Editor’s Note: WPR has agreed to publish this article anonymously due to the hostile environment in Kashmir toward independent reporting.
SRINAGAR, India—In July, I joined a group of young men plodding glumly through verdant paddy fields in Bijbehara, a picturesque town tucked inside a network of lofty mountains in the Kashmir Valley. It was the middle of the monsoon season. One of the men was recounting a midnight raid conducted by the Indian Army in a nearby village, Arwani, in August last year.
“They were bloodthirsty,” he said, in a wobbling voice. “We live in the shadow of violence,” another man replied. There have been similar raids recently, he said. “They pick up boys without provocation.”