The view from Hill Kaka

Since Bakerwals have a nomadic lifestyle, they build stout shelters called Dhoks — two feet wide walls made of stone and roofs crafted out of wood and shrubs. These are designed to provide maximum insulation against the weather. This exquisite lifestyle, as ancient as the surrounding hills, has been disrupted ever since insurgency was injected from across the LOC, right up to the Pir Panjal and beyond, past the valley.

If you set out from Jammu, the urban centres of Akhnoor, Rajouri and Poonch are far from Hill Kaka. In fact you have to visit Surankot, the town from where you have a close enough view of the Ranjati Ridge, beyond which is Hill Kaka. If you peer through the binoculars from one of the army posts on the Ranjati, you can see the Wamsi ridge in the north and Said Baker ridge in the south-east, all commanding deep valleys, bowls and crevices, like a magnified, forested version of the intractable Chambal valley — all leading to the base of Pir Panjal.

Ringed on all sides by these features is Hill Kaka, a meadow with finger-like crevices branching out in all directions. During the monsoons, the bowl has a breathtaking, magical quality. Thick clouds settle on the ridges but a ring on Hill Kaka makes room for a shaft of light to strike the lush green of the bowl. This then is the setting where Operation Sarp Vinash took place. Clearly, given its intractable terrain, the Hill Kaka bowl had over time become hideouts for militants. Bakerwals were blackmailed to bring provisions from urban centres like Surankot.

Comparisons are always dangerous in military matters. For example how on earth can anyone compare Hill Kaka with, say, Kargil. I mention this because such comparisons have been made. Kargil commanded a strategic road. Hill Kaka is 30 km away from the LoC and 20 km away from the nearest road at Bafliaz.

Even though plans to eliminate militants from their temporary havens in Hill Kaka and around were discussed and refined in January 2003, a major flushing out operation was difficult to undertake with the militants using thousands of Bakerwals and their families as human shields. An obvious tactic that suggested itself was to cordon off the militant infested areas and provide the Bakerwals with compensation which the state government believed would be about Rs 8 crore. Although it was Mufti Mohammed Sayeed who had pushed for this compensation, it led Farooq Abdullah to make the allegation that the Centre had ignored him when he had made a similar request. Extraordinary this, considering that his party was part of the NDA.

Since there were no “embedded” journalists around to watch the operations, I am afraid we have to fall back on the army’s version that the operations launched on April 21 have been successful. Obviously an operation of this nature can succeed only if there is coordination between the army, police and intelligence agencies. But, at the end of the day, to split hairs on whether 65 militants were killed, as the army claims, or 47, as other sources contend, only exposes a leaky system which can be ill-afforded at a time when the army and other services are fighting in the most forbidding terrain.

Of course Dhoks built by Bakerwals are not “fortifications” constructed by militants in a “liberated area”. Groups of journalists should be taken to Hill Kaka to make this clear. It is interesting that even as I was at Hill Kaka, attacks were launched at Katra, Tanda and at the police in Rajouri. Only time will tell whether this rapid-fire sequence indicates that militant groups are feeling the squeeze.

Yes, a controversy that may not be long in coming is whether the compensation money has been equitably distributed among the Bakerwals. “The Bakerwals are thriving,” says Abdul Majid a shopkeeper in Surankot. “They have received ample compensation”. “Nonsense,” exclaims Azad Khan, a contractor, “Officials are pocketing the money.”

Are these Mufti-Farooq partisans? The authorities will have to be alert.