Day 18: Srinagar’s old city a no-go zone

Azhar Qadri

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, July 26

At Baba Dawood Khaki bridge, one of the many connectors between Srinagar’s old city and Civil Lines areas, smoke from burning tyres curled into the air on Tuesday afternoon —- Day 18 of the ongoing unrest.

Tuesday was a litmus test to know the mood of residents of dozens of volatile neighbourhoods of the old city, aka the Downtown, as the state government lifted curfew for the first time here in the last 18 days since the unrest began.

The separatists had also called for a rare relaxation in the shutdown across the Kashmir valley after 2 pm, which gave an option to the city to resume its businesses and open its shuttered shops for a few hours during daytime.

However, the mood in Srinagar, the city of 1.3 million residents and state’s summer capital, was belligerent. “We will not allow anything to open,” said a protester at the bridge. “Even if you cross this, the road ahead is blocked,” he said.

When asked about the relaxation in shutdown, called by separatists Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik, the protesters at the bridge said it meant nothing to them. “We don’t follow any leader. This time everything will be decided by the youth,” another protester said.

At Barbarshah, another entry point into the old city, three protesters stood in the middle of a road and asked few car drivers and motorcyclists to turn back. A large group of protesters blocked the road further ahead.

During the ongoing unrest, the city has not recorded any major confrontation between protesters and security forces like in south Kashmir, which has emerged as the new epicentre of pro-militant sentiment. The city’s most volatile pockets —- most of them in the old city —- remained under curfew and restrictions.

On Tuesday, when the city was given an option to open its markets as the curfew was lifted, the road to the downtown neighbourhoods ended at the links like Baba Dawood Khaki bridge and Barbarshah as teenagers and young men erected barricades and stopped the feeble movement of traffic. At some places, the protesters talked politely, and at other places, they reacted angrily.

The protests in the old city neighbourhoods, which are covered under the jurisdiction of five police stations, began early morning across all its volatile localities, setting the scene for the rest of the day. Militant songs reverberated through the old city from loudspeakers of dozens of mosques.

During the day, protesters made several attempts to march towards Lal Chowk, the city’s commercial heartland. The police intercepted one such march at Baba Dawood Khaki bridge, another was intercepted at Budshah bridge, metres away from Lal Chowk as the police fired tear-smoke shells that reverberated in the area that houses the civil secretariat and the High Court.

The day neared an end on a defiant note from Srinagar as reports of clashes between protesters and the police and tear-smoke shelling came from various localities across the old city. The overt expression of anger in Srinagar on a day when it was supposed to remain calm hinted towards the unrest without an immediate end.