Wed, Oct 19, 2005 page5

• India's soldiers earn rare praise from Kashmiris

  • AP
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  It's a battle for hearts and minds that half a million Indian soldiers have never really been able to win in Kashmir.

  But more than a week after South Asia's earthquake, Indian soldiers in the divided Himalayan region are earning praise from Kashmiris by helping provide victims with the food, shelter and clothing needed to start rebuilding shattered lives in a territory where the troops have often been seen as occupiers.

  Kashmiris' deep distrust of Indian soldiers, who for 16 years have battled a separatist insurgency in the Indian-controlled portion of the region, prompted protests against the army and civilian authorities over delays in providing relief in the days immediately after the quake.

  But much has since changed, and now many in Indian-held Kashmir are clamoring for all aid distribution to be handed over to the army, charging that civilian authorities have bungled the effort.

  "There is no shortage of relief, but there are delays," Mohammed Irshad Mir said of Jabla, a village in the Uri valley, which is one of the worst-hit parts of the Indian-held region.

  "We want the relief to be distributed only through the army," he said. "If they have 100 blankets, at least we know that 100 people will get them."

  Kashmir, a largely Muslim land, was split between India and Pakistan after the bloody partition of the subcontinent as it received independence from Britain in 1947.

  The 7.6-magnitude quake on Oct. 8 is estimated to have killed at least 40,000 people in the Pakistan-controlled portion of Kashmir, and another 13,000 in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province.

  It killed 1,361 people in Indian-held Kashmir, including 103 soldiers who died when their outposts collapsed along the so-called Line of Control, the heavily militarized border between India's and Pakistan's parts of the region. At least 140,000 others were left homeless, and civilian authorities say they are doing the best they can with limited supplies.

  Despite the military's losses, soldiers trekked to some remote villages within hours of the temblor and pressed on into other hamlets in the days after the quake, flying out the injured.

  "There were bodies all over the village, and we thought the injured would die too," said 12-year-old Mehmood Hussain from the village of Sirai. But the army "came on the very first day, and they took away the injured."

  He added: "Allah bless them" -- words the Indian military rarely hears in Kashmir, where soldiers and civilians live together uneasily in a land rife with suspicion, mistrust and, at times, rage.

  A small group -- no more than a few thousand -- has been fighting since 1989 to wrest Kashmir from India.

  That has made the army's enemy invisible: teenagers in long flowing Kashmiri tunics; bombs hidden in fruit carts.

  But soldiers are also known to have committed excesses. Civilians regularly face humiliating body searches, and charges of rape and extrajudicial killings against soldiers have been repeatedly made since the insurgency began in 1989.

  While the army has in recent years tried to crack down on human rights violations and improve its image in Kashmir by building schools, bridges and clinics, commanders said their work after the quake should improve relations between soldiers and civilians.

  "This will make bonds stronger," said Lieutenant General S.S. Dhillon, the army's commander in Kashmir.
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