Kashmir Ceasefire Comes After 50% Rise In Armed Encounters, Killings During 2015-2017 Over 2012-2014
India Spend
Athar Parvaiz, May
18, 2018
Srinagar: The
Ramzan ceasefire announced
by the Indian government on May 16, 2018, comes after a period of heightened
armed violence and killings in Kashmir. An IndiaSpendanalysis of Jammu & Kashmir Police data shows that
in the three years since March 2015, when the current government assumed power
in the state, armed encounters between militants and security forces have
increased by 53% over the preceding three years. Deaths in conflict have
similarly increased by 51%.
The Peoples Democratic Party and the Bharatiya
Janata Party formed a coalition government in Jammu & Kashmir in March
2015. Data suggest an increase in violence and related deaths since then,
particularly after the July 2016 killing of militant commander Burhan Wani–209
militants were killed in 2017, up 65% from 136 in 2016.
The data also attest to a spurt in incidents
of stone pelting, pellet and bullet injuries, as well as damage to homes and
private property.
“The alliance between PDP and BJP was sold to the
people with the promise that it would lead to a peace process. But the peace
process never took off,” Noor Ahmad Baba, political commentator and former head
of Kashmir University’s political science department, told IndiaSpend, “On the contrary, the protests and
political dissent in the aftermath of Burhan Wani’s killing is being met with
repression. It has further alienated the people especially the youth.”
The coalition partners have been at loggerheads
over many issues, the latest disagreement having been about the current
ceasefire–the PDP’s proposal to New Delhi had been opposed by the state BJP
unit, as The Telegraph reported on
May 11, 2018, and also by the union defense ministry, as the Hindustan Times reported on
May 13.
The central home ministry relented eventually and
announced a ceasefire. “It is important to isolate the forces that bring a bad
name to Islam by resorting to mindless violence and terror,” home minister
Rajnath Singh said on Twitter on May 16, 2018.
To be sure, Wani’s killing is not the only
reason why militancy has registered an increase in Kashmir.
“The continuous vicious cycle of violence in the
absence of a political dialogue is leaving a huge impact on the mindset of the
youth,” Baba said, adding that a new phenomenon is visible in Kashmir in which
people risk their lives and
rush to encounter sites to support trapped
militants during cordon-and-search operations. This, he said,
is due to the lack of a meaningful peace process.
Nevertheless, the ceasefire is “a step in the right
direction,” Baba said, adding that when Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives in
Srinagar on May 19, 2018, he must make clear whether he intends to kickstart a
long-term peace process. “Mr Modi recently went to neighbouring China and then
to Nepal. Would he be interested in Pakistan as well? It remains to be seen,”
Baba said.
By the end of 2016, the number of active militants
across Kashmir was 209 (136 militants were also killed in that year), according
to a map published by the Crime Branch of Jammu & Kashmir Police in its
annual crime gazette.
Between 2012 and 2014, the army had estimated that
fewer than 100 militants were active in Kashmir, most of them non-locals, as
the Hindustan Times reported on
April 7, 2015.
The spurt in militancy is reflected in the increase
in the number of armed encounters between militants and security forces.
Between 2012 and 2014, 129 encounters or incidents of cross-firing between
government forces and militants were recorded, in which 227 militants
(including 60 Kashmiri militants) and 101 security forces (including 48 army
personnel) were killed, Jammu & Kashmir Police data show.
Encounters registered an increase of 53%, with 247
encounters recorded from 2015 to 2017, in which 439 militants (including 156
Kashmiris) and 200 government forces (including 109 army personnel) were killed.
As many as 4,799 incidents of stone pelting took
place from 2015 to 2017, as per home ministry data cited
in a parliamentary response on February 7, 2018. Stone-pelting is a relatively
recent phenomenon, so no comparative figures are available.
However, its human toll has been
well-documented, and was evident when IndiaSpend visited Srinagar’s Shri Maharaja Hari Singh
Hospital, where most pellet victims with eye injuries come for treatment.
Hospital records show that 1,398 patients have been treated here for pellet
wounds from January 2015 to May 10, 2018.
“As you can see, my eye is totally damaged,”
20-year-old Ashfaq Ahmad Chohan, a pellet victim from Chek-Hayin village in
north Kashmir’s Kupwara district, who was visiting the hospital to obtain a
disability certificate, said. However, he said, he was being given a document
certifying only 30 percent disability, which would impair his chances of
getting commensurate compensation.
The government of Jammu and Kashmir had announced in
November 2017 that it would provide jobs to the worst-affected pellet victims,
but until January 2018 only 13 people had got the promised jobs, Greater Kashmir reported on
January 25, 2018. Last year, human rights NGO Amnesty International’s India
chapter had started a Ban Pellet Guns campaign,
urging the Jammu & Kashmir government to ban pump-action shotguns which
fire metal pellets.
Owners of houses where militants hide often become
unwitting victims as their homes get cordoned off by security forces, and
crossfire results in loss of life and extensive damage or total destruction of
their property.
As many as 105 houses have been destroyed since
2015 in encounters in Pulwama, one of the two worst militancy-hit districts in
south Kashmir, for which IndiaSpend was
able to access official figures.
News reports have noted that during encounters,
local youths as well as youths from adjacent and even far-off villages have
started helping the militants escape, as The Week reported on
June 12, 2017. They distract the security forces by hurling stones and raising
slogans so that the militants can flee.
In response, the security forces have started
conducting search operations during the night so that civilians cannot gather
in support of militants. However, at a recent encounter during
the intervening night of May 12 and 13, 2018, four militants escaped while
incidents of stone pelting by civilians were recorded, the Business Standard reported on
May 12, 2018.
Hundreds of people reached the spot shortly after
they heard gunshots, a local resident of Wagum-Pulwama, where the latest
encounter had taken place, said. “Once we felt our young boys have been
surrounded by army men, the darkness didn’t deter us and we came out help
them,” another resident said, speaking to IndiaSpend without wishing to be named.
Sitting in a tent outside his gutted house, local
resident Bashir Ahmad Ganie alleged that the security forces had burned his
house down on suspicion that militants were hiding inside. Ganie had also
sustained a bullet injury during the encounter.
Srinagar-based defense ministry spokesperson Col
Rajesh Kalia refuted the allegations. “We don’t destroy any property
intentionally,” he said, “Whenever local terrorists get trapped during our
cordon and search operations, we give them the opportunity to surrender. But,
when they resort to firing, the encounter happens and in the process property
also gets damaged.”
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