[Reader-list] Left Orphaned by War: The City and Its Children

[shohini]

The New York Times
January 10, 2002

SRINAGAR JOURNAL
Left Orphaned by War: The City and Its Children

By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Somini Sengupta/The New York Times

Aijaz Ahmed Ganai, the 12-year-old son of a slain Kashmiri militant, 
lives in an orphanage in the heart of Srinagar, a city that has been 
devastated by the fight for territory between India and Pakistan.

SRINAGAR, Kashmir, Jan. 9 - Pressed hard against a cliff at the dead 
end of a twisting road in the old city here, a cluster of squat red 
buildings houses the lingering misery of Kashmir. It is an orphanage 
for boys, a great many of whom were left fatherless and destitute by 
the bloody 12-year guerrilla war in this Himalayan valley.

Some of them are sons of dead militants. Some of them don't know how 
their fathers were killed. Not many remember their fathers at all. 
They know only that one day their mothers packed their clothes, told 
them to tend to their studies and had them ferried from their 
villages to the orphanage here.

For all the gloom that has descended over this city, it is a cruel 
twist that its name in the ancient Indian language Sanskrit means 
city of the sun. Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir, is at the 
heart of the disputed territory between India and Pakistan, the spoil 
for which they are poised to fight their fourth war.

No other place has been as pulverized by the rivalry between the 
nations. And today, with the soldiers of India and Pakistan lined up 
along their 1,800-mile border, no other place likely will.

"In both the nations, the governments are thriving on Kashmir," 
observed Abdur Rasheed, a retired government official here who helps 
support dozens of women and children who have lost their men to the 
conflict. "This is the battleground. We are the sufferers. Who else?"

The dispute over Kashmir, which has gone on for more than 50 years, 
has spawned a violent insurgency, pitting guerrilla fighters against 
Indian soldiers and paramilitary outfits. India accuses Pakistan of 
fomenting the insurrection in Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority 
state. Pakistan, as well as many Kashmiris, accuse India of hindering 
their right to self-determination.

The conflict has left a terrible human toll here - the orphans are 
but one of many examples.

That toll is visible on virtually every street corner in this city. 
Paramilitary forces stand bunkered behind stacks of sandbags on every 
other block. Abandoned apartment houses have been taken over by 
security forces. The sports stadium has suffered the same fate.

Of the dozen or so movie theaters that once operated in the city, 
only two remain open. The rest have been abandoned or serve as 
bunkers for India's Border Security Force. The streets are empty by 
dark. People think twice about making dinner appointments. The 
restaurants close by sundown, anyway.

The latest indignity heaped upon the people of the valley is a 
severing of their connections to the world beyond. Kashmiris awoke on 
New Year's Day to discover that their Internet connections had been 
snapped. The long distance telephone shops that the vast majority of 
people use to talk to friends and family outside the state have had 
their long distance connections suspended, too. There is no word on 
when service will be restored.

Indian officials contend that such steps were needed to stop 
terrorists operating in the valley from communicating with one 
another. For the same reason, mobile phone service is not available 
here either.

So for over a week now, a car dealer hasn't been able to call 
Chandigarh, some 400 miles to the south by road, to speak to his 
factory dealer. An exporter of Kashmiri woolens hasn't been allowed 
to send an e-mail to his American distributor in Utah. The purveyor 
of a sweet shop has been unable to call New Delhi, to request what 
were his daily rations of curd and cream.

The shopkeeper, Bashir A. Butt, shrugged off the inconveniences as a 
fact of Kashmiri life. Things could be worse. They have been before. 
"Maybe the government will say, `There's a curfew, close up your 
shop,' " he said. "We can expect anything. People here, they are used 
to these things."

Even today, the severed phone service mattered little anyway, at 
least to the store owners. As is routine here, a one-day strike 
shuttered the city's shops, in protest of the death of a young 
Kashmiri man in police custody in New Delhi, the Indian capital.

For most Kashmiris, however, the lack of phone service meant that New 
Year's greetings to friends and family elsewhere had to be put off.

"They say Kashmiris are an integral part of India," Prince Ahmed, 24, 
said, biding the time at the long distance telephone shop of his 
brother Muzzafir, "but don't let them talk to the rest of the 
country."

On the streets of Srinagar, blood and guns have been such constant 
features that the prospect of war hardly meets with outrage or panic.

Bashir Ahmed Dabla, a sociology professor at the University of 
Kashmir, recounted the words of a student at one of his seminars 
recently. The young man said he would be relieved if war broke out. " 
`Let both countries kill us and the Kashmir problem will go away 
automatically,' " Professor Dabla recalled hearing him say. "This 
sentiment got the approval of most of the audience."

Few have felt the crunch of the conflict here as acutely as Aijaz 
Ahmed Ganai, a 12-year-old boy who appeared to be drowning inside one 
of the flowing woolen overcoats that Kashmiris wear in winter. His 
father was a commander with a militant group called Al Jahad when he 
was pulled off his scooter and gunned down by security forces.

The boy was 2 at the time, and he was called Irfan. He got a new name 
after his father died - Aijaz, his father's alias. But he lost his 
home. Four years ago, an uncle brought him here to the orphanage, the 
Yateem Trust hostel, one of the largest and oldest in the city. They 
rode the bus from their village, in the center of the valley, here to 
the old city. It was the boy's first time in Srinagar.

Aijaz learned of his father's fate from a newspaper clipping his mother kept.

Aijaz is a shy boy, with big eyes and a beauty mark under his bottom 
lip that gives him a slightly coquettish look. He sees his mother 
during Eid, the annual Muslim feast. He wants to be an engineer, he 
said, not a mujahedeen, and buried his face, giggling, in his 
overcoat.

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