Some people say these elections could be a first step toward resolving the 55-year-old Kashmir conflict. The vote, which began last week and continues through Oct. 8, is to choose an 87-member State Assembly for India’s Jammu and Kashmir. Secretary of State Colin Powell himself raised hopes in Kashmir–and the prospect of fresh U.S. engagement–when he said last July the balloting could open “a process that addresses Kashmiri grievances.” The disputed territory has been the subject of two full-scale wars between India and Pakistan, and last spring and summer the quarrel threatened to erupt into another war between the two neighbors, both of whom now have nuclear weapons. A free, fair and inclusive vote could produce legitimate representatives of Kashmir, who could then help negotiate the fate of the disputed territory–or so the theory goes.
But in reality these elections–held under virtual military occupation, in an area under assault by terrorists–are not about hope, they’re about desperation. From one side, the Kashmir Valley’s overwhelmingly Muslim population is facing India’s security forces, who have a long record of torture and summary executions of suspected militants. The Army has a strong interest in getting people to the polls, because a high turnout will give legitimacy to Indian rule. From the other side, Kashmiris are threatened by armed extremists, including Pakistani, Arab and other self-declared holy warriors, who routinely murder or massacre civilians deemed to be enemies. They want the elections to fail, and have warned people not to participate. Neither side seems to represent the popular will of ordinary Kashmiris. According to a credible poll conducted for the Indian magazine Outlook in 2000, 82 percent of the valley’s people support a ceasefire “as a prelude to political dialogue,” and roughly three quarters favor “a separate identity” from both India and Pakistan.
It’s not hard to see why they want freedom and an end of war. The conflict has already claimed some 60,000 lives in 13 years. More than 155 people, including 64 civilians, have been killed during the past month alone. Human-rights activists say many hundreds, perhaps thousands, have “disappeared” since 1989, mostly after being apprehended by Indian security forces. Last week Indian soldiers patrolled roads, manned positions among orchards, turned shops into bunkers and set up gun emplacements around polling stations. Locals say that soldiers in several areas commandeered loudspeakers at local mosques to call people out to vote, sometimes threatening those who did not. “We call this gunshot democracy,” says Parvez Imroz, a prominent human-rights activist who has been threatened by both security agents and extremist groups, and was shot in the back by militants in 1995. “Fear is the basic factor here–implicit and explicit fear.”
Shortly after Haseena’s relatives were marched off, a man from the nearby village of Aham-e Sharief wandered up the road in torn and blood-splattered clothes, his cheek bruised. That morning, at around 11:30, Indian soldiers had gone to his family’s house to round up voters, said Mohammed Qasim Shah. They beat him and his brother Said with gun butts, he said. The brother, a 30-year-old bank employee with a badly swollen nose covered in tape, confirmed the story. Dried blood still speckled his mustache and lips. Their sister, Zubeida, 25, told NEWSWEEK she tried to stop the soldiers from beating her brothers, but one of the soldiers pushed her, then picked up a stick and whipped her with it. Mohammad Yasin Shah, a 65-year-old neighbor, said the soldiers later confiscated some villagers’ identification cards. If they wanted their IDs back, the soldiers said, they would have to collect them at the polling station.
The villagers who voted had a dismal choice. Both main candidates were “surrendered militants,” also known locally as “renegades”: former guerrillas who had turned themselves in to the Indian Army. Kashmiris put little trust in such people. Some are suspected of being double agents who joined the extremists as Indian spies. Others apparently wanted the rewards India offers to militants who turn themselves in.
The extremists have declared open season on pro-India candidates and activists, and have also targeted independents. Two candidates have been killed–one of them a state minister of law from the ruling National Conference party–along with scores of political activists. One of last week’s victims was Ali Mohammad Dar, a 60-year-old National Conference party worker. Assassins shot him with three bullets at close range at 10:33 a.m. on Wednesday in the summer capital, Srinagar. He fell dead on a dirt street where sheep graze amid garbage. His family said he’d gone out to buy books for some of his eight grandchildren. “We are living in terror here,” says Farooq Lone, Dar’s nephew, sitting with male mourners in a second-story room as a gathering of grieving women wailed in the courtyard below. “We don’t know at any time what will happen to us from any agency–whether from militants, or the Army or renegades. Nobody is safe here.”
Pakistan’s top officials have promised to crack down on the extremists. But Pakistan-based militant leaders seem mostly unfazed. Syed Salahuddin, a former political candidate in Srinagar who took up arms after the massively rigged 1987 elections, now heads the militant Hizbul Mujahedin from his headquarters in Pakistani Kashmir. “No army in the world can stop Kashmiris from crossing into their own territory,” he says. “There is no shortage of fighters in Kashmir and we can keep fighting Indian forces for many more years without any outside help.”
Separatist political parties in Indian-ruled Kashmir all boycotted the voting. “If we participate in these elections, we will lose our credibility,” says Abdul Ghani Bhat, chairman of the separatists’ umbrella group, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. “We’ll be gone, finished.” Nevertheless, a handful of separatist politicians did run as independents. “My agenda is to push for dialogue on Kashmir,” says one of the most prominent, Ghulam Mohideen Sofi. “We have to reach a stage where we can sit down and talk about a final settlement.” Sofi’s political mentor had similar aspirations–until he was assassinated on May 21. Sofi campaigns wearing a bulletproof vest and accompanied by Indian soldiers. His principles might get him elected. But they could just as easily get him killed.
