Hajin, October 1
\nA sluggish town in north Kashmir which once housed the base of a counter-insurgency militia which hunted militants and their support network is undergoing a change of heart as it begins sympathising with the militant cause.<\/p>\n
The change, its several residents said, came in pauses.<\/p>\n
Hajin, surrounded by harvested rice fields, is at the crossroads of its own existence. There are no policemen on its roads and no paramilitary personnel patrol its neighbourhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey only come out in huge convoys in bullet-proof vehicles and that leads to stone-throwing protests,\u201d said Riyaz Ahmad, a tea vendor in Hajin town. \u201cThere was a time when this town would be bustling till late evening, but now every shop shuts at dusk. There is fear everywhere,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For years, Hajin had remained the quiet backwater of the Kashmir valley. In the mid-1990s, the township evoked fear as it housed the base of a brute counter-insurgency militia Ikhwan-ul-Muslimoon, which operated outside the ambit of law.<\/p>\n
Less than 100 metres from the fortified residence of the now disbanded Ikhwan-ul-Muslimoon\u2019s slain commander Kuka Parray, a former folk singer who led a murderous campaign, a wounded Mohammad Afzal attends to a slow trickle of visitors at his home in Parray Mohalla.<\/p>\n
Afzal, a carpet weaver, and his family had scuffled with militants on Wednesday evening who had come to kill his brother Mohammad Rameez, a BSF constable who was at home on leave.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was talking on the phone when militants came to him and asked for his identity card, which he refused to show. They took away his phone and left. They returned after 15 minutes, we tried to resist but they stabbed us with knives,\u201d Afzal told The Tribune.<\/p>\n
By the time the militants left, Afzal, his another brother, his father and his aunt were grievously wounded with knives by militants. Afzal\u2019s constable brother was dead. Three bullets had pierced his head, stomach and leg.<\/p>\n
The audacity with which the militants moved around with ease in Parray Mohalla is the evidence of how much has changed in Hajin. In the neighbourhood that once was the base within the base of Ikhwan-ul-Muslimoon, residents now talk about militants with reverence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe militant gun is not bound by any law but they will never hurt any innocent,\u201d a young man, who refused to give his name, said at his shop at Parray Mohalla. A police constable who served five years in the area said many young people in the town now \u201csympathise with and support\u201d the militants because they want to \u201cshed the baggage of the past\u201d.<\/p>\n
The moment of change in Hajin first came during the 2008 protests. Even though the strong-arm crowd control measures of the police contained the protests, they agonised large sections of the population. \u201cWe faced a lot of oppression. The police made no distinction between men and women, young and old,\u201d the shopkeeper in Parray Mohalla said.<\/p>\n
By 2010, Hajin and its adjoining towns had a zero footfall of militants. \u201cIt is where we became a little off guard,\u201d a senior police official said. In 2015, a group of foreign militants made their first entry to the township and managed to set their base.<\/p>\n
The counter-insurgency operations to neutralise the militants faced resentment as locals took to stone-throwing, a repeat of a phenomena that was born in faraway districts of south Kashmir. When the unrest swept the Kashmir valley last year, Hajin had completed its transition.<\/p>\n
For the first time in the last two decades, its residents were militants in militant ranks. Abid Hamid Mir, a former student of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, and Nasrullah, became militants in May this year. \u201cHe would often say that he would pick up a gun and he could not bear the oppression, but thought he was a kid,\u201d Abid\u2019s mother Jawahira said. In August, Abid was the first Hajin militant to die in two decades.<\/p>\n
Haji Dar, a mid-aged imam who had come to condole the death of the BSF constable, said the militant commander Burhan Wani\u2019s killing \u201cchanged everything\u201d. \u201cIt built the support for militants,\u201d he said. Another man interjected, \u201cthis is a baand gaam (folk singers\u2019 village), it changes mood with the changing wind\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hajin, October 1 A sluggish town in north Kashmir which once housed the base of a counter-insurgency militia which hunted militants and their support network is undergoing a change of heart as it begins sympathising with the militant cause. The change, its several residents said, came in pauses. Hajin, surrounded by harvested rice fields, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6533,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6534,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6532\/revisions\/6534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}