His Excellency, a former Chief of the Indian Army, liked to get away from the bloodletting in the city as often as he could. He spent his weekends in Dachigam, strolling along a rushing mountain stream with his family and friends, while the children in the party, each shadowed by a tense, heavily armed security guard, mowed down imaginary militants (who shouted Allah-hu-Akbar! as they died) and chased long-tailed marmots into their holes. They usually had a picnic lunch, but dinner was always back at the guest house—rice and curried trout from the fish farm close by. The ponds in the hatchery were so thick with fish that you could put your hand in—if you could stand the close-to-freezing temperature—and pick out your own thrashing rainbow trout.
It was autumn. The forest was heart-stoppingly beautiful in the way only a Himalayan forest can be. The Chinar trees had begun to turn color. The meadows were a coppery gold. If you were lucky you might spot a black bear or a leopard or Dachigam’s famous deer, the hangul. (Naga used to call one of Kashmir’s famously randy ex–Chief Ministers the “well-hung ghoul.” It was a clever pun, I have to admit, though of course most people didn’t get it.) I had become something of a bird man—a passion that has remained with me—and could tell a Himalayan griffon from a bearded vulture and could identify the streaked laughing thrush, the orange bullfinch, Tytler’s leaf warbler and the Kashmir flycatcher, which was threatened then, and must surely by now be extinct. The trouble with being in Dachigam was that it had the effect of unsettling one’s resolve. It underlined the futility of it all. It made one feel that Kashmir really belonged to those creatures. That none of us who were fighting over it—Kashmiris, Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese (they have a piece of it too—Aksai Chin, which used to be part of the old Kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir), or for that matter Pahadis, Gujjars, Dogras, Pashtuns, Shins, Ladakhis, Baltis, Gilgitis, Purikis, Wakhis, Yashkuns, Tibetans, Mongols, Tatars, Mon, Khowars—none of us, neither saint nor soldier, had the right to claim the truly heavenly beauty of that place for ourselves. I was once moved to say so, quite casually, to Imran, a young Kashmiri police officer who had done some exemplary undercover work for us. His response was, “It’s a very great thought, sir. I have the same love for animals as yourself. Even in my travels in India I feel the exact same feeling—that India belongs not to Punjabis, Biharis, Gujaratis, Madrasis, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Christians, but to those beautiful creatures—peacocks, elephants, tigers, bears…”
He was polite to the point of being obsequious, but I knew what he was getting at. It was extraordinary; you couldn’t—and still cannot—trust even the ones you assumed were on your side. Not even the damn police.
It had already snowed in the high mountains, but the border passes were still negotiable and small legations of fighters—gullible young Kashmiris and murderous Pakistanis, Afghans, even some Sudanese—who belonged to the thirty or so remaining terrorist groups (down from almost one hundred) were still making the treacherous journey across the Line of Control, dying in droves on the way. Dying. Maybe that’s an inadequate description. What was that great line in Apocalypse Now? “Terminate with Extreme Prejudice.” Our soldiers’ instructions at the Line of Control were roughly similar.
What else should they have been? “Call their mothers”?
The militants who managed to make it through rarely survived in the Valley for more than two or at most three years. If they weren’t captured or killed by the security forces, they slaughtered each other. We guided them along that path, although they didn’t need much assistance—they still don’t. The Believers come with their guns, their prayer beads and their own Destroy-Yourselves Manual.
Yesterday a Pakistani friend forwarded me this—it’s making the mobile phone rounds, so you may have seen it already:
I saw a man on a bridge about to jump.
I said, “Don’t do it!”
He said, “Nobody loves me.”
I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”
He said, “Yes.”
I said, “Are you a Muslim or a non-Muslim?”
He said, “A Muslim.”
I said, “Shia or Sunni?”
He said, “Sunni.”
I said, “Me too! Deobandi or Barelvi?”
He said, “Barelvi.”
I said, “Me too! Tanzeehi or Tafkeeri?”
He said, “Tanzeehi.”
I said, “Me too! Tanzeehi Azmati or Tanzeehi Farhati?”
He said, “Tanzeehi Farhati.”
I said, “Me too! Tanzeehi Farhati Jamia ul Uloom Ajmer, or Tanzeehi Farhati Jamia ul Noor Mewat?”
He said, “Tanzeehi Farhati Jamia ul Noor Mewat.”
I said, “Die, kafir!” and I pushed him over.
Thankfully some of them still have a sense of humor.
—
The inbuilt idiocy, this idea of jihad, has seeped into Kashmir from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Now, twenty-five years down the line, I think, to our advantage, we have eight or nine versions of the “True” Islam battling it out in Kashmir. Each has its own stable of Mullahs and Maulanas. Some of the most radical among them—those who preach against the idea of nationalism and in favor of the great Islamic Ummah—are actually on our payroll. One of them was recently blown up outside his mosque by a bicycle bomb. He won’t be hard to replace. The only thing that keeps Kashmir from self-destructing like Pakistan and Afghanistan is good old petit bourgeois capitalism. For all their religiosity, Kashmiris are great businessmen. And all businessmen eventually, one way or another, have a stake in the status quo—or what we call the “Peace Process,” which, by the way, is an entirely different kind of business opportunity from peace itself.
—
The men who came were young, in their teens or early twenties. A whole generation virtually committed suicide. By ’96 the border-crossings had slowed to a trickle. But we hadn’t managed to completely stem the flow. We were investigating some disturbing intelligence we had received about our soldiers at some border security posts selling windows of “safe passage” during which they would look away discreetly while Gujjar shepherds, who knew those mountains like the backs of their hands, guided the contingents through. Safe Passage was only one of the things on the market. There was also diesel, alcohol, bullets, grenades, army rations, razor wire and timber. Whole forests were disappearing. Sawmills had been set up inside army camps. Kashmiri labor and Kashmiri carpenters had been press-ganged into service. The trucks in the army convoy that brought supplies up to Kashmir from Jammu every day returned loaded with carved walnut-wood furniture. If not the best-equipped, we certainly had the best-furnished—if I may coin a phrase—army in the world. But who’s to interfere with a victorious army?
The mountains around Dachigam were comparatively quiet. Still, in addition to the paramilitary pickets permanently stationed there, each time His Excellency visited, Area Domination Patrols would go in a day ahead to secure the hills that looked down on to the route his armored convoy took, and Mine Proof Armored Vehicles would check the road for landmines. The park was permanently closed to local people. To secure the guest house, more than a hundred men were stationed on the roof, in watchtowers around the property and in concentric circles a kilometer deep into the forest. Not many folks in India would believe the lengths to which we had to go in Kashmir just to get our boss a little fresh fish.