"I am a pacifist, but now I explain why I would go to throw stones." Zahid Rafiq So begins an article in Tehelka, the weekly India in recent years has established itself as an authoritative critical voice. Rafiq, 26, is a Kashmiri journalist who knows how to capture the depth psychology of the conflict in the valley traversed by a revolt over twenty years now: the anger of the boys who throw stones at the cavalier attitude of the establishment in India, "who behaves like an ostrich hiding its head in the sand and think that there is no problem. "
After the end of the armed uprising in 2003, many said that the Kashmiris were resigned to be a part of India. Because the conflict is re-explode?
The feeling of freedom you're never off, even during the four years of relative calm since 2003. It can not be crushed or bought with blood money in New Delhi. The fact is, after the military victory of the Indian security forces on the guerrilla movement was forced to turn to stone passing from guns. It 'was a complex step that could not happen in one night ..
As the conflict in Kashmir has changed compared to the '90s?
The conflict in Kashmir has become a war where one party decides to be uneven. When a guy grabs a rock and walks over to a soldier knows that the stone can only superficially wounded the soldier, but he also knows that if the soldier shot him or he will die will end up mutilated. Choosing the stone instead of the gun the boy stands on a higher moral plane, where the confrontation has more to do with physical force but by moral force.
addition to the kids, you see many women take to the streets and throwing stones. What does this mean?
The government had asked the women to go to the protests to stop their children. They are going to throw stones. For Kashmiri women is an act of catharsis after decades of silence, past seeing his brother taken away by police, soldiers abused by her husband, the funeral to pass under the window. Women could not be part of the armed uprising, but now came out into the open.
The Indian state responds to the stones with the same means with which he crushed the armed rebels. Why respond so repressive?
The Indian state still wants to treat the disease by treating the symptoms. He does not want to accept the fact that the vast majority of Kashmiris want independence. The tragedy for them is that this movement is more difficult to deal with that armed insurrection. The Indians would prefer to resolve the situation using the 700,000 soldiers committed in Kashmir. They want to avoid at all costs political rallies because they bare the fact that the separatists are not terrorists and have legitimate claims.
There is much talk of the risk of a new Jihadi footprint of armed insurrection. What do you think?
After the experience of the armed uprising in Kashmir, no one wants a gun. At present, the fundamentalist Muslims are not welcome in Kashmir, where he is remembered with pleasure the mass arrival of foreign fighters during the 90s. However, with all the kids who are killed one can imagine what goes through the heads of their brothers, cousins, neighbors. If the slaughter continues, there is the risk that the jihadists are the new space and that Kashmir may once again be a battleground by Muslim fundamentalists after the Americans will be withdrawn from Afghanistan. It would be a tragedy, both for India and the Kashmir. The Kashmiris would find themselves fighting a war that does not belong. At the first shot fired on Indian troops this movement is dead.
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