Teen girls with stones are the new threat in India’s Kashmir conflict
SRINAGAR, India — The first stone was heavy in her hand before she let it fly. It arced through the smoky air and hit the khaki leg of a soldier. She barely stopped to watch the man grimace before she picked up another.
In India’s restive Kashmir territory, the weapon of choice among separatist youths targeting Indian security forces is a
stone — or a brick, if they can get one. Indian soldiers have slingshots — as well as conventional weapons and pellet guns that have killed and maimed scores.
Last month, a round of fresh violence broke out in the valley. A dozen people were killed in clashes with Indian security forces, sparking days of student protests across Kashmir. Large numbers of girls in headscarves and school uniforms have been joining male protesters for the first time in recent memory.
“A lot of these boys have been killed,” said Nisha Zahoor, 18, a senior who took up “stone pelting” during a standoff with paramilitary forces in a market square last month. “Now girls will go out and protest for freedom.”
Officials, hoping to avoid a repeat of five months of violence that paralyzed the region last year, have appealed for calm. The state’s leader, Mehbooba Mufti, flew to New Delhi recently to urge Prime Minister Narendra Modi to hold talks with separatists. A new female police battalion has been established to deal with the schoolgirls and other public safety issues.
Mufti’s government on Wednesday also instituted a month-long ban on social networking sites WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and others to slow the spread of incendiary viral videos among young people — including one in which the army strapped a man to the hood of a jeep as a
human shield.
“I can’t say how difficult it will be, but we’re very confident it will be contained,” said S.N. Shrivastava, the special director general of the Jammu and Kashmir Zone of the Central Reserve Police Force.
Yet some see the presence of the girls in protests as a sign that the security situation in the valley is spiraling out of control.
Former chief minister Omar Abdullah tweeted last week that student protests are the “new worry” and posted a photo of a girl in her school uniform kicking the side of a police vehicle. Her left arm cradled a basketball while her left hand clutched a brick.
Omar Abdullah
✔@abdullah_omar
The reality that is Kashmir - she has her basketball & a brick in the same hand while she kicks the truck.
https://twitter.com/umarganie1/status/856477906112921602 …
3:39 PM - 24 Apr 2017
Anger at a show of force
The Kashmir region that straddles India and Pakistan has been in dispute since India’s independence from Britain and the creation of Pakistan in 1947. The lush valley that sits below snowcapped Himalayan peaks saw a violent armed insurgency in the 1990s that later gave way to fractured calm. But the Muslim-majority region erupted again in July when a popular militant commander named
Burhan Wani was killed, leading to months of protests that left 78 dead.
Then, on April 12, Indian army soldiers made the mistake of showing up in an armored vehicle to a routine meeting with teachers at Government Degree College in Pulwama to discuss a painting competition — a show of brute force that angered students. They threw stones, and three days later clashed with security forces inside the once-sheltering walls of the school. More than 30 students were beaten with bamboo sticks in the library, according to the school’s acting principal, and dozens were injured.
The incident galvanized protests that continued last week and for the first time included girls, according to Sadaf Bushra, an assistant journalism professor at Central University of Kashmir. Many of the girls probably found their schools safer places to express “outrage” than the confines of their strict Muslim families, she said.
“It’s a new form of protest, because you have this other gender being a part of it now,” Bushra said.
Zahoor and her friends, 12th-graders at the Government Girls Higher Secondary School at Nawakadal in Srinagar, had seen the news reports of the student beatings. They’d seen the viral videos. But they finally took to the streets when they heard — falsely, as it turned out — that a female student hit by a rock thrown by security personnel had died of her injuries.
School administrators locked the iron gate to keep them in. But when class was over, there was nothing more they could do, and hundreds of girls spilled out, exhorting businesses to shut down and chanting “We want freedom!” and “Go India, go back!”
They reached a line of paramilitary police brandishing riot shields. Police fired tear gas. They responded with rocks. In the end, several girls lay in the street, bleeding or unconscious.
Riyaz Ahmad Shah, a 22-year-old bank security guard who police think was killed by security forces in August. It is his death that drives her, she said. Zahoor’s mother, Fareeda Shah, came in to serve mango juice and sat beside her daughter. She said she is proud of her for protesting.
“She did a rightful thing,” Shah said. “Her uncle was killed brutally and without reason. It is the only way to express anger.”
And the stones her daughter threw at the paramilitary personnel?
“Did you?” Shah asked her daughter. She gave her a fierce look — part disapproval, part pride.
“It is okay,” Shah said. “He was like a brother to her.”
Ishfaq Naseem contributed to this report.
Annie Gowen is The Post’s India bureau chief and has reported for the Post throughout South Asia and the Middle East.
Follow @anniegowen
