August 31, 1998

To prove that Kashmiris yearn for liberation, Pakistan highlights the issue at an international conference in "Azad" Kashmir and takes Associate Editor Harinder Baweja on a tour of areas along the LoC shelled by the Indian Army.

"Pakistan has recently been accused, and accused most unfairly, of being obsessed with Kashmir. It has even been called 'neurotic'. Pakistan, let me declare from the capital of Azad Kashmir, is not obsessed with Kashmir. But Pakistan is certainly obsessed with winning justice for the Kashmiris. If our consistent and principled stand on the acceptance of the fundamental right of the people of Kashmir to determine their future as laid down in the United Nations resolutions is 'neurotic', then we are proud of this neurosis."

- Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a message to the conference.

A huge dose of neurosis is what I unwittingly let myself in for at a place they so deceptively call "Azad" Kashmir. When Mushahid Hussain, Pakistan's minister for information, invited me to attend a three-day seminar on 50 years of the United Nations resolutions in what India calls "Pakistan Occupied Kashmir", I was among the few privileged journalists from around the world. The only Indian, I was constantly told, as I was welcomed into "free and liberated Kashmir". Hussain, whom I have got to know, was his charming self, instructing his staff to look after me. To make sure also that I got to the Line of Control (LOC) to see for myself what damage the Indian Army had wrought on poor civilians and their homes.

That was a privilege indeed. To be allowed first into Muzaffarabad, the capital of "Azad" Kashmir, and then to be taken to the forward areas along the LOC which had seen incessant firing in recent months between the two nations and heavy civilian casualties. "If you go to the Line of Control, make sure she goes with you," Hussain told Javed Akhtar, director of information, shortly before he saw us off from Islamabad.

The seminar was only beginning on the afternoon of August 13 -- the day India took the Kashmir case to the United Nations 50 years ago -- and we had the entire morning for a trip to the border. However, as the evening wore on, Akhtar expressed reservations about the trip. At dinner, American journalist Martin Sugarman stunned me by asking if he would see me at 7.30 the next morning. "The trip is not on," I informed him confidently as I returned to the hotel and joined two other colleagues from London for a cup of green tea. The London journalists weren't sure about the next day's programme either. So I called Akhtar. "There is no visit to the border," he was categorical, but Sugarman's words kept coming back to me. "Why don't one of you call Akhtar? He may be saying one thing to me because I'm an Indian," I told my friends, feeling guilty that I was suspecting my hosts. One of them spoke to Akhtar, who said that the journalists should assemble in the lobby at 7.30 a.m., and that an army officer would escort them to the border.

Thanks to the wake-up call, I was down in the lobby by 7.20 a.m. where Akhtar was eating breakfast with the other journalists. I was quite angry because he had lied to me that he was only co-ordinating the seminar. I contributed to a number of red faces in the Information Department when I told one of them, "I would have understood if I had been told straight away that there was a problem with an Indian visiting the Line of Control."

The departure was naturally delayed as they didn't know how to handle me. Finally, an hour later, we were asked to get into the coaches. Like the others, I walked towards the bus, only to be stopped at the door. "Your name is not on the list," I was firmly told. My reply was simple: "That is your problem, not mine." I got into the bus and said they could throw me out if they wanted to. Akhtar, of course, was not to be seen. "Let the rest go. We'll get special permission for you. There's been a miscommunication," they told me. I stuck to my ground saying I had been invited as a journalist and was not out on a picnic. "Why don't you understand that there is tension between the two countries," one of them said. I told them plainly they should have thought of that before inviting me. I was quite angry by now. I screamed, "You might think it is a crime to be an Indian, I don't."

I demanded that Akhtar come and face me. He was busy making telephone calls, certain by then that I was not going to give in. Sure enough, a little later Akhtar came out saying I could go. So what was the point in trying to keep me out? If being an Indian was a disqualification, why invite me at all? Hussain had been kind enough to invite me and I was not going to let anyone humiliate me. They say India unfairly accuses them of being "neurotic" about Kashmir. If anything, it was they who displayed this obsession.

Whether it was the brigadier who briefed us before we left for Chakoti, a village on the LOC, or Lieutenant-General (retd) Majid Malik, minister in charge of Kashmir affairs, the paranoia was self-evident. India, according to Brigadier Khalid Nawaz, was deliberately not supplying adequate food and medicine to the Valley in order to weaken the armed uprising. Accusing India of deliberately shelling civilians, Malik asserted that the Indian Army had not been able to hit a single Pakistani military post. "We consider Kashmiris our brothers and so we don't target civilian areas. Only three civilians have been accidentally injured," he told the audience, which neither wanted to hear anything else nor knew otherwise.

If the Pakistanis are good at one thing, it is propaganda. They make out that there are as many as seven lakh Indian soldiers in the Valley, when actually the number is around two lakh. They claim there are no foreign mercenaries in Jammu and Kashmir. The contrary view, according to them, is Home Minister L.K. Advani's propaganda, trying to tell the world that the Kashmiri mujahideen (warriors) are tiring. They also like to picture that a frustrated Indian Army is killing Pakistani civilians because "it has not been able to quell the spontaneous uprising in Kashmir".

In Chakoti, the same views echo among the people as we are taken around the village where shops lie in a heap of rubble. Frightened people say the shelling was worse than during the 1971 Indo-Pak war. But they become silent when I ask if they support the idea of azadi (freedom) from Pakistan. For, I have too many minders watching my movements and hanging on to every word I utter. Ironically, they told me, "Breathe free for the three days that you are here. This is liberated Kashmir."

I realise how liberated "Azad" Kashmir is when I step into my room the same night for a brief reprieve from the "neurosis" that has enveloped the seminar. No sooner do I enter than the phone rings and a person introducing himself as Jamil says he needs to talk to me urgently. "What about? Who are you?" I ask. The answer is, "I can't tell you on the phone." I tell him to meet me at the conference room or in the dining room. But he says, "There are too many intelligence people around. Can I come to your room?" No, I say, and he wants to know if I am alone. "None of your business," is my terse reply.

No one approaches me during dinner. But well past midnight "Jamil" calls again with the same request. I disconnect and ask for a meeting with Hussain. In the morning the minister apologises for what had happened and I tell him that I would have returned to Islamabad if it were not for him. It was not probably in Hussain's hands because the caller was obviously using an internal line and his aim was to harass me.

By then I was beginning to wonder whether the "neurosis" around was enveloping me too. I knew I wasn't affected when Professor Ainslie Embree, a member of the US-based Kashmir Study Group, was told he didn't know enough when he offered the view that the UN resolutions had lost their allure. "Perhaps the subject and the location are responsible for the paranoia," he says politely. I disagree. The hostility has increased by leaps and bounds. The nuclear tests on both sides of the border have changed everything. With one exception. The Pakistanis seem proud of their "neurosis".

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