Kashmir civilians banned from using only highway twice a week

Srinagar: Civilians in Kashmir have been banned from using the only highway out of the disputed region for two days each week to allow Indian security personnel to be safely moved in and out.

The order, which local political parties have compared to the policies implemented by Israel in the Palestinian territories, followed a suicide bombing on the highway in February that killed at least 40 Indian paramilitaries and triggered the first airstrikes by India and Pakistan on each other in decades.

The 170-mile (275km) highway, which remained open at the height of the region’s guerrilla conflict in the 1990s and during a war with Pakistan in 1999, was deserted on Sunday, the first day the order came into effect. Hundreds of soldiers, armed police officers and armoured vehicles were stationed across its length to prevent civilian vehicles from encroaching. Exits to adjacent neighbourhoods were sealed off with barbed wire.

The order will also be in force every Wednesday, which is expected to cause greater disruption, as more people will be seeking to use the highway to travel within Kashmir for work, education or for medical and other appointments.

Kashmir is regarded by the United Nations as the most militarised zone in the world, with about 470,000 soldiers, police personnel and intelligence agents deployed on the Indian-controlled side, by some estimates. At least 100,000 Pakistani soldiers are stationed on the other side of a ceasefire line, with both countries claiming the entirety of the region in full.

A separatist insurgency has raged on the Indian-controlled side for three decades, which waned in the early 2000s but has surged again in the past five years. The first phase of the militancy was largely armed and manned by Pakistanis, but the more recent fighting is being carried out by local men and boys, prompting warnings that the Narendra Modi government’s hardline policies in the region are alienating the population.

“We’ve heard of curfews and times when there were restrictions put in place for convoy movements, but a complete ban on civilian traffic on a major highway is unprecedented,” said Khalid Shah, an associate fellow at the Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation.

The highway ban was announced last week by the local administration, which since June has been under the direct rule of a governor appointed by Delhi after Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party pulled out of the state’s ruling coalition.

It was implemented in response to a suicide bombing in February by a local man, who rammed a car laden with explosives into a convoy of paramilitaries on the highway near the southern town of Pulwama. The death toll was the deadliest in the history of the insurgency. Another car bomber exploded his vehicle on 30 March, which may have spooked local officials into making the “kneejerk order”, Shah said.

“They thought, this is not going to only happen in south Kashmir, this could move to other parts of the highway,” he said.

The highway, which snakes through rural rice fields and apple orchards as well as urban commercial neighbourhoods, crosses through five of Kashmir’s 10 districts and is the only connection between its northern, central and southern areas.

Its closure was been condemned by local politicians, who are campaigning for India’s elections, which start on Thursday and continue for six weeks.

“How can you restrict civilian movement on our main highway? You want to smother Kashmiris, change the demographics of the state and imprison them in their own land? Over my dead body,” said Mehbooba Mufti, a former chief minister of the state.

“This is Kashmir, not Palestine. We won’t allow you to turn our beloved land into an open-air prison.”

Another former state leader, Farooq Abdullah, who told his party members to defy the ban on Sunday, called for the order to be revoked. “This looks like a dictatorial law,” he said.

Doctors at major hospitals said they would assess the impact of the ban on Wednesday, but said it had already been felt. “There has been an impact,” the superintendent of a major Srinagar hospital told the Guardian, asking not to be named. “We are still collecting and comparing the data, but it is confirmed the number of patients on Sunday were less.”

The Kashmir chamber of commerce said in a statement that the ban would have “disastrous consequences” for the economy. “It is unprecedented and alienating,” it said. “The state needs to deal with the situation without encroaching on the rights of the public.”

Courtesy: The Guardian