Seeds of unrest were sown in Tral

Azhar Qadri

Tribune News Service

Tral, August 26

Many years ago, a resident here recalls, militant commander Shabir Ahmad of Hayina village of Tral sub-district had a conversation with his father. “There should be some solution now,” the father had told his militant son.

“What do you think will happen then?” the son had replied. “Do you think I will return home? I will move on to fight in Afghanistan or in Palestine,” the militant had said.

This conversation and many others, spread through the word of mouth, laid the building blocks of myths and legends of Kashmir’s new generation of militants, as young men took to a fight where death was the imminent end.

Even after facing violent deaths in gunfights, the militants — like the Hayina village boy who left home at the age of 16 and was killed seven years later in 2013 – live on in legends and folklore, in videos circulated through social media sites, in their voices immortalised in last calls made home from midst of ferocious gun-battles, and in pictures that made their faces familiar to everyone.

In Tral sub-district of south Kashmir, home to dozens of villages separated by orchards, lush-green rice fields, streams, and ringed by mountainous jungles where young men escaped to become militants, the seeds of ongoing pro-militants unrest were sown many years ago.

It was here that groups of young men – some of them with flowing beards and long hair – led the beacon of revolt when militants in other parts of the region were struggling with shortages of manpower and arms, and most separatists were reduced in stature by a growing distrust.

At the entrance to Tral, near the highway town of Awantipora, graffiti scratched on walls welcome visitors to “Burhan Chowk”. These pro-militant and anti-India graffiti are a new reality here and sign of a deep anger that has taken over this vast cluster of villages.

The widespread wave of sympathy for militants, renewed in Tral in recent years that moved to distant parts of Kashmir in the recent weeks, is now symbolised by Burhan’s name and pictures.

“Burhan would always say that he should be the last martyr,” Muzafar Wani, the militant commander’s father, said. “He always wanted that he should first become a martyr and then there should be azadi,” he said.

The scale and magnitude of the protests sparked by the Burhan’s killing in a gunfight on July 8 surprised everyone, including his father. “I had anticipated there would be a reaction in south Kashmir, but I had never thought this would happen like this,” Wani told The Tribune at his home in quiet and shuttered Tral town.