Impact of protracted conflict on Kashmiri women

Impact of protracted conflict on Kashmiri women


The continued conflict and turmoil in the Indian illegally occupied territory of Jammu and Kashmir have had a devastating impact on almost every aspect of life. However, women have been the worst sufferers of this long-drawn conflict that has left behind a harrowing legacy in the person of rape victims, widows and half-widows. Large-scale usage of violence has been a persistent and dominant feature of India's Kashmir policy. The terrible consequences of this reckless state violence on Kashmiri society, politics, and culture have gone vastly unnoticed at the global level. Besides other forms of violence enacted under many different pretexts, the Indian forces have been found guilty of leveraging sexual violence as a weapon of war. 



By Altaf Hussain Wani


Sadly, this wicked phenomenon has been grossly overlooked at the international level despite growing awareness of the urgent need to end violence against women, especially in conflict-hit areas such as Kashmir, where India’s prolonged military occupation, huge troops' concentration, and sprawling military camps stretched across cities, towns, and villages created a fertile ground for violence against the women. troops' The continued conflict, bloodshed, and violence have affected the lives of women to such an extent that thirty-six percent of Kashmiri women, today, suffer anxiety disorder. Caught in a whirlwind of violence, the life of a Kashmiri woman, being a mother, daughter, sister, or wife, has been adversely affected during the years of turmoil. 



Many of them have been widowed, displaced, molested, gang-raped, and even brutally tortured, harassed, and humiliated in jails and interrogation centers. Besides bearing the brunt of violence, the majority of women in the region have lost their loved ones during the silent war going on in the region. According to the official figures, more than 50,000 people have been killed in the violence, but independent sources put the death toll at over 100 thousand. Of them, a sizable number of Kashmiri youths have been subjected to extra-judicial killings.  It has also been estimated that around 50,000 women have lost their partners.



Rights groups engaged in documenting enforced disappearances in Kashmir since 1989 have revealed that more than 10,000 people have disappeared in Kashmir as a result of violence, which diametrically varies from the official figures put forth by the government of India. 

Rape, the outrage of modesty and other forms of violence against women has been one of the deadly aspects of the long-drawn conflict that has inexpressibly shattered the lives of women living under a constant threat of rape and sexual assault from the Indian army. The rights groups that have investigated incidents of abuse in Kashmir during the past several years have established beyond a reasonable doubt that the Indian troops deployed in length and breadth of the Kashmir valley were using sexual violence against women as a weapon of war to punish, humiliate and degrade women folk.



The mass rape of scores of women in Kunan Poshpora village in Handwara in 1991 by the Indian occupation forces and the rape and murder case of Shopian, and Islamabad (Anantnag) serve as the most shocking example of the nightmarish ordeal of Kashmiri women.

Since the occupied territory of Jammu and Kashmir has been a no-go-zone for international human rights watchdogs, it is quite difficult to ascertain reliable statistics on rape in Kashmir and the intensity of violence the women of Kashmir have gone through over the years. Still, existing evidence suggests that this shameful practice (sexual violence), which amounts to war crime is frequent and widespread. 



In a statement in Kashmir’s Legislative Assembly in October 2013, then Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah admitted to registering more than 5000 cases of rape since 1989. A report based on women’s testimonies from the Kashmir Valley confirmed that women were brutally targeted by security forces. Most rape cases, according to the same report, have occurred during cordon-and-search operations. According to a 1996 HRW report, security personnel in Kashmir have used "rape as a counterinsurgency tactic". Inger Skjelsbæk, a Norwegian psychologist and gender studies scholar, says that the pattern of rape in Kashmir is that when soldiers enter civilian residences, they kill or evict the men before raping the women inside.



The conflict, as said, has affected the women folk in Kashmir in many different ways. Besides causing severe disruption in their education, job opportunities, and overall development, the ongoing conflict has wreaked havoc on women’s physical and mental health. As a result, there has been a phenomenal increase in psychiatric morbidity due to the continued conflict in the region. On the other hand, the sense of insecurity is greater among girls and young women who have become virtual prisoners in their own houses because of the continued threat of abduction and sexual abuse from the Indian army found present at every nook, corner, and cranny of the state.



The 15-month-long military clampdown and information blockade imposed on Kashmir by the government of India on 5th August 2019 has further added to the miseries of Kashmiri women. Nusrat Sidiq, a Kashmir-based journalist covering human rights issues, says that years of conflict have already fuelled alarming levels of untreated mental illness in Kashmir but the months-long crippling clampdown is adding to civilian trauma in the disputed region.



A study published by IMHANS and ActionAid has also confirmed an alarming increase in levels of mental health disorders in the population of Kashmir. The survey says that 11.3% of the respondents in the valley were suffering from a mental health disorder which is significantly higher than the Indian “national average”. Another detailed report released by MSF Doctors without Borders on mental health in Kashmir concluded that half of all residents of the valley have mental health problems.  It stated that 50 percent of women and 37 percent of men are likely to suffer from depression; 36 percent of women and 21 percent of men have a probable anxiety disorder; and 22 percent of women and 18 percent of men suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The report was the third of its kind on mental health carried out by MSF.  A team of 5 women who visited Kashmir soon after the Indian government stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its special status last year, narrated a spine-chilling account of the horrible situation in Kashmir. The report titled “Women’s Voice: A Fact-Finding

 


Report on Kashmir”, said, “The humiliation and torture they have suffered for 70 years has reached a point of no return”. Referring to overwhelming levels of stress and fear in society, the report said that the situation in the region was so grim that women were delivering babies prematurely due to stress and (fear) in the present condition. Quoting a senior doctor from North Kashmir, the report further said that there was an alarming uptick in mental disorders and heart attacks. The irony of Kashmiri half-widows is yet another highly disconcerting aspect of this conflict that has given rise to a category of women known as “half-widows” whose number has swelled to thousands during recent years.



They are the ones who went through more pain and agony than other women whose near and dear ones have fallen to the bullets of the Indian army. Caught in a cobweb of uncertainty, this ill-fated lot of Kashmiri women often referred to as "Half-widows" are forced to live even a more painful, agonizing, and excruciating life as there seems no end to their nerve-wracking struggle of tracing their husbands who have been subjected to forced disappearances by the army. Despite growing awareness of the urgent need to end sexual violence and empower women in conflict zones, Kashmiri women continue to suffer the worst consequences of violence and abuse of power by the Indian security forces. Being the most vulnerable segment of society, they (Women) continue to be the primary victims of large‑scale systematic sexual violence being unabashedly used by India as a war tactic.  



According to data collected by a Kashmiri news-gathering agency, over 11, 000 Kashmiri women have been molested or gang-raped, nearly 23 thousand women have been widowed, whereas 107,805 children have been rendered orphaned since 1989. There are thousands of instances of sexual violence having been used by the Indian army as a tactic to instill fear among Kashmiri society, but these cases go unreported in the media due to the social stigma attached to it.



 As the International Day for Women is being observed across the world to celebrate women's achievements and raise awareness about empowering women in conflict-hit territories, it is high time that the international community take stock of the situation in Indian-occupied Kashmir and impress upon the Indian government to investigate the human rights violations in light of the UNHCHR report of 2018 & 2019, which contains graphic documentation of human rights violations being committed by the Indian military and paramilitary forces in Jammu & Kashmir.  The influential world governments must ask the Indian government what action it has taken to enforce the writ of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women. 



The writer is the Chairman Kashmir Institute of International Relations and vice chairman of Jammu Kashmir National Front and can be reached at; saleeemwani@hotmail.com

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