Where the colours of campaign fade out into a pale shadow of fear

SOGAM LOLAB VALLEY, SEPT 14: The colours of campaign fade out at the garrison town of Kupwara. From there, all through the Lolab Valley...

SOGAM LOLAB VALLEY, SEPT 14: The colours of campaign fade out at the garrison town of Kupwara. From there, all through the Lolab Valley Assembly segment, there are no banners or posters. It is a ghost campaign with just two rickety Ambassadors blaring the virtues of candidates. Sogam, the village of the State Minister for Home, M A Lone, is the LoC for campaigning in Baramulla.

Politicians and the odd journalist on the campaign trail through Lolab are given strict directions in Kupwara not to venture beyond Sogam and Lalpora as Sudanese, Afghan and Pakistani terrorists hold sway over the thickly-forested ridges flanking the Lolab Valley.

Police reports say that anywhere between 300 to 350 terrorists are holed up in Lolab. 8220;They have circulated their dictates through posters pasted on the mosques. Terrorists are even checking the ID cards of people in Dardpora and Anderbugh villages of the Diver area,8221; says Nazir Johar, Lone8217;s elder brother. His village, Nazir tells us, pointing to the fir-clad mountain beyond his palatial house, is the headquarters of most of the terrorist outfits.

8220;In the old days, the forests used to teem with wildlife 8212; leopards, bears, hangul and wildfowl. But now the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Toiba, TJI and Hizbul-Mujahideen outfits roam in the forests,8221; said Nazir.

It is not difficult to discern why villagers of Lolab are unlikely to keep their tryst with democracy on September 18. Take a terrorist poster that appeared overnight in the Dardpora area: 8220;Rs 1,000 will be kept at the polling booth for the first man who chooses to cast his vote. After that, he will be gifted with a free bullet.8221;

With only two days of campaigning to go, there is nothing that would indicate that it is an election for the mandate of the millennium. No banner, no poster, no announcement as the road meanders through maize fields with numerous teams of the Gorkha Rifles and Rashtriya Rifles keeping vigil half-hidden in the failing crop.

If fear of the terrorists was not enough, there8217;s the disillusionment of having to witness election after election. Says Abdul Ahad, who ruefully displays a bad paddy crop brought on by drought: 8220;We have not even thought about voting. The election campaign is a joke. The terrorist threat will probably have a strong effect.8221;

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Not even a loudspeaker campaigner has dared to enter Sogam. 8220;Last week, when the Home Minister was scheduled to come home, a lone terrorist came charging down the mountainside and entered the market. He fired several bursts and fled. It was all to terrorise the people,8221; says Fayaz Ahmad, a shopkeeper.

Nearly one-third the Assembly segment of Lolab comprising Diver, Tikkipora, Dardpora, Gundmanchar, Anderbugh and Lalpora are out of bounds for politicians. The security forces, too, desert many of these areas at night. 8220;Besides checking ID cards, terrorists are conducting parades in these areas. Last month in Lalpora, they came down in a strength of more than a hundred and conducted a patrol and checked the ID cards of policemen. They bought rations and vanished into the mountains,8221; says Abdul Majid Rather.

There is going to be no polling booths in villages like Dardpora. The police fear that terrorists, who have attacked Army camps, may run over polling booths in areas close to the LoC like Lolab, Ramhal and Rajwar. The result: The odd villager of Dardpora who ventures to cast his vote will have to walk three kilometres to reach the polling station.