....And the siege continues

Year 1993: It is a calm October afternoon. The fall colors look beautiful and the breeze is a little chilly. However, the serenity did not last too long and was broken by the sound of gunshots. Within a few minutes we found out that armed militants were surrounded by the army in a neighborhood near mine. These gunmen and many civilians took refuge in a mosque, less than half a mile from my home. I could see the beautiful white marble dome and the minaret of this lovely mosque in our neighborhood. The mosque was sieged and so was the entire neighborhood, including ours.

In a situation like that the world gets divided into two groups those in uniform with guns on the streets and the civilians without the guns inside their homes. I belonged to the second group. Nobody knew how long it was going to last. It lasted over a month while the negotiations between the army and the holed up people were in progress. During this time we were under curfew. For the first week we could not get out of our houses at all and the weeks after that we could go out only for an hour. Army was positioned even in the homes of our neighbors' attics. At the end of each hour the securitymen atop these houses would blow a whistle signalling us to head back to our homes.
My father was Additional district magistrate at that time. He was the one responsible for giving out curfew passes to get out of the area in addition to his other duties of trying to break the deadlock. However, I did not use this opportunity because I did not want to leave my home and family behind. The one hour break in curfew broke the monotony of our lives. I would hang out with my friends.

While we were under siege, the rest of Kashmir wasn't normal either. Life had come to a halt. People were demanding the siege be lifted and one of those protests turned very ugly. On October 22, people of the town of Bijbehara came out in a rally and as they walked through the town, the border security forces fired on the group leaving 40 dead and 160 injured. The investigations that followed, concluded that the security forces were involved but nobody has been arrested or punished yet. While we were under siege, this town was burying their dead. Kashmir was hit by yet another tragedy, one of the many.

Eventually, after over a month of negotiations with the people holed up inside the mosque, the government reached an agreement and all of them were allowed to walk free to avoid any bloodshed. Those who were carrying the guns were also allowed to leave, only to be killed in another house in the same neighborhood a few months later. The people holed up in that mosque surivived that ordeal, but the protesters of bijbehara were not that lucky.

While the siege was physical, it left a psychological impact. An entire population was restricted to their homes. Such a collateral damage is very dangerous. It was getting more and more difficult to really stay normal. The one hour deal in curfew was not enough to find enough food. However, human endurance was at display as the neighbors helped each other. Traditionally kashmiris have been storing food in their houses which came in handy during that month and so did the kitchen gardens. While people took care of the food to some extent more or less, 40 people and a month of our lives were snatched from us forever.

Sixteen years later people are still struggling to live a normal life. Although the siege of our neighborhood was lifted after a month, the siege of Kashmir still continues. It may not be apparent as the siege of 1993, but it has a much deeper impact on the way the civil society functions in Kashmir.