No place to call home for Pakistani women in Kashmir

By Nusrat Sidiq

SRINAGAR, Jammu and Kashmir (AA) - Bereft of basic citizenship rights, around 350 Pakistani women have spent years of their lives as “stateless citizens” in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.

They have been away from their families since the day they stepped foot in the now blockaded region.

None of them have ever gone back home, missing many a moment of joy and being unable to comfort loved ones in times of grief and sorrow.

That has been Nageena Kausar’s life for nearly a decade now.

She was born in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, and lived a normal life surrounded by family and friends.

In 1995, she married a Kashmiri man, Mohammad Ashraf Malik. He was a militant at the time who crossed the Line of Control (LoC) -- the de facto border dividing the disputed Himalayan region between Pakistan and India.

In 2011, the couple decided to move back to Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir and has lived in Sopore, a town in Baramulla district, ever since.

Their move came after the Indian government in November 2010 announced its intent to rehabilitate former militants.

But, as Kausar told Anadolu Agency, reality has been quite different than what she and many others like her imagined.

“It has been almost 10 years since I saw my parents. We have been caged here and we don’t know why. What is my fault or that of my parents?” said Kausar, the only child of her aged and ailing parents.

- ‘Never-ending punishment’

Nearly a decade after it was announced, India’s militant rehabilitation policy has left the Pakistani wives and children of former fighters craving for a place to call home.

Taibah Ajaz is another Pakistani woman who rues the day she came to live in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.

Born and raised in the garrison town of Abbottabad in Pakistan, Ajaz is a management postgraduate who had a settled job and lived a simple life with her parents and siblings.

She married a former Kashmiri militant, Ajaz Ahmad Malik, in 2002 and moved to Pattan in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir in 2013.

“I curse the day I came here; nothing good has happened in our life since we moved here. Everything is so difficult for us. We don’t have valid Aadhar [identity] cards so even small tasks such as getting a mobile phone connection are a challenge for us,” said Ajaz.

“Life here is a never-ending punishment and nothing else.”

Nabeela Javed is also from Abbottabad and shares Ajaz’s sentiments on life under Indian control.

“So many of my close relatives passed away and I was not there to comfort my family. They [Indian government] are not even letting us grieve for our loved ones,” she lamented in a talk with Anadolu Agency.

“Was this rehabilitation policy only rolled out to punish us? If we are unwanted and illegal, they should deport us. Anything will be better than this; at least we won’t be separated from our families,” said Nabeela Javed, who has lived in Anantnag with her husband Javed Ahmed since 2012.

- From bad to worse

These “stateless” women have staged several protests in Srinagar to bring attention to their plight.

They have also repeatedly appealed to Pakistan and India to decide their status but no solution seems forthcoming.

The disinterest in their fate was reflected in the response of government advisor Farooq Khan, who told Anadolu Agency that he was “not in a position to comment on the matter”.

In reality, their situation has gone from bad to worse ever since Narendra Modi’s government unilaterally stripped the region of its limited autonomy and imposed a crippling curfew.

Their fears have been further compounded after the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) passed a controversial new law that grants citizenship to religious minorities except Muslims.

The law -- known as the Citizenship Amendment Act -- has drawn widespread criticism for its discriminatory nature and is the focus of mass protests that have continued in India, particularly New Delhi, since December last year.

The women fear the BJP government can arrest them anytime it wants since they do not have valid Indian nationality or nothing to prove their status as citizens.

- Legal lacunae

Faced with increasing uncertainty, the women and their families turned to the judiciary and moved the high court in Srinagar last year.

That too, though, did not bring any relief as the court is yet to issue any effective order on the matter.

Advocate Parvez Imroz, who is representing the families, told Anadolu Agency that the abrogation of Article 370 completely changed the dimensions of the case.

“Since Kashmiri statehood itself is now lost, these women cannot fight to become subjects of the Kashmiri state,” Imroz said.

“The government has to pay attention to their situation. They are stuck in a place with no identity at all. This is a serious issue that needs to be dealt on a humanitarian basis rather than becoming a political play,” said Imroz.

“At the very least, they should be allowed to reunite with their families.”

- A perilous path

While the repercussions for these families are already terrible, it should be remembered that they can take a much more tragic and deadlier turn.

The case of Saira Begum is a vivid example. She was among the Pakistani women who moved to Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir after 2011.

She spent years with her husband braving extreme poverty and incessant harassment by Indian authorities. Eventually, it all proved too much for her and she took her own life in April 2014.

The same year, a former militant named Syed Bashir Bukhari died after setting himself on fire in the main square in Kreeri village. He had struggled for years to acquire Indian citizenship for his Pakistani wife, while local schools repeatedly refused admission to his son.

Nabeela Shahzad, a Kashmiri woman born on the Pakistani-administered side, fears others may also be pushed to tread the path taken by Begum and Bukhari.

“At a point, our situation does feel truly hopeless. Our lives have been nothing since we came here. For years, we have lived under stress and suffered in silence,” said Shahzad, who moved to Kupwara in 2013 with her husband Omar Shahzad.

“Some of our sisters have lost their husbands to death and some to divorce. Where do they go? Who do they turn to for help? Theirs is an unending pain, the kind that can push any person over the edge.”