India and Pakistan are set to relaunch peace talks but residents of Kashmir, at the heart of decades of hostility between the nuclear-armed countries, say they are pessimistic about the outcome.
India has proposed foreign secretary-level dialogue with Pakistan, signaling a major breakthrough in relations frozen since the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people died. New Delhi blamed the assault on Pakistan-based militants.
In Muslim-majority Indian Kashmir, which has been in uproar over allegations about police killings of two teenage boys and where anti-India violence has resurfaced, the mood over the talks is gloomy.
“On the one hand, India is offering talks to Pakistan, and on the other hand it is killing innocent people in Kashmir,” said Javed Mir, senior leader of the pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front.
A two-decade insurgency by militants who oppose New Delhi’s rule in Indian Kashmir has claimed more than 47,000 lives, according to an official count.
“I don’t think anything will emerge from these talks, I’m not hopeful at all,” said cab driver Sheikh Shafayat, 40, in Indian Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar.
India proposed the talks, which Pakistan has welcomed, “because violence has staged a comeback in Kashmir,” Shafayat said.
Over the weekend, thousands of demonstrators shouting “blood for blood” and “we want freedom” protested in Kashmir against the alleged security force killing of a second teenage boy in a week.
Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah vowed strong action over the boy’s death.
But his words have failed to calm tensions in the region, which was already agitating over the killing of a 14-year-old boy by a police tear-gas shell the previous weekend. The demonstrations have evolved in recent days into wider anti-India protests reminiscent of protests in 2008 and an increasing number of the young are joining them.
“These talks will never move beyond photo sessions. Those who think things will change are living in fool’s paradise,” says Akber Mantoo, a contractor.
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