Kashmir Diary: Fidayeen keep soldiers on their toes

Begging can be a very dangerous business in Kashmir these days. Some time ago, a mendicant was killed outside a Border Security Force camp in the late evening darkness at Nunar, a village not far from Srinagar.

He was a familiar figure in Nunar and most people used to laugh at him as a mad man. Pitying his gypsy existence, some of them would hand him scraps of food. The poor man had gone to the camp that night and shouted at the soldiers on guard duty at the gate to give him food.

When he kept repeating his chant even after they warned him to move away, they let loose a burst of automatic fire. He died on the spot.

"It's not their fault," says the headman of the village, shaking his head. "Suicide attackers do approach military camps that way. They thought he was a fidayeen (suicide attacker)."

It is a bitter reality of the situation here that the suicide attack tactic that has become common over the past three years has placed security forces on hair-trigger alert. Camps across the valley have gradually come to resemble the sets of war films dreamt up by an overly dramatic moviemaker.

Fifteen foot walls surround some, triple barbed wire fences, with live electric wires between them, have come up around others. Under the heavy drop gates lie iron slabs with huge iron spikes that would halt any vehicle less than a tank.

At night, soldiers often push out huge rolls of barbed wire beyond them. Lights have been set up right around the perimeter of most camps and empty bottles are often tied to barbed wire fences, so that their clanking would warn guards of anyone shaking the fence.

The scene along the rocky, bushy landscape of the road leading up to the Avantipora air base could easily be the setting for a Rambo film. It leaves one breathless with unease as the barrels of several guns jut out from behind trees and drums, pointing straight at one.

On one occasion, I got delayed leaving for Bandipora in the north of the valley, and it was dark soon after I left Srinagar. By the time the car approached Bandipora at around 8.30 pm, we had to pass a large army camp.

A little before a byroad winds off toward the camp, boulders and old tyres had been placed across the main road. My driver, scared of just such a panic volley as the one that killed the gypsy in Nunar, switched off the engine and headlights before requesting me to walk slowly to the camp gate and request the soldiers to let us pass.

I walked toward the thick roll of barbed wire, calling out loudly in Hindi. There was no response and I stopped, but my driver urged me to go closer. As I got close enough for the soldiers to see that I was alone, a voice answered, asking where I thought I was going.

Following lengthy explanations that I was a journalist, had to go to Bandipora for an interview related with the elections, had got delayed and was frightened to go back in the dark, the voice finally instructed me to remove the obstacles myself and replace them after the car had crossed.

Only halfway through the conversation was a strong flashlight switched on for a better view of me. The soldiers cannot be faulted for these precautions. The soldier holding the torch could have been shot as soon as he switched it on.

Suicide attacks have often begun with a lone fidayeen approaching such a gate to locate the exact position of its guards so that they can be killed before the camp is invaded.

There were plenty of rocks and bushes near that gate for attackers to lurk behind. As the headman of Nunar observed after the gypsy's death: "Nobody can be blamed in these circumstances." The sad fact, of course, is that the ordinary Kashmiri, even one as innocent as that gypsy, can fall victim to the dictum: "When in doubt, shoot."

No doubt one of the objectives of the revised terrorist strategy of suicide attacks is to cause just this sort of panicky response among soldiers, and thus further alienate them from the common people.

However, the extraordinary security measures, and the lack of forces‚ movement beyond the city and their own camps at night, have largely prevented this sort of fallout. Withdrawing into a shell might appear to be a less than soldierly tactic but it has served the purpose of minimising damage.

Going after suicide attackers aggressively would only lead to the frequent killing of innocent Kashmiris, for fidayeen add the ultimate weapon, eagerness to die, to that other lethal weapon of any guerrilla, surprise.

The result of the forces‚ tactic of caution is that such panicky responses as the one in which the gypsy died are rare - and the general reaction in Nunar indicates that people by and large do not blame the soldiers when such mistakes do occasionally occur.