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Indian Troops Use Kashmiri Muslims for Live Mine Detectors
POONCH, India, June 27 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Indian army patrols looking for mines and booby traps in troubled Kashmir have found the safest and most effective way to conduct their dangerous searches - get a civilian to do it.
Abdul Hamid, 16, steps gingerly into a large hole along an isolated stretch of the Rajouri-Poonch highway, around 125 miles northwest of the Kashmiri winter capital Jammu.
Clad only in a pair of cotton trousers and a T-shirt and carrying a wooden stick, Hamid's figure cuts a striking contrast with the small army sapper patrol watching him.
The soldiers are dressed in army fatigues and flak jackets, and carry sensitive metal detectors and semi-automatic weapons.
As Hamid hesitates, a member of the patrol points towards the hole with a stick, egging him on.
Such scenes are common in Kashmir where, despite warnings from international and Indian human rights groups, the military continues to use civilians as protective shields.
Hamid and his friend, Abdul Rashid, 20, remained with the patrol the entire morning, poking into bushes and under boulders along the sides of the highway.
The patrols, known as "road opening parties," can be seen all over Kashmir, performing their daily checks for landmines and other explosive devices planted by Muslim activists the night before, targeting military convoys.
The landmines are one of the main causes of military casualties in Kashmir, where more than 35,000 people have died since the launch of a military crackdown to a separatist Muslim insurgency in 1989.
Local villagers in Poonch and Rajouri, say most patrols will force two civilians to accompany them on the routine searches.
"Two civilians, usually young men, accompany every 20 odd soldiers every morning to look for landmines…" said Mohammed Hussein of Sarankote village.
"They have to search along the roadsides, under the bridges and culverts, and behind the heavy rocks," Hussein said, adding that they were rarely given anything more than a wooden axe handle in terms of equipment.
The villagers' anger is not just directed at the army, with many blaming the militants who also force locals to act as guides during their exceedingly dangerous nighttime operations.
"We're caught in the middle. What can we do?" said a local shepherd named Ibrahim. "Either we go along with it, or we get punished by one side or the other."
Irshad Hussain, a roadside laborer, said he had frequently been forced into accompanying small separatist groups.
"If we complain, they will kill us. But if we say nothing and the army gets to hear about our involvement, we will be beaten or worse by the soldiers," Hussain said.
An army officer, leading the patrol leading Hamid and Rashid, denied that any coercion was used when drafting the villagers into helping.
"It is with their agreement that we ask locals to accompany us who know the topography of the area very well," the officer said, while acknowledging that the "volunteers" received no special training or equipment.
Two civilians were killed and another was injured earlier this month when army troops asked them to investigate a large lunch box left by the roadside near Ganderbal, on the outskirts of the Kashmiri summer capital Srinagar.
Last month, another civilian was killed at Safapora, in north Kashmir, when he was asked to check an unidentified bag placed behind a rock.
Ajaz Khan, Chief Administrator of the Poonch district, said the local government had taken up the issue of using civilians for security work with the army authorities.
Rajouri and Poonch run along the disputed Kashmir border with Pakistan, and witness regular shootouts between Indian security forces and separatist infiltrators.
Since the beginning of June, when the Indian authorities withdrew from a lukewarm six-month unilateral ceasefire with rebel groups, more than 100 militants have been killed in the hills of Poonch and Rajouri.
Kashmir was given the right to self-determination by the U.N. after Pakistan and India were decolonized, but since then, the strife-torn state - whose warring takes place over some of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring landscapes in Asia - has been fighting for either independence or accession to Pakistan, which shares its Muslim-majority population.
Kashmir is caught between India and Pakistan, both of whom claim possession of the territory and have fought two of their three wars in its name.
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