Jammu, June 28
The state government and the Army authorities have locked horns over the 700 Gujjars and Bakerwals who have carried nearly 50,000 heads of sheep and goat besides scores of horses for grazing in the grazing zones in the strategic Zanskar area of Kargil.
While the state government functionaries do not doubt the bona fides of the Gujjars and Bakerwals, the Army authorities have started treating them as a security risk.
It is on considerations of security that the Army authorities have not allowed these Gujjars and Bakerwals to enter into the Suru valley that lies between Kargil and Zanskar. The Minister for Health, Mian Altaf, who is a prominent Gujjar leader, had sent a letter to Lt-Gen Arjun Ray, GOC, 14th Corps, on June 14 last requesting the Corps Commander to intervene and allow the Gujjars and Bakerwals to carry their livestock to the grazing zones which they had been doing for the past 53 years and before that. Mian Altaf had reminded the Army authorities that the Gujjars and Bakerwals had always assisted the Indian troops during the three Indo-Pak conflicts and during the past 11 years of militancy.
The Divisional Commissioner, Kashmir, too, had sent a communication to the Corps Commander requesting him to provide grazing permits to the Gujjars and Bakerwals who had been forced to retreat from Challan Nallah and other grazing areas.
General Ray in his reply to Mian Altaf had explained that both Muslims and Buddhists in Kargil and Zanskar had resented the entry of Gujjars and Bakerwals into their areas. In the reply, the Corps Commander had informed the minister that if the Gujjars and Bakerwals were allowed entry into the Suru valley it may lead to communal tension when Buddhists and Muslims in the area were living in harmony.
General Ray had also said that since militants had picked up Bakerwal language the rebels could infiltrate into the area as cattle grazers and create security problems. He has suggested to the minister to allow these cattle grazers to utilise the forest belts in Wardwan valley in Kishtwar for rearing their sheep.
However, the Gujjar Development Board has cited a series of events and incidents which speak volumes about the patriotic feelings of the Gujjars and Bakerwals. The board has cited a letter which Capt U.S. Raj of 15 Gorkha Regiment had written to his senior authorities on June 27, 1949, in which he had stated that it was because of the role of these two ethnic groups that the Indian troops could push back the Pakistani raiders.
The board has informed the Army authorities that since 1990, when militancy took roots in the Kashmir valley, Gujjars and Bakerwals used to carry their livestock to the Suru valley and there had been no security problem for the security forces or the government in the entire Kargil belt.
However, General Ray has informed the state authorities that after three Buddhist monks and one German tourist were killed in a militant strike in Zanskar last year the hilly belt could not be thrown open to those Gujjars and Bakerwals who had been bringing their livestock for grazing from Jammu and Kathua districts.
The Army authorities have apprehensions that since these grazers have to pass over the Pir Panjal mountain ranges of the Kishtwar Himalayas to enter Suru valley, groups of militants who have established their hide-outs in the mountain ranges, could also join these grazers and create a problem in Kargil district.
