It was the worst of times, that bleak winter evening in 1994 when Mohammad Ramzan Naikoo was dragged out of the front door of his home by troops who had discovered the ageing Islamist activist’s hidden arms cache. He reappeared days later, his body shattered by weeks of torture; death, when it came in the summer, must have been a relief.
Mr. Naikoo’s son, Shabbir Ahmad Naikoo, meanwhile, was kidnapped by jihadists on charges of being a police informer. He joined a pro-India militia to defend himself. He didn’t have his gun ready, though, the day he was dragged out of the front door, just like his father, and executed.
Fayyaz Ahmad Naikoo, nephew to Mohammad Ramzan and cousin to Shabbir Ahmad, stepped out of the same door on Wednesday morning to cast his vote in the small, north Kashmir village of Taarzu — where twenty years of violence have extinguished hope, the foundation of democracy.
Even as north Kashmir registered the highest voter participation seen in the violence-scarred elections—40% of voters in the Baramulla constituency turned out on Wednesday, against 41% in 2009. It would have been higher but for the fact that in the Sopore assembly segment, just over 1 in 100 voters cast their vote. Afzal Guru, executed for the Parliament attack, belonged to the constituency.
In the heartland of Kashmir’s Islamist movement, gaggles of pre-teen youth battled police with stones, while terrorists staged at least two attacks.
A culture of hopelessnessTaarzu, like many Sopore villages, is intimately familiar with death. Two hundred village residents, of some 4,000, died in the violence that began in 1990 — a hundred fighting with groups like the Hizb-ul-Mujahideenothers with the pro-India Ikhwan-ul-Muslimoon; others, just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, like nine-year old-Riffat Mir, shot by a jihadist who was cleaning his assault rifle’s chamber. There are three graveyards around the village for those martyred during the violence — though the cause they died for isn’t always clear.
Fayyaz Naikoo offers the simplest reason for voting: “I honestly don’t think anything is going to change around here”, he says, “but I want the right to complain that the government I voted for is doing nothing for me.”
Exactly 81 of Mr. Naikoo’s 800 fellow-voters shared his resolve — but most shared his deep pessimism. It isn’t hard to understand why. There’s little sign of accountable government around the village. The Public Health Centre has walls, and a box of a paracetamol; even the lights weren’t working. Local contractors have stopped road-works after the district treasury said it had no funds. Labourer Pervez Ahmad’s four-year struggle to get a ration card has gone nowhere; little Ms. Mir’s family hasn’t received compensation for her killing, ten years on.
There is little opportunity for the large cohort of educated young men now searching for jobs, either. “I have two Masters degrees in history,” says Ijaz Ahmad Untoo, the son of casual labourer, “but frankly, I don’t see that I’m going to do anything different from my father.”
Businessman like Mohammad Ashraf, a Taarzu fruit contractor, say Sopore’s decline seems inexorable: the absence of investment means the apple-growing hub has few fruit-processing industries, or ancillary industries that would generate jobs.
Like in urban Sopore, many young men have turned to drugs, often prescription medicine shipped in by their more enterprising peers. Bar a hard core of Islamists, there’s little support for terrorism: the terrorists killed in recent firefights up the road in Krankshivan were all Pakistan nationals. But plenty of young people are finding a sense of agency and purpose in throwing stones at the officers of a system that has failed them. Local secessionist leaders pay up to Rs.100 for a few hours of stone throwing — enough for two bottles of opiate-based cough syrups.
