Kashmir: Violence in the Vale

The group of Kashmiri herdsmen seemed innocent enough as the Indian police patrol approached them. Clad in traditional skullcaps and flowing, grey-brown woollen pherons, the herdsmen stared blankly until the police drew near enough to ask them a question. Had they seen anyone suspicious in the vicinity? In reply, one of the herdsmen whipped a Sten gun from under his voluminous robe. Within seconds, four Indians lay dead. Similar incidents erupted throughout mountainous Kashmir last week, killing 29 Indians and wounding 27 more. According to the Indian government, the murderous men in the flowing robes were members of a 3,000-man Pakistani guerrilla outfit code-named “Gibraltar Force,” which infiltrated the Vale of Kashmir, bent on sabotage, assassination and provoking revolt. Before the week was out, New Delhi claimed that 138 of the raiders had been killed and 83 more captured. Another 1,500 were reportedly trapped in Gulmarg, the “Meadow of Flowers” high above Srinagar, where Indian troops moved in through pines, poplars and deodars to capture them. Threatening the Airport. According to the Pakistani government, the “invaders” were really indigenous Kashmiri rebels, rising in revolt against “the oppressive and treacherous rule of impostors and enemy agents” (i.e., India). Coincident with the outbreak of last week’s fighting, a clandestine radio station calling itself “The Voice of Kashmir” began broadcasting bulletins of a “revolutionary council.” It warned that all Kashmiris who cooperated with Indian authorities would be shot, promised to set up a revolutionary tax collection agency, appealed to all Indian minorities “groaning under the oppression of caste Hindus” to rise in arms, boasted that India would be chased “out of our land.” Whatever their origins, Kashmir’s “freedom fighters” will have to perform better than they did last week if the Voice’s boast is to be made good. One group of 500 raiders swept down from the Himalayan heights to strike at Srin-agar’s airport, but were stopped four miles from their objective by a detachment of the 100,000 troops India keeps in her part of Kashmir. Other bands surrendered after local citizens—fearful of a repetition of the fierce Pathan raids of 1947—fingered them for the police. India’s contention that Pakistan had staged the raids was strengthened by the plethora of weapons and equipment captured with the raiders, many of whom freely admitted Pakistani citizenship. They carried rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, plastic explosives, and disguises (including dresses and black nylon wigs to pass themselves off as women). At least one prisoner reportedly carried badges of rank of the Pakistan army. Warning from Shastri. The raids were obviously timed to coincide with the twelfth anniversary of the arrest of Kashmir’s Sheik Abdullah, who has long demanded independence for his divided mountain country. Released by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964, the “Lion of Kashmir” was recently rearrested, is now being detained by the Indian gov ernment at a hill station in Madras. Pakistan could clearly profit from an ostensible war of liberation in Kashmir. With peace talks on the Rann of Kutch dispute due to open soon, trouble in Kashmir would permit Pakistan to demand inclusion of the Kashmir question in the mediated discussions. India’s Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri had anticipated as much. “Pakistan has probably taken a deliberate decision to keep up an atmosphere of tension,” he declared in a special broadcast to the nation. “If Pakistan has any ideas of annexing part of our territories, she should think afresh. Force will be met by force, and aggression will not be allowed to succeed.”