Secessionist Clash Cuts Into Kashmir Tourism

Iqbal Chapri sat in his posh tourist houseboat on the placid blue waters of Lake Dal and fretted about the dwindling number of Indian and foreign travelers visiting the Kashmir Valley this year.

Not far away, Indian security forces had taken over waterfront hotels and erected sandbag bunkers on the balconies where tourists once watched the sun set over the snow-capped Himalayas in the distance.

“When I go into my streets, which were once so very familiar to me, I see men holding guns in their hands pointing toward me,” said the 75-year-old Chapri. “When terror is prevailing in every corner of the street here, how could I issue brochures inviting people to come to this place.”

The visitors have been frightened away by the region’s 2-year-old Muslim secessionist movement, which flared into a popular uprising against New Delhi’s rule in mid-January after Indian troops opened fire on demonstrators and killed at least 35 people.

Since then, thousands of Indian security force personnel have been deployed in the region and violent confrontations are reported almost daily. More than 700 people have been killed.

More than halfway through the 1990 tourist season, the crisis in the Kashmir Valley has almost completely shut off the flow of Indian and foreign visitors to the region considered “paradise” by the ancient Mogul emperors.

Indian families have stopped visiting the region, backpackers have halted their treks through the Himalayas and European vacationers who once packed the grassy area on Boulevard Road around Lake Dal have canceled their holidays to the valley.

Only 1,200 people visited Kashmir during the first seven months of the year, compared to 250,000 tourists who flocked to the region during the same period last year, tourism officials recently told the Press Trust of India.

“I would advise now . . . for tourists not to come here because it is no holiday area anymore,” said a Western tour operator in the Kashmir Valley. She said she had only two bookings this year compared to 40 in previous seasons.

“I told them about the curfews, about everything, so that the tourists are informed what is happening here,” she said. “And then many people were not interested anymore because they were afraid.”

The decline in tourism has had repercussions throughout the economy of the Kashmir Valley. Tourism accounts for about 30% of the area’s income, second only to agriculture. About 80% of non-farmers are dependent upon tourism for their livelihood, businessmen said.

“This includes houseboat owners, it includes hotel owners, shikara (boat) men, taxi men,” Chapri said. “It includes our handicrafts, like carpets, shawls, papier-mache, wood carving, copper utensils. All of those used to get some proportion out of that (tourist trade) for their earnings.”

Manufacturing in the region also is heavily dependent upon tourism. Kashmir is famous for its silk carpets, hand-woven shawls and papier-mache products, most of which are sold to tourists or exported to markets outside the area.

“Everybody in Kashmir, they are facing it,” said G. M. Dug, president of the Srinagar Chamber of Commerce. “They don’t have any money, especially the people who are directly linked with the tourism.”

Although hurt by the sharp economic decline in the region, many businessmen said the hardships only stiffened their support for the Kashmiri independence movement.

“Despite of all the best efforts to crush us economically, let me tell you very categorically Kashmiris are not today worried about economic aspects,” said one businessman. “The economy today does not matter. Today we are standing united together as a nation for the survival of our nation.”

But for others the collapse of tourism marks the end of a road.

“You cannot make any business like this,” said the Western tour operator, who asked not to be identified. “I don’t know if I’ll come back.”

“I don’t think that tourism is possible here anymore. There has to be a political solution here, not by war, but by negotiations,” she said. “I think tourism is impossible before the Kashmir problem is solved.”

Many businessmen charge the government has deliberately discouraged tourism in Kashmir in a bid to increase pressure on those fighting Indian rule and to keep outsiders from witnessing the violent excesses of the Indian security forces.

At least a dozen hotels and guest houses have been taken over by the government for use as military barracks.

“They gave no notice, had no authority or anything,” said one hotel owner, whose building was taken over by troopers who evicted the staff and cut the locks on the gates to enter the building.

“They just occupied the hotel and started building bunkers,” he said. “What can an unarmed person do?”

The presence of the troops have turned the buildings into targets for attack by the Muslim rebels, who have fired rockets into at least three hotels including the four-star Broadway Hotel, which had not been taken over by the military and had several civilian guests.

The economy also has been hurt by the flight of thousands of Hindus, who were afraid of being attacked by Muslim militants.