Editor: Murtaza Shibli

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Special Report: Dead But Not Forgotten - Survey of Death Toll in District Baramulla 1989-2006

Conducted by Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS)


Baramulla: District Profile
Baramulla is the largest district in the entire Kashmir valley, with reference to both its population and area. The district is spread over an area of 4588 square kilometers, and according to the 2004-5 State Digest, its population is 11,69,780. Baramulla district is bounded by Kupwara in the north, Budgam and Poonch in the south, parts of Srinagar and Ladakh in the east and has the Line of Control to the west. (After the completion of this survey in 2006, Baramulla district was split into two, with Bandipore carved out as a separate district)

The district is administratively divided into eight Tehsils namely Bandipore, Baramulla, Gulmarg, Gurez, Pattan, Sonawari, Sopore, Uri and sixteen Community Development Blocks. Koshur is the main language of the people in the district, Pahari and Gojari are also spoken in Uri and the areas near the foothills of Gulmarg and Bandipora, and Sheena (Dard) is the local language in Gurez and Tilail areas.

At 45.50% Baramulla lags behind the state average on literacy (55.52%) but compares reasonably with the other districts of the valley. The sex ratio of 903 in the district compares favourably with the state average of 892.

The vast majority of the population of the district are agriculturists, and horticulture, mainly apple growing, is a major source of income especially in the tehsil of Sopore. At 26749 hectares it leads the districts of Kashmir in the total area under apple cultivation. Other fruits like apricot, peach, pear, and dry fruits also form significant portions of the net sown area of the district. At 2690 hectares it also leads the districts in the total area under forests, second only to Doda in the Jammu division.

The district has for ages been the natural passage for travellers out of the valley. And the city of Baramulla for long held the position of a gateway, located as it was on the route to the Valley from Muzaffarabad (now in Pakistan Administered Kashmir), and Rawalpindi (now in Pakistan). The present day Uri Muzaffarbad road (earlier known as the Rawalpindi cart road) was the only all weather link that the valley enjoyed with the rest of the world. A huge traffic of trade, ideas and culture proceeded from this area till the events of 1947 when travel through this road was restricted. And the present day Jammu Srinagar highway was made as an alternative land route that would connect this restive region to the Indian union.

Introduction
In 2002 Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) decided to undertake a door-to-door survey of an entire district to find out not only who was killed, but also when, where, how, and if possible, why.

What was the rationale behind wanting to record these deaths? After all, in any war there are casualties. And amongst those who get killed there are combatants as well as civilians. But by leaving that death toll unexamined, by remaining innocent of the context and circumstances in which these deaths take place, one can never hope to understand what the nature of the conflict is. It was to provide precisely this context that the Survey of Death Toll in District Baramulla was undertaken.

Who were the dead? What were their names? How old were they? Were they students or working people? Where did they come from?  Who did they leave behind? What did they do?  How much had they studied? How many men, women, children perished? Were there more men than women? More young than old? Which stratum of the society did they come from? What caused their death?

A questionnaire was prepared (Appendix 1) in which we asked respondents 37 questions, grouped under seven headings. Through this survey we hoped, so to speak, to bring ‘alive’ the profile of the dead, and by so doing, fill out the contemporary history of our people, and rescue those who died in a struggle for freedom from becoming mere statistics in the records of an occupation force.

Although Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) came under military occupation in October 1947 the armed resistance began only after 1988. The decades between 1947-88 saw a movement fight for the right of self-determination through militant but non-violent struggle. Every step of this way was punctuated with obstacles, in the form of direct physical assault, arbitrary arrests, false cases, long periods of detention without trial, as well as the politics of proscription where organizations were banned and their literature seized, and elections rigged. But what followed was something unprecedented in scale and magnitude, and it will be no exaggeration to say that after 1988 J&K will hereafter not remain the same.

Our report State of Human Rights in Jammu and Kashmir 1990-2006 [Pub. JKCCS, Srinagar 2006] pointed out that based on our research, projections showed that death toll for the period between 1990-2004 was more than 70,000, when for the same period the Indian State was reporting a death toll of 47,000 (1990-2005). And that the authorities have under-played tens of thousands of deaths of people killed in J&K as a consequence of a war against a democratic movement.

While we proudly admit to being partisan, and hold the Indian state responsible for the loss of lives, we also do not believe in belittling anyone’s suffering. All those thousands of people who have been killed, including renegades who committed innumerable war crimes, have died as a consequence of war, as victims of a long, cruel war. It is inconceivable that such internecine bloodletting would have taken place but for the exigencies of counter-insurgency warfare, a euphemism for the suppression of a people. We are also concerned that Indian soldiers are made to fight an ignoble war against the people of J&K, a war which has begun to cause a great deal of harm to them too.

In remembering the dead we become familiar with them, as well as those they left behind. Through a survey like this we might not get to know them individually. But there is still so much that we can find out about them.

Occupation, Resistance, Violence
In any conflict situation, there is always an attempt to manipulate the death count (for instance the U.S. administration rejected researched claims, advanced by the autonomous British medical journal Lancet, which shows that the death toll consequent to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 is in excess of 650,000). The JKCCS estimate the death toll in Kashmir since 1990 is 70,000. This figure has been flatly denied by the Indian state.

However, in an occupation of this nature it is not enough to only count the dead. The living too continue to pay an unacceptable price, their every move controlled by soldiers, their society shattered by spies, intelligence agencies, and government agents. Death then, is only the most brutal metaphor of this occupation; there are other poignant markers of this occupation that seek to smother the aspirations of the living. A military occupation that has evicted people from their farmlands and orchards, foisting interminable humiliations upon a people, and marking their spaces with instruments and agents of violence. The bunkers, checkpoints and the military camps of an army that seeks not only to perpetuate violence to gain military ends, but also seeks to secure, in the ultimate analysis, political ends through military means.

The most obvious marker of this strategy is the half million plus armed forces stationed in the state, who are surely there not only to fight the thousand odd officially estimated militants. If this were the case then the military and paramilitaries of the Indian state would cut a sorry figure on parameters of military efficacy. This military occupation has been foisted upon the people not only to fight and kill but essentially to establish a hegemony of force and coercion amongst a people perceived as being perpetually rebellious, and thereby to break their collective aspiration and will to freedom.

In its 2006 study Medicine Sans Frontiers (MSF) notes [Kashmir: Violence and Health, A quantitative assessment on violence and its impact on the psychosocial and general health status of the Indian Kashmiri population] in its executive summary:
“The period of violence considered was defined by the local population as starting in 1989, continuing until the time of the survey. At the time of interview, almost half (48.1%) of the respondents said they felt only occasionally or never safe. In the period 1989-2005, people frequently reported crackdowns (99.2%), frisking by security forces (85.7%) and round-up raids in villages (82.7%). In the same period, damage to property (39%) or the burning of houses (26.3%) was considerable. Interviewees reported witnessing (73.3%) and directly experiencing themselves (44.1%), physical and psychological mistreatment, such as humiliation and threats.

In addition, people were forced to perform labour (33.7%) or to give shelter to combatants (18.4%). In the same period, one in six respondents (16.9%) were legally or illegally detained. A shocking finding is that torture appears to be widespread among those detained (legally or illegally): 76.7% said they were tortured while they were in captivity. The high levels reported suggest a strategy of intimidation and fear employed by the warring parties.”

Ironically, the mental health studies undertaken by the Indian army of its own personnel serving in J&K presents a very grim picture too. A 2003 study [Evolving Medical Strategies for Low Intensity Conflict: A Necessity; Lt Col Ajay Dheer, Lt Col Jaipuria, Col HK Sharma and Brigadier Jasdeep Singh: All India Joint Armed Forces Institute, Volume 59, # 2, 2003] noted:
the “(d)ilemma in being able to resolve the contradictions between general war and Low Intensity Conflict, particularly concepts of ‘enemy’, ‘objectives’ and ‘minimum force’…” is one set of problem. The other is that “whereas in general war nation looks upon the soldier as a saviour, out here he is at the receiving end of public hostility. Unable to understand these conflicting relations, the soldier is desensitized.”

Another study from 2005 [Impact of Low Intensity Conflict Operations on Service Personnel; S Chowdhury, PK Chakaraborty, V Pande, TR John, R Saini, SP Rathee, Industrial Psychiatry Journal 2005, 14(1-2)] lends credence to operational experience of the personnel by identifying “operational stressors”. According to them:
“feeling of anger/frustration at fighting with ‘one arm tied behind the back’ (88%)”; “anger at public admonition (84%)”; “bitterness at not being able to deal with the unarmed but vicious ideologues/motivators/financers of militants, the ‘Jamaatis’ who were blatantly misusing religious institutions such as ‘madrasas’ in their anti-national activities (64%)”; “ambiguity with regard to aim (30%); feeling of uncertainty (26%); feeling of fighting a futile war with no benefits to the country (25%)”, and “fear of ever present danger/attack from unexpected quarters (18%)”.

It is worth noting that 88% of the respondents felt that they were fighting with ‘one arm tied behind their back’, 84% resent public criticism, and 64% felt bitter at not being able to “deal with” what are called “Over Ground Workers or OGWs”. In contrast only 30% are troubled by “ambiguity about the aim”, 25% believe they are fighting a “futile war” and only 18% fear attack from “unexpected quarters”. What this means is that anger and resentment among soldiers outweighs fear and doubt among them. An angry and resentful soldier preys on a population that feels hostile and adversarial. And when they are deployed in such immense numbers-nearly seven hundred thousand for over ten million people-then the likelihood of casualty is inherent. 

The Indian army’s “Doctrine for Sub Conventional Operations” also lays down that “…the military operations should aim firstly, at neutralizing all hostile elements in the conflict zone that oppose or retard the peace initiatives and secondly, at transforming the will and attitudes of the people ... The endeavour should be to bring about a realization that fighting the government is a ‘no win’ situation and that their anti-government stance will only delay the return of peace and normalcy. Therefore, distancing from the terrorists is in their own interest and the only plausible course of action. However, the manifestation of such a realization can take from a couple of years to decades as attitudes take time to form and to change.” (Pages: 21-22, emphasis added).

It is important to understand the full import of the above citation. The muscular tone and use of phrases such as “neutralizing”, “transforming will and attitudes” and so on, speak for themselves. But when this doctrine is read together with the survey of the psychological profile of government forces, it reveals a direct relationship between the objective of subjugating a people, and the manner in which this warfare brutalizes the occupation power’s own personnel in the process of inflicting brutalities on the occupied population. Add to this a dangerous impunity, and it’s a recipe for havoc. Casualties in this form of ‘dirty war’ occur in the form of encounters, custodial killings, enforced disappearances, search and cordon operations, arbitrary detentions, torture etc. We will have more to say when we analyse the data on this issue. But suffice it to say that in this form of warfare there is a high degree of deliberate targeting of non-combatants by the government forces in order to impose their will on the people.

Not all of the 70,000 victims of this dirty war died at the hands of Indian forces. Many were victims of militants. Some of these deaths were either in the nature of internecine killings or deliberate targeting. Some of these were caused by the use of weapons such as grenades and mines which when exploded in crowded areas cause more damage to the non-combatants than the combatants they are aimed against. However, the armed struggle in Kashmir is a direct response to the suppression of peoples’ democratic right to self-determination. The Indian Government has consistently and ruthlessly stamped out, discredited, co-opted or destroyed every attempt at non-violent resistance, thereby privileging violence, and this has undoubtedly led to excesses perpetrated by militants as well. In other words, while there may be several actors in the violence in J&K, the primary responsibility for the destruction caused rests fair and square on the shoulders of the Indian State.

This is why it is a critical matter to understand who is responsible for this war, and why is this war being prosecuted? When deaths occur it is the circumstances which determines and explains why people died and what meaning and significance is or can be attached to it. It will not do to equate victim and the victimizer in a game of sophistry whose purpose is to obfuscate the overarching fact of occupation, and the struggle for people’s inalienable right to self-determination.

Under international jurisprudence the term “occupation” denotes hostile military rule against the wishes of the people. This concept derives from the modern principle that people are the sovereigns, whereas occupation signifies its denial.  Article 42 of the Hague Regulations (also called law of warfare) describes occupation as a “territory placed under the authority of the hostile army”. In the Fourth Geneva Convention 1949 this is attenuated. Article 2 provides that the convention shall apply even to an occupation that “meets with no armed resistance”. The rationale for this was that there is an inherent hostility between the occupant and the occupied. Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention provides that “the benefits under the Convention shall not be affected by any change introduced, as a result of occupation of territory, into the institutions or government of the said territory, nor by any agreement concluded between the authority of the occupied territory and the occupying power, nor by annexation by the latter of the whole or part of the occupied territory”. We are convinced that the conditions in J&K match and conform to everything that is juridically invested in the legal term “occupation”. 

The resistance to this occupation became an armed struggle in 1988, and as a result scores of deaths turned into hundreds and then thousands and then tens of thousands. There is a fundamental political, historical, and moral difference between an occupying force and the resistance to it. When the resistance commits crimes we must not flinch from criticizing them for their excesses. But equally we must be mindful of the principal problem - which is the occupation. This obvious point needs to be stressed because pseudo “humanitarian groups” pretend to be neutral between two warring groups, and pretend to be only interested in “people’s welfare”. However, they choose to remain ignorant about the war, and its context, and gloss over the fact that militants are organically linked to the people, whereas government forces are not. Is it therefore surprising that to this day every namaaz-e-janaza (funeral prayer) of a militant is attended by thousands of people? This does not happen when soldiers or renegades die.

The Baramulla Survey
The actual survey began in 2003 and continued till 2006. Teams of four or more volunteers would travel to a village and move from house to house, asking people if any member of their family had died or disappeared, either at the hands of the Indian security forces, renegades or the militants. Volunteers then filled the questionnaire prepared by JKCCS. (See Annexure)

Because volunteers did the entire survey, this also meant that the bulk of the work had to be done on weekends or holidays. Data entry, and ensuring the correct entry of data, i.e. ensuring that data fed matched survey forms, took nearly a year. Each data form had to match what had been ‘keyed in’ and cross-checked by a person other than the person who fed the data. However we are aware that some errors could still have crept in a survey of this magnitude. But we believe these to be not statistically significant.

Methodology
This was an exercise in quantitative analysis, with statistical data collected on the basis of a detailed questionnaire. Before commencing the survey a workshop was organised where volunteers were familiarized not just with the questionnaire but also with the broader reasons why the survey was being undertaken and its significance for our own time. People volunteered their time, formed teams, and systematically covered one village after another.

Teams went from house-to-house accompanied either by a village elder or a social activist of the village. The respondents were told clearly that the survey was not meant to get them compensation and that it was not linked to any government project but meant to record those who died, be it a militant, civilian, renegade or police personnel. These forms were then carried to Srinagar, and one member of the team usually supervised the data entry, after which the forms were labelled and stored.

Not all forms came back fully filled. Some had one or more columns unfilled. Those with more than 30% of the columns unfilled were not accepted (the total numbers of rejections were six).

Since data was collected over a period of three years, obviously a village covered in 2003 would naturally not include figures for the subsequent three years. This makes year-wise comparison between various villages difficult, and may also result in a possible under-estimation of the number of deaths. Also, while we did cover most of the villages in Baramulla district four had to be left out as access to these was denied by the Indian Army.

The extent of killings could be higher than the survey data throws up on account of the fact that many of those not present during the survey could be from the Kashmiri Pandit community, who had migrated from the valley in 1990. Since the data was collected from the residents of the district, information from those families who were not present was also clearly not collated. The questionnaire did not have a column for religion.

Ideally, the survey would have had to be simultaneous over space and time, clearly impossible without a huge team, and substantial resources.
                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                                                                                                                                                                Continued ...