Trekking in Kashmir: Where nuclear powers once clashed Kashmir torn by nuclear rivals India and Pakistan ivert

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This is the in-depth "focus" article that appears in the Oct. 3 issue of the the weekly Christian Science Monitor magazine. Reporter Ben Arnoldy travels the nea r vertical slopes of Kashmir with former timber smugglers who now look for a new economic livelihood guiding trekking tours where nuclear rivals India and Pakis tan once clashed. (Ben Arnoldy) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------By Ben Arnoldy, Staff writer posted October 1, 2011 at 12:34 pm EDT Novroz Baba, Indian-controlled Kashmir On that first day, we climbed up and up into Kashmir's forests and mountains, ho me to nomadic shepherds, timber thieves, and Indian soldiers defending the Line of Control from Pakistani militants. I was the first Westerner some had ever seen on the Himalayan footpaths crisscro ssing the world's most militarized zone. Rimmed by peaks flowing into Pakistan a nd China, the Kashmir Valley looks pristine. But for decades it was a paradise l ost to fighting between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan and a Kashmiri Muslim struggle for independence from New Delhi. The armed conflicts have mostly ended in Kashmir. But absent a political resolut ion, spring never followed winter: no thaw in relations between Kashmiris and In dians and few shoots of economic revival. Photo Gallery: Trekking the Kashmir Himalayas with former tree smugglers The expedition I took represents one group's efforts to bring back foreign trekk ers and economic life to rural Kashmir. My companions were 10 Kashmiri men, amon g them former tree smugglers training to become guides on the very footpaths the y once trod secretly by moonlight. Our four-day vertical foray allowed me to trace some of the social problems like timber smuggling that are festering here. Villagers cut the trees because of wi despread rural unemployment and deep corruption, both results of Kashmir's unres olved status. Without trees, the snow would melt early, the greenery would reced e, and shepherds and tour guides alike would be finished. The organization, Trekking for Trees, is trying to move Kashmiris off the path o f destroying their own natural heritage before it's too late. Doing something se emingly so simple, however, has made many powerful people nervous, including the Indian security forces who control even the remotest corners of the countryside . In the background of any initiative here looms "The Kashmir Problem." The Kashmi r Valley can feel like a prison: restless, brooding, waiting on unlikely appeals . At times, the trek felt like parole from all that. The guides practiced for a day when foreign tourists would visit. But the guards were never far away, watch ful. And the men carried memories heavier than their packs. That Night, our first obstacle was finding a flat place on the mountainside to p itch our tent.

Noor Mohammad Bhat, a weathered cattle herder, offered the mud-and-timber roof o f his hut. I was tired from our walk in the woods and had been quietly ruing my lack of phy sical endurance. But Mr. Bhat quickly reframed my thoughts for the trek around a different sort of endurance the emotional, spiritual, cultural strength of a peop le who have struggled for six decades for some sort of resolution for their home land. Bhat, his wife, son, and 10 head of cattle stay here for the summer. When snow c omes, they head back down the valley, and the cattle owner pays him $135 total f or their care. After some cups of pink, salty tea known as noon chai, Bhat told us of his sons. His eldest, Ghulam Mohammad, has been in prison for 11 years. As Bhat tells it, his son got wind of a plot by three Ikhwanis to blackmail a village. So he pree mptively killed them. (The Ikhwanis are former Kashmiri separatists who were cap tured by India and flipped to fight as counterinsurgents for the Indian governme nt. Some Ikhwanis turned to banditry after the armed insurgency was crushed in t he 1990s.) Another of Bhat's sons, Nazir Ahmad, turned up dead in 2008 in a ravine we'd wal ked past earlier in the day. Bhat has his suspicions about who tortured and kill ed his son, but won't say until police agree to file a report and open an invest igation. "I often think that the people should be brought to justice," he says, "but ... I have a son alive in jail and ... so my whole energy is to release him ." The next morning, two women showed up at our camp with bags of chili powder and turmeric. Someone had forgotten to pack the spices. The discovery the night before caused such a stir that one of my companions called his wife in Novroz Baba, the villag e where we started. Within two hours she and a friend covered the distance we'd taken five hours of slogging to climb. A horse even carried my pack and I still hit the grass hard every time we stopped. I felt bad about sticking the horse with my pack, especially after the animal tu mbled into the ravine where Bhat's son had been found. But I was reassured when I learned that horses are normally used to smuggle out massive tree trunks. As we resumed our marches, my guides told me how illegal logging works. The tree s can be cut quietly by day: Thieves use axes and handsaws to fell two-foot-thic k fir and deodar trunks. At night, they come back with horses. A tree is cut int o about seven logs; a horse can carry two logs at a time, making it a four-night job. Prices vary, but here a whole tree can fetch $320. But that's not all prof it: One former smuggler on the trail with me regularly paid $70 to bribe the for est officer and $45 to bribe the police. Still, $50 a day is big money here. The government price for a trekking guide is $11 a day. But that hasn't discouraged Trekking for Trees. "We make them aware and educate them about the value of the forest. If there wil l be no trees, there will be no [lasting] snow. And there will be landslides on these mountains," says Sheikh Ghulam Rasool, one of the organization's leaders w ho is hiking with us. Trekking for Trees is looking for other alternative livelihoods for villages, su ch as guesthouses and orchards.

One of the quietest and gentlest guides told me that "through this profession, t here is honor and through timber smuggling there is no honor." On the afternoon of the second day, we reached a wide-open meadow ringed by moun tains. Thousands of trees and thousands of sheep dotted the slopes. In a few cor ners lay stumps and wood chips: Timber thieves had done their dishonorable deed. The trade-off between honor and economic security, as the smuggler-turned-guide described it, will continue to be too great for many Kashmiris until more legit imate development comes. After setting up camp, I followed three of the city boys in my group to look at the cuttings: Abid Hussain, a sports reporter for the newspaper Greater Kashmir; his buddy Sameer Ahmed; and Muneer Ahmed, a Trekking for Trees driver. As we sat on a fallen trunk, Muneer told about a two-month forest department int ernship he did that was supposed to involve catching timber thieves. But he hear d tales from officers that the focus was more on shakedowns. In one story, fores t officers hung tin cups on trees and returned later to pick up their bribes. Still, Muneer was disappointed that he wasn't offered a position. Government job s mean stability and a ticket to marriage, powerful draws regardless of a person 's political views. India quelled armed separatism a decade ago, but never won over the people. The majority in the valley want independence. Concerned that Pakistani militants and cross-border training of Kashmiris could return if security softens, Indian for ces stay on and investors and foreign tourists stay away. To help contain periodic unrest, India has poured in money for government projects and jobs. A Kashmiri businessman, Iqbal Trumboo, told me later in Srinagar: "This is what the government can offer common Kashmiris to keep quiet government jobs." The state has only 11 million people but half a million government employees. Me anwhile, the private sector is paralyzed by the lack of any settlement to Kashmi ri aspirations for self-determination, says Mr. Trumboo. A houseboat owner on Dal Lake in Srinagar says he still dreams of Western touris ts returning. "It's because we overpay, right?" I asked. A. Rashid Dangola shook his head, recalling guiding Westerners for money, but en joying himself: "We can understand each other better than we can a person from D elhi or Bombay." The German founder of Trekking for Trees, Carin Jodha Fischer, tells me later th at she is targeting foreign tourists because they spend more and are interested in outdoor activities. She says European governments should stop warning against travel to Kashmir as it has been safe for many years. And she wants the Indian government to encourage foreign tourists. That requires loosening up Army restrictions on travel into mountain areas near the Line of C ontrol, still closely watched for armed infiltrators from Pakistan. For my trip, she sought special permission ahead of time. "It is only now through relationship-building with the Army that all the sudden they are becoming supportive. Before, it was just a straight 'no,' " says Ms. Fi scher, who notes that tourism dollars will mean jobs, development, and less unre st.

But to what degree does India want foreigners to grow familiar with the current situation? "They don't want that out-siders should see what's happening in Kashmir," says a state official not authorized to speak. "After the insurgency, every place has been occupied by security forces and people need to seek permission." That second evening, as we sat around the campfire, Bashir Malik, one of the gui des, appeared holding aloft a skinned sheep by its rear foot. The mountain slope s now had one less sheep and the Kashmiris whooped for joy. Muslims in India and Kashmir revere meat even more than American men at a backyard barbecue. Meat-ea ting differentiates them from Hindus, who lean toward vegetarianism. It's also l uxurious because meat is expensive. But the group refused to let me chip in for the shepherd's fee. "You're a guest," said Dr. Rasool The sheep would be the next day's dinner. This night it was a curry of wild mush room picked trailside. The men fed the fire with ever bigger logs until a large bonfire rose up. In the wide glow, Mr. Malik took out his cellphone and blasted a wedding song about "henna night" sung in Urdu. The dancing began. The henna night is the wedding eve in South Asia when relatives tattoo the bride 's skin. The song reminded me that for all the differences Kashmiris feel with I ndians, many customs overlap. And it also underscored the premium put on marriag e here, something the city boys complained was growing unaffordable. To win over a female's family, ever more money is needed and often a government job which req uires joining a system of corruption and collusion. Malik dragged me into the circle of dancing Kashmiris. I'm not much of a dancer and the rhythms and moves were culturally unfamiliar. But what was the point of inhibition when there was nothing to look down on us but the flying sparks and a million stars? As I whirled around, I heard Mr. Hussain, the sports reporter, call out to me fr om behind his upheld phone: "I'm going to put this on YouTube!" In quieter moments, Hussain shares childhood memories of the main city of Srinag ar without electricity and other basics. The 20-something journalist now wears b aseball caps backward, speaks English fluently, and loves digital photography. B ut he's still a son of the soil, he says: "It's only in the last 20 years that u rbanization has come. I like the old ways better. More time with family." His yearning for a simpler era is part of his generation's response to life duri ng the uprising that began in 1989. Like nearly every family, Hussain's did not escape unscathed. One of his brothers, an insurgent fighting the Indian governme nt, was killed in custody in 2000, just days before India initiated a unilateral cease-fire to talk with Kashmiri militants. The next night, the bonfire grew bigger, but the mood was more somber. Malik pla yed from his phone a song for those who disappeared during the conflict. In August, the Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission revealed it had f ound 2,730 bodies in 38 unmarked grave sites in Kashmir. It marked the first off icial acknowledgment of unmarked graves containing civilians killed during the c onflict. A 2009 human rights report by a civil society group says 8,000 people r emain missing since 1989; government figures say the number is less than 4,000 a nd that at least 47,000 people have died in the conflict. In Kashmiri, Malik sang along:

Pray for him. Call him back from afar. Show him we have tears in our eyes, And maybe he will come back. Rasool downloaded the song to his own phone using Bluetooth. In the summer of 20 10, when the Kashmir Valley erupted in anti-India protests and Indian security f orces killed 117 civilians, Kashmiri youth used cellphones and social networking websites to spread word and song about demonstrations and deaths. The song that passed from phone to phone last summer was "I Protest," by Kashmiri rapper MC K ash: I protest, against the things you done! I protest, for a mother who lost her son! I protest, I'll throw stones and neva run! I protest, until my freedom has come! Earlier that night, we watched Indian Army signal flares from a nearby mountain on the Line of Control. As the rockets drifted down with a red glare, I remember ed it was July 4, the anniversary of America's separatist movement. On the morning of JULY 4, we had gone for a day hike to a small glacier, leaving two men back at camp. When we topped a ridge, we turned around to see tiny unif ormed men fan out across the meadow toward our tents. We learned in the evening that Indian soldiers had searched the campsite and sai d they would keep the two men's IDs until we all came to their outpost a mile aw ay. With its wooden gate and watchtowers rising from a grassy knoll, the outpost loo ked like something out of Colonel Custer's day. We sat down on benches and waite d. A couple of soldiers took a group photograph for intelligence records and tol d us to wait for the commanding officer. After 30 minutes, Rasool went to ask what was taking so long. As a government do ctor, he occasionally accompanies the Army when it conducts medical camps to bui ld goodwill among rural Kashmiris. He was clearly annoyed when he relayed the re sponse: "The officer is in the bathroom." Finally, the soldiers came back, served everyone a cup of tea and biscuits, and returned our IDs. We could go without meeting the officer. (Rasool had not taken the tea. "I wanted to send a message to the officer that I am not friendly with him," he said as we bounded down the trail.) On the way back, we bumped into three forest officers on foot. They were armed o nly with notebooks, so I asked what they would do if they actually met a timber smuggler. "Over here we never hear any sound of an ax," said the leader, arguing that smug gling isn't a problem. The conservator of forests in Srinagar, Nisar Ahmad, says that "maybe sometimes" forest officials collude with timber thieves, but "that does not mean the fores t department has changed its role from protection of forests."

He says his office in 2010 arrested 17 timber thieves and confiscated 508 horses , 68 vehicles, 20 handcarts, and 36,000 cubic feet of timber. He says forest cov er has actually expanded in Kashmir since 2009. But a retired deputy conservator of forests, Gurcharan Singh, estimates that 70 percent of forest officers work hand-in-glove with smugglers. "And I don't know if that [other] 30 percent is [even] there or not," he adds. Forest cover statistics are misleading, he charges, because they are derived by satellite over a wide area, not taking into account the actual health and thickn ess of the forest. About one-third of current forest cover is "highly degraded," he says, and the growing forest stock per hectare has fallen by half over the p ast 50 years. "Smuggling is more of a socioeconomic problem," says Mr. Singh. Before the upris ing, many Kashmiris worked in handicrafts sold to tourists. These cottage indust ries have dwindled, and to pacify the independence cries, the government is hand ing out jobs. "Everybody is interested in a government job because people can ma ke easy money and you don't have to do anything," says Singh. Back on the trail, less than 10 minutes after meeting the forest officials, we e ncountered two men on horseback. Rasool asked them if they were timber smugglers. With a mischievous smile, they rode on into the mountains