The Hindu : Peace brings no amenities to Marrah

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Dec 13, 2003

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National

Peace brings no amenities to Marrah

By Praveen Swami

A Pir Panjal scout teaching children at the makeshift school in Marrah. — Photo: Praveen Swami

Marrah (Poonch) Dec. 12. Until a few months ago, the armies of the Jihad ruled the remote mountain village of Marrah in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch district. Villagers collected permits to graze their cattle and cut wood from the local Lashkar-e-Taiba commander, not the State Government. They paid levies to a welter of terrorist groups, hauled supplies into the hills and helped build fortifications.

Early this year, fed up with forced labour, beatings and the summary execution of those who complained, the villagers of Marrah rebelled. Their revolt was spearheaded by a local vigilante army, which calls itself the Pir Panjal Scouts. The Scouts, along with the Army, drove terrorists out of the Hil Kaka bowl, their base above Marrah. The village now has over 50 armed volunteers to defend it, and no terrorists have visited it since August. Liberation made Marrah a safer place to live in — but the residents of this mountain hamlet are discovering that safety does not necessarily mean a better life.

Earlier this year, Marrah's Gujjar herdsmen, like their counterparts across rural Surankote, were denied entry into the Hil Kaka bowl as offensive operations began. In return for this denial of access to the high-altitude pastures which Gujjars have traditionally used in the summers, the Union

Government put up a Rs. 7.5-crore compensation package. In practice, the compensation deal means just a few thousand rupees in hand for each Gujjar family — but the residents of Marrah have been told they would not even be getting that.

The reason? Around 1999, the terrorists who held the Hil Kaka area ordered the Marrah herdsmen to stop using government-endorsed permits to use the pastures. Instead, the terrorists started issuing their own pasture permits. The Marrah residents were in no position to object. But, the District Administration says, they cannot now claim compensation because they do not hold officially-endorsed permits for 2002. "Almost every home here lost one or two animals because of the hot weather and fodder shortages during the summer," says Kulali hamlet Panchayat member Noor Mohammad, "and without our animals, we might as well be dead."

It is much the same story in almost every aspect of village life. Two years ago, the Lashkar-e-Taiba cadre began carting away the physical assets of the primary school in Dofali to build their fortifications in Hil Kaka. The tin roof went first, and then the wooden beams. Six months after Operation Sarp Vinash, the Army offensive which cleared terrorists from the Hil Kaka bowl, the school has not been rebuilt. Children in Dofali still have to study in Mohammad Khalid's home, and suffer battering by the winter winds when he needs to use his living room.

Where there is a school building, there are no teachers. In Lower Marrah hamlet, villagers complain that the headmaster, Mohammad Razzak, has not made his way up from Surankote, the nearest town, in two years. An educated member of the Pir Panjal Scouts, a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, fills in instead. Most basic amenities are in much the same condition. The dispensary in Marrah generally has no medicines, and anyone seriously unwell must be hauled for several hours down the mountains into Bufliaz, and then by road to Surankote. Lower Marrah is supposed to have a veterinary hospital, but no doctor has made his way there for years.

A road into the region would help matters, but terrorism has helped ensure one has never been built. A seven-km link road from Bufliaz to Dofali was sanctioned years back, and surveys were carried out in 1999. The Public Works Department subsequently assigned the road construction project to an independent contractor. Weeks after starting work, the contractor abandoned the task, claiming to have been threatened by terrorists.

Marrah valley residents claim that the threats were engineered by the Bufliaz shopkeepers who wanted to continue selling to their captive mountain market at high prices.

Whatever the truth, work on the road has not commenced even after Operation Sarp Vinash forced terrorists out of the area. The Army is building a road above the Marrah valley, bypassing the hamlets and leading directly to Hil Kaka. It, notably, has not faced a single terrorist attack. "This whole terrorist threat issue is just an excuse," says the leader of the Pir Panjal Scouts, Fazl Hussain Tahir.

"There is terrorism in Srinagar and Jammu, but they have roads, schools and hospitals."

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