[Reader-list] Was there a blockade?

[rashneek kher]

Read this Shivam..and I will keep sending more...Arun is incidentally based
in Jammu as Head of Bureau for HT...and in future dont send stale news...

ALL POLITICS,NO BLOCKADE by Arun Joshi

The mainstream and separatist Kashmiri leaders may be crying themselves
hoarse over the issue of 'economic blockade', but the ground reality is
totally different.

While helicopters are hovering over the Pathankote-Jammu-Srinagar highway,
the army has effectively sealed all the roads leading to this lifeline of
supplies to Jammu & Kashmir. Meanwhile, hundreds of trucks laden with sheep,
poultry, medicines and foodgrains are running smoothly toward their
destinations, uninterrupted by protesters.

"It is our single-minded focus to keep the highway through and ensure
supplies to Kashmir," Chief Secretary S.S. Kapur said.

After some incidents of violence in the Jammu region — as also in Anantnag
in the Valley — there were protests and blockade for a few hours in Punjab.
These incidents — not entirely targeted against Kashmiris — were played up
in the Valley as "economic blockade" even after the Shri Amarnath Yatra
Sangarash Samiti leading the Jammu agitation categorically denied any such
move.

Hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani was the first to do so;
thereafter, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, Yasin Malik, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed and
Farooq Abdullah followed the suit, threatening they would look at the option
of trading through the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road. They were exploiting the
loose statement of state BJP president Ashok Khajuria, who had used the
terms like "blocking supplies" and "quit Jammu".

Meanwhile, Governor N N Vohra declared that whatever had happened on the
roads leading to Kashmir were "traffic disruptions" and "not the economic
blockade". He made it clear that there was "no planned economic blockade".

"They are apparently trying to out do each other in the similar fashion as
they first did on the land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, for they view
electoral gains in it," said Mohammad Aslam Khan, a retired employee.


On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 3:42 PM, Shivam Vij शिवम् विज्
<mail at shivamvij.com>wrote:

> It seems the blockade strategy of the BJP-RSS-SASS was givenm up after
> it backfired.
>
>
>
> At the mouth of tunnel to tumult
> No blockade but long lock
>
> SANKARSHAN THAKUR
> http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080813/jsp/frontpage/story_9686774.jsp
>
> Banihal, Aug. 12: There is a lock on the burning Valley, two miles long.
>
> We swept swiftly up the road from Jammu this morning, past Patnitop's
> scenic pine resorts and the narrow gauge cut by the turbulent Chenab,
> but found a swirl of concertina wiring thrown across this high gateway
> into Kashmir.
>
> Layers of security cordons stood blocking the Jawahar Tunnel, the
> longest manmade road duct in Asia and the country's only land-link to
> the trouble-ridden Valley — police, the CRPF and then jawans of the
> Indian Army.
>
> "Closed", a gum-booted, gun-wielding sentry said, "until further orders."
>
> But why? "Orders," he bluntly repeated, unyielding, "Can't permit you
> to pass, not even at your own risk."
>
> It had begun to rain and the sentry's little shortwave set was
> crackling in the slanted wind, spewing grim news from its oil-barrel
> perch. Processions pouring out in torrents across the Valley. Defiance
> of curfew. Violent engagement with security forces. Firing.
> Retaliation. Deaths and injuries. More retaliation. A chain of cause
> and effect ruinously whirring.
>
> Bandipora, Ganderbal, Lafjan, Baramulla, Kangan, Rainawari, Haripora,
> Patang, Badgam, Watlar, Wusan, Lal Chowk, even Kishtwar which is
> located outside the Valley — a swelling directory of datelines fast
> staining the landscape.
>
> "Ab pata chala kuchh kyon nahi jane de rahe?" the sentry asked
> sardonically as he arranged the concertina spools even more firmly
> across the mouth of the tunnel. "Haalaat kharab hain janab," (Do you
> get a little sense now of why we are not allowing you? Things are bad,
> Sir.")
>
> In the little highway hamlet of Banihal down below — the only Muslim
> majority pocket this side of the Jawahar Tunnel — the Valley's tumult
> was beginning to echo. A band of men carrying green flags had gathered
> in the square and were calling out to residents on a megaphone. "Our
> brothers and sisters across Banihal are in trouble, let us tell them
> we stand in solidarity, let's tell them we are with them!"
>
> The shanty shops of Banihal's one-lane bazaar lay shuttered, its
> nervous residents looking on from half-ajar windows. But slowly as the
> call rang out again and again, the band in the town square was joined
> by trickles from the bylanes and soon became a flaming mob. It was
> more than a kilometre long and spilled out on both sides of the
> Jammu-Srinagar highway, a charged column on the march.
>
> More green flags began to wave about in the taut air and then roll the
> shrill slogans of Kashmiri insurrection. "Chalo Muzaffarabad!; hum kya
> chahte: azaadi; Pakistan zindabad."
>
> The elders frantically appealed for calm. "No commotion, please, no
> violence," one of them cried out. "This is the hour of mourning. We
> must respect our dead."
>
> But youngsters on the fringe of the mob would have none of that. As
> the procession rolled up the winding road, en route to the mosque,
> they got more strident, fisting the air in the face of CRPF jawans and
> policemen. The closer the securitymen pressed the procession, the
> louder the slogans, the more ardent the green flags. "Pakistan
> zindabad; hum ko chhordo, Hindustan."
>
> The jawans, armed and ready to tear gas the mob at the first sign of
> trouble, held their fire; the procession held its protest to angered
> slogans, no more. But for three hours this afternoon, Banihal failed
> precariously close to the chaos of violence.
>
> "Anything could have happened," said a nervous but relieved Haji Abdul
> Majid Banihali, a local elder who was among the lead cast of this
> protest. "You can feel it in your veins, can't you, the crowd and the
> forces are just testing each other? We got away with it today but I
> can't say the same about tomorrow. There's anger bubbling over what's
> happening in the Valley."
>
> To either side of the protest, traffic lay coiled in the mountains
> like a dead crocodile's tail.
>
> Hundreds of trucks laden with goods on their way to the Valley and Leh
> beyond it. Wheat, pulses, oil, medicines, other packaged food. Half a
> dozen carriers packed with bewildered chickens clucking in their
> cages. Even a busload of Amarnath pilgrims from Maharashtra who had
> somehow blundered their way up to this impasse.
>
> "We don't know what to do now, where to go," said Sudhakar Naik, who
> arrived with his family of five from Nashik. "We can't go ahead and we
> are not being allowed to return because there is a curfew all the way
> down to Jammu. And it is getting cold."
>
> Up close to the mouth of Jawahar Tunnel, scores of more trucks lay
> girded along the bends, lost on the prospects of being able to
> proceed. All of them loaded with goods, all headed to the Valley, all
> posting puzzling questions on allegations of an economic blockade.
>
> "We have been waiting two days at Banihal," said an irate truck driver
> from Pathankot, carrying vegetable oils. "There was a disruption on
> the road for a few days about a fortnight ago but the road has been
> clear since. Who says trucks are not going? It is only here that the
> security forces have blocked our way, nobody else did."
>
> A little distance away, the sentry, now under an oversized olive parka
> to shield against the rain, was waving off newer arrivals with his
> gun. "Khabar nahi suni? Kashmir jal raha hain (Haven't you heard the
> news? Kashmir is burning.)"
> Top
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-- 
Rashneek Kher
Wandhama Massacre-The Forgotten Human Tragedy
http://www.kashmiris-in-exile.blogspot.com
http://www.nietzschereborn.blogspot.com