Wednesday, September 03, 2008
By Baba Umar
Srinagar, India (CNSNews.com) – Amid the most serious anti-government protests and violence in Indian-administered Kashmir in years, children increasingly have begun to adopt in their games some elements of adult behavior they see around them.
Where once they enjoyed cricket or video games, today it is not uncommon to see children, even those of toddler age, play-acting protest demonstrations, chanting political and anti-India slogans and “fleeing” from imagined security forces.
Ten-year-old Abrar, a resident of Srinagar, says the kids enjoy emulating “what we see on the streets.”
For him and his cousins, games now involve demonstrations, flag-waving, shouting slogans and make-believe baton-charges and shooting.
Assembled on the patio of his home, Abrar takes the role of protesters’ leader. “We want …” he shouts. “Freedom,” comes the response from a group of half a dozen children.
“Then they disperse quickly into the kitchen garden behind shrubs, pretending that the police have got nearer,” explains the boy’s uncle, Zahoor Ahmad Nath.
Zahoor said the children sometimes spend hours each day playing the game.
Kashmir is divided between Pakistan and India and claimed by both. The two nuclear-powered neighbors have fought two of their three wars over the Muslim-majority Himalayan region.
Separatists in the Indian-controlled portion – known as Jammu and Kashmir – are fighting for its complete independence or a merger with Islamic Pakistan. At least 70,000 people have been killed in the anti-India insurgency over the past two decades.
Recent months have witnessed an increase in violence, triggered by a dispute in June over the transfer of state land to a Hindu shrine. Muslims viewed the move as an attempt to alter the area’s demography by increasing the Hindu population.
When the state government later decided to scrap the plan, angry Hindus began to protest, with some radicals mounting an economic blockade by shutting off a key access route. Essential commodities cannot come in and apples, the mainstay of the local economy, cannot be trucked out.
Since June, at least 40 Muslims and three Hindus have died when security forces have fired during protests.
With schools shuttered for almost six weeks as a result of the tensions, children in the area have embraced their new form of amusement.
“Ultimately it is exactly a replica of what they see in roads and what they hear when the protest marches pass by. Even children in their mothers’ arms have learnt to display fingers in a V, meaning victory,” said Mohammad Shafi, who has seen his grandson making the gesture.
Child development experts are concerned about the trend.
Dr. Khurshid-ul-Islam, a psychologist at the Kashmir University, voiced concern that a new generation would grow up regarding bombings and gunfire as a normal part of life.
One of the region’s leading psychiatrists, Dr. Arshid Hussain, said the new game is a reflection of what children see happening around them – developments which he said could have “a tremendous sociological and psychological impact” on them.
He was worried that children were internalizing emotions including rage, which could spill out in their behavior toward one another.
Although many children live in conflict zones around the world, in many such areas agencies like the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) run programs aimed at providing help and relief.
There are few or no such programs in Kashmir, however.
MSF project coordinator Adam Thomas said the does not have any specific programs for children in the Kashmir valley.
“We do have mental health projects in Kashmir, but there is no specific psycho-socio support program for children,” he said. “We don’t have huge projects in this region.”
Likewise, officials of the UNICEF admitted that they have little involvement in Kashmir.
ICRC India representative Philip Stoll explained that the organization’s options were limited by the political situation.
“India has not recognized Kashmir as a dispute, so ICRC cannot really venture into such regions with these projects,” he said. “We have less power to do what we actually want to.”
Stoll said the ICRC does support the region’s Ministry of Education in an education program that introduces 13- to 18-year-olds “to the basic rules and principles of international humanitarian laws.”
Hilal Ahmad, project coordinator for the U.K.-based charity, Save the Children, said the organization has been working in Kashmir for four years, but its programs focus on child labor, education and trafficking.
The government does operate an initiative for children affected by violence, but so far its role has been limited to those children whose parents are not involvement in the separatist campaign.
“Only those children are eligible for support packages who can produce non-involvement certificate from the state police absolving that their parents have not fought against the Indian forces,” said Suraya Bhat, executive director of the Rehabilitation Council for Militancy Victims, a body established in 1996.
