SRINAGAR: India is to phase out the controversial presence of large numbers of its troops in towns across the Muslim-majority Kashmir region, the country’s home minister announced yesterday.
Such a move would be the first time the armed forces have been pulled out of urban areas in the disputed region since an insurgency against Indian rule broke out in 1989.
The announcement also comes amid sustained protests over last month’s suspected rape and murder of two local Muslim women, allegedly by members of the Indian security forces.
Home Minister P. Chidambaram told a news conference in Srinagar, where he has been conducting an urgent review of security, that the army should carry out counterinsurgency operations “far away from towns and cities.” “In the inhabited areas we believe maintaining law and order is the primary responsibility of the state police,” he said.
India has not officially disclosed how many troops and paramilitaries it has in its part of Kashmir, but they are thought to number up to 500,000.
Chidambaram did not give a timetable for the redeployment of troops, or the numbers involved, but said: “It will take some time. That is the direction in which we have agreed to move and we will move.” He said the decision was made because militant violence inside Kashmir had dropped, but infiltrations along the Line of Control — which divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan — were continuing.
“Many infiltrators are neutralized at the borders but there are other infiltrators who successfully infiltrate. They are not coming here as tourists, they are coming here to foment trouble,” he said.
The anti-India insurgency in the region has left more than 47,000 people dead by official count since it started in 1989. New Delhi has long accused Pakistan of arming and funding the rebels.
Islamabad denies the charge, but the level of violence has dropped since the two nuclear-armed nations started a peace process in 2004 to resolve all their pending disputes, including Kashmir.
The presence of Indian troops in Kashmir, especially in the Muslim-dominated Kashmir valley, has long been a major source of tension in the region. For the past two decades, troops have regularly been accused of human rights violations including rape, murder and torture.
