ends at the end of January. It is during this period that snowfall is expected.

“The temperatures during this period plummet to even minus 8 to 10 degrees Celsius, and when it snows, it accumulates in glaciers. The snowfall in the later period is of no use,” says Abdul Ghani Malik.

He was part of the congregational prayers held across Kashmir for snowfall. Local Muslims, who constitute more than 90 percent of the local population, decided in January to hold special prayers for snowfall in all major mosques. “We prayed, and we hope God listens to our plight.”

According to Abid Ali, a student of environmental sciences from Kashmir, Kashmir’s livelihood depends on snowfall, and if it doesn’t snow, things are going to take a terrible shape.

“The region’s electricity system, agriculture, and tourism are all dependent on snowfall. The dry winter will prove catastrophic for the local populace,” Abid said.

Kashmir, as per estimates, reported a 79 percent precipitation deficit through December of last year. Indian meteorologists claim that unusual weather is linked to global warming and El Niño, the sporadic climate phenomenon that can create warm, dry conditions in the Indian subcontinent and other parts of Asia.

A man walks through an area in Kashmir where low snowfall is causing concern as the region’s economy is highly dependent on it. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

Threat to Agriculture

In Kashmir, 60 percent of the state’s revenue comes from agriculture and horticulture, and about 80 percent of the population lives in rural areas.

However, over the years, the valley has experienced irregular patterns of precipitation. In the first five months of 2022, Kashmir saw a 38 percent rain shortage, according to data provided by the Meteorological Department (MeT) in Srinagar.

The data reveals that the Kashmir Valley has experienced a significant lack of pre-monsoon precipitation over the years. From March 1 to May 31, 2022, the region got 99.5 mm of rain, 70 percent lower than average.

Comparatively, between March and May of each of the following years—2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021—there was a deficit of 16, 28, 35, and 26 percent, respectively. The dry winter this year is already throwing life out of gear for the farmers.

Abdul Karim Ganaie, a farmer hailing from south Kashmir’s Pulwama, says the threats are menacingly looming large, and people cannot do anything other than watch helplessly as the crisis unfolds.

When IPS contacted Choudhary Mohammad Iqbal, the director of agriculture in Kashmir, he stated that the department was closely monitoring the situation and would be issuing a warning to the farmers in the coming months.

“We accept that the situation is going to prove worrisome for Kashmir’s farming community, but we have to adopt a strategy to ensure minimal losses. We are working on that front,” Choudhary said.

Tourism under Cloud

The famous tourist destinations in Kashmir are also witnessing a dip in tourist arrivals, putting the people associated with this business in dire straits. In January, the famous tourist resorts recorded the lowest arrival of foreign and domestic tourists, with only 30 percent occupancy in hotels.

It snows at last but too little, too late!

Finally, in the first week of February, when the harshest 40-day-long spell was already over, it snowed in most of the areas of Kashmir. However, according to experts, the snow would yield the fewest results as it is not possible to accumulate for an extended period.

What is important, says Mehraj Ahmad, a research scholar working on climate change in Kashmir, is that the snow must accumulate in the higher reaches for as long as possible until the arrival of summers.

“The snowfall of February or March carries the least significance when compared with the snowfall of January. Therefore, we really are keeping our fingers crossed and praying for the safeguard of our lives against the dark, dreadful effects of climate change,” Ahmad said.

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Farmers checking the saffron flowers on their farm in Pampore, Kashmir. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India, Feb 7 2024 (IPS)

Saffron, the expensive spice from the Kashmir Himalayas, has been facing challenges for years, mostly related to yields and inadequate irrigation compounded by the climate crisis.

While the government launched the 4.1 billion rupee National Saffron Mission (NMS) in 2010 to mitigate these challenges and rejuvenate saffron cultivation in Kashmir, its efficacy remains questionable, farmers say.

Saffron is one of Kashmir’s major industries, along with horticulture and agriculture, supporting some 17,000 families in the region. India contributes 5% of the world’s total production, of which 90% is supplied from the Kashmir Himalayan region.

The spice has been cultivated since 500 AD in the Kashmir valley and reached its peak in the 1990s at an annual average yield of around 15.5 tonnes from 5,700 hectares (14,085 acres), but both the land farmed for saffron and yields have declined since then.

According to a study, prolonged periods of drought have caused significant concerns among saffron farmers.

“Since the crop heavily relies on rainfall, insufficient precipitation has resulted in the region experiencing its lowest saffron productivity in the past three decades,” the study says.

“In addition to the challenges posed by drought, the region is also facing issues related to urbanization and increasing population growth,” the study further says. According to Kashmir’s agriculture department, saffron land has reduced from 5,700 hectares in the 1990s to 3,715 hectares in 2016 due to land-use conversions.

Saffron farmers, who grow the “king of spices” in fields sprawling across several thousand hectares, mainly in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district, have been complaining for years that lack of rainfall at crucial times has led to a decline in saffron production.

One or two spells of rain in September and October are vital for the crop to flower, farmers say. But in most years since the late 1990s, it either hasn’t rained in those months or has rained too much, damaging the crop, says farmer Mohammad Reshi, adding that farmers still rely on the weather in the cropping season.

“The sprinkle irrigation system, which the government claims has been put in place, should have been functional by now. But it is not working. You can see for yourself what has happened to these pipes and the bore wells. They are not serving any purpose,” Reshi tells IPS while pointing at the defunct sprinkle irrigation system in a saffron field in Pampore, where saffron cultivation is concentrated in Kashmir.

Though, Reshi says, tube wells have been dug and pipes have been laid in saffron fields for years now, “we are yet to see the water in saffron fields.”

According to him, the project was supposed to be completed years ago, but it still lingers. Denying the allegations of saffron farmers, Ghulam Mohammad Dhobi, Joint Director of Kashmir’s agriculture department, who is also the Nodal Officer for NMS, says that the government is trying its best to help the farmers get good yields.

“The farmers have not to wait for long to see the positive results of the irrigation infrastructure, as we are expecting its completion soon after it will function properly,” Dhobi tells IPS.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which has given saffron cultivation in Kashmir a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) status, “saffron cultivation has been facing severe challenges of sustainability and livelihood security, with an urgent need to adopt appropriate technologies to address water scarcity, productivity loss, and market volatility.”

Scientific research has established that irrigation plays the most important role in saffron cultivation in Kashmir. Firdous Nahvi, a former agriculture scientist at Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, says that saffron yields have traditionally depended on rainfall in the crucial months from August to October in Kashmir, and saffron yields have fallen in recent years because of the irrigation problem.

According to Nahvi, until 1999-2000, Kashmir received well-distributed precipitation of 1,000 to 1,200 mm per year in the form of rain and snow, but that has now decreased to 600 to 800 mm.

“In any part of the world, farming is unthinkable without water,” Nahvi says and adds: “Creating irrigation facilities was the critical part of the project because we have observed in recent years that it doesn’t rain when the crop needs the moisture.” Nahvi was the expert who advised the NMS implementers about the need for installing the sprinkle irrigation system for saffron cultivation in Kashmir.

Solutions in Farming Methods

Bashir Allie, an agricultural scientist who heads Kashmir’s Saffron Research Station, says that he has also advised the agriculture and irrigation departments of the Kashmir government that creating drip irrigation facilities is crucial for improving saffron yields.

“But we are also working with farmers through our field awareness program to enhance saffron yield,” Allie tells IPS, adding that he and his team are telling the farmers to plant the optimum number of corms in the saffron fields rather than planting them haphazardly.

For example, Allie says, the farmers mostly plant up to 300,000 corms per hectare, “whereas we advise them to go for 500,000 to one million corms per hectare (or 50 corms per square meter).” This, he says, will help the farmers increase their yields, provided they uproot the old corms every four years and plant new corms.

“What we have also observed is that the farmers keep the corms in the fields for up to 20 years and leave them unattended,” he tells IPS, adding that this affects the yield as the older corms keep producing new corms, which increases the competition for nutrients within the population and the entire population underperforms (in producing flowers), thus affecting the yield.

“So, the solution we are offering to the farmers is to plant the optimum number of corms (50 corms per square meter) and replace the corms after every four years,” Allie informs.

To mitigate the impact of drought conditions on saffron crops, Allie says that he and his team have advised the farmers to start growing almond trees in saffron fields at a distance of four to five meters so that they provide shade and help the farmers retain moisture in their saffron fields.

“Once the almond trees produce branches, they will provide shade to saffron fields, as saffron is a shade-loving plant. Also, the moisture in the soil will be retained,” Allie says, adding that the almond trees, besides providing shade, will also produce almonds, thereby helping the farmers increase their income.

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Women walk in a village in Indian-administered Kashmir. Women here often find themselves lured by the promise of a job into unsuitable marriages. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
BUDGAM, INDIA, Sep 13 2023 (IPS)

It has been over a decade since 32-year-old Rafiqa (not her real name) was sold to a villager after being lured by the promise that she would be employed in the handicrafts industry of Indian-administered Kashmir.

But, instead of getting a job, she was sold to a Kashmiri man in central Kashmir’s Budgam district for a paltry sum of 50,000 Indian rupees (USD 605). Before the traffickers lured her, Rafiqa lived with her parents and three siblings in a poor Muslim family in West Bengal, a state in eastern India.

Ranging from Rohingya refugees – there are an estimated 40,000 Rohingya refugees in India – to women in other states of the country, such as West Bengal and Assam, women are trafficked and sold as brides to men who find it hard to find brides within their communities. Such grooms often include aged, physically challenged, and men with mental health issues.

Rafiqa’s husband, who drives a horse-cart for a living and lives in a one-room wooden shed, had to sell the only cow he possessed to pay the sum to the human traffickers.

She has now come to terms with “what I was destined to face in my life.” Embracing the reality, she says, was the only option left with her.

“I could have either tried to escape or taken some extreme step, but I decided to apply myself positively to make some kind of life out of what I ended up with,” Rafiqa told IPS while sitting at the base of the small wooden staircase of her house. “My husband’s simplicity and kind nature were also helpful in taking this decision – even though I didn’t like his appearance.”

“Now I have three kids for whom I have to live,” Rafiqa said. “I miss my parents and siblings. But it is very difficult to visit them. Even if I convince my husband, we can’t afford to visit them as it takes a lot of money to pay for the travel,” she added, saying her husband hardly provides two square meals for the family.

Rafiqa is not the only trafficked woman in that village. Over a dozen women have ended up getting married in similar circumstances. Elsewhere in the region, hundreds of other women from the Indian states of West Bengal and Assam are married to divorced and physically challenged men.

When 23-year-old Zarina (name changed), a woman from a poor family in West Bengal, got ensnared in a human trafficker’s trap, she had no idea that she would end up marrying a man whom she had never seen and was almost double her age. Zarina also fell for the false promise that a job in a carpet manufacturing unit in north Kashmir’s Patan area would be arranged for her. But, to her shock, she was sold into marriage.

“Now, how will my situation change after talking to you if it has not changed in the last five years? This is where I must be all my life,” an annoyed Zarina told IPS and then refused to elaborate.

Some women who encounter human traffickers are far unluckier. In a village of southern Kashmir’s Anantnag district, a young Rohingya woman was sold to a family by traffickers for their son with mental health issues after she was trafficked from a Rohingya refugee makeshift camp in the adjacent Jammu province.

“We were surprised when we discovered that the family has got a bride for their son who we knew was not mentally sound since his childhood,” said a neighbour of the family. “We would hear her screaming when her husband used to beat her almost every day. But fortunately for her, the young Rohingya woman was somehow able to escape after a few months.”

There are not any accurate official figures about sold brides, but some estimates say that thousands of girls and women are sold annually. The media sometimes reports the arrest of human traffickers, but such reports are not that common.

On July 26, India’s Minister of State for Home Affairs, Ajay Kumar Mishra, told the Indian parliament that 1,061,648 women above 18 years and 251,430 girls below 18 years went missing between 2019 and 2021 across different states in the country.

Mishra, however, said that most of the victims have been found and added that the Indian government has taken several initiatives for the safety of women.

Last year in April, India’s National Commission for Women launched an Anti-Human Trafficking Cell “to improve effectiveness in tackling cases of human trafficking, raising awareness among women and girls, capacity building and training of Anti Trafficking Units, and to increase the responsiveness of law enforcement agencies.”

In its 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report, the US Department of State identifies India as a Tier 2 country.

“The Government of India does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so. The government demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared with the previous reporting period, considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, if any, on its anti-trafficking capacity; therefore, India remained on Tier 2,” the report says.

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Mumtaza Bano (centre), is ploughing the field along with other women in her village in south Kashmir. Farmers in the region have experienced a heat wave which has turned much of the area, known for lush green hills, into a dry wasteland. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
Srinagar, Indian Kashmir, Jul 13 2022 (IPS)

The soaring temperatures this year in India’s northern state of Kashmir are proving calamitous for the region’s farming community.  The place, otherwise known for its emerald streams, lush green hills, and ice sheets, is reeling under heat attributed to climate change this year. The heat wave of such intensity has left most of the water canals dead and dry, plunging the already conflict-torn region into a frightening agrarian crisis.

Perturbed and dismayed, Ghulam Mohammad Mir is trying to sow a paddy crop on his two-acre plot in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal area. Mir says his months of hard work would probably get wasted as the land has almost turned barren due to scorching heat and water scarcity.

“We are witnessing the temperatures spiking as high as 37 degrees Celsius. Such heat wave was otherwise alien to Kashmir. You can see the land looks barren, and if we sow any crop here, we fear it would turn into dry, dead twigs in the coming days. The scenes are scary to imagine. There is little water accumulated by the rain left in the fields,” Mir told IPS.

Ghulam Mohammad Mir is sowing a paddy crop on his two-acre land located in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal area. Mir says his months of hard work will probably get wasted as the land has almost turned barren in the unrelenting heat. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

The farmer, who is in his late 50s, says he has been in paddy cultivation since childhood but has never seen the drying of the land with such intensity.  Mir says the water canals were never as dry as they are today, and in the first three months after spring – from March to June, there was no rainfall, and then it rained heavily for four days, suddenly plummeting the temperatures to mere 15 degrees Celsius.

“And then, the mercury surged again, and within a mere one week, the temperatures surged to almost 37 degrees. Where will we get water to irrigate our fields now? The paddy will burn amid such scorching heat. This is disastrous to the core,” Mir said.

According to the research titled ‘Climate Change Projection in Kashmir Valley’ conducted by the region’s agriculture university, the states of Jammu and Kashmir are impacted by climate change. The state, claims the research, is expected to have a surge in the number of rainy days by 2030.

“Similarly, the annual temperature is likely to increase in the next century compared to the base period of 1970. An increasing trend in annual maximum and minimum temperature, as well as precipitation, has also been predicted for the region under Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES).”

Over the years, the valley has experienced irregular precipitation patterns. In the first five months of 2022, Kashmir saw a 38 percent decrease in rainfall, according to data from the Meteorological Department (MeT) in Srinagar. The data reveals that the Kashmir valley has experienced a significant lack of pre-monsoon precipitation over the years. From March 1 to May 31, 2022, the region got 99.5 mm of rain, a 70 percent down from the average. Comparably, between March and May of each of the following years—2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021—there was a deficit of 16, 28, 35, and 26%, respectively.

Mohammad Iqbal Choudhary, the Director of the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Kashmir, told IPS that most irrigation canals have turned dry in Kashmir. As a result, the majority of paddy fields have been left uncultivated.

Dr Arshid Jahangir, who teaches Environmental Studies at the University of Kashmir, said climate models indicate a pretty bleak outlook for the region.

In the future, Jahangir says extreme events will happen more frequently in the Himalayas, which includes Kashmir.

“The Kashmir region has had numerous extreme weather occurrences in the last ten years, including floods, frequent cloudbursts, heat waves, droughts, landslides, and early snowfalls. In Kashmir’s climate history, such occurrences were never typical. These extreme events won’t just keep happening; their frequency will also rise. Aside from the financial losses, everyone’s lives are in danger as a result of this,” he said.

For farmers like Mir, if the situation doesn’t improve, they will have no choice but to abandon farming forever.

“You see, our children do not want to do this work. They ask, ‘what is the fun of toiling so hard only to get losses in the end?’ We could sell this land off and do some other business,” Mir said.

Most Kashmiris are farmers, using various techniques adapted to the region’s environment. Rice is planted in May and harvested in September. The main summer crops are maize, sorghum, millet, pulses, tobacco, and cotton, and the main spring crop is barley.

In south Kashmir’s Pulwama area, Mumtaza Bano was busy ploughing her two-acre land with her husband. However, Bano seems pessimistic about having a profitable yield this year.

“The soil looks hard, and it is tough to plough it through. It is July, and we are without any irrigation facility here. The canals are running dry, and so are our hopes of a good yield. This entire village is considering abandoning farming now and doing some other work. It is just a waste of time now,” Bano said.

Kashmir’s renowned earth scientist Professor Shakil Ahmad Ramsoo, told IPS that action at the global level is needed to resolve the crises prevalent across the Himalayan region.

“Global climate change is a reality. There would be extended dry spells interspersed with high-intensity, long-duration downpours. There is a trend when we look over the past 30 to 50 years. Snowfall in the winter is currently below average. The autumn is becoming dryer. The rainy spring is drying up. This is why the crisis needs global attention so that we can mitigate it,” Ramsoo said.
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In Kashmir there are thousands of young women who were sold in their teens by their parents to older men, and now living lives governed by restrictions which many equate to imprisonment. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, Oct 11 2019 (IPS)

Haseena Akhtar was only 13 when an agent told her parents that they could earn a good amount of money by letting her marry a Kashmiri man. The man was, however, three times older than Akhtar, the agent said.

Akhtar’s parents, who lived in the poverty-stricken region of West Bengal (an eastern Indian state), had two other daughters and according to tradition they would have had to bear cost of their marriages. So they let their 13-year-old daughter go with the agent.

Akhtar, who is now 20, ended up here in Kashmir — a landlocked northern region of India caught in the grip of violence and conflict over the past 30 years.

The agent took her to an old part of the city in Srinagar, the region’s capital, and she was married to a middle aged, disabled, Kashmiri man.

“That was not a marriage in any terms. That was a pure selloff. I was sold to a man who couldn’t find a bride for himself in Kashmir because his right leg was amputated after he was injured in a bomb blast some years before,” Akhtar told IPS.

Too many daughters and no boy

A year after the marriage, she gave birth to a girl.

Three more daughters later, and the strong desire by both her husband and her in-laws for a son and grandson was not fulfilled.

By the age of 18 Akhtar was mother to four daughters and relations with her husband and her in-laws had deteriorated.

“I was nothing less than a sex slave for my husband who wanted me to give birth to a boy. When that didn’t happen, I was first ridiculed, then beaten and then dragged out of the home along with my daughters,” Akhtar said.

One of the neighbours provided her with shelter and intervened to talk to her husband and his family. A volunteer organisation also came to her aid and helped her get work as a cleaner in a private firm, earning $100 a month.

When efforts to remedy things with her in-laws failed, Akhtar’s husband  paid her $550 and divorced her.

With a meagre income and four daughters to support, the road ahead for Akhtar looks filled with hurdles.

“I don’t know what I will do and where I will go. I sometimes wonder why being poor makes you vulnerable to all kinds of exploitation,” she said.

It’s so common, its socially acceptable

Akhtar’s story is not unique here.

In Kashmir there are thousands of young women like her, sold in their teens by their parents to older men, who are now living lives governed by restrictions which many equate to imprisonment. 

Infested with violence and Islamist militancy, Kashmir is becoming a safe haven for human traffickers. 

A three-decade insurgency that aims to free the region from Indian rule and the Indian efforts to quell it have claimed at least 100,000 lives, including those of civilians, militants and members of the security forces.

The border tensions and insurgency have killed an average of 1,500 people each year over the last 30 years, according to official records. Here, many former militants, torture victims and people who remain psychologically affected by the conflict didn’t marry at the traditionally marriageable ages of between 25 to 35 years. 

Now much older, these rejected grooms are turning to agents who provide them with young, non-local women whom they can marry — all for the price of just a few thousand dollars.

Aabid Simnanni, a renowned scholar and a social worker who heads an organisations that focuses on human trafficking in Kashmir, told IPS that a majority of the marriages between Kashmiri men and teenage, non-local women end badly due to the generational and cultural gaps. 

“You see the men to whom these young brides are married to are middle aged — 40 to 45 years old. How could you expect such a huge generation gap to disappear? Also, there are cultural, linguistic and many other barriers between the two sides. These things matter a lot in a successful marriage,” Simnanni said.

He said that for the past five years his organisation has been helping women get legal and financial help but that it would be a Herculean task to stop the practice. 

Police won’t investigate because the women are legally married

A senior official in the anti-trafficking cell of the Kashmir police told IPS that it has become almost impossible to catch traffickers as there is no one willing to testify to the crime.

“The victim is usually married to the man by [law] and it is difficult to ascertain the victim’s age as the documents are already forged by the agents. We act only when we receive the complaint against anyone,” said the official who did not wish to be named as he is not authorised to speak to the media about the issue. 

He says that there are no records available about the number of brides trafficked to Kashmir as the practice has societal acceptance in Kashmir. 

“The marriage is happens in a broad day light. Though it is an open secret that these girls are sold by their parents for a pretty sum, the relationship they get into is absolutely legitimate and legal in accordance the law,” the official said.

My marriage, my prison

Four years ago, Ulfat Bano, a 14-year-old from India’s Northern state of Bihar was taken to Kashmir by her distant cousin who herself was married to a Kashmiri man. 

Bano’s family was given around one thousand dollars and an assurance that she would marry into a good family. 

Here she was given to a  50- year-old torture victim.

“I was shocked when I saw him first. He was older than my father and I was forcibly married to him. I had no choice,” Bano told IPS.

According to her, her husband was tortured in the early 1990s when militancy against the Indian rule erupted in Kashmir.

His left eye was damaged and for years he could not find a local woman to marry him. His family contacted Bano’s cousin, who was married to one of their relatives, and asked her to find a bride for their son.

Now the mother of a three-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son, Bano longs for home every day. 

In the four years since her marriage, she has not been allowed to return to Bihar to see her family.

“Kashmir is nothing less than a prison for me. What good is this life for when you cannot meet your parents and share few moments of joy with them? My husband fears that if he allows me to meet my parents, I won’t return home.

“He is probably right.”

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

A boy pedals his bike along the desolated street of old city, which has been epicentre of protests and demonstrations. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah and Umer Asif
SRINAGAR, Kashmir, Sep 23 2019 (IPS)

It is 50 days into the lockdown in Kashmir since roads were blocked off, schools shut, and internet and communication services stopped.

On Aug. 5, India’s federal government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a curfew in the Muslim-majority area after amending the law to revoke the partial autonomy and statehood of Jammu and Kashmir. Restrictions on movement were immediately placed through a curfew as internet and telecommunications were cut.

The government also decreed that people from other Indian states could buy land in the region and become permanent citizens here.

Local Muslims, who form 80 percent of Kashmir’s 8 million people, feared that through such a move, the Indian government was trying to change the demography of the region.

More than 4,000 people, including politicians of opposition groups, human rights activists and separatists have since been detained by the government.  

Though the government claimed that it is making attempts to restore normalcy and open schools, the efforts elicited no positive response from people as parents refuse to send their children to school for fear of violence. In a tweet the YFK-International Kashmir Lobby Group, a non-governmental human rights organisation, stated that the region’s economy had been devastated because of the clampdown.

Tourism in the region has been badly hit ever since the imposition of curfew by the Indian government. Hotels have zero occupancy and tourist resorts are deserted.

49 days of curfew#Jammu & #Kashmir‘s economy in tailspin pic.twitter.com/WdwogaHrRb

— Kashmir Lobby Group (@KashmirLobby) September 22, 2019

The Indian-administered part of Kashmir has experienced increased violence since 1989 when militants stepped up armed resistance here.

Rights groups estimate that 100,000 people have since been killed, but Indian official records put the number at 47,000. 

Kashmiri has seen 50 days of imposed restrictions by the Indian government since it imposed a curfew in the Muslim-majority area after amending the law to revoke the partial autonomy and statehood of Jammu and Kashmir. The area also saw an increased military presence. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

A boy pedals his bike along the desolated street of old city, which has been epicentre of protests and demonstrations. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

An Indian paramilitary officer instructs his sub-ordinates about how to implement law and order in Kashmir’s capital Srinagar, as a curfew was imposed in the region. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

As schools continue to remain shut in the region since Aug. 5, amounting to 50 days tomorrow, kids are being taught in make shift schools, established by local citizens in several areas of Kashmir. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

A fleet of school busses parked in a garage in Srinagar outskirts as parents are reluctant to send their children to school due to the wave of uncertainty in Kashmir. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

View of a desolated classroom of one of the schools in Kashmir. Schools, universities, colleges and government offices are all shut in the region. The government’s attempts to reopen schools have failed as parents are reluctant to send their children to school due to the wave of uncertainty. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

The family of Asrar Ahmad, a 16-year-old boy who was killed during protests in the Illahi Bagh area of Srinagar. Ahmad succumbed to his injuries in hospital a month after being injured during protests. According to the family, Ahmad was hit by pellet guns fired by police, a claim vehemently rejected by the government. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

A para-military trooper guarding the main door of Kashmir’s largest mosque, Jamia Masjid. No prayers have been allowed inside the mosque since Aug. 5. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

Army men patrol one of the busiest markets of Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital, known popularly as Lal Chowk. Even as the government eased restrictions, locals continue to observe the strike against scraping of Kashmir’s autonomy. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

A protester who was shot at with a pellet gun displays the X ray film showing the pellets that penetrated his body. He was protesting against the curfew the Indian government placed on Kashmir. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

In the aftermath of protests. A road in Kashmir’s Anchaar area in the capital Srinagar. It’s the scene of pitched battles youth have had with the police on Aug. 5. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

The Indian government put an end to large scale protests by revoking the autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir – a status provided for under the Indian Constitution. Thousands of troops were deployed and the valley region faced unprecedented lockdown. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

Amid the communication gag which includes an internet blockade, Kashmir’s journalistic fraternity were provided with a limited internet facility at a basement of a private hotel in Srinagar. It is from this place that IPS correspondents were able to file their reports and use the internet. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

Shikaras — special boats used to take tourists to explore Kashmir’s mesmerising lakes — parked near on the bank of the world-famous Dal Lake. Tourism in the region has been badly hit ever since the imposition of curfew by the Indian government. Hotels have zero occupancy and tourist resorts too are deserted. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

As a series of conflicts in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region come into sharp focus, sidelining local populations, the long-term environmental costs may leave the region degraded, poor and desperate. Courtesy: CC by 2.0/Lensmatter

By Omair Ahmad
Sep 10 2019 (IPS)

As a series of conflicts in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region come into sharp focus, sidelining local populations, the long-term environmental costs may leave the region degraded, poor and desperate.

It has been a month since India cut off communications and implemented a security lockdown in the part of Kashmir it governs. While India has explained that the governance changes it is implementing – rendering significant legislative changes in territory it governs – as an internal matter, the move has drawn strong reactions from Pakistan and China, both of which claim the territory, at least in some part. The political outcome of these changes are a matter for both international relations and domestic politics within the various countries, but this move is one of many political factors that will make cooperation over the environment in the Hindu Kush Himalayas (HKH) far more difficult.

The Indus, a river of troubles

The impact of any political troubles will be felt the most along the Indus, which rises in Tibetan territory controlled by China, winds through the part of Kashmir under Indian control, enters Pakistan, with one stretch entering and exiting Afghanistan, before reaching the sea after traversing Pakistani territory. The two countries where most of the Indus basin is located are India and Pakistan, and their management of the river is largely governed by the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) signed in 1960. The Treaty has survived the outbreak of the 1965 war and the 1971 war between the two countries, as well as a host of skirmishes and conflict, and it is unlikely to be negatively affected now, as it was not affected in the last such crisis in 2017.

The problem, though, is less about the treaty as it has functioned in the past, but how it will function in the future. The IWT was a product of its times, and thus issues like environmental impact were not covered. The recent Hindu Kush Himalayan Monitoring and Assessment Programme (HIMAP) project led by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development highlighted that climate change impacts – everything from irregular rainfall to glacier retreat – in the HKH region would be felt most within the Indus basin. These are new factors that the treaty is not designed to cover. The hope that these could be brought into the treaty has now receded. With the Pakistani government withdrawing its High Commissioner from India, and lowering its diplomatic engagement, it seems unlikely that these issues will get the attention they deserve.

More importantly the Kabul river, part of the Indus, is not covered by any treaty. Pakistani policymakers have been hoping for an IWT-type treaty between Pakistan and Afghanistan would deal with many outstanding issues. But with lowered cooperation between India and Pakistan, the IWT looks less and less like a good example to follow. The idea of including China as well, so that the four countries could all be involved in the joint management of a river basin that they all share now seems almost impossible to imagine.

In the meanwhile conflict will continue to degrade the environment, while also limiting scientific access to the more remote parts of the HKH region. Both Indian and Pakistani troops continue to be deployed on the Siachen glacier, the highest battlefield in the world, costing both countries significant amounts of expenditure and significant loss of lives due to the harsh climatic conditions. The material and garbage accumulated on a glacier has significant negative effects for the environment, not to mention cutting off areas like this from any kind of scientific assessment. Reports like HIMAP, dependent on the cooperation of the various governments, will have to continue to deal with these blind spots.

The dangers of over-centralisation

By its very nature, conflict centralises decisionmaking, as security issues take precedence over everything else. This can have disastrous results on the local environment. This was most clearly demonstrated by the Rohingya crisis in Mayanmar and Bangladesh. The million refugees created due to the crisis led to the environmental destitution of the areas where the refugees were settled in camps.

By laying mines across the areas the routes that the Rohingya took, the Myanmarese military may have meant only to restrict human movement, but these were also traditional elephant corridors. Insurgency and civil war in India’s northeast and Nepal, had a deleterious impact on the rhino population, as poachers found it easy to operate. All 30 rhinos translocated to the Bardiya National Park where killed during the Nepalese civil conflict. In Kashmir, the decades of conflict have led to extensive poaching, the destruction of delicate habitats, and a timber mafia operating with impunity. With militarised borders, populations of key species, such as the yak, will find it difficult to travel freely, leading to limited cross breeding, and the decline of their populations.

The centralising tendencies of governments when it comes to “internal security” issues can possibly be best seen in the Tibetan region, where Beijing insisted on implementing agricultural and animal husbandry practices out of sync with local cultures. The local practices had evolved in consonance with the environment of the region, and had been more sustainable, something that China is now discovering, decades after putting into place self-harming practices. Nevertheless this sidelining of local populations remains a significant part of China’s investments abroad, with the China Pakistan Economic Corridor offering a very clear example. Due to its high political value for Pakistan, the investments are handled at high government levels with military support. Local factors are rarely factored in, so the heavy investment at the Gwadar port being built at the end of CPEC has managed to isolate and marginalise local fisherfolk.

Making the mountains poorer

Lastly, there are significant financial costs of the conflict on local people. Fear of violence undermines the confidence of outsiders willing to invest in a region, leaving people dependent on either government funds or their own limited means. The HKH region is one of the most biodiversity rich regions on the planet, and yet its mountain population are significantly poorer than their fellow citizens in their own countries. Despite potential opportunities for innovation and investment, the remoteness of the communities means that other than heavy infrastructure such as dams – which tend to marginalise local communities even more – investment does not reach these areas.

Fear of conflict will only make this more difficult, depriving the 240 million people that live in the mountainous areas of the HKH region that much poorer. This is at a time when climate change is already negatively impacting traditional crops such as apples, and half of the springs in the HKH region have either dried up, or become seasonal from perennial. Desperate people, who have few options, and whose involvement in governance is limited, make for poor caretakers of the environment.

While discussion of conflict between the countries of the Himalayan region is often spoken of in the same breath as nuclear war, the clear and present danger of a breakdown of cooperation in the region may be simpler. The price of conflict may simply mean that the environment is degraded, species are lost, scientific enquiry is stifled, investment is hobbled, and the hundreds of millions of people dependent on the delicate ecosystem of the HKH region will be made poorer and more miserable. It may not be a global catastrophe, but it will certainly be a series of local catastrophes.

This story was first published on thethirdpole.net and can be found here.

Excerpt:

The Indian government put an end to large scale protests by revoking the autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir – a status provided for under the Indian Constitution. Thousands of troops were deployed and the valley region faced unprecedented lockdown. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

By Abdullah Yusuf
Sep 9 2019 (IPS)

August is immensely important in the history of the Asian subcontinent, marking the month that India and Pakistan gained independence from the British in 1947. Now, in 2019, it has once again proved momentous, when, ten days before India’s Independence day celebrations, prime minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked the autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir – a status provided for under the Indian Constitution.

This latest move was a manifesto pledge from Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which claims that Kashmir’s autonomy has hindered its development while fostering an area of thriving terrorism and smuggling.

Soon, thousands of troops were deployed and the valley region faced unprecedented lockdown. Experts say that Modi’s move to tether the Muslim majority of Kashmir is a gamble that could trigger conflict with Pakistan while reigniting an insurgency that has already cost tens of thousands of lives.

Kashmir: a brief history

Until 1947, Kashmir was a territorially well-defined and functional state that had existed for a century before its seizure by the British in 1846. The British decolonisation of the subcontinent in 1947 was instrumental in creating disorder that pushed Kashmir into a repeated cycle of war and stalemate between Pakistan and India, which have both claimed the region as sovereign territory for the last 70 years.

Today, Kashmir’s geopolitical position and glacial water reserves – which provide fresh water and hydro-electric power to millions – add an extra dimension to the existing sectarian and ideological conflict between India and Pakistan over this small northern region.

The Kashmir issue has resulted in three wars between these two countries – in 1947, 1965 and 1999 – triggering numerous UN Security Council Resolutions – which unequivocally call for the Kashmiris’ right to self-determination.

Modi’s Hindu nationalist project

Many within the region feel that Modi’s BJP is brazenly trying to change Kashmir’s ethnic composition to disadvantage India’s Muslim minority by encouraging more Hindus into the region. Since the revocation of Article 370 (which assured the region’s autonomy), Indian Kashmiri leaders who vehemently opposed the decision – including two former chief ministers – have been sent to jail.

Modi’s government has a history of stoking tensions between Hindus and Muslims, with its political rule now focused on “Hindutva”, which translates roughly as “Hindu-ness”, and reframes Hinduism as an identity rather than a theology or religion.

Modi has fostered Hindu nationalism through anti-Islamic rhetoric, accusing Muslim men of attempting to change India’s demographics by seducing Hindu women, as well as encouraging lynching of Muslims falsely accused of eating beef (from the sacred Hindu cow) in BJP controlled states. Clearly, these are tactics designed to expand the notion of Hindutva and further isolate the Muslim population within India. Targeting Kashmir is a crucial part of the strategy.

Dangerous tensions and nuclear options

In the wake of India’s decision to revoke Kashmir’s special status, there are two key questions.

First, will it be beneficial to Kashmir as claimed by Modi’s government? The situation on the ground would suggest not. After a month of curfew and lockdown, protests have turned violent. The Indian government has been unable to restore peace in the valley despite the increasing atrocities. According to news reports, 4,000 people have been arrested since the territory lost its status.

Second, how is the situation affecting the already tense relations between India and Pakistan? India’s land grab comes just five months after a breakdown in relations following claims by India that a Pakistani-based suicide bomber killed 44 Indian soldiers in the Kashmir region, leading to airstrikes by both sides. The situation threatens to reignite this conflict with both countries cautioning the world about the nuclear option.

Addressing a joint session of Pakistan’s parliament on August 6, prime minister Imran Khan briefed lawmakers on the steps his government had taken towards peace in the region. But he maintained the situation in Indian-occupied Kashmir would deteriorate and its neighbour would blame and attack Pakistan.

Days later, Indian defence minister Rajnath Singh stated that India is committed to “no first use” of nuclear weapons, but future policy is dependent on the ever-evolving circumstances. These sentiments have led to international debate over the possibility of nuclear weapons being unleashed.

Parallels with East Timor

With this nuclear threat ever present, the situation in Kashmir is now one of the most dangerous in the world. Since the two countries have consistently failed to make any progress, external help from the international community and the UN is crucial in resolving the conflict and preventing further escalation.

As the world witnessed in the case of East Timor in 1999, independence from Indonesia after two decades of bloodshed was achieved following a referendum held under the stewardship of the UN. This result was not accepted by Indonesia, which launched a scorched-earth campaign, killing more than 1,500 Timorese, displacing nearly half the population, and razing much of East Timor to the ground.

The subsequent progression towards independence and peacebuilding was facilitated by external bodies such as the UN-mandated International Force in East Timor and the Transitional Administration in East Timor, underscoring the importance of support from both the UN and the international community.

The UN didn’t achieve success overnight, but endured through increasing international pressure, combined with a change in the Suharto government. Soon, Indonesia found itself falling out of favour with the international community.

There are parallels here for the Kashmir situation. Although progress may be slow while Modi’s populist BJP remains in power, pressure from the international community would likely go a long way towards pulling both countries back from the brink. In the meantime, while Modi tries to remake India in the BJP’s Hindutva image, for Kashmiris the struggle for self-determination goes on.

Abdullah Yusuf is a lecturer in politics at the University of Dundee

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the article here.

Excerpt:

Rahti Begum a fisherwoman sells fish on a roadside in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir state in India. She says she will be the last woman in her clan to sell fish. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India, Oct 25 2018 (IPS)

Much has changed since Rahti Begum, a fisherwoman in Kashmir, now in her late 60s, first began wandering the streets with a bucketful of fish on her head. She was 17 when her father roped her into the business that became the source of her livelihood for the remainder of her life.

Living in a houseboat on Dal Lake, one of Kashmir’s famed water bodies, Rahti says catching fish and selling it to people has been the sole source of income of her family for centuries.

“Even when I was a child, I knew I was going to sell fish. Every one in our family does that. The lake on which we live was been fulfilling all our needs,” she says. 

Her family belong to a tribe in Kashmir called ‘Hanjis’ who live in houseboats and eke out a living from the lakes and rivers the region had in abundance. A majority of the members of the tribe are involved in tourism as they take tourists in the lavishly decorated boats called ‘Shikaras’ to explore the beauties of the rivers and lakes.

Others amongst the tribe catch fish and sell it directly to the public. Rahti belongs to the latter group. The men during the early hours of the morning cast nets into the lake, catch fish and pass on the stock to their women who sell it by roaming around in different areas.

“When my father asked me join him, I was reluctant to say yes but there wasn’t anything else through which we could have earned a living. Gradually, selling fish became an integral part of my life and hence the family legacy continued,” she tells IPS. 

However Rahti, now afflicted with ailments that come with old age, is confident that she is going to be the last woman in her tribe to sell fish.

“My death will end the legacy for ever. No one wants to do this business again as the lake has all of a sudden turned monstrous for us; it is becoming a cesspool and fishes underneath its belly are vanishing with each passing day,” Rahti explains. 

Fish production and agricultural activities in this Himalayan region contribute 23 percent of GDP and are the mainstay of the economy.

According to a study conducted by researchers Neha W Qureshi and M Krishnan, the total fish production in Dal Lake registered a negative compound growth rate (CGR) of -0.34 percent for the period 1980-1990. But for the period 2000-2010, fish production in Dal Lake showed a negative compound growth rate of -2.89 percent. Wullar Lake showed a negative compound growth rate of -8.78 percent from 2000-2011

The study blames the decline in numbers on the negative externalities of tourism, excessive fertilisation of vegetable crops on floating gardens that lead to algal blooms, and the spike in pollution due to the dumping of waste in both lakes.

These have all led to a consistent decline and destruction of the breeding grounds of the local fish species schizothorax.

Furthermore, the consumption of fish has outnumbered actual fish production in the region.

While the annual consumption is 25,000 tons of fish, production stands at 20,000 tons per year in both lakes combined. Of this, Dal Lake produces no more than 5,000 tons a year. 

Rahti, who now struggles to earn enough for one full meal a day, says she vividly remembers the times when during her childhood, fish under the diamond-like transparency of the lake used to swim in shoals and flocks of ducks with emerald necks used to swim on the surface.

“Those were the days when we used to earn a decent livelihood and the lake produced no less than 15 thousand tons of fish every year. It is now a thing of a past,” she rues. 

Rahti, who has two daughters and a son, says the reason that her children wouldn’t go into the business of selling fish is the dreadful decline in fish production in the lake. Her daughters are homemakers and her son has a job at a local grocery store. Her earnings, Rahti says, have declined from 500 dollars a month to a mere 100 dollars a month at present.

“There isn’t enough produce that I could sell and with merge income in hand, why would I push my children to the precipice of a disastrous living?” Rahti tells IPS. 

Another fisherwoman, Jana Begum, has similar fears. In her 50s now, Jana says her only concern is how the family would survive if the situation were to remain the same.

“Our sole income is selling fish. My husband, a fisherman catches fish and I sell it. We have been doing this for 30 years but it looks like the difficult times have begun to dominate poor people like us,” Jana tells IPS. 

She says almost every day, her husband returns home with empty nets and a glum face as there aren’t any fish left to be caught in Wullar Lake — another famous water body located in the north of Kashmir.

“Why would my daughters do this business? What is left for them to earn. With us, the profession shall end and we are already long dead,” says Jana. 

According to a study by Imtiaz Ahmed, Zubair Ahmad and Ishtiyaq Ahmad, Department of Zoology, University of Kashmir, the main reasons for the depletion of fishery resources in these water bodies are over-fishing and encroachment.

It suggested that the entry of domestic sewage, solid wastes and agricultural wastes into these water bodies needs to be controlled and properly managed.

“Also aquatic weeds present in these aquatic ecosystems must be  cultivated and  should be  properly utilised because  of its  high  nutritional  values  and  economic  values. A separate  authority  needs  to  be  established  to  monitor the physico-chemical and biological characteristics of Dal Lake.” 

The management of waterbodies and marine life is one of the topics under discussion during the first global Sustainable Blue Economy Conference which will be held in Nairobi, Kenya from Nov. 26 to 28 and is co-hosted with Canada and Japan.

The director of the Department of Fisheries, Ram Nath Pandita, gives similar reasons for the decline in fish production in Kashmir’s lakes and rivers, attributing it to increasing pollution and encroachment.

He says because of the dumping of waste in water bodies, fish larvae do not grow into fry, resulting in the decline.

Pandita tells IPS that in order to address the decline in fish production, the government is supplying larvae to the water bodies and is continuously monitoring the process.

“The government is keeping closer watch on the entire process of increasing the fish production in Kashmir’s lakes and besides increasing the supply of larvae, it is also ensuring that no illegal fishing is allowed,” Pandita says.

He added that due to the massive floods that occurred in Kashmir in 2014, a large quantity of silt and sewage accumulated in the lakes, affecting fish production directly.

Pandita said awareness campaigns are being carried out about the importance of keeping the water bodies clean and not dumping household solid and liquid wastes in them.

“There are even seminars and road shows being conducted by the government in which people from cross sections of the society are educated that the fish can turn poisonous and will extinguish if water bodies aren’t protected through the unanimous efforts of the people and the government,” Pandita tells IPS. 

The government in February banned any illegal fishing in Kashmir’s water bodies and claims that the law will help curb the decline in fish production and help secure the livelihood of people involved in the sector.

Under the new law, only those permitted by the government can fish in the water bodies and any one found violating the norm shall be liable to three months of imprisonment and a fine of 500 Indian Rupees (about 90 dollars.)

The Department of Lakes and Water Ways development authority – a government department tasked with the protection of lakes in Kashmir – reports that various plans are underway to save Dal Lake and various species that live in it.

The department is uprooting water lilies with traditional methods and is de-weeding the lake with the latest machinery so that the surface of the lake is freed from weeds and fish production will rebound.

However, according to a study by Humaira Qadri and A. R. Yousuf from the Department of Environmental Science, University of Kashmir, despite the government spending about USD170 million on the conservation of the lake so far, there is no visible improvement in its condition.

“A lack of proper management and restoration plan and the incidence of engineered but ecologically unsound management practices have led to a failure in the conservation efforts,” says the study.

It concluded that the lake is moving towards its definite end and that conservation efforts have proved to be a total failure. It adds that official apathy and failure to take the problems seriously on the part of the managing authorities have deteriorated the overall condition of the lake.

The study says a united effort is needed by the government as well as the people so that instead of turning the water bodies into waste dumping sites, they are saved for the greater common good of Kashmir.

But Pandita is optimistic that the lakes can be restored to their past glory. Though, he admitted, that due to the high level of pollution in the lakes, it is feared that they may turn into cesspools. However, he said the government was working to combat this through various methods, which included awareness campaigns and lake clean-up drives.

But among the uneducated communities living around the lakes, many do not understand the measures taken by the government. When IPS spoke to local community members, all they talked about were the lack of fish. They were unaware about whether the government’s efforts will bring about any change in the lake.

As IPS asked fisher-person Jum Dar whether the government’s measures were bringing any positive change, Dar said he has seen many government agencies taking water samples for research from the lake and but there hadn’t been any visible change. His livelihood, he says, continues to remain in danger.

As IPS spent an entire day with Dar, and he only caught two fish which weighed no more than half a kilogram.

“See yourself the hard times we encounter everyday. How could we survive when such a catastrophe has engulfed our lives?”

Shugufta Barkat, a former teacher, and her brother Rasikh Barkat, a former student, stand in the charred remains of the Nasirabad Government High School in Kulgam – one of the many schools in India’s Kashmir that have been recently burnt down. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
KULGAM, Kashmir, India, Nov 23 2016 (IPS)

In the fading light of a November afternoon, 12-year-old Mariya Sareer bends over a textbook, trying to read as much as she can before it gets dark. It’s been nearly five months since the seventh grader from Shurat, a village 70 kms south of Srinagar city, last went to school, thanks to a raging political conflict.

“Studying like this is hard. I don’t know where to focus. My scores won’t be as good as before,” says the young student, who has always been top of her class. Her siblings Arjumand, 9, and Fazl, 6, both students at the same school, nod in agreement.Unlike other terror attacks, the arsons have remained a mystery, with no one claiming responsibility.

Mariya is still luckier than many of her friends. Although her school – the Taleem-Ul-Islam Ahmadiyya Institute – has been closed for the past four and half months, the building is still standing. But for thousands of others, there will be no classrooms to return to when the shutdown ends because their schools have been destroyed in fires.

Burning down a generation’s future

Schools across Kashmir were closed for Eid ul Fitr, which was celebrated on July 6. They were expected to reopen soon after the festival. But violence erupted across the valley after Burhan Wani, a young militant, was gunned down by security forces on July 8. Amidst mass rallies, stone-throwing and renewed demands for “freedom” from India, the pro-separatist parties called for a total shutdown of the valley.

The shutdown effectively kept the valley’s 1.4 million students from returning to their classrooms.

A few weeks later, on Sep. 6, the first news of a school fire was reported in Mirhama village of Kulgam district. Soon, similar reports began to pour in from all over the valley. So far, nearly three dozen schools – both government-run and privately-owned – have been burnt down. A majority of these schools are in South Kashmir where Burhan Wani was killed.

One of them is the Nasirabad Government High School in Kulgam. The building was set on fire on the evening of Oct. 16 and although locals and police tried to douse the flames, the library, gymnasium, computers, laboratory and desks were destroyed. Locals allege that the arsonists wanted to prevent the school from reopening – a reason why they burnt the upper floor, instead of the ground floors that had little equipment.

Shugufta Barkat, a former teacher at the school, says it was among the best in the district. “They are burning down the children’s future,” a visibly shaken Barkat told IPS.

Mariya, Arjumand and Fazl Sareer, students from the village of Shurat in India’s Kashmir valley, study at their home. Educational institutions have been closed for four and half months due to political unrest in the state. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Surprisingly, unlike other terror attacks, the arsons have remained a mystery, with no one claiming responsibility. Separatists and the government have both blamed each other, while some locals say they are the work of “fringe elements” in society who just want to cause disruptions. The police have made some arrests, but in each case, the accused has been identified as a “pro-separatist” without any clear link with any terror group.

With the increased cases of arson, the government has asked teachers to protect their schools during the nighttime hours. Accordingly, schools have created charts of teachers on “night duty”. Female teachers have been asked to send a male relative to patrol on their behalf.

Unease in a minority community

Basharat Ahmed Dar is the head of Asnoor, a village of the minority Ahmadiyya Muslim community in Kulgam. In a state of long political turmoil, violence, murders and torture, this is a community campaigning for love, peace and harmony. Their unique principles have earned them global respect, as well as scorn from many, especially the radicals.

The community strongly advocates for education as a healthy path to progress and also runs five schools in South Kashmir. The schools – which admit both Ahmadiyya and non-Ahmadiyya students – are known for a high standard of education and superior infrastructure.

Since the shutdown began, the Ahmadiyya youths, including some of the teachers, have been guarding their schools to repel possible attacks and arson. The patrolling will continue until the snow begins to fall, says Dar.

“It has not rained here for several months, so everything is very dry and prone to catching fire. But once snowfall begins, setting fire will not be as easy,” he explained.

Mass promotions and continued uncertainty

In Kashmir, a study year begins in April and ends in November- just before the three-month long winter vacation begins. The annual examinations are held in late October. However, this year, none of the schools could conduct the final examinations. With no signs of an end to the shutdown, government this week declared a mass promotion for students from first to ninth grade across the valley.

Private schools have decided to conduct examinations, even though they had completed only about 40 percent of the syllabus.

Farooq Ahmed Nengroo, a private school teacher, calls the mass promotions a “dangerous mistake.”

“In 2014 also, after a flood hit the valley, the students had a mass promotion although only two to three percent of all schools were affected. In future, we will definitely see a vacuum of knowledge and skills in the state’s labour force,” he warned.

High school students are also not pleased with the government decision. Ishfaq Ahmed, an eleventh grade student in Kulgam, says, “I had joined a coaching institute to prepare for the engineering college entrance test next year. But because of the shutdown, all the coaching institutes are closed. Unless those are allowed to function, nothing else is going to help.”

Meanwhile, Mariya Sareer is praying for an end to the shutdown and the burning of schools so she can get her life back. “I just want to return to school, study and play cricket,” she says.

A hospital in Srinagar, Kashmir. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

By Umar Shah
SRINAGAR, India, Dec 18 2015 (IPS)

In an isolated ward of one of Kashmir’s largest government-run hospitals, 54-year-old Ashraf Ali Khan is finding it hard to sleep properly. His 15-year-old son, Asif, is sitting on a bench near the bed staring at his ailing father.

Asif has not been told by his family that his father is suffering from a potentially terminal disease cancer. He knows his father is suffering from a consistent fever which sent him to the hospital, but doesn’t know his father is in the last stage of the crippling disease.

Ashraf Ali, a carpenter, went to the doctor eight months ago after persistent coughing. He had a chest X-ray which then led to further examinations. After series of tests, it was finally he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He has two months to live at best.

Ashraf is among thousands of people who have ben struck down with the disease. In a war-torn Kashmir, about 4000 cases are found every year in this Himalayan region.

Apart from the political uncertainty, which so far has claimed thousands of lives, experts says there is a 20 per cent rise in cancer cases in Kashmir with figures never decreasing. The latest data published by the state’s health department has Kashmir topping the list of cancer cases in India.

The data reveals in the past three years, more than 1,700 people have died due to cancer in Kashmir. It says that since January 2014 there were 12,091 patients who were detected with cancer in various state hospitals. In 2013, 6,300 patients were detected with the killer disease.

The top 10 cancers taking a toll in Kashmir are lung cancer, stomach, colon (large intestine cancers), breast, brain, esophagus (cancer of food pipe), non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, gastroesophageal, junction cancer (cancer between the stomach and food pipe), ovarian and skin cancers.

Experts say the cancer mortality rate among the people in Kashmir witnessed a sharp increase due to some leading behavioural and dietary risks, including high body mass index, low fruit and vegetable intake, lack of physical activity, tobacco use and lack of regular check-ups. Changing lifestyle, environmental degradation and differing food habits are reasons attributed to the surge in all the cancers especially in esophagus, colon and breast cancers.

Kashmir’s leading oncologist Mohammad Maqbool Lone says the situation in Kashmir is becoming more grim every day a with the highest number of lung cancers In the country found in the people of Kashmir.

“The situation is indeed alarming in Kashmir. There are patients hailing from every part of Kashmir including the far flung areas which are diagnosed with such a terminal disease,” says Lone.

Until now no single factor has been identified as the main cause of the rising cancers as compared to other regions of India. As health experts in Kashmir are not certain about the major causes for the rise of the deadly disease, they suspect three main components can trigger the rise of cancer in this Himalayan region.

One is a societal component with poor rural lifestyles and general deprivation, in particular a lack of vitamins and dietary nutrients.

The second reason for rising cancers in Kashmir is the use of copper utensils in cooking, the consumption of spicy, deep fried foodstuffs, and the drinking of hot salty tea which is largely being consumed in every home in Kashmir.

The third factor in rising cancer cases is an environmental issue with exposure to high levels of dietary nitrosamines from diverse sources. Overall, these three components are the general pattern that has led to esophageal and other cancers.

Oncologist Abdul Rashid Lone says that rising numbers of smokers has led to a rise in lung cancers here. He also claims that the detection rate also has increased besides the advancement in medical technologies.

“Earlier, most of the cancer cases in Kashmir used to go unnoticed. At present, the technology has advanced so much that a patient can be diagnosed with the disease. This is the main reason that today we say cancer cases rise in Kashmir,” Dr Lone said.

Oncologist Riyaz Ahmad Shah says that apart from the lung cancer, there are cases of stomach cancer on the rise in Kashmir. He says certain types of cancers are found in children including blood cancers and tumours.

“In case of females, there are cancers related to the reproductive system like cervical cancer, ovarian tumours and breast cancer. In males there are stomach, lung, and esophagus cancers found,” said Dr Shah.

Renowned gastroenterologist, Dr Showkat Ahmad Zargar, says any delay in the detection of cancer could prove fatal for the patient. He says due to the massive adulteration in food items, gastric diseases are on rise in Kashmir.

“Such diseases are killing people slowly. The people here are not very much health conscious which leads to the delay in detecting whether a person is suffering from a cancer or not,” Dr Showkat said.

“There are high chances that a person suffering from cancer can be cured if detected at early,” said Dr Sana-ul-lah who heads the oncology department in one of Kashmir’s leading government run hospitals.

Tobacco use in Kashmir has increased along with unhealthy diets. “If the key risk factors are avoided, Kashmir could be saved from this fatal disease which continues to claim thousands of precious lives every year in the region,” Dr Sana-ul-lah said.

Insha Usman, a research scholar says there are no major steps being taken by the state government to ensure that people are informed and are aware of cancer. She says early symptoms and preventive measures should be made public in far flung areas of Kashmir so that people are conscious of the cancer threat.

“Ironically, there is no comprehensive policy available with the government at the present time that could have made people aware of such a fatal disease. Mass awareness campaigns in villages and towns and people are informed about the symptoms of cancer and early treatment,” she said.

According to the latest study, colorectal cancer (CRC) is the major cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide and in Kashmir, CRC has been found to be the third most common gastrointestinal cancer after esophageal and gastric.

The study says there are certain factors which increase person’s risk of developing CRC. “The most important of these are the age, diet, obesity, diabetes and smoking, personal cancer history, alcohol consumption, large intestinal polyps, family history of colon cancer, race and ethnic background, genetic or family predisposition,” said the finding.

It adds that another major cause of cancer deaths was a late visit to the doctor. “The involvement of quacks, inexperienced medical practitioners and post-referral delays make the situation difficult to handle,” the study concluded.

The steady rise in cancer patients began several decades ago leading to the establishment of an NGO. The Cancer Society of Kashmir, formed in 1999, provides medical and financial help to poor patients suffering from the dreadful disease here.

Masood Ahmad Mir from Cancer Society of Kashmir says that they have started a one-day care centre which runs twice a week. “During this time, doctors from different fields like medical oncology, radio oncology, and gastroenterology sit together and treat patients. We do not charge anything from the people who visit us for the treatment,” he said.

(End)

Plastic bags and bottles comprise a major part of the rubbish that clogs this delicate mountain ecosystem when scores of Hindu devotees flock to the Amarnath cave in Kashmir to worship a representation of the god Shiva. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
PAHALGAM, India, Aug 17 2015 (IPS)

As he struggled to find a section of the stream clean enough to rinse off his muddy shoes, Mohan Kumar, a Hindu pilgrim on his way to the holy Amarnath shrine in Indian-administered Kashmir, gazed with despair over the filth that lay thick on the landscape.

“I fail to understand how our journey of faith can reconcile with all this filth." -- Mohan Kumar, a Hindu pilgrim on his way to the holy Amarnath shrine in Kashmir
What should have been a well-maintained track leading to one of the world’s most visited religious sites was instead clogged with human excrement and plastic waste, much of it contaminating the stream that runs alongside the path.

Standing at over 3,800 metres above sea level, the 40-metre-high Amarnath cave houses a stalagmite that is believed to be a representation of the god Shiva. For two months each year, between July and August, over half-a-million devotees make the perilous five-day trek, known as the Amarnath Yatra, to pay homage to one of the supreme deities of the Hindu pantheon.

But in their rush to reach sacred ground the devotees leave behind a sorry sight: piles of trash that blot the scenic views of the foothills and valleys of Jammu and Kashmir, a mountainous Himalayan state of exceptional natural beauty.

“I fail to understand how our journey of faith can reconcile with all this filth along the track,” Kumar told IPS. “I have come for a spiritual journey, but what I see along the way disgusts me. If this vandalism continues for another few years, it will mean an end to the pilgrimage.”

Ten metric tons of trash a day

He is not the only one with strong concerns about the future of this delicate ecosystem.

A steep rise in the number of visitors to the shrine in recent years also has environmental experts and public health officials on edge: government data indicate that the number of worshippers has sharply increased from 4,500 in 1950 to 650,000 in 2012, while tourist arrivals shot up from 15,000 in 1950 to two million in 2012.

The logistics involved in the yatra place a huge burden on the authorities. For the duration of the pilgrimage, which lasts 60 days, 7,000 security personnel are deployed on the mountain, along with 1,500 ponies and as many men for carrying worshippers and their belongings.

“Based on these numbers our modest estimates suggest that [at an average] a minimum of 10,000 people visit the Amarnath cave every day,” an official of the Pollution Control Board (PCB) of Srinagar told IPS on the condition of anonymity.

“An average person generates about a kilogram of waste everyday; this means that 10 metric tons of waste are left behind every day for 60 days.”

Despite a government ban on polythene use in the state, much of the debris left behind by the pilgrims, or yatris as they are called, comprises plastic bags and bottles.

Furthermore, according to Riyaz Ahmed Lone, an environmentalist who heads the Pahalgam Peoples’ Welfare Organisation (PPWO), the garbage disposal and sanitation facilities provided by the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) are inadequate to meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of devotees, who are forced to defecate in the open on the mountainside.

Added to the mix of plastic and human feces is gotka (chewing tobacco) and the excrement of ponies and donkeys, all of which eventually gets washed away into nearby streams that feed into the Lidder and Sindh rivers.

Other PCB officials who did not wish to be named told IPS that at least half a dozen fully functional Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) need to be set up to facilitate the proper functioning of several hundred toilets that serve the tourists and worshippers.

Currently there are only two STPs, which, environmental activists say, do not function properly, allowing effluent to flow untreated into larger water bodies.

These rivers subsequently provide water to roughly two million people throughout Kashmir, explained Shakil Romshoo, who heads the Earth Sciences Department at Kashmir University.

Kashmir’s Public Health Engineering (PHE) Chief Ghulam Mohammad Bhat added that 85 percent of the state’s drinking water needs are met by surface water sources in the mountains.

“But, it is a common knowledge that we have no healthy arrangements for sanitation here,” he told IPS.

“Not only the waste from open defecation areas, but also the sewer systems [from tourist hotels] are connecting with our rivers and contaminating our water bodies,” Bhat stressed.

An official at his office added that if people could see “what kind of water we treat at our treatment plants, they would not drink even a drop of it.”

According to India’s Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (MDWS), Jammu & Kashmir ranks 23^rd rank on a list of 30 states surveyed, with only 41.7 percent sanitation coverage as per the 2011 census.

Human waste left behind by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims during the Amarnath Yatra in Indian-administered Kashmir flow untreated into nearby rivers. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

Limiting arrivals and beefing up logistics

Lone told IPS that activists and experts “want the organizers to ensure environmental protection and proper regulation of the pilgrimage, by reducing the number of pilgrims to the permissible limit as per the carrying capacity of the fragile mountain ecology on a single day.”

Until the late 1990s, official data reveals, the pilgrimage had never crossed the 100,000 mark. Noted Indian human rights activist Gautam Navlakha says that the numbers started multiplying only after the establishment of the SASB in 2002 – an all-Hindu body with no representation from the majority Muslim population.

A few years after its formation, Navlakha says, the SASB extended the pilgrimage from 30 to 60 days, a move that is still mired in controversy, with environmental activists arguing strongly against the longer duration.

Pointing to tough restrictions on the number of pilgrims allowed into ecologically fragile zones like Mansarovar in Tibet and Gomukh – the snout of the Gangotri Glacier that forms the source of the Ganges River – in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, Navlakha has called for similar rules to govern the Amarnath Yatra.

Quoting the landmark 1996 Nitish Sengupta Committee report, he told IPS, “Along with the regulation of the total number of pilgrims to about 100,000, we could lay down a ceiling of 3,000 pilgrims permitted to travel in a single day.”

Nearly two decades after the report was released, these recommendations have been wantonly disregarded. Figures on the 2015 Yatra available on the SASB website indicate that the daily average between Jul. 2 and Aug. 13 far exceeded 3,000, with Jul. 6 alone witnessing over 20,000 worshippers on the mountains.

A May 2015 study on sustainable tourism in Kashmir published in the journal Elsevier revealed that the tourist flow in July for Pahalgam alone was almost fourfold the Tourism Carrying Capacity (TCC) of the mountain.

Shakil Qalandar, a member of the Kashmir Centre for Development and Social Studies (KCDS), said that civil society would continue to press for necessary restrictions on the number of pilgrims to better reflect the area’s carrying capacity until their demands are met.

“We have formally presented this demand to the government saying we are in full support of an ecologically-friendly pilgrimage for our Hindu brethren,” Qalandar told IPS.

The environmental implications of not dealing with the situation are enormous.

Hindu religious scholar and social activist Swami Agnivesh has even suggested that the growing number of pilgrims might have been the catalyst for the devastating floods that swept Kashmir in September 2014, resulting in a death toll of 600 and incurring economic losses of some 18 billion dollars.

According to an assessment report prepared by Kashmir’s Department of Environment, Ecology and Remote Sensing (DEERS) after the September 2014 floods, ecological degradation across the state is a major catalyst of natural disasters.

The study revealed that since 1992 Kashmir has lost 10 percent of its forest cover as tourism infrastructure encroached into wooded areas. It added that in the last century, the state’s total extent of water bodies plummeted from 356 square km in 1911 to just 158 square km in 2011.

Dealing with the challenges of sustainable religious tourism has been a concern all over the globe with the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) estimating that 300 to 330 million tourists visit the world’s key religious sites every year.

Kashmir is in a unique position to set a global example, but it will have to overcome numerous political hurdles and religious sensitivities in order to do so.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Over 100,000 people in the north Indian state of Kashmir have been left homeless after a deadly flood on Sep. 7, 2014. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
Oct 23 2014 (IPS)

Rafiqa Kazim and her husband Kazim Ali had a simple dream – to live a modest life, educate their four children and repay the bank-loan that the couple took out to sustain their small business.

Until early last month, their plan was moving along steadily but now Kazim says they have “hit a roadblock”, which took the form of deadly floods that swept through the north Indian Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir on Sep. 7, killing 281 people and destroying crops worth millions of dollars.

According to government estimates the overall damage now stands at some one trillion rupees (16 billion dollars), in what experts are calling the worst ever recorded flood in Kashmir’s history. The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) said this was the first time the force was called upon to respond to such a severe flood in an urban area.

“I have no idea how to get things back to normal." -- Rafiqa Kazim, a flood victim residing just outside of Kashmir's capital, Srinagar
By the time the floodwaters had receded and the Jhelum River had returned to its usual steady flow, much of Kashmir’s capital Srinagar was underwater, with 140,000 houses destroyed and hundreds of thousands of others badly damaged.

It has been over a month, but families like the Kazims are only just starting to come to terms with the long-term impacts of the disaster as they move slowly out of makeshift camps, shelters and relatives’ homes to start picking up the pieces of their lives.

Making her way through the wreckage of her home in Ganderpora, 17 km northwest of Srinagar, Kazim points out the damage to their house and one acre of agricultural land. But in truth, her mind is elsewhere – on the 10X10-foot carpet that she and another weaver had been working on for over two months.

For Kazim, this carpet represents months of labour, and the promise of grand profits for a woman of her economic background: in a single year, she can earn up to 200,000 rupees (about 3,350 dollars) from carpet weaving and embroidery. In a country where the average annual income is about 520 dollars, according to the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), this is a tidy sum.

“As the announcement came on the community address system that flood waters were entering the village, our first instinct was to save ourselves and get to a safer place. In the process, we forgot everything else including the loom, the carpet, as well as our floor mats and bedding,” she explained.

Hajira Begam, a 49-year-old flood victim, rigs up a clay cover for an electric coil that will serve as her stove in the absence of a proper home and kitchen. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

The loss of the loom could mean dark days ahead for the couple. Kazim only took up the practice of weaving and embroidering when Ali lost the use of his right arm due to a neurological disorder, preventing him from continuing with his job as a videographer.

Reluctant as he was to pass the onus of breadwinning onto his wife, Ali soon realized he had no choice. He sold his beloved camera, and pooled the money together with a 1,500-dollar loan to purchase the loom and various other tools Kazim would need to convert their home into a small handicrafts unit.

Their first order, for an eight-by-seven-foot carpet and assorted embroidered clothing items, brought the family nearly 1,250 dollars, which enabled them to pay their children’s school fees and set something aside for repayment of their loan.

Now, the floods have swept away their hopes of making ends meet, including the limited harvest from their small plot of farmland.

“I have no idea how to get things back to normal,” a dejected Kazim concluded, looking around at her three daughters and son. She is convinced that unless government support is forthcoming, families like hers will be looking at a bleak future.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi marked Wednesday’s Diwali holiday, a holy Hindu festival of light, with a visit to the affected areas, where hopes were running high that he would announce a generous aid package to flood victims.

In an already poor state – with 2.4 million out of a population of some 12 million people living below the poverty line – the impact of a natural disaster of this nature is gravely magnified, leaving the destitute far worse off than they were.

Things are particularly bad for farming families, who constitute 75 percent of the state’s population and lost some 512 million dollars worth of agricultural products in the floods. Some 300,500 hectares of crops were also destroyed, spelling trouble for landholding families who generally own just 0.67 hectares of farmland.

Women shoulder the burden

Until official assistance kicks in, women like Kazim will be forced to bear the brunt of the floods, since the responsibility of managing domestic affairs is seen throughout traditional Kashmiri society as a woman’s job.

In most of the flood-hit areas, it is the women who are fetching water for their families, cleaning homes of silt and mud, retrieving cooking utensils and generally making sure that life gradually returns to normal.

Finding clean drinking water is proving a particular challenge, with many sources such as wells and water supply tanks damaged and contaminated by debris washed up by the floodwaters, which reached heights of up to 25 feet in some areas according to the NDRF. For the average family, which consumes about 500 litres of water per day, this poses countless challenges on a daily basis.

In Haritara Rekhi-Haigam, a village located some 60 km north of Srinagar, IPS witnessed women struggling with all these challenges. Some residents told IPS that several women had been injured while attempting to fill their buckets from a water tanker, as scores of people jostled for a place in the line.

Many women in Haritara Rekhi-Haigam must now walk over four km each day for a single pitcher of water. IPS spoke with a group of young girls carrying heavy pots on their heads, who said they set out at daybreak for a return trip that lasts over five hours.

Women like 49-year-old Hajira Begam are coming up with unique solutions to their problems. She shows IPS the earthen insulation she has rigged up over an electric coil, which allows her to boil water to clean her cooking utensils.

She has also created a makeshift structure over a portion of the roadside that serves as her only shelter since the flood has washed her house away. She is one of some 100,000 people left homeless by the floods.

Women must also see to their children’s education, no simple task given that the floods damaged as many as 2,594 schools, with some 686 buildings left completely uninhabitable.

A school teacher named Nahida Begam told IPS that her family still has not found permanent housing, with some renters demanding as much as 423 dollars “for two rooms and a kitchen” she said. With a combined monthly income of about 900 dollars, and two children to educate, she and her husband cannot afford such a high rent.

With the winter approaching, bringing with it the promise of weather that falls as low as minus ten degrees Celsius, “it is likely that people are going to die of cold in the coming months for want of shelter,” according to Mehbooba Mufti, president of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

And with the onset of winter, those with humble dreams like Rafiqa Kazim will be hunkering down to plan for a future that, for the time being, holds very little promise.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

A Kashmiri woman with the picture of her son who went missing 17 years ago. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS.

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India , May 5 2014 (IPS)

Forty-seven-year-old Shahmala’s husband has been missing since 1993. In India’s restive Jammu and Kashmir state, she is what is known as a half-widow, a woman who has no clue whether her husband is dead or alive.

In December last year, a group of clerics issued a fatwa (Islamic decree) at a meeting in state capital Srinagar that women in Kashmir whose husbands had been missing for more than four years could remarry. But for Shahmala, the decree is of no consequence.While the decision has been widely welcomed, many also say it has come too late as most disappearances in Kashmir took place during the 1990s and early 2000s.

She has lost her youth, her children have grown up, and she has weathered the blows of life as a single mother for 21 years. The prospect of marriage at this stage seems remote.

“It should have come much earlier in order to help hundreds of half-widows across Kashmir remarry,” law professor Showkat Sheikh, who teaches at the Central University of Kashmir, told IPS.

According to the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (CCS), there are 1,500 half-widows in the state, where an insurgency since 1989 has resulted in many custodial disappearances of men. Human rights activists say most of these men were taken away by the security forces that were battling insurgents, and never seen again.

The ‘half-widows’ they leave behind are stigmatised, lonely and often under severe financial strain.

Many of these women join sit-ins by the relatives of missing persons every month in Srinagar to seek the whereabouts of their loved ones.

All these years, the half-widows of Muslim-majority Kashmir had to abide by Islam’s Hannafi school of thought that says a woman has to wait up to 90 years to marry again following the disappearance of her husband. But civil society groups appealed to Islamic scholars to find a solution to Kashmir’s problem.

The result was the new fatwa in December, a decree on remarriage coming for the first time since insurgency broke out in the state 25 years ago.

While the decision has been widely welcomed, many also say it has come too late as most disappearances in Kashmir took place during the 1990s and early 2000s. According to the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons in Kashmir, at least 8,000 people have gone missing.

Some of these cases, as Professor Sheikh observes, are 15 to 20 years old. “The half-widows who are still young might think of remarrying, but it might not be helpful for those now advanced in age,” he told IPS.

Shahmala has struggled all these years to make ends meet. Following her husband’s disappearance, her two brothers-in-law started taking care of her and her two children.

“But after four-five years, their wives wanted to live separately,” Shahmala told IPS in Lolab area, 110 km north of Srinagar. “Our family disintegrated, though my brothers-in-law continued to help with my children’s education.”

This arrangement too did not last long. Both children eventually dropped out of school. “Fatherless children can hardly study, especially when their mother is also uneducated and without any source of income,” she said.

“My son is now 21 and drives a cab to fend for the family,” Shahmala said. “Had his father been around, he would have been in a college or university. But this is what fate has chosen.”

Human rights activists say Kashmir’s half-widows do not fall under a compensation policy. The Kashmir government does give an equivalent of around 3,300 dollars to the families of those killed in militancy-related incidents.

Dr. Peerzada Mohammad Amin, who teaches sociology in Kashmir University, told IPS: “I think Islamic scholars across South Asia and particularly in our part of the world focus more on ritualistic Islam than on social problems even though it is clearly mentioned in basic Islamic literature that religion can’t be separated from politics, sociology and economy.

“In all these years, society, state and religion have failed to respond to this human problem in Kashmir. If they come forward in a committed manner, things can still be done for these women.”

In spite of societal pressures, there are many half-widows, especially the younger ones, who would like another shot at a happy married life.

Mehmooda (name changed) is only 29. When her husband went missing five years ago, they had been married for just one-and-a-half years, and was pregnant.

She has thought of remarrying but continues to live with her in-laws on their insistence. “They are very good people and they take good care of me,” she told IPS. But, she says, they didn’t agree when her parents brought a marriage proposal for her.

“While I respect my in-laws and appreciate whatever they are doing for me, I have my whole life ahead,” she said. “Things don’t always stay the same.”

Education of girls is helping women learn about their rights in Kashmir. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India , Dec 24 2013 (IPS)

Mehnaz Bano (not her real name), a 37-year-old woman in a hamlet in Indian Kashmir, is living a “satisfied and peaceful” life ever since she secured her daughter’s property rights before her remarriage – though not without a long and tedious struggle following her first husband’s death.

When her first husband died in 2003, she was just 27 years old. But her in-laws stood in the way of her second marriage. According to Bano, they argued that since they had invested money in their son’s wedding, they couldn’t let that money go to waste by allowing her to remarry.

“Initially, I took it as my fate and lived with it for six years. And I also wanted my daughter to grow up a bit. She was just a year old at the time of her father’s death,” Bano told IPS.

But, she added, as time went by, she started getting the feeling that she was no more than a slave in their household, given that she had no legal right to the family’s property.

“I asked them to leave me alone with my daughter or to allow me to remarry, in which case I would leave my daughter with them provided they registered one-third of the property in her name. But they agreed to neither of these two options,” said Bano, who has a master’s degree in history and teaches at a government school.

“I could easily provide my daughter with a quality education given that I had a steady monthly income, but they refused it vehemently.” She said that if her in-laws had allowed her to take her daughter with her, she wouldn’t have remarried, for the sake of her daughter.

But her in-laws’ “stubborn stance” compelled her to wage a legal battle against them. And once the case went to court, her in-laws approached her with a “compromise,” agreeing to register property in the name of Bano’s daughter on the condition that the girl would live with them.

“When I saw them budging, I was happy to settle out of court. So I withdrew the case,” she said. Bano now has two children – a daughter and a son – with the new husband she married in 2009. “I am glad that I pushed for my rights, and my daughter’s,” she said.

A recent trend

Women are just starting to become aware of their rights in the region of Kashmir in northwest India.

“It was mainly because of illiteracy. Women’s education used to be considered against the norms of Kashmiri society,” Bashir Dabla, a leading sociologist at Kashmir University in Srinagar, told IPS. Women’s employment has also long been looked down upon, he added.

But this trend, said Dabla, has been changing in the past few years. “Now women are not only seen in good numbers in educational institutions, but also in workplaces,” he said.

According to the 2011 census, female literacy in the state of Jammu and Kashmir increased from 20 percent in 1981 to 58 percent in 2011, compared to 44 and 78 percent for males in the same period.

The result gazettes at Kashmir’s school board examination reveal that girls have topped the 10th standard annual exams six times in the past ten years. In Kashmir University a number of departments have an almost 50:50 male to female ratio.

The impact

Results have begun to be seen on the ground. Tasaduq Ahmad, assistant divisional commissioner of Kashmir, said his office received 917 complaints this year from women who were denied their share of the family property.

“We straightaway asked the concerned revenue officials to cancel the land registration of all the households where women had filed complaints,” Ahmad told IPS.

According to Ahmad, legislation passed by the Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly in 2007 made it easier for women to claim their share of the family property. Earlier laws were not clear on women’s property rights.

Ahmad said women have increasingly filed complaints since the legislation was approved. “This was not the case 10 years back, but now such numbers go up each passing year,” said the assistant divisional commissioner, who has been serving in Kashmir’s revenue department for 23 years.

But social activists say women in Kashmir have a long way to go in fighting social prejudices against them.

“For example, when it comes to decision-making in a household, men continue to call the shots. Women are not yet in a position to assert themselves,” said Abdul Rashid Hanjoora, a prominent rights activist.

The 2011 census reflected the continued preference for boys over girls among Kashmiris, with the child sex ratio falling from 964 girls per 1000 boys in 2001 to 862 girls per 1000 boys in 2011. The national average in India is 940 girls per 1000 boys.

A woman victim of a buried shell. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS.

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India, Dec 2 2013 (IPS)

A vast and picturesque meadow called Tosamaidan, about 112 km west of Jammu and Kashmir’s capital Srinagar, has now become the rallying point for hundreds of villagers who want the artillery exercises being carried out there by the Indian Army to stop.

For, the unexploded shells of Tosamaidan have been tearing their lives apart.

Reshma, a villager, lost her 19-year-old son Bilal Ahmad in 1997 to an unexploded shell while he was playing around the meadow. “As a mother, I don’t want to see children getting killed in like this,” Reshma told IPS.

In 1964, the meadow spread over 375 acres had been taken on lease by the Indian Army from the state government for 50 years. Now that the lease period is coming to an end in April next year, the residents of more than 30 villages around Tosamaidan have started a massive campaign against its renewal.The shells have resulted in heavy casualties and maimed hundreds of people, besides killing livestock and hitting the picturesque area’s tourism potential.

They say the shells have resulted in heavy casualties and maimed hundreds of people, besides killing livestock and hitting the picturesque area’s tourism potential.

“We don’t want our children to suffer like us,” said Fatima Begam of Khag village who has three children.

“If our parents had said in 1964 that the army should not be allowed to carry out military exercises in the vicinity of our villages, we would not have suffered,” Begam told IPS outside her home.

Picturesque Kashmir valley has for decades been at the heart of a bloody conflict between India and Pakistan. At least 60,000 people have lost their lives since an insurgency broke out in 1989, with the fighters demanding ‘freedom’ for Kashmir. The region has seen heavy mobilisation of troops by the Indian government.

Now the army has approached the Kashmir government for a fresh lease for Tosamaidan for another 20 years.

Lt Col. N. N. Joshi, army spokesperson in Srinagar, told IPS: “I can’t comment on this beyond the fact that the issue of lease extension is currently being deliberated upon.”

But the residents of Khag, Beerwah, Arzal and many other villages are bitterly opposed to an extension.

An inquiry by a Kashmiri lawmaker in the state assembly in August this year revealed that many shells left behind during army exercises have accidentally exploded, killing 63 people over the years. The statistics were provided by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah.

Ever since, the villagers who had been demanding an end to the military exercises around their homes have garnered the support of human rights activists as well as Kashmiri politicians.

Mehbooba Mufti, president of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has demanded that instead of military exercises, the idyllic beauty of Tosamaidan should be used as a tourist destination. “You can’t ignore the pleas of thousands of villagers who have been suffering on many fronts because of these military exercises,” Mufti told IPS.

Members of her rival political party, the ruling National Conference party, also agree that the lease should not be extended for the army.

The Kashmir government has constituted a high-level committee to give its report to the state government. But many feel the government should deny an extension at the current site due to the ground realities.

“Both on principle and legally, the government has enough reason (to say no). Besides, a democratically elected government should always consider the genuine demands of its people,” a widely circulated Urdu daily, Kashmir Uzma, wrote in its editorial on Nov. 12.

Villagers say artillery exercises also hit their livelihoods.

“These artillery exercises hamper agricultural and livestock related activities apart from spoiling all chances of developing the area as a tourist destination,” said Arjumand Talib who has extensively written on conflict and economy in Kashmir.

Akhtar Hussain, another villager of Khag, said that developmental activities had become virtually impossible. “A few years back, the army disallowed the construction of the road in the area on the plea that it would give villagers easy access to the army camp,” Hussain told IPS.

Villagers say not only do they stumble upon unexploded shells in the upper areas while grazing their livestock, but shells also roll down to lower areas when torrential rains come in summer.

In May this year, a major tragedy was averted when a villager informed a social activist about an unexploded shell in a nearby stream.

“One of our villagers, Bashir Ahmed, telephoned me saying he had found a suspicious item near the stream. I informed the police right away and got the shell exploded safely,” Raja Muzaffar, a social activist, told IPS. “But unfortunately this does not always happen. Most often people stumble upon these shells and start tampering with them or step on them accidentally.”

Raja and other social activists have filed a petition before the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC). “We are quite hopeful that the SHRC will give clear directions to the state government about not leasing out the land any further,” Raja told IPS.

Maryam Akhtar, a farmer in Kashmir, worries the taps will not yield enough water for her family's daily needs. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India, Aug 16 2013 (IPS)

Zareena Bano has had to skip school 17 times this year to help out on her family’s farm in Tangchekh village in the northern Indian state of Kashmir.

Her teachers say she has the potential to be a brilliant student, but warn that if she keeps missing school she will not go far.

Never before has the 15-year-old had to sacrifice her education in order to support her family, but an acute water crisis in this Himalayan state has made irrigation a constant worry and severely disrupted the way of life for thousands of farming families like her own.

Troubled though they are by the toll the extra labour is taking on their daughter’s schoolwork, Zareena’s parents are in no position to order her to stay away from the fields.

Her father, Gaffar Rathar, says the family is entirely dependent on the yields from his 2.5-acre paddy field and half a dozen walnut trees. Frequent droughts mean a lot of additional hard work for him and his family.

“Sometimes, when water is in extremely short supply, we have to store water in small ponds that we dug ourselves, and plastic containers,” he told IPS.

Most residents of this lush valley, nestled between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range, are unaccustomed to drought. For generations subsistence agriculturalists have relied on steady rainfall and glacial rivers to irrigate their farmland, but now this scenic alpine region is feeling the pinch of climate change.

The most recent State of the Environment Report (SOER), released by the Directorate of Ecology, Environment and Remote Sensing in the capital, Srinagar, says that all its monitoring stations across Kashmir – except Jammu, which is located 290 km away from the capital – recorded a decreasing trend in total annual rainy days.

A number of other studies carried out in recent years corroborate these findings, adding that glaciers in the Kashmir Himalayas are receding, while snowfall and precipitation are both showing decreasing trends.

A study by Norwegian scientist Andreas Kaab and his French colleagues, which was published by Nature Magazine in August last year, found that increasing temperatures in the region posed no immediate threat to glaciers in the Hindu-Kush Karakoram Himalayas (HKKH) except to those in the Kashmir Himalayas.

Kaab’s findings suggest that Kashmir’s glaciers may be receding by “as much as half a metre annually,” presenting an immediate threat to the rivers that feed the Indus basin.

Jhelum, the largest river in the region, originates in South Kashmir and is fed by glaciers in the upper reaches of the town of Pahalgam. One of the river Jhelum’s primary tributaries, the Lidder, is fed by the Kolhai glacier, which is receding fast.

Quoting a study conducted by Kashmir University’s geography department, Department Head Mohammad Sultan Bhat informed IPS that, since 1975, precipitation in the lower parts of Kashmir has declined by 1.2 centimetres in lower altitudes and eight cm in higher altitudes.

These trends, say experts, bode badly for the future of Kashmir’s agricultural industry: according to figures in the most recent Kashmir Economic Survey, only 42 percent of agricultural land in Kashmir is covered by irrigation facilities like canals and lift stations, while the remaining 58 percent is entirely dependent on rainfall.

Following the enforcement of the Big Landed Estates Abolition Act in 1959, over 9,000 landowners were stripped of over 100,000 hectares of land, which was transferred to peasants, thereby creating an agrarian-based economy in Kashmir.

Over 80 percent of the population is now dependent on agriculture for a livelihood, cultivating such crops as rice, maize, pulses, saffron and potatoes.

Official statistics indicate that 75 percent of agricultural land – roughly 46,943 hectares – is under paddy cultivation in Kashmir, indicating that rice farmers comprise the bulk of agriculturalists here.

Early this year, scientists from the earth sciences department at the Kashmir University revealed that increases in temperature and a considerable reduction in precipitation would result in a sharp decrease in paddy yields across the region.

Earlier this year, renowned scientists Shakil A. Romshoo and M. Muslim presented a paper at the Indian Science Congress in New Delhi, predicting that rice production would decrease by 6.6 percent (over 4,000 kg per hectare) by 2040.

According to Romshoo, these projected declines are based on predictions that maximum and minimum temperature will increase by 5.39degrees Celsius and 5.08degrees Celsius respectively by 2090.  Precipitation levels are likely to decrease by about 16.67 percent by 2090.

Most farmers in Kashmir earn roughly 1,900 dollars a year and produce an annual average of 40 quintals (4,000 kgs) of paddy per hectare. Experts say these farmers will struggle to withstand the decrease in yields that will undoubtedly accompany the predicted weather changes.

Already countless families are feeling the pinch of decreasing water supplies. Nasreena Begum, a mother of three children living in the village of Surigam in the northern Kupwara district, spends several hours every morning walking over a kilometre to fetch water from a stagnant pond, since the stream that once bordered her village has completely dried up.

She told IPS she makes the trek several times a day in order to collect enough water to meet her family’s daily needs.

In addition to drinking and washing water, she must also ensure that the family cow is properly watered, since her children rely heavily on the cow’s milk for nourishment and she herself sells five litres a day to the local milkman in order to supplement her husband’s meagre earnings as a daily labourer.

As the rains become thinner, and the glacier-fed rivers slow to a trickle, she and many other farming families will be forced to hunker down to weather a hotter and drier Kashmir.

(END)

A worker bends over the rows of flowers in one of Rubeena Begum's polyhouses. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India, Jul 9 2013 (IPS)

As a little girl, Rubeena Begum had big plans: she would become a doctor and secure a decent income working in one of the 30 hospitals in the Himalayan state of Kashmir in north India.

She had pictured sterile medical establishments and well-lit corridors that reeked of disinfectant, never dreaming that she would one day make a living in a much more organic environment.

Standing in front of a handsome collection of polythene-covered greenhouses, or polyhouses, Rubeena points proudly to the fragrant blossoms inside – Lilium, gladiolus, gerberas, carnations, lavender and Bulgarian roses – that have changed her life forever.

She does not cultivate these flowers for their aromatic and medicinal properties alone: they also fetch her a tidy sum at the local market, enough that she has been able to pay back a considerable portion of the loans she took to get this floriculture business off the ground.

Starting with just three polyhouses erected on half an acre of land in the Budgam district of Kashmir in 2006, Rubeena has doubled her business in six years, and now manages 12 growing units.

Banks that once baulked at the idea of providing a loan to this intrepid young woman – demanding countless documents as proof that she would be able to repay – now approach her with offers of even bigger loans to sustain her successful venture.

Rubeena tells IPS that she has become the veritable poster child for entrepreneurship in Kashmir, where half a million out of roughly ten million people are jobless.

Experts blame this dire situation on the armed conflict that has gnawed at every aspect of life in this scenic yet troubled state for over two decades.

Every year over 2,500 young people graduate from Kashmiri universities with Master’s degrees in hand – but those who are unable to bag the few available jobs in the government sector, or in the tourism, agriculture or handicrafts industries, end up searching desperately for work that simply does not exist.

Now, floriculture seems to be offering a way out of a cycle of poverty that many youth were beginning to fear they would never escape.

In full bloom

Rubeena had been on the lookout for employment opportunities when she happened to tune into a radio programme extolling the virtues of agricultural ventures, and of flower cultivation in particular.

“As a child I was always passionate about flowers – I would gather them and decorate my house with them,” she said. “I knew then that this was something I needed to take up.”

After receiving basic training from the Jammu and Kashmir Entrepreneur Development Institute (J&KEDI) on how to erect polyhouses, as well as advice from the floriculture department on the basic growing seasons and harvesting techniques, she set to work.

While reluctant to divulge details of her profits, she readily shared news of having recently expanded her operations by renting 57 acres of land for the cultivation of Bulgarian roses and lavender.

She transports many of her flowers and aromatic oils to collection centres in Kashmir, where they are picked up by distributors who drive them into major urban centres like Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, where flowers for religious festivals, marriage ceremonies and temple offerings are in high demand.

She also sells extracts like rose oil (used in perfumery), rose water (used for cosmetic and medical products) and lavender oil (used in cosmetics and alternative medicines) at her shop in Srinagar’s Sheikh-ul-Alam International Airport.

The Jammu-based Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (IIIM) also facilitates sales of her products by putting her in touch with buyers interested in the plants’ medicinal properties.

Experts tell IPS that a bunch of 10 high quality carnations or gerberas typically fetch between five and 15 dollars, while a kilogramme of rose oil brings in up to 7,000 dollars in the Indian market.

According to official estimates, Kashmir’s floriculture industry has the potential to generate 100 million dollars a year in revenue, since the blooms here are said to be of exceptionally high quality.

Whether this is due to the crisp, clean mountain air or the rich Himalayan soil does not seem to matter much to the youth who are flocking to the sector.

Shahnawaz Rasool Dar, a youth from downtown Srinagar, recently started cultivating flowers in the Baramulla district on four acres of land.

“I was working in a private company outside Kashmir but after realising the potential of floriculture in Kashmir, I rushed back here,” Dar told IPS at his farm where he cultivates gerberas, carnations and roses.

Dar’s Bismillah Flora Company is still in its infancy, fetching around 4,000 dollars a year, but he says he is confident that he can transform it into a major business operation.

Well educated and tech-savvy, Dar spends hours online researching the best scientific practices such as the ideal distance between rows of flowerbeds and optimal irrigation techniques; he also buys seeds from reputed companies.

According to Kashmir’s Floriculture Department, in the last year alone more than 1,100 youth started growing flowers for a living.

Popular regions for floriculture include the Budgam, Srinagar and Baramulla districts of the Kashmir Valley, a fertile basin of the river Jhelum, where the climate is ideal for nurturing the delicate flowers, according to Sunil Mistri, director of Kashmir’s Floriculture Department.

“The average farmer can earn an additional annual income of 3,000 dollars if he also grows flowers,” Mistri told IPS.

According to Javid Ahmad, a floriculture officer in Budgam, the number of flower-growing farmers reached 375 in the last year. Once registered with his department they are entitled to regular advice from experts and subsidised loans ranging from 3,300 to 16,600 dollars to encourage more people to venture into the field of floriculture.

As Javid was talking to IPS, two young men dropped into the office and expressed their desire to start a flower cultivation project using a small portion of their farmland.

Bashir Ahmad, who graduated from Kashmir University two years ago and has since tried – unsuccessfully – to secure a livelihood cultivating mushrooms, is desperate for an income.

Lured by the many success stories of floriculture entrepreneurs like Rubeena, Bashir is now “quite keen to take this up as a profession,” he told IPS.

Individual ventures have a multiplier effect on employment. For instance, Rubeena now hires 53 workers to tend to the flowers, paying day labourers about five dollars a day, and her regular employees between 70 and 100 dollars per month.

Anxious to capitalise on these developments, the government is laying plans to develop the sector on a national level. Mistri says the floriculture department will soon create cold storage facilities at various centers across Kashmir, to ensure that flowers stay fresh until buyers come for them.

Qadir Sheikh, a landmine victim from Warsun, laments that his handicap will mean no education for his two daughters. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, May 18 2013 (IPS)

Aadil Khan and his two siblings had been playing as usual behind their house in the village of Diver, 110 kilometres north of Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, when they came across what they thought was a “plaything” laying on the ground. But no sooner had they picked the object up than it literally shattered their innocent lives into pieces.

Stunned by the explosion from the shell, which the children had mistaken for a toy, they cannot remember much about the aftermath of that incident on Dec. 17. But the medics who treated them said they were “lucky” to have escaped with their lives.

“Aadil and Mashoq received severe injuries while their sister Naza escaped any major damage,” Sharief Khan, the children’s father, told IPS.

Khan, who supports a family of seven and earns his livelihood through manual labour, had to make a “tough decision” to ensure his children received proper medical treatment: he had to sell off a portion of his land.

The value of land in his village is so low that he only received 800 dollars for the entire plot, which is less than two-eighths of an acre, but Khan had few options. “Who could have lent such a huge amount to a poor man like me?” he asked.

Nearly six months later, Khan is still feeling the crunch of that sacrifice, forced to buy extra rice in the market because his remaining land does not yield enough grain to feed his large family. Already accustomed to the pangs of hunger, the Khan family now almost never has enough to eat.

Such are the stories of the nearly 700 victims of shells and mines here in Kashmir, a valley tucked between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range, whose scenic beauty conceals a bloody history that has its roots in the 1947 partition of India.

As the latter celebrated its independence from British colonial rule, and the newly created state of Pakistan struggled to find its feet, Kashmir found itself claimed by both sides.

While the two countries jostled for power over the resource-rich region, a United Nations resolution offered the valley’s residents three possibilities: either join Hindu-dominated India, Muslim-majority Pakistan, or vote for independence. But this last option was never made a reality, leaving Pakistan to seize a third of the territory and India to administer what was left.

For decades Kashmiris have resisted this arrangement, enforced by India and Pakistan. The “pro-freedom” uprising of 1989 morphed into a resistance movement that continues to simmer today and has resulted in at least 60,000 deaths to date.

Those whose lives have been spared have not been left untouched by the conflict, with hundreds maimed by landmines and unexploded shells months, even years, after they were planted. Most of the victims are children or farmers, who stumble across unexploded shells in fields where encounters between insurgents and the Indian army once took place.

Though no exact figures are available, experts believe thousands of unexploded shells and mines are scattered around frontier areas like the northeastern administrative unit of Karnah; the western town of Poonch; the Rajouri district, also known as the Vale of Lakes; Uri, a town located on the banks of the river Jhelum; and in various remote villages.

Earlier this year, four children were injured when a shell exploded in Chattabandy, a village in Kashmir’s Bandipora district.

“The children were playing in an open paddy field when they found an unexploded shell and started fiddling with it,” a villager named Mohammad Ramzan, who witnessed the scene on Feb. 3, told IPS, adding that such incidents have become a matter of “routine.”

“A number of people, mostly kids, have either been killed or sustained injuries in such explosions in and around our village alone,” he said.

For nine-year-old Aadil Khan, memories of the blast are too painful to recall. Though he is now recovering, he is plagued by the hardships his family has endured as a result of his injury.

But activists lament that the Khan family’s situation is not unique. Those maimed by stray explosives receive standard government compensation of about 1,500 dollars, a sum that does not even cover the most basic treatment and fails to take into account the fact that most victims end up disabled for life, according to Dr. Hameeda Nayeem, a civil rights activist and professor at Kashmir University.

She told IPS nearly 100 percent of the victims come from poor socio-economic backgrounds and belong to families who earn less than 95 dollars a month.

A technician at the the Hope Disability Centre in Kashmir preparing prosthetic limbs. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

Qalandar Khan, a farm worker who was handicapped by a shell in 2012, is one such example. In the last year his family has spent 1,900 dollars on his treatment by selling off their cattle. The medical expenses have devoured their savings, and the loss of their animals has left them with almost no income since Qalandar was the family’s sole breadwinner.

“Now, the onus is on me and the kids,” his wife Reshma tells IPS. “Sometimes we don’t have enough to eat.”

Clinics providing free services are few and far between. One of them, the Hope Disability Centre, is currently treating 150 of the roughly 700 landmine victims, according to Director Sami Wani.

Working in collaboration with the Paris-based Handicap International, the NGO sends its coordinators into affected areas to identify families or victims in need of support, and even “provides prosthetics free of charge,” Wani told IPS.

Zahid Ahmad, coordinator of the northwestern Kupwara district for the Hope Disability Centre, says he found Qadir Sheikh in the village of Dardsun during one of his routine searches for victims.

“Had he not come, I would not have got my prosthesis,” Sheikh told IPS. He received basic training at the Centre and is now able to walk, but still cannot find a job. “I am worried about my two daughters, as I am not in a position to earn enough money to educate them.”

Rights activists say that the government should offer better compensation to those who have lost body parts and been rendered disabled.

“Most of these victims are now dependent on others,” Khurram Parvez, convener of the Srinagar-based Coalition of Civil Society (CCS), told IPS. “They should be compensated in a manner that allows them to lead dignified lives.”

Caregivers of victims who are bedridden, immobile, or otherwise unable to perform the most basic life functions are under enourmous pressure. In the village of Marhama, Habeed Lone sits by the side of his disabled wife Fata, who had both legs amputated after stepping on a mine on her way home from the family farm.

“We have six children and I have to take care of them and my wife single-handedly,” Lone tells IPS.

According to experts like Parvez, “It is the duty of security agencies to sanitise the surroundings of a place where they carry out combat operations,” adding that no effort has so far been made to raise awareness among the general public about the hazards involved in coming across these destructive shells.

“Give us his body; we want to give him a respectable burial…” this is the overwhelming demand across Kashmir following the hanging of Mohammad Afzal Guru who was convicted for his role in the attack on the Indian parliament on Dec. 13.  2001. Nine people died in the attack.

Guru was convicted by a trial court in 2002. Two years later, the Indian Supreme Court upheld the trial court’s order.

A mercy petition from his family was rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee on Feb. 3. He was executed on Feb. 9 in New Delhi’s Tihar Jail. The body was buried in the jail premises.

His family and many others have objected strongly to the burial. “We will not sit silent until the body of our beloved brother is returned to us,” Afzal’s elder brother Aijaz Guru told IPS in a broken voice over phone from his house in Doabgah-Sopore, 65 km north of Kashmir state capital Srinagar. “We want to give him a decent burial.”

He added: “We are well aware that our brother became a victim of vote bank politics. Now his body should be returned to us. It is our right.”

The demand for Guru’s body is the second such from Kashmiris. There is already a demand for return of the mortal remains of Maqbool Bhat, a Kashmiri separatist leader who was hanged and buried in Tihar Jail on Feb. 11, 1984 after being convicted on the charge of killing an Indian official. Kashmiris have kept an empty grave for Bhat’s mortal remains in Srinagar’s ‘Martyrs’ Graveyard’.

The execution of Afzal Guru has evoked strong reactions from civil society and political parties in Kashmir across the board. With elections in India due next year, many say Guru was hanged for ‘petty’ political reasons and that he was not given fair trial.

“This is part of India’s election drama and a proposition motivated by electoral considerations in which Kashmiris are being made sacrificial lambs,” separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq told IPS over phone from New Delhi where he was detained briefly after the hanging of Guru.

“Yes, there was politics involved at every stage and it was indeed a political trial rather than a judicial trial,” Prof. Anuradha Chenoy from the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi told IPS on phone.

According to Chenoy, there are many loopholes in the Indian judicial system. “The Indian lower courts and judiciary as a whole look at some cases in a typical fashion: if they treat somebody as an enemy, they look at his case with that perspective only; and not on merit,” she said. “It is well known that Guru did not get a fair trial.”

Expressing her distress about Afzal’s last wish to see his family not being fulfilled, she said:  “Every person’s last wish before death is to see his family. But it is quite unfortunate that he did not get an opportunity to see his wife and son before he was hanged.”

Guru’s friends say he had “given up militancy” in the late 1990s and had set up a pharmaceuticals business.

Delhi University lecturer Syed Abdul Rehman Geelani, who was earlier acquitted in the same case, said that Afzal Guru’s family was not informed by the government about his execution. “His wife had absolutely no clue. Under the law, she had every right to meet him before the execution,” he told IPS.

“I woke her up early on that morning (Feb. 9) and informed her about rumours of Afzal’s hanging. It was so shocking for her as she was completely unaware. She told me that she had received no communication at all.”

India’s Home Secretary R. K. Singh has said the family was sent a letter through speed post.

That led Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah to say: “If we are going to inform someone by post that his family member is going to be hanged, there is something seriously wrong with the system.”

Omar Abdullah said this kind of execution is “unheard of.”  In an interview to Indian news channel NDTV, he said:  “There are enough voices already in the rest of the country who believe that the evidence was flawed.”

According to Abdullah, there could be long-term political implications. “We can deal with the short-term implications as we have taken enough security measures for that, but what we are worried about are the long-term political implications of this execution,” he said.

Mehbooba Mufti, president of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – the largest opposition party in the legislative assembly – said that while “the hanging should not have been carried out, the return of Afzal’s body was the least the government could do to show concern for humanity.”

The Kashmir government has imposed curfew all over the state. At least three people have been killed and scores injured in clashes between police and people who defied curfew restrictions.

Internet services have been blocked in order to curb protests on social media. News channels have also been blocked.

Orphanages like this one house thousands of children, but are unable to provide residents with more than their most basic needs. Credit: Sana Altaf/IPS

By Sana Altaf
SRINAGAR , Dec 23 2012 (IPS)

Seventeen-year-old Afzal is an unusual orphan. Though his father died many years ago, his mother is still alive and living with Afzal’s grandparents and younger siblings in a house not far from the orphanage where the boy has spent most of his teenage years.

Once a month, on the day when his mother and younger brother come to pay him a visit in the Bait Ul Hilal orphange in Kashmir’s capital Srinagar, Afzal has, briefly, a reason to rejoice; but his excitement is short-lived. As soon as visiting hours are over, he is left on his own again, wishing he could return home with his family.

Like thousands of other children in Kashmir, Afzal has been orphaned not by the death of his parents but by crushing poverty.

“We are poor. My mother cannot afford my schooling and my upbringing,” he told IPS simply. This is Afzal’s fourth year at the orphanage in his hometown of Kupwara, which is home to thousands of children.

His mother, Farzana, added, “Afzal will starve if he lives with me. At least he gets proper food, clothes and an education in the orphanage.”

Farzana told IPS she no income, and runs her family using the money she receives from a local NGO.

Other children living in Bait ul Hilal have a similar story.

Not a day goes by when frail, dark-complexioned Nabeel does not wish he were back in his own house, with his mother and three siblings.

“My father was a militant and was killed five years ago. I have lived here ever since, as my family plunged into poverty,” Nabeel told IPS.

Nabeel’s mother says the only reason she sent her son away from home was so he would have a chance to get a proper education.

“I cannot pay for his school, books and other expenses. I earn only 55 dollars per month working as a domestic helper,” Arifa, Nabeel’s mother, told IPS.

In 1986, before the armed uprising cast its shadow over the Valley, Srinagar had a single orphanage. For the most part, kindly neighbours or relatives adopted orphaned children.

But the number of orphans has risen sharply after the insurgency claimed the lives of about 100,000 Kashmiris, mostly young men, many of them fathers.

The UK-based NGO Save the Children recently put the number of orphans in Kashmir at 214,000 , 37 percent of whom have been ‘orphaned’ – either directly, due to their parents’ death, or indirectly, through poverty – by the conflict.

The orphanages spread across the Kashmir Valley are full of children who still have one parent – mostly mothers – but have been driven by destitution into state-funded homes.

Zahoor Ahamd Tak, chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Yateem Trust, a large local orphanage in the Valley, said that most children living in orphanages around Kashmir have mother and grandparents.

“But after losing their breadwinner, the family faces immense poverty to the extent that they are unable to bring up their children,” Tak told IPS.

If the government provided some financial support to such families, Tak added, they would not resort to sending their children away from home in a bid to keep them fed, educated and cared for.

Emotional needs neglected

But while families insist they have their children’s best interests at heart, experts point out that food, clothing and education do not come close to satisfying emotional and psychological sensitivities.

Ripped from their homes and placed in centres that do not have the resources to attend to more than the residents’ most basic needs, these ‘orphans’ are now developing mental disorders at an alarming rate, experts say.

A recent survey conducted in orphanages around the Valley by Dr. Mushtaq Margoob, a renowned psychologist, found that nearly 41 percent of the residents suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), while a quarter of the children living in these homes showed signs of major depressive disorder.

The study also found a 7-13 percent incidence of seizures, attention deficiency hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and panic and conversion disorders.

While some homes have been able to address the emotional needs of the children, and create a ‘home away from home’, most orphanages end up provoking or exacerbating psychiatric disorders.

“Children placed in orphanages at a young age and for long periods risk developing serious psychopathologies later in life,” Margoob told IPS. “They have troubled interpersonal relations and face grave problems in parenting their own children.”

The specialist psychiatrist agrees that orphanages, which tend to neglect “intellectual and emotional needs”, are breeding grounds for mental health problems.

He strongly believes orphanages should provide a social environment that offers close and stable relationships between members.

Bashir Ahmad Dabla, a sociologist at the University of Kashmir, added his own concerns about the developmental impacts of this “unhealthy” trend.

“These children may have lost their fathers but sending them to orphanages (strips them of) the love they could receive from mothers, siblings and other family members,” Dabla told IPS.

The moment a child is admitted into an orphanage – and made to live on the sympathy of strangers, even though they have a family of their own – it changes their outlook on life and society, since they are viewed as outcasts and sometimes even a burden on society.

According to Zahoor Tak, 80 percent of orphans are unable to continue their education after the 10^th grade,which is when they are sent back to their homes.

(END)

Protests against human rights violations have been a hallmark of the armed conflict in Kashmir. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, Dec 15 2012 (IPS)

Amid growing scepticism among Kashmiri people that the separatist leadership has lost relevance in the region’s fast-changing political landscape, the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference – an alliance of separatist political parties and religious and social groups – is making a Herculean effort to reclaim some relevance in this disputed region.

Kashmir, the northwestern most region of South Asia, has long been the site of a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan.

Ever since the partition of India in 1947, Pakistan has held control over one-third of Kashmir’s territory, while India administers the remaining two-thirds, including the Kashmir valley.

In the six decades since Indian independence, the two South Asian neighbours have fought three wars over Kashmir, but neither one has ever been able to claim complete control over the territory or its people.

Formed as a political front in 1993 with the goal of realising Kashmir’s right to self-determination, guaranteed by United Nations Security Council Resolution 47, Hurriyat was once the voice of Kashmir’s resistance movement, encompassing members from the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), Jamaat-e-Islami, the Awami Action Committee, the Peoples Conference, the Jammu and Kashmir People’s League (JKPL), the People’s Democratic Front and the Islamic Students League.

But the inability to resolve some of Kashmir’s most basic political questions resulted in the Conference being edged out of its central spot in the political sphere, replaced by more mainstream parties.

A delegation representing the Hurriyat Conference, led by its chairman, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, is in Islamabad today for talks with the Pakistani government, which has supported Kashmir’s freedom struggle since its inception in 1989.

India, in turn, has accused Pakistan of supplying arms to Kashmiri freedom fighters.

Throughout decades of talks and failed negotiations, Pakistan has pushed to resolve the territorial dispute according to the wishes of the Kashmiri people, while India – which currently has tens of thousands of troops stationed at intervals across Indian administered Kashmir – has fought to maintain the status quo.

Meanwhile, Kashmiris themselves want to be included in the dialogue that has, hitherto, been primarily a bilateral exchange between India and Pakistan.

People like Ghulam Rasool Malik, who lost his only son to the conflict, are desperate for the freedom struggle to yield results. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

“We want to go to Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir issue and make the dialogue a vibrant one, with Kashmir at the top of the agenda for the Indo-Pak talks, along with active participation of Kashmiris,” Farooq said last week in Srinagar, before leaving for the Indian capital, New Delhi, to board a flight bound for Pakistan.

“We will urge Pakistan to (increase) its support for Kashmiris so that India will feel pressure to initiate a meaningful dialogue for the solution of this issue.”

Analysts say that Hurriyat’s visit will not yield much for the coalition, nor even for the overall political situation in Kashmir.

Commenting on Hurriyat’s visit, Reyaz Wani, a leading Srinagar-based political commentator, told IPS, “The visit is taking place at a time when Pakistan is preparing for national polls next year. And at the same time there has been little headway in the ongoing talks between India and Pakistan to warrant consultations with Kashmiri leadership.”

According to Wani, Hurriyat’s demand that it be given “legal sanctity” for its third party role in the resolution efforts is, simultaneously, well past its time and ahead of its time.

“It is past its time as Hurriyat has lost its political centrality in Kashmir, being reduced to a spectator to the fast-changing political (landscape). And it is ahead of its time because India and Pakistan seem to have moved away from tackling their political issues, towards nurturing a long-term trading relationship.”

Recently, Pakistan has shown eagerness to build trade relations with India and is on the brink of granting India the long-awaited Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status by the end of December.

“Besides,” Wani added, “not only has the separatist leadership itself splintered into different groups but the two-thirds of the political space it once dominated has been appropriated by the mainstream parties (such as the pro-Indian National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party),” who not only have electoral sway but also occupy a substantial space in the minds of most Kashmiri people, he said.

Still, the visit will undoubtedly bring Hurriyat, which has long been stagnating on the margins of Kashmiri politics, back into the mainstream discourse.

“The meetings with Pakistani leaders and those from Pakistan Administered Kashmir will allow Hurriyat to bask in some media attention. Hurriyat will also get a chance to be active on a larger plane, playing the role of the de facto third party without being acknowledged as such by New Delhi,” Wani said.

According to Shamas Imran, a professor at Kashmir’s Central University, the visit “provides a good opportunity” for Hurriyat to pluck itself and the Kashmir issue from obscurity.

“The recent successful elections for grassroots-level government (village heads and Panchayat members for local governance) and the growing influence of mainstream politics is presently the most worrying situation for the pro-freedom political parties,” Imran told IPS, referring to the fact that the average Kashmiri and most of civil society have grown sceptical about Hurriyat’s role.

Addressing Hurriyat leaders during one of their seminars last Thursday, Siraj Ahmad, general secretary of Kashmir’s Economic Alliance, pointed out, “You have to bear in mind that people do come out in large numbers to cast their votes during polls held by the Election Commission of India, despite your boycott calls.”

“The movement for seeking the resolution of the Kashmir issue should not be confined to giving sermons and holding deliberations; actions should speak louder than words,” Doctors Association President Dr Nisar-ul-Hassan told participants at the same seminar.

The historic Jamia Masjid was built by Sultan Skinder Shah Kashmiri in 1394 A.D. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR , Dec 5 2012 (IPS)

Nestled in a valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range, Kashmir is an idyllic and culturally rich region, a cradle of Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist religious relics and architectural sites.

But a decades-long conflict has overshadowed the region’s heritage and produced a new generation of Kashmiris who are ignorant of the unique history and culture of their land.

A recent survey by the New Delhi-based Indian Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), based on extensive interviews with a sample population of 1,600 people, combined with broad field research, found a significant “cultural disconnect” in 98 percent of the youth polled.

“We are most concerned about the fact that the majority of the respondents were unaware about the rich cultural heritage of Kashmir,” Saleem Beig, who heads INTACH in Jammu and Kashmir, told IPS.

This cultural isolation was evident in the number of youth engaged in any kind of community service (only two percent of respondents), the number of residents seeking to leave their homes in the historic ‘old city’ due to a lack of civic infrastructure (30 percent) and ignorance about the many world-renowned religious and architectural sites in the region – a group of school children who were taken on a ‘heritage tour’ as part of INTACH’s research could only name, at most, two of Kashmir’s heritage sites and were unable to identify places like the Jamia Masjid and the Hazratbal shrine.

According to Beig, the respondents had very little knowledge about the significance of the River Jhelum, the largest river in Kashmir.

A historically significant area of the River Jhelum, which served as the tax collection centre for goods ferried into the region. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

“River Jhelum has tremendous economic, cultural and religious significance. Until very recently it used to be the only means of transporting goods and it has religious significance for Kashmiri non-Muslims (Kashmiri Pandits). But for most of the respondents, it was just a river flowing nearby,” Beig added.

And despite widespread international awareness about increasing pollution levels in the Jhelum, 70 percent of the residents who live on its banks said they had not noticed “any change” in the water body.

“A majority of the respondents could not even describe what cultural heritage was and felt that they should be educated about it by the media and local government,” according to the survey, which also found that 91 percent of inhabitants view cultural heritage as the practice of traditional crafts like carpet weaving, shawl making, papier mâché, embroidery and woodcarving.

Experts like Bashir Ahmad Dabla, a leading sociologist and professor at Kashmir University, have blamed this worrying trend on the ravages of conflict, which has its roots in the 1947 partition of India.

As India concretised its independence from the British Raj, the Muslim-dominated areas of Kashmir were absorbed by the newly established state of Pakistan.

Meanwhile a United Nations resolution gave the remaining population the option of either joining Hindu-dominated India, Muslim-majority Pakistan or becoming independent – but Kashmiris have never been allowed to exercise the third option.

As a result, Pakistan took control over about a third of modern Kashmir, leaving the rest to Indian military and political administration.

Generations of Kashmiris have challenged this arrangement and demanded independence from both countries. A ‘pro-freedom’ uprising in 1989 signalled the beginning of an armed insurgency that continues to simmer today.

Government agencies and a host of non-governmental organisations that have monitored the situation closely over the years have put the death toll of the conflict at well over 50,000.

The struggle for freedom has usurped interest or the ability to participate in cultural and social life. Between 1989 and 2004, young people between the ages of 20 and 35 flocked to the resistance movement, taking up arms in lieu of pursuing higher education, professional development or any kind of hobbies or social activity.

Data from the INTACH survey estimates that 98 percent of youth over the age of 18 have no involvement in any kind of formal sporting activity.

A dearth of cultural education in the school system has compounded the problem, given that the first casualties of the armed insurrection were basic government sectors like health and education.

Tagore Hall, the nerve-centre of cultural activities in Kashmir, was recently renovated after being destroyed by a bomb blast in 1990. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

In the early days of the resistance movement, militants bombed Tagore Hall, the nerve-centre of cultural activities in the region, to send the message that the population should not participate in cultural activities, as they were considered ‘un-Islamic’.

“The heavy impact of conflict and insecurity crushed normal life. So education of all types, including cultural education, became almost impossible”, due to the presence of the Indian army and frequent encounters between army personnel and militants, Abdul Gani Madhosh, a former professor at Kashmir University, told IPS.

The Academy of Art, Culture and Languages, which used to organise cultural programmes in the Kashmir valley prior to 1989, was forced to cease its operations.

“The conflict simply (killed) cultural life in Kashmir,” Farhat Lone, a special officer in the Cultural Academy, told IPS.

Now that the resistance movement has laid down its arms and embarked on a road of peaceful protest, the need to nurture cultural life is urgent.

Since early 2000, youth resistance to the military occupations by both India and Pakistan has followed a non-violent path, employing such tactics as peaceful demonstrations and the use of social networking sites to discuss the political situation.

“Remember: education, including cultural education, is an activity of peace,” Madhosh stressed, referring to the fact that 80 percent of youth from the 15-35 age group are in favour of freedom and are still frustrated by the level of military presence in the region.

Tens of thousands of troops are stationed at intervals across Indian-administered Kashmir to oversee a population of 7.5 million people. The Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) says that 10,000 people have been disappeared since the inception of militancy in 1989. Unless these issues are addressed, it will be very difficult for Kashmir’s residents – especially the younger generation, which has known nothing but war – to find the time for cultural appreciation.

Kashmiri journalists at a rare protest against a government clampdown on freedom of expression. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, Oct 18 2012 (IPS)

Fayaz Ahmad’s Faim Internet Café in the Sopore township of Indian Kashmir was booming until a year ago, when police entered his premises without warning and seized all his computers.

Fayaz himself was taken into custody after being told that someone had sent a “suspicious” email from his café.

Fayaz told IPS it is “impossible” for a café owner to control the actions of his customers.

“All I could do was note down the names and addresses of my visitors, maintain a record of their identity cards and list the times (of their arrival and departure from the café),” said Fayaz.

He is not the only person to have his life seriously disrupted by the government’s clampdown on Internet users throughout the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Rayees Ahmad, owner of Hughes Internet Café, was also harassed by the police and forced to pack up his business.

Kashmiri youth at an internet cafe in central Srinagar. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

Now, not a single Internet café operates in Sopore, a town of 300,000 people.

In the towns of Sringar – the economic capital of Indian Kashmir – Anantnag and Baramulla, many young boys have been picked up from their homes for expressing their personal views on Facebook and Twitter. Popular sites like YouTube have been blocked. Text messaging services have been jammed.

Yet when Indian Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde visited Lal Chowk, a city square in Srinagar that has served as a meeting point for rights activists since the 1980s, he failed to mention the attack on freedom of expression in the Valley.

“With 500 security personnel present in and around Lal Chowk, and mobile phones jammed, the minister claimed that everything was (fine) in Kashmir,” Khurrum Parvez, a renowned human rights activist and convener of the Coalition of Civil Society (CCS), told IPS in reference to the two-day official visit last week.

The Indian minister’s silence did not come as a shock to many civil society activists here, who have long expressed concerns about the government’s consistent efforts to curb freedom of speech and the right to access social media and online communications.

“Every time a high profile (official) visits Kashmir, and every time Kashmiris try to express their political aspirations or protest about the violation of their rights, Web sites like Facebook and YouTube are blocked while the mobile phones are jammed for days on end,” Hameeda Nayeem, a social activist with a long involvement in Kashmir’s human rights movement, told IPS.

Local newspapers in Indian Kashmir have also been drawing attention to these violations, which the government claims is a response to a surge of protests across the Valley.

Kashmiris say both India and Pakistan have illegally occupied their territory following that region’s independence from British rule in 1947. For over six decades now, residents of the disputed Valley have been demanding freedom from both India and Pakistan, who control two-thirds and one-third of Kashmiri’s territory respectively.

In August and September of 2010, at least 110 civilians were killed and thousands injured during demonstrations that lasted 50 days and spawned strict curfews.

“The government’s response to (popular opposition) – blocking access to the Internet – is a very unhealthy development,” according to an editorial in Greater Kashmir.

“The move is not only undemocratic in spirit but is also uncalled for under the circumstances. Except for the recent three-day protests (on Sep. 16, 17 and 18) over the anti-Islam movie, the Valley has been experiencing unprecedented peace for almost two years now.”

Internet blockade ‘counterproductive’

Columnist and political commentator, Sheikh Showkat, told IPS that the government is choosing a dangerous path by blocking every outlet of expression.

In times of crisis, Kashmiri youth find solace in music. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

“In a place where the space for street protests has shrunk in recent years, social Web sites have emerged as the (primary) medium for the peaceful expression of individual and collective opinions,” said Showkat.

“The attempt to curb (such communication) will not only violate the principle of freedom of expression but also be counter-productive in nature.”

According to Showkat, this is not the first time the government has muzzled free speech. “(We) have (been) experiencing an SMS ban since 2010,” he claimed.

Youth have borne the brunt of this particular strand of repression.

Back in 2010, an 18-year-old student from Srinagar, Faizan Samad, became the first person to be arrested for posting pro-freedom slogans on Facebook.

This year alone, police have identified 24 youth for disseminating political messages on Facebook. Four have been arrested on these same charges.

The reputed English daily ‘Kashmir Times’ noted, “It is clear that the establishment has scant regard for free speech and free ideas. Like in George Orwell’s famous novel ‘1984’, free thinking itself is becoming a crime and individuals and groups targeted for ‘thought crimes’ (in Kashmir).”

The opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) says that frequent bans on social networking sites and jamming of mobile phones could agitate Kashmiri youth further.

“The young boys and girls use the Internet to stay connected and express themselves. If they can express themselves (online) instead of coming onto the streets, that should be encouraged,” PDP president Mehbooba Mufti said during a recent session of the Legislative Assembly, which ended earlier this month.

“We may not be using (the Inernet) much but the youth are dependent on it,” said 52-year-old Mufti.

A student named Majid Rashid told IPS, “I am part of many (online) networks that give me fresh insights about politics and current affairs. I am connected to sources of information that I am not able to track otherwise.”

Fayaz’s popular café, which used to draw over a hundred netizens everyday, has now been reduced to a place where tutors get their notes typed.

From a dozen computers, the café now operates just two machines, for Fayaz and his co-worker.

“Following my release after a year’s detention I had to take a bank loan to re-start my café. But now I don’t allow anyone to browse. I simply don’t want to get into trouble again,” he stressed.

(END)

Willow plantations inside the Wular lake have choked its ecology. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
SRINAGAR, Sep 22 2012 (IPS)

Parvez Ahmad Dar climbs three hours to reach the hilltop, generator-equipped tourist centre in Ajaf village, 35 kilometres from Srinagar, to recharge his mobile phone.

The 46-year-old president of the Wular Valley People’s Welfare Forum is in high demand as an activist and organiser – he cannot allow the long power outages in northern India’s Kashmir Valley to cut off communication with his constituency.

The Forum was set up earlier this year to protect livelihoods dependent on the massive Wular Lake located in Kashmir’s Bandipora district, a wetland of international importance protected under the Ramsar Convention, following plans to begin conservation work in the area.

“The major deliverable of the 3.86-billion rupee (69-million-dollar) Wular conservation project is improving the lake’s water holding capacity and flow,” Abdul Razak Khan, a senior state forest department official heading the Wular conservation project, told IPS.

“This is critical for enhancing Kashmir’s hydropower generation, besides helping the lake regain biodiversity and improving local livelihoods.”

But this is easier said than done. Local leaders like Dar will have a hard time reconciling the many competing claims of community members, conservationists and politicians, all of whom see the lake as a site of immense economic, environmental and strategic importance.

Severe energy deficit

Villages of 300 to 2,500 people around Wular that IPS visited endure power cuts that last up to 18 hours a day. Peak power availability in the Kashmir valley is less than one tenth of residents’ demand, and even lower in winter, according to experts.

Despite a 20,000-megawatt hydropower generation potential, Jammu and Kashmir’s installed hydroelectric capacity – which accounts for 81 percent of total power supply – is only 758 megawatts, according to the Jammu and Kashmir State Power Development Corporation.

Besides Wular, Kashmir has few options. The lake outflows feed two hydroelectric installations downstream of Jhelum River.

The first, the Lower Jhelum and Uri Phase I, constitutes 80 percent of the State’s total installed hydropower capacity. Uri requires 8000 cusecs of water but gets just 2000 cusecs in the October-February lean flow period, producing only a quarter of installed capacity.

Similarly, the 240-megawatt Uri Phase II installation, when complete, will be critically in need of water from the Wular.

With a 90-billion-rupee (1.6-billion-dollar) investment on the two Uri projects and a 110-million-rupee (1.9-million-dollar) potential annual return, the federal government has a high stake in Wular’s revival.

A shrinking lake

The lake area has shrunk by 45 percent, from 157 square kilometres to 86 square kilometres, between 1911 and 2007.

Its water holding capacity has fallen by one fifth in the last 30 years, owing to siltation, at an alarming rate of 2,470 acre-feet annually, according to the Delhi-based Wetland International South Asia (WISA)’s comprehensive management action plan report for Wular lake.

Fragmentation of the wetland’s marshy spread, reclamation for rice cultivation, degraded catchment areas and 27 square kilometres of willow planted over the period of a century inside the lake for the purpose of flood-control are all factors responsible for Wular’s ecological crisis.

The WISA report found that the complex hydro-regime has also undergone a critical change. Wular-connected marshlands were huge, efficient absorption basins retaining glacier melts and slowly releasing water in winter, thus maintaining uniformity in flow for power installations.

With marshlands reduced by 70 percent and fragmented by flood protection embankments, the natural pattern has been reversed – the lean season now retains water instead of releasing it, power installations idle, and summer flashfloods and winter droughts have become common.

Dredging the lake is therefore an urgent, but by no means an easy, task.

“Before the 27 million cubic metres of silt can be removed, first the two million willow trees spread over 27 square kilometres need digging out by their roots from the water,” Khan told IPS.

Discontent among local communities

Though the conservation effort is crucial to energy security, it could have short-term negative impacts for locals who have traditionally relied upon the lake for subsistence.

Half of the lakeshore population in 31 villages that are affected by Wular’s conservation project lives on less than two dollars a day, according to WISA.

Dependent on fisheries and picking water chestnuts and lotus roots (a gourmet delicacy), their incomes have plummeted with Wular’s degradation.

Once dredging begins they will lose even the measly income they have.

Voicing the collective concerns of the community, Dar told IPS, “Inaugurating the project, chief minister Omar Abdullah assured us work, but we are apprehensive about whether we will really get much.”

“For the six-million-rupee (less than one-million-dollar) boundary demarcation only three villages got work, that too only after we protested,” added 38-year-old Abdul Razak Pahloo of Saderkoot Payeen village.

“Villagers have already collected one million rupees (18 thousand dollars) to bring a legal stay order if project work that villagers are capable of doing is given to outsiders,” Sameer Ahmad Hanji of Banyari village told IPS.

“Our Forum can (absorb) labour contracts worth up to four million rupees (72,000 dollars), but officials say the contracts would more likely be in the range of 40-50 million rupees (0.72-0.90 million dollars) each,” according to Dar, suggesting that large companies will attempt to contract their own, external labour forces capable of carrying out every aspect of the project.

Political tensions

Simmering tensions between India and Pakistan over the 1960 Indus Water Treaty (IWT), an offshoot of the bloody partition of India in 1947 and a major bone of contention between both sides, could escalate and pose hurdles to the conservation effort.

Analysing last month’s grenade attack on the Wular project, where work has since resumed under police protection, Indian intelligence agencies say Pakistan may be harbouring fears that under the pretext of conservation, India will make a fresh attempt to begin construction on the Tulbul project – a 400-foot-long dam with sluice gates to regulate water flow to hydropower installations.

Pakistan’s objections halted the project mid-way in 1987 and officials have, since 2010, expressed fears that India may exercise a strategic advantage by regulating the dammed waters during war.

However experts think such cross-border complaints will have no legs to stand on. “Pakistan cannot object to the dredging because it is a conservation measure for a wetland under the Ramsar Convention to which Pakistan is itself a signatory,” Khan told IPS.

Under IWT, Pakistan has full rights to the headwaters of the Indus and its western tributaries, Jhelum and Chenab in Kashmir, whereas India gets rights to the natural flow of water, but not to storage.

“The conservation work in no way contravenes the IWT and Pakistan will in no way be affected,” Khan added.

(END)

Rashid was 12 years old when he picked up a gun and received armed training in Pakistan. He was caught by the Indian forces in 1992 and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. Five years later when he wished to return to a normal life, everyone turned away from him.

His parents refused to support him, and for a long time no girl agreed to marry Rashid, who is now 40. For relatives, he was an outcast who had spent two years in jail, and for state authorities a militant who could not be given a job.

“I have struggled for years after I was released from prison. Life of militants is hell after they give up guns,” Rashid told IPS.

Rashid served his sentence in several prisons, including Srinagar’s central jail. Prison was the most dreadful phase of his life, he said. Torture, beating and interrogation, together with lack of recreation, rehabilitation and even medical facilities turned life into a nightmare.

“Our food would contain husk and sandy stones. We had no recreational facilities like sports, counseling or anything that could keep us busy.” Inmates, he said, would spend time talking or offering prayers.

After release, things took a bad turn in another way, he said.

“There was no job, no financial security to lead a good life. The state government has been repeatedly promising jobs and compensation to ex-militants in Kashmir. But no results could be seen on the ground.”

It was not just unemployment that Rashid had to fight; social stigma fenced him from a good life.

“I couldn’t marry till I was almost 40. No one was ready to marry their daughter to an ex-militant, the tag makes you alien in our society.”

Rashid was forced into manual labour which is his means of earning now.

Rashid’s associate Iqbal was driven to unemployment due to his militant background, which even brought his marriage to breakup.

“I was not able to support my children and wife. My wife grew sick and threatened to divorce me. We reached the stage of separation,” said Iqbal, 45.

Iqbal was imprisoned in 1998 and released after eight years.

“Even after giving up guns, we are eyed with suspicion by people and authorities. Whenever any untoward incident takes place in our areas, we are called for questions first,” Iqbal told IPS.

Iqbal says normal life is impossible for ex-militants because neither the government nor people help in overcoming the trauma they face.

“There is no rehabilitation, no job prospect -we are left in the lurch.”

Forty-year-old Ibrahim was jailed for 15 years. After release he not only lost his family but his normal state of mind.

“He lives alone despite a wife and son, survives on medicines and fighting an insane mental state. There is no caretaker, no family, no money, no job for him,” said Masood, Ibrahim’s cousin.

Ibrahim developed many ailments in jail, he said. “But it was the death of his father and alienation from his brothers that drove Ibrahim to an insane mental state. The government never came to rehabilitate him. He is left to die.”

Experts point to the need for rehabilitation measures such as vocational training within prisons, counseling, education and recreation.

“The behaviour and inclination of the prisoner has to be assessed and accordingly he has to be rehabilitated to keep him away from crime. But such things are completely missing in our prisons,” Prof A.G.Madhosh, educationist and psychologist told IPS.

Madhosh, former head of faculty of education at the University of Kashmir, stressed the need for job avenues for former militants.

“We don’t have to push them towards wrong but pull them away from delinquency. Without proper rehabilitation they suffer emotionally, psychologically, financially and socially,” Madhosh told IPS.

Sociologists say former militants are treated like outcasts in society.

“Thousands of youth on both sides of Kashmir suffer as they are denounced by the government, relatives, family, friends – everyone. They are the worst sufferers of the conflict,” sociologist at the University of Kashmir, Prof Bashir Ahmad Dabla told IPS.

A Kashmiri trader who deals in saffron and almonds. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, Jul 30 2012 (IPS)

As part of recent confidence building measures aimed at minimising tensions between India and Pakistan, which arose largely due to conflicting claims over Kashmir, the two countries have decided to make the Valley an economic bridge, rather than a bone of contention.

But merchants who have long been trading across the Line of Control (LoC), which separates Indian-controlled territory from Pakistan Administered Kashmir (PAK), are fearful that efforts to normalise relations between the two countries will be disastrous for small traders, who will effectively be cut off from the benefits of bilateral trade.

Soon after the inception of a composite dialogue in 2004, initiated after a war crisis in 2001-2002, both states agreed to reopen the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road in April 2005 to allow families splintered by the LoC to visit each other.

Still, merchants continue to lament the lack of adequate trade-related infrastructure, which they say limit what could otherwise be a highly lucrative flow of goods.

The nuclear neighbours have already fought three full-scale wars over Kashmir while an armed insurgency and counter-insurgency in Indian Kashmir that erupted in 1989 has claimed 47,000 lives to date, according to official estimates.

The insurgency fanned hostility between the two states, but in recent years, especially in the aftermath of the September 11^th attacks on the United States, the relationship has been changing.

In October 2008 a series of confidence building measures (CBMs) that included resumption of cross-LoC trade for the first time in over 60 years began to ease restrictions in the flow of agricultural and horticultural products like rice, maize, fresh fruits, vegetables, wooden furniture, medicinal herbs, handicrafts, mattresses, pillows and cushions out of Kashmir. At the close of 2011 trans-LoC trade amounted to roughly 37 million dollars.

But more than three and a half years down the line, cross-LoC traders say they are yet to enjoy basic trade facilities.

“When trade between the two sides was first announced, international media equated it with the falling of Berlin Wall,” Rashid Wani, a trader who uses the barter system to send consignments of wooden handicrafts to PAK in exchange for mattresses, cushions and pillows, told IPS.

“But nothing much happened after that media-hype. Doing trade without basic facilities in the 21^st century makes no sense.”

“Our traders can’t even make a phone call to their counterparts in PAK as the government of India is yet to lift the ban on telephonic communication from this side to Pakistan,” Mubeen Shah, president of the Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industries (JCCI), a committee comprised of members from both sides of the LoC, told IPS. “Similarly, we can’t make any transactions through banks.”

Cross-LoC Traders at Risk

Late last year, Pakistan granted India Most Favoured Nation (MFN) trade status, evoking mixed reactions from residents in the valley.

“This is the first time since 1965, when India and Pakistan fought the second war, that trade ties seem to be improving between them,” Khursheed Mahajan, professor of commerce at the Kashmir University, told IPS.

Early this year, the two countries decided to phase out the negative-list trade regime, which had previously included thousands of items, and limited the number of restricted products to just 1,200.

The move was a bid to normalise trade relations between the two sides, but it only caused consternation among Kashmiri traders who fear that competition from large-scale industries will threaten cross-LoC trade.

“We have been observing that both the countries are working towards improving bilateral trade, which will have a negative impact on cross-LoC trade,” said Zulfikar Abbassi, former president of the JCCI.

Earlier this month, Abbassi led the traders’ delegation from Pakistan Administered Kashmir to Srinagar for a two-day conference to discuss the two sides’ future trade strategy.

“The principles that are applicable to Indo-Pak trade should be made applicable to cross-LoC trade also. They have developed bilateral trade to the extent that few items are in the negative list now. We hope the same policy is applied to our trade as well,” Abbassi told IPS.

However, early signs indicate that this may not be the case.

“Even among the 16 items that they have declared (legal) for cross-LoC trade, three to four of them, like gabba (woolen mats) and khraw (wooden footwear) have absolutely no demand on our (Pakistan’s) side of the LoC.”

According to Abbassi, the two-decades long conflict in Kashmir has turned the paradise on earth into a hell of extreme poverty. According to the 2011 census, 3.2 million people, 21 percent of the total population of Kashmir, live below the poverty line, while the unemployment rate is a staggering 11 percent.

“So the governments of India and Pakistan need to encourage trans-LoC trade. This would enable Kashmiris to overcome the economic deprivation of decades,” Abbassi said. While no comprehensive research exists, modest estimates say cross-LoC trade could be in the millions of dollars if allowed without restrictions, employing thousands of youth.

Abbassi’s counterparts in Indian Kashmir are equally vehement in their demands.

“The traders from this part of Jammu and Kashmir are not being allowed to visit PAK. There has to be actual trade and it would only happen when the traders of both the parts of the State are allowed to interact and meet each other,” Shah told IPS.

Currently, the entire LoC trade system operates on a barter basis. Since bartering requires physical marketplaces, the entire operation is held hostage by restrictions on freedom of movement.

Only those 10,000 “broken” families, with members on either side of the LoC, manage to barter their goods on a regular basis.

If not for the many hurdles, cross-LoC trade would have created “great economic dividends”, Shah told IPS. “During the 18th century, this route would handle trade worth millions of dollars in present value.”

According to Shah, the trading community in 2008 supported opening cross-LoC trade on the premise that transit trade would eventually be allowed.

“We had hoped that our goods would travel to central Asia, Russia, China, Turkey, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Iran and the Middle East. This would surely have made trade flourish. But nothing of the sort happened,” Shah added.

After the joint conference, traders from both sides of the LoC prepared a list of recommendations for the meeting of the India-Pakistan working group on cross-LoC confidence building measures, held in Islamabad on Jul. 19.

The final statement of the Joint Working Group read: “The two sides reviewed the progress since the last meeting of the Joint Working Group on cross-LoC CBMs and discussed modalities for strengthening and streamlining the existing trade and travel arrangements across the LoC.”

But Kashmiri traders say that they have heard these statements several times, though without any positive action.

“We still hope that something positive emerges. Let us wait and see,” Shah told IPS.

(END)

Kashmiri youths have managed to cross difficult terrain to receive weapons training in Pakistan. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS.

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India, Jul 2 2012 (IPS)

After spending more than 15 years in Pakistan Administered Kashmir, Rafiq Mir (name changed) is keen to come back to his home in the part of Kashmir administered by India.

When he had crossed the Line of Control (LoC) – the de-facto border dividing the parts of Kashmir under India and Pakistan – Mir had thought his life and the lives of his fellow Kashmiris would change for the better.

That was in 1993, when he volunteered his services for an armed rebellion against India to ‘liberate’ Kashmir from its rule. He sneaked across the LoC to receive arms training in Pakistan Administered Kashmir.

Despite the border security forces deployed by India, large numbers of Kashmiri youths managed to infiltrate into the other side to get training and weapons. Many were killed after coming under fire from Indian troops while crossing the LoC.

Citing the division of the sub-continent in 1947 on religious lines after independence from Britain, Pakistan lays claim to the entire Muslim-dominated Kashmir, while India says the Kashmiri ruler then, Maharaja Hari Singh, had acceded to India.

Kashmir has since then been an apple of discord between India and Pakistan. The two South Asian nuclear neighbours have fought three full-scale wars for gaining full control of its territory.

A two-decade armed uprising against India, which Mir joined in 1993, has ebbed in intensity in  recent years. Most of the militants stuck on the Pakistani side now want to return home. In 2010, the pro-India Kashmir government announced a rehabilitation policy for such Kashmiri militants.

Kashmir’s chief minister Omar Abdullah said in a recent statement that his government had received 1,034 applications from former militants now on the Pakistani side for their return under the rehabilitation policy. According to figures from the government, more than 3,000 Kashmiris who had gone for weapons training, are stranded across the LoC.

More than a hundred of these militants have returned to their homeland since early this year. Around 500 militants have returned to valley in the past five years. Following the announcement of the rehabilitation policy, more militants now feel encouraged to come back to their native land, but a lot of questions still haunt them.

“The government says its security agencies would not harass us, but I am still not sure,” Mir said from the Pakistani Kashmir side during a Skype chat with IPS facilitated by one of his neighbours.

“The security agencies can do anything,” Mir told IPS. “I strongly want to come back. Living the life here is getting too difficult. Things are too costly here. If the government gives us support and protection, it will be so good to start a fresh life back home.” While in Pakistani Kashmir, Mir married a Pakistani woman and has two children.

Shabir Ahmad of Shopian, who had gone to Pakistan for weapons training in 1991, told IPS, “I am a worried man, you see my Pakistani wife can be sent back any time.” He says he had just learnt tailoring when the craze among Kashmiri youth to join an armed rebellion against India became widespread.

“When I saw many youth going to Pakistan for receiving arms training, it attracted me as well and I set off,” he told IPS. “The journey was tough, we had to walk through rugged terrain in order to sneak into the other side of the LoC.”

On one occasion, he said, his group was spotted by Indian troops, but they made it across. “When I reached Pakistan, I developed cold feet and decided not to come back. I decided to settle in Pakistan and started taking up tailoring jobs. And when it seemed I was earning good enough to support a family, I married a Pakistani girl, Rashida.”

Now back in Kashmir on the Indian side, the couple have two children and the family seems quite happy. Ahmad has concerns about the likely deportation of his Pakistani wife, and she is worried that living in Kashmir would not be that easy. “My husband can be harassed any time by the security agencies as they don’t trust us,” Ahmad’s wife Rashida told IPS.

The former militants who have returned along with their families say that their journey back was as tough as the one from this side. They say Pakistani security agencies do not allow them through the easy crossing points connecting the two parts of Kashmir, and the Indian agencies put them through a series of investigations before they can get home.

More than 90 percent of the families come via Nepal. “But it is too costly and hectic,” says Ahmad whose journey back home was possible after he spent 2.5 lakh rupees (4,100 dollars).  He said he had to pay an agent in Rawalpindi for arranging the travel documents for the family.

But he has no regrets. “I had made my mind to bear these heavy expenses because I desperately wanted to come home.”