RAZOR ’ S EDGE
OPINION
Uri where the border fence erected by India is one to two kilometres inside the LoC . It leaves Indian villages like Churanda , Hathlanga and Saura beyond the border fence , and others like Sillikot and Tillawadi straddling it . In Churanda , barely 20 metres from the LoC , people can shout out to their relatives in the Pakistani village of Khwaja Banday . To go to work in Uri or to take their cattle for grazing , they are allowed to cross the fence through a gate open only from 9 am to 5 pm .
There are army posts between the fence and the LoC alongside these settlements in Uri . When these posts are targeted by the Pakistan army , collateral deaths and injuries among villagers are often the result . About 1,500 people from these villages were evacuated after intense exchange of fire began on February 20 , which finally escalated to the use of field artillery — a line not crossed in Uri in the last 15 years .
MOHAMMAD Lateef from Churanda says , “ My family has been evacuated thrice — in 1992 , 1997 and now in 2018 . One woman was injured this time and about 30-35 houses were damaged .”
Reports that the Pakistani Army had addressed Indian villagers and asked them to evacuate are misrepresented , says Lateef . “ There were two announcements from the mosque at Khwaja Banday village on the Pakistan side , one on February 20 and another on February 24 . The first requested both sides to stop firing so that an eight-year-old boy could be buried . The firing stopped for three hours . On the 24th again it asked for firing to stop as there were some casualties in the village . This time the announcement also urged villagers to evacuate , but this was addressed to people on their own side .”
In Sillikot , the house of Fayyaz Ahmad was completely destroyed in the shelling . “ Luckily , the gate on the border fence was open and we could flee . About 22 houses have been damaged by mortar shells ,” he recalls .
Another villager , Abdul Qayoom , wonders how he will repay his housing loan of Rs 9 lakh , now that it has been damaged . “ I have 12 family members . Where will we go now and how will I repay the bank ?” he wonders , before breaking down . Visibly embarrassed and unable to control his sobbing , he cries , “ Ladkiyan jawan ho gayi hain . Shaadi ke layaq hain . Jayen to jayen kahan ( My daughters have come of age . I should be getting them married . But what should I do )?”
Villagers from beyond the border fence are unanimous in their demand for resettlement .
STAIRWAY TO HELL A boy holds the tail unit of a mortar shell in front of his damaged house in Nowshera
In Uri , there are army posts between the border fence and LoC , with villages all around . People here are easy targets .
PTI
Javed Ahmad Chalku of Sillikot says , “ We are in no man ’ s land and bunkers will not help us . Give us some government land and get us out of here .”
The litany of woes continues . Hanifa , in her late forties , first lost her young daughter to shelling in 2001 ; then her husband was hit fatally in 2003 . Helpless , she continued in Sillikot . “ We have had to leave because of the shelling again . Where should I go with my young children ?” she asks , wiping her tears .
As of now , the state government has no plan to resettle villagers who live beyond the fence in Uri . The army prefers villages on the LoC that are settled , as they need villagers to work as porters , mas ons and casual workers . The district administration does not know how to deal with the dem and for relocation but assures people that their demand will be forwarded to the government after a survey . “ We have to say this or the situation will get politicised . I hope they agree to go back to their villages soon ,” says a district official .
Overlying the misery is a sense of hopelessness . No one either in Jammu or in the Kashmir Valley believes that the Centre will defuse border tensions . Continual suffering and offers of bunkers and periodic evacuation are their lot , believe villagers .
Asharaf Mir , a businessman from Srinagar , says , “ We had expected the Narendra Modi government to further the legacy of Atal Behari Vajpayee . He should ask himself — have we progressed since Vajpayee ’ s time in Kashmir or regressed ? If he thinks that spending Rs 5 to 7 crore a day on border firing is good for the nation , then he should explain to us how .”
Haji Mohammad Yasin Khan , chairman of the Kashmir Economic Alliance , explains the border tension , saying , “ This benefits the BJP . They have a constituency which thinks that Modi is doing the right thing — banning beef , removing Haj subsidies and teaching Pakistan a lesson . The shallow people who run the BJP don ’ t realise that they are ruining the country .”
A Kashmir intellectual echoes a similar sentiment : “ Because of its inability to deal with terrorism , the ruling dispensation is heating up the border . Nothing that Modi had promised to the people has been delivered and his advisors want him to follow a doctrine of tit-for-tat with Pakistan , ruling out dialogue . With about a year left for the next general election , it suits him to escalate tensions . What else can he offer to his radical Hindutva constituency ?” O
( The writer is a journalist based in Delhi )
20 OUTLOOK 19 March 2018