Living in despair, Kashmir half widows' hopes still alive Submitted by admin7 on 25 December 2011 - 9:15pm India NewsIndian

Muslim By Yasir Ashraf, Agence India Press, Srinagar: Today Javaid would have been celebrating his 37th birthday, if security forces had not picked up him 21 years ago. On August 18, 1990 Javaid was taken a way for never to return. During the first years of militancy in Kashmir sixteen year old Javaid Ahmad Aha ngar, class 11thcommerce student, was staying at his uncles house for the night w hen he was picked up by the security forces and bundled into a vehicle. Till now h is whereabouts are unknown. Parveena Ahangar along with prominent human rights activists founded an organiza tion in 1994(split into two organizations in 2006) Association of Parents of Dis appeared Persons to know the whereabouts of their dear ones. Parveena told Agenc e India Press that, her son was taken mistakenly. The security forces had come to arrest Javaid Ahmad Bhat, a JKLF militant in neighborhood, but instead picked u p my son Javaid Ahmad Ahangar, remembers Ahangar. Every month she organizes a sit in protest with others like her whose dear ones are missing. Ahangar says that we are one family: They are my family, their suffe rings are mine, and we fight for same cause. The search of our dear ones, says Ah angar. Mothers, sisters, and wives of the disappeared have organized under the associat ion of parents of disappeared persons (APDP) towards bringing justice. Today they are protesting against the enforced disappearances of their relatives , and one among them is Naseema Bano. Naseema is sitting silently on a road here with a candle in her right hand and wearing black pheran (a long cloak to cover body) to mark the International human rights (December 10) day as black day. Sh e is a half widow. Women whose husbands have been subjected to enforced disappearances but not yet be en declared deceased are often called half widows. By conservative estimates there are 1,500 widows in Kashmir. Indian forces have been accused of human rights abuses against civilians since 1 989. By conservative estimates, 22 years of strife have left more than 70,000 de ad and more than 8,000 disappeared. Such disappearances have been carried out by government forcespolice, paramilitar y, or militaryor by militants. However, the number of the disappeared carried out by militants is significantly lower than government forces. The British Raj, which once controlled Kashmir, a Muslim majority princely Kingd om ruled by a Hindu monarch Maharaja Hari Singh. End of British rule in sub-cont inent or independence in 1947 split this sub-continent into two sovereign states of India and Pakistan. The two nations have paid with strife and bloodshed to e stablish their conflicting claims over the disputed region. Kashmir has signified a major source of tension between India and Pakistan since their birth, 1947, and has seen armed conflict since 1989. Currently, 4000,000 to 750,000 (the exact number remains unknown and disputed) I ndian military and paramilitary remain in Kashmir, making this one of the worlds most militarized regions. The Indian government has passed security legislationsu ch as the Disturbed Areas Act, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, and the Pu

blic Safety Actgiving military and police forces special powers to suppress insur gency and maintain a fortified presence in the region. Naseemas husband, a painter, left for work on 21 July, 2000, never to return. She lives in a rented one-room apartment with no curtains and scraps of calendar an d news papers over the walls and the ceiling, as if hiding their poverty. She li ves with her brother-in-law, her mother-in-law, and her 11- year-old daughter Sh azia. Naseema, herself about 27-years-old, is effectively the breadwinner of the family. She was married to Anwar Shah in 1998; she belongs to south Kashmirs Islamabad di strict. They were living happily after their marriage, but their happy life last ed only for two years. Anwar went missing as if he never existed. He vanished as thousands of others like him vanished in Kashmir and get the term disappeared. Sh e has no clue about what happened to her husband. Anwars disappearance was the beginning of the familys sufferings. Mushtaq and his Mother, Haseena Bano, who went looking for their loved one, are sent from one mi litary base to another, one jail to another, each suggesting some clue at the ne xt. They went from pillar to post in order to register a missing report, but the pol ice officials refused to file any report. Mushtaq along with his mother appeared in the year 2006 to the district magistra te Srinagar with an application for filing a missing report. Again the applicant has filed an application to the District magistrate 16-06-2007. Finally, it was 11 February, 2008 an FIR was lodged in the police post Bona Mohallah, Fateh Kad al on the directions of Chief Judicial Magistrate Srinagar. The irony of the off icials and the judiciary did not stop here, the orders were wrong instead the of ficials filed a wrong date of the missing, as the orders were given by the CJM h imself to lodge a missing report in 2002. But Anwar went missing in 2000.A quest ion mark on the judiciary and casts a shadow over its verdicts so far. The family felt at they ordered thought it will our lawyer also relieved to get a copy of FIR but the irony of the justice is th a wrong date of the missing report. We get copy of an FIR, so we be alright. As an uneducated how could we see such details? And did not speak about it, laments Mushtaq.

The family has received no compensation for the disappearance. Naseemas brother-i n-law and mother-in-law made several trips to the District Commissioners office, all unsuccessful bear no fruits. The family has a copy of a confidential report by the Special Branch of the Crim inal Investigation Department (CID) report from October 2009 that states: "...as per reports the subject has not come to averse notice prior to his missin g." That is, the CID affirmed that Naseemas husband was not part of the militancy and is thus not believed, even by the CID, to have potentially left with a militant group or gone to Pakistan. Naseema no longer hears from her natal family. While her parents are long deceas ed, her siblings refuse to help her unless she re-marries. Only a small fraction of half widows choose to remarry. Many half widows do not contemplate re-marriage, believing they will eventually receive some information about their husbands. Even more give up the option of remarriage on account of their children; there is a deeply held fear that a stepfather will never accept his wifes children or give them his best. And for those who want to remarry, soci

al stigmas around remarriage remain strong, while religious interpretations of t he rules around remarriage remain contested, says a report titled Half widow, Ha lf wife? Compiled by Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS). A well known Kashmiri Sociologist, Prof Bashir Ahmad Dabla, carried out a survey in which he says that one of the tragic consequences armed conflict has been ex perienced in terms of emergence of huge widows and orphans, 16,000 widows in 200 0, their estimated number has increased to 32,400 with 97,000 orphans in 2008. The research says, having the provision for re-marriage in Islam, only 8.66 perc ent had remarried. "Rest doesnt want remarry because they wanted to devote themse lves for the development of children of the dead husband." "89 percent had not married till date and had no intention to marry again becaus e children emerged as the crucial problem, adds study. The social taboos around remarriage are cultural rather than religious. Islam en courages widow remarriage. In Islamic law, Shariah, there is no consensus around the marriage of women who are half widows, because there is no special provision for the phenomenon of enf orced disappearances. All major schools of Islamic thought provide different gui dance about re-marriage. However, the concept of Ijtehad provides for scholars to extrapolate an opinion re garding any topical issue that has no instance in Islamic jurisprudence, if done in accordance with the context and urgency of the issue and without violating b asic Shariah. Thus, though the Hanafi School has declared that a woman has to wa it 90 years after her husbands disappearance but, Maliki School says that a woman either wait four or seven years, and if husband remains missing, without inform ation about his whereabouts even after proper investigation the marriage is deem ed to have been dissolved. If I get married, my daughters life will be ruined. If it was a son, it would stil l be fine, but she is a girl, what will she do without me?asks Naseema. The absence of husbands renders women economically vulnerable. In already socioe conomically weak families, this is the status of most families that have suffere d disappearances, such vulnerability leads to destitution. Generally, the husband is the sole breadwinner in the family and his disappearan ce results in an abrupt paucity of income. Naseema works in neighborhood homes, cooking and cleaning and doing domestic cho res as required. The money fluctuates and everything she makes is spent on food for the four family members, her daughters school supplies, and medicines for her mother-in-law. Her brother-in-law, Mushtaq Ahmed, has a disability since birth and walks with difficulty. He cannot earn for the family. They believe she is squandering her energy taking care of an ailing old mother-i n-law, a brother-in-law with debilitating disability, and a young girl. Mushtaq says that if this family have nothing to eat in the house, but they will never b eg. The half widow is mostly not equipped, educationally or socially, to begin earni ng for her family. As a result she, as well as any children she has, become depe ndent on others, most often the husbands family (given the cultural context where parents live in a joint family with their sons and daughters-in-law, not with t heir married daughters). In the in-laws family, relationships often sour after th e disappearance.

I have no mother, no father, and my husband is lost. Where shall I go leaving all of them?Says Naseema. In their desperation, many half widows visit pirs, fakirs, darweshs (holy men), ma ke offerings at Sufi shrines, and some even patronize fortune tellers. I have also visited Shrines and pirs to get a clue about him, maybe someday he wi ll be back to his home, says Naseema. Amidst this socioeconomic insecurity, women battle their emotional traumas while struggling as single mothers, many of whose children also often show manifestat ions of trauma. The various socio-economic pressures together have psychological effects on half widows that largely go unaddressed. Most half widows report anxiety (often described in terms of speeding up or palpit ations), sleep disorders, and lack of interest in everyday activities. Many half widows exhibit Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); anxiety attacks may be tr iggered by memories of the disappearance or the disappeared. The Government Psychiatric Diseases Hospital in Srinagar continues to receive 20 0 patients a day in its Out Patients Department. However, doctors there report no t seeing half widows or other family members of the disappeared come in for trea tment very often; the families continue to harbor hope without recognizing that retaining such hope has taken its toll on their own mental well-being. Half wido ws are known to self-medicate, consuming easily available antidepressants, resul ting in further health issues. In a vicious cycle, the worsening mental and phys ical health has adverse effects on their economic situation, which further worse ns their social standing and vulnerability, entrenches their isolation and suffe ring, further compromising. Valleys well known psychiatrist Mushtaq Margoob told Agence India Press that most of the half widows have insecurity and uncertainty. They are always in a state o f turbulence, because they are over burned with responsibilities of their childr en, says Margoob.Their whole world changes, their entire life, suffering a perpetu al trauma and having extreme psychological agony. Which many times magnified, af ter months or years, because of their loneliness. They have also hope at the sam e time. They think Creators powers are not limited, it would create a miracle and finally their husband will come back, elaborates Margoob. He always come in my dreams and says he will be back soon, says Naseema with a hop e in her words. Agar hai su aeshaa yem maslie ma gasheen (if he, Anwar, would have been here, ther e would have been no problems), says Mushtaq in a broken voice. I am living on a hope that he will knock at the door and declare I am back, says N aseema finally. (AIP News) ShareComment viewing options Flat list - collapsedFlat list - expandedThreaded list - collapsedThreaded lis t - expanded Date - newest firstDate - oldest first 10 comments per page30 comme nts per page50 comments per page70 comments per page90 comments per page150 comm ents per page200 comments per page250 comments per page300 comments per page Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to a ctivate your changes. Grave injustice to humanity Submitted by satwa gunam (not verified) on 26 December 2011 - 8:15pm. I think government of kashmir and india owes an explanation to these woman. They must give a clear picture to say what happened to those people picked up by pol

ice or by army. One wrong is not an answer to correct another wrong. Indian army must behave more responsibly at least in giving information about people taken on custody. replyShareIt is man-made affair and I Submitted by tasnim faruqi (not verified) on 26 December 2011 - 10:17am. It is man-made affair and I am sure the social groups are taking the stock and l et them live a dignified way. People say there is no work, but I say that you do nt get workers. May Allah give them more strength and guide us. Ameen tasnim - noida reply