Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Chairman, Hurriyat Conference (M), tells Baba Umar why a peaceful protest is not possible in Kashmir and admits that there is a strong sentiment againt the death sentence to Parliament attack convit Afzal Guru.

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah announced the release of 1,200 youths arrested for stone pelting. Do you welcome it?

Not at all. It is political gimmickry. ‘Granting amnesty’ is a wrong term used by Omar. These youths are not criminals. They were reacting to...

Mirza Waheed was born and brought up in Srinagar, Kashmir. At 18 he moved to Delhi to study English Literature at the University of Delhi, and thereafter worked as a journalist and editor in the city for four years. In 2001, he moved to London to join the BBC’s Urdu Service in London, where he now works as an editor. Waheed briefly attended the Arvon Foundation in 2007. He has written for the Kashmir Observer and the BBC’s Urdu and English websites and appeared on BBC radio and TV as a...

The first one reads “Number 1, Martyred on August 24, 2009, Jawansaal (Young)”, the second one reads “Number 2 “Martyred on August 24, Safaid Dhadi Wala Bhodha (white bearded old man)”. Scattered between few graves that have traditional tombstones, there are many that have tin plates inserted on top. Numbers and scanty details of the appearance of dead is all that is known about the people who lay burried.
The caretakers of ‘Martyrs Graveyard’ here, situated in Lolab alongside...

Atta Mohammad Khan, 65, doesn’t know the dead or their names. He remembers them by the ‘bullet wounds and torture marks’. After burying over 230 unknown people, Khan, the lone caretaker of Chachal graveyard in Uri’s Bimbyar village is an exhausted man. His old eyes have lost sight, yet a look into the past makes tears roll. These tears that shine on his cheeks hold the secret to the unmarked graves where nameless dead dubbed as militants lay buried.

From a year-old girl to people as...

In Salamabad, located on the Line of Control (LoC), Shabir Ahmad bartered Kashmiri chillies for dates with a trader across the de facto border while Asif Lone traded South Indian coconuts for almonds. The cross-LOC trade was supposed to be one of the baby steps in solving the vexed Kashmir dispute but the deal is fast turning sour.

“Every week you will see a newcomer in the trade. After facing serious problems they retreat,” explains Lone, a cross- LoC trader from Baramulla in north...

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) vice-president Moulvi Iftikhar Ansari, who was among one of the party leaders to visit Sopore, tells Baba Umar that people didn’t pelt stones at them, but at the police.

The government stopped People’s Democratic Party leader Mehbooba Mufti from visiting the family of Nazim Rashid, who died in police custody. How do you feel about it?

The Sopore incident is a cold-blooded murder of a youth who was arrested and eight hours later, his body was handed over...

At about 9.30 on Wednesday night, Mohammad Ashraf Dar quietly ventured out of his house in ChanKhan locality of Sopore town. But, his mother saw him talking on cellular phone while moving out. “We presumed that he was talking to his fiancee,” says a family member. Dar the eldest among three siblings, including two sisters, had been engaged last week and had plans to solemnize his marriage in near future.
  At about 10.15, the silent night was broken by a volley of...

Last year on 9 May, amid the din of cheering friends and tearful relatives, 39-year-old Mirza Iftikhar Hussain walked slowly into his ancestral Srinagar home after nearly 14 years. The handicrafts dealer got pats on his shoulder, winks and hugs. Behind his back, he was the subject of ‘do-you-recognise-him’ remarks.

“Those who were kids all those years ago took time to recognise me,” says Hussain. “It wasn’t a problem for the elders though. They had waited 14 summers for my...