Kashmir crisis leaves apple orchards to rot

Farmers in Kashmir are deliberately leaving their apples to rot, undermining the restive territory's most lucrative export as bitterness towards the Indian government grows.

New Delhi has deployed tens of thousands of extra troops since early August, when it scrapped the region's decades-old semi-autonomous status, and brought in a communications blockade that cut off Kashmiris from the outside world.

Either in anger or at the urging of local militants, farmers have joined in the rebuke of India's actions by deliberately sabotaging a crop vital to the local economy.

Empty boxes are stacked outside an apple orchard. AFP

The fertile Himalayan region usually sells hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of apples each year, and more than half of Kashmiris are engaged directly or indirectly in cultivation.

At one orchard in central Shopian district, Ghulam Nabi Malik and his brother usually sell 7,000 boxes of apples a year for markets and kitchen tables across India, earning them some seven million rupees (nearly $100,000). 

Ready to sacrifice

"Apple growers and students are ready to sacrifice this year and not betray the blood of martyrs," reads one such notice, nailed to a wooden post and signed by a local rebel commander.

Farmers in Kashmir are deliberately leaving their apples to rot. AFP

Many farmers say they are willing participants in the campaign, although there have been threats and one orchard owner — a local bigwig close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party — was attacked.

In one village, a former police officer who deserted to join a rebel group set fire to empty boxes his own family had bought for packing fruit.

"To leave the ripe apples rotting on the trees is the only form of protest we can do under the current circumstances," Malik said.

Kashmir sells hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of apples each year,. AFP

People say they are more frightened of Indian security forces, who often haul away young men from villages at night.

"There is fear (of the militants), but it's not like the fear of the state forces," said one villager who declined to be named, fearing reprisal.

Security measures

Modi says that with tens of thousands killed in Kashmir's 30-year-old anti-India insurgency, his government has acted to end "a vicious cycle of terrorism, violence, separatism and corruption."

The state government has tried to resolve the situation with the apples by promising security for growers and offering to buy apples directly.

A security personnel stands guard at a empty government-run fruit market . AFP

It insists these measures are working.

Deliveries of apples to market were only down by around 25 percent, said Metharam Kriplani of the New Delhi-based Kashmir Apple Merchants Association.

The "biggest problem" facing buyers was the lack of phone lines as a result of the region's communications lockdown, he said.

But growers that spoke to AFP have refused the offer of government support, and fruit markets in Shopian and elsewhere in Kashmir are empty — despite some traders claiming that local authorities attempted to browbeat them into opening as normal.

The authorities "threatened that they would destroy the shops (at the market) if we didn't open. But the market is deserted," said Bashir Ahmad Bashir, head of the local fruit-growers association.

Agence France-Presse