Local support for militants changes front lines in Kashmir Archives

The road to Begumbagh passes through hauntingly silent villages. The houses and shuttered shops looked abandoned and fewer people walked the potholed road on Saturday, the third day of a shutdown to mourn the killing of two militants and a teenaged civilian. An overwhelming eeriness competed with a cloudy grey sky. Begumbagh is a quiet village in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district, the new heartland of Kashmir’s ageing conflict and home to a dangerous trend of civilians trying to storm the cordoned-off sites to rescue militants. It was here in this…