THE ANGER FUELING THE VIOLENCE IS NOT NATIONALISTIC OR ECONOMIC; IT IS RELIGIOUS.For decades, India maintained hundreds of thousands of security forces in Kashmir to fight an insurgency sponsored by , which claims this border region, too. The insurgency has been largely vanquished. But those Indian forces are still here, and today they face a threat potentially more dangerous to the world’s largest democracy: an intifada-like popular revolt against the Indian military presence that includes not just stone-throwing young men but their sisters, mothers, uncles and grandparents.
The protests, which have erupted for a third straight summer, have led India to one of its most serious internal crises in recent memory. Not just because of their ferocity and persistence, but because they signal the failure of decades of efforts to win the assent of Kashmiris using just about any tool available: money, elections and overwhelming force.
... After two summers of protests on specific grievances, this summer’s unrest has taken on a new character, one more difficult to define and mollify.
That anger has led to a cycle of violence that the Indian government seems powerless to stop. Events that unfolded last week in Pulwama, a small town 20 miles from Srinagar, illustrate how the violence feeds itself.
It began on Monday, Aug. 2, when a young man, Mohammad Yacoub Bhatt, from a village near Pulwama was shot dead during a march to protest the earlier killings of other young protesters.
Four days later, a procession set off to protest his death. Soon it swelled into the thousands. The police blocked the road and refused to let the marchers pass, worried that the crowd would burn down government buildings, as previous crowds had.
What happened next is disputed. Protesters claimed that when they tried to surge through a barricade, the police opened fire.
“We did not think they would open fire,” said Malik Shahid, 17, who had joined the march. “There was no violence. It was a peaceful protest.”
First the police fired in the air, witnesses said, then into the scattering crowd. A bullet felled Mr. Shahid’s uncle, Shabir Ahmed Malik, a 24-year-old driver, and killed him on the spot.
Mr. Shahid, a 12th grader who hopes to become an engineer, said the latest violence was evidence to him that remaining part of India was impossible.
“If India took steps against those who kill us, maybe the people of Kashmir would be willing,” he said. “But when there is no justice how can we remain with India? They are not doing anything but killing. So we will just go for freedom.”
Commandant Prabhakar Tripathy, spokesman for the Central Reserve Police Force, the main paramilitary force trying to keep order in Kashmir, declined to comment on the episode but said that the protests were not as spontaneous as they appeared.
“Militants are just mingling with the crowd, firing bullets from the crowd,” Mr. Tripathy said. “Now they are trying to raise this confrontation between the public and the security forces.”
“We are charging them with tear gas, rubber pellets, firing in the air, nothing works here,” he said. “When a crowd of thousands attacks the camp, what can you do?”
Indian officials have tried to portray Kashmir’s stone-throwing youths as illiterate pawns of jihadist forces across the Pakistan border and have suggested that economic development and jobs are the key to getting young people off the streets.
But many of the stone throwers are hardly illiterate. They organize on , creating groups with names like “Im a Kashmiri Stone Pelter.” One young man who regularly joins protests and goes by the nom de guerre Khalid Khan has an M.B.A. and a well-paying job.
DENYING IT ONLY GIVES THE ENEMY TIME TO STRENGTHEN.
PAKISTAN AND SAUDI ARABIA AND IRAN MUST BE NEUTERED FOR GLOBAL PEACE TO REPLACE GLOBAL JIHAD AND FOR WW4 TO END WITH VICTORY FOR THE WEST.
IF & WHEN IRAN GETS NUKES - OR WHEN PAKISTAN'S REMAINING PRO-WESTERN FACTIONS COLLAPSE AND PAKISTAN'S NUKES FALL INTO THE HANDS OF THE JIHADISTS - OR WHEN THE ANTI-WEST HALF OF THE SAUDI ROYAL FAMILY SEIZES POWER, WELL THEN... CHANCES OF WINNING WW4 WITHOUT A GLOBAL CATACLYSM ARE NEXT TO NIL..
TIME IS RUNNING OUT...
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