Emotions vs strategies

Ajay Banerjee in New Delhi

After a pre-dawn swoop at an orchard, a group of soldiers was retreating from  Sirnoo village in Pulwama when the outer cordon of troops, some 100 metres away from the encounter site, came under a hail of stones from protesters all of a sudden.  Around 150-200 in number, they came from all directions. Some of them climbed the Casspir, the mine-proof, ambush-protected military vehicle. Apprehensive that the Casspir would be hijacked, the forces — comprising soldiers from CRPF, Army’s 55 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) and Special Operations Group of the J&K Police — fired at the stone pelters. Seven of them died in what is now being called one of the highest ‘civilian’ casualties in a single event in recent years. Another 36 were injured.

Contrast this with just 10 years ago when a gunshot or an explosion would send the common Kashmiri looking for cover. Former Director-General of Military Operations, Lt-Gen Vinod Bhatia (retd), says, “In the past, people would avoid coming anywhere near a gunfight.” Today, angry youth, including girls — all born after the birth of militancy in 1989 — are mobilised through social media like WhatsApp. They counter armed forces by stone pelting. The motive is clear — to disrupt anti-terror operations.

Stone pelting, now synonymous with Kashmir, peaked in July 2016 when the ‘Victor Force’ of the RR killed Buhran Wani of the Laskhar-e-Toiba. Thousands turned up at his funeral. In the months following his death, most stone pelters emerged from Pulwama and Shopian, both in south Kashmir. Sirnoo, the village, where the encounter took place, is the hotbed of militancy. Highly placed sources in the Army say it is listed among the ‘dark villages’ in internal assessments. In classification, ‘dark’ means radicalised. The number of dark villages is quite high in Pulwama and Shopian.

Defiance at all-time high

The fear of ‘khaki’, the police and ‘camouflage’, the Army and CRPF, has dwindled; the fear of death is missing. “This fearlessness stems from the helplessness that has come about due to wrong handling of the events in Kashmir,” says an intelligence official who has seen the Valley up close in the past two decades. Lt-Gen Bhatia reasons: “The stone pelters have been empowered and emboldened by the political discourse in south Kashmir. Local politicians have backed them and Pakistan is driving the narrative.”

The normalisation of gun culture among the youth, who now see terrorists pose with guns on social media, is another angle to this acceptability, says a serving Army officer. 

The legal position is a grey area. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on December 18 informed Parliament there is “no provision in the Constitution of India to deal with anti-nationalists raising slogans or stone-pelting on the Indian Army and paramilitary forces”. The Minister of State (MoS) Hansraj Gangaram Ahir was replying to a question posed by BJP MP Shamsher Singh Manhas, who wanted to know how can such offenders be dealt with as per the provision of relevant laws applicable in Jammu & Kashmir. Due to the special status under Article 370, J&K has its own Ranbir Penal Code (RPC). Stone pelters are usually booked for rioting under Section 147 of the IPC.

Pakistan hand evident

In local language, the stone pelters are called sangbaaz. The word became popular in February 2017 when the Inter Service Public Relations (ISPR) of Pakistan Army released a video titled Sangbaaz praising the efforts of stone pelters. It went viral in the Valley. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has filed chargesheets in the court claiming Pakistan was funding the stone pelters. This is one of the many Pakistan-aided twists in the three-decade saga of foreign-abetted violence in Kashmir, which started in 1989 after the Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan. The US-Pak trained mujahids turned towards Kashmir. 

Divided opinions

The Army that has lost its men in stone-pelting incidents sees these youth as ‘accomplices of terrorists’. The other side calls them ‘protesters’ and wants to understand the reason behind this anger. Army Chief Gen Bipin Rawat, after losing a man in stone pelting in October, said, “If they (stone pelters) can kill people with such acts, are they not becoming like terrorists.”

Seeking justice for those killed in the December 15 incident, Programmes Director,  Amnesty India, Asmita Basu, has demanded a full and independent investigation into the civilian deaths. “…those responsible must be prosecuted in a civilian court of law.” Meanwhile, Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, Satya Pal Malik, has ordered a probe by Kashmir's divisional commissioner. In a high-level meeting of senior officers of the state and central police forces, Malik ‘directed’ the security forces to ‘minimise collateral damage’ during anti-terror operations.

Considered an authority on Kashmir, Lt-Gen Syed Ata Hasnain (retd), who commanded the Srinagar-based 15 Corps, is worried if stone pelting manifests itself into something more worrisome. “With infusion of greater radicalisation, change is evident. It would be dangerous if this were to graduate to suicide bombings in crowded places targeting soldiers and civilians. The cooperation of moderate clergy is a must.”

In history: Stone as weapon

Though protesters pelting stones emerged only in 2010, historically, stone pelting was a turning point of the 1931 uprising in Kashmir, which was then under the Dogra Rulers. Abdul Qadeer, a protester, was facing trial in Srinagar jail. Author Altaf Hussain Para, in his book The Making of Modern Kashmir: Sheikh Abdullah and the Politics of the State, narrates the incident from July 13, 1931. He says a mob became uncontrollable and forced its way into the outer compound of the jail. “The police stopped them. The angry crowd replied with stones and the authorities reciprocated with bullets… It led to a massacre of 21 protesters… The incident shook the very foundations of the Dogra Raj,” he writes.