It was all of it in my opinion. There was wide local support in Kashmir against the soviet invasion and the Mujahideen did receive moral support from the Kashmiris. This was a time when Religion based war was being glorified in international media as a powerful stand against communism and its expansion.
After the war ended and infiltration started in 1990, Kashmiris too started believing independence from India was possible after 40 years of calm, blinded merely by religious sentiments and the feeling of fraternity from across the border towards their cause. Many crossed the border which was lawless and porous and received arms training from the same camps where Mujahideen were trained. They came back with Kalashnikovs and dreamt of a revolution.
All these developments were compounded by the fact that Indis's economy in general was in shambles and these incidences of minor violences and terrorism were mostly overlooked. There was no comprehensive plan to tackle this issue or even understanding of the extent of the problem.
Pakistan at that time had surplus CIA funds and extensive manpower to keep funding the insurgency and arming jobless,poor youth who were bombarded by propaganda through local masjids which was their only source of news.
Their propaganda further gained strength when
Kunan Poshpora mass rapes were publicized and Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992. It was used by the newly formed Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. Most of their training camps were located in NWFP and many were shifted to Azad Kashmir for the sole purpose of training volunteers for the Kashmir Jihad. From 1992 onwards, militancy surged in Indian Kashmir, as many Lashkar-e-Taiba volunteers were infiltrated into Indian Kashmir from Azad Kashmir with the help of the ISI. The Pandits became the natural enemy of the twisted form of Islamic Dogma fed to population.
Only when militancy peaked during 1993-96 did the Indian Government start formulating strategies and the army was given a free hand. The policies were terrible and suddenly every Kashmiri was a suspect. Entire villages were rounded up, treated like criminals in their own land. Their religion was mocked and their aspirations crushed.
To tackle the problem of producing evidence and putting so many militants to trial, AFSPA was introduced and encounters were awarded monetarily. The immediate repurcussions of monetary reward was corruption in which many innocent civilian kashmiris were killed in fake encounters and thousands were rounded up and disappeared forever, never to face a court of law.
Interrogation centre's like PAPA-2 instilled fear in the heart of Kashmiris and alienated them. Large numbers of local people, as well as the occasional captured Pakistan jihadi, would "disappear." Their bodies would later be found, if at all, floating down Jhelum, bruised, covered in cigarette burns, missing fingers or even whole limbs.
If at all, I blame our intelligence agencies and army for failing to predict the aftermath of the Afghan Jihad, contemporary local sentiments and take necessary precaution and anti-infiltration measures which could have cost us Kashmir.
I am happy that things are slowly going back to normal. Lets not forget there is an entire generation of late teenagers who hardly had the opportunity to go to schools and lead a normal life due to frequent closures and boycotts. We need to approach this in a more humanitarian way.
@chhota bheem @acid rain @IND_PAK @SarthakGanguly @Icewolf @Armstrong @he-man
