Asia Times: India/Pakistan


	June 13, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Wild boars infiltrate Line of Control
By Rahul Bedi

JAMMU, India - When it comes to sabotage in the disputed territory of Kashmir, Pakistan relies not only on armed jihadis (holy warriors) to cross over the Line of Control (LoC), but also on destructive wild boars.

Military officials, who are part of a 700,000-man force that India has deployed along the tense border since last December, say the wild boars are rounded up by the Pakistani army and the paramilitary Border Rangers and chased into Indian territory, where they wreak havoc on the cultivated fields.

"The animals come around at 9 most nights and stay till dawn foraging about in the cultivated fields of wheat and rice," said Mukhtiar Singh, a border farmer in the Sambha region, some 50 kilometers from the Kashmiri winter capital Jammu.

Sambha and adjoining areas were witnesses to fierce tank battles in two of the three wars that the South Asian neighbors have fought over possession of Kashmir since they were granted independence and partitioned on the basis of religion by Britain 55 years ago. Today, they are the scene of a monotonously regular exchange of heavy-artillery and mortar fire between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

After intervention by the United States and Britain, whose diplomats secured a pledge last week from Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf to put a permanent end to cross-border infiltration, tensions between the two countries have begun to wind down.

But whether that pledge covers herds of wild pigs or not remains to be seen. Hunting in packs of as many as 50, the boars roll around in wheat and rice fields, ruining the crops, an official said.

Farmers on the uneasy frontier have retaliated by sowing their fields with balls of dough packed with explosives, which are detonated when the boars bite the deadly bait. The explosives blow their snouts away but make them even more dangerous.

Recently, Nihal Singh and three fellow farmers made the mistake of approaching what they thought was a boar crippled by the explosives. But the enraged animal chased them across several rice fields. Another farmer was not so fortunate. His thigh was ripped open by a wily boar that sneaked up on him as he worked his field and savaged him with its sharp tusks.

Other farmers have laid live electric wire across their fields at night and succeeded in stunning the animals and getting them to avoid particular patches. But this measure is resorted to sparingly because it is dangerous and power is in short supply.

"The boar invasion is a perennial menace," a border guard in the Sambha region said, adding that the animals also invade fields in the border villages of western Punjab state, which adjoins Kashmir. "Boar invasions" take place regularly in Punjab's border district of Ferozepur.

India, unlike Pakistan, allows farmers to cultivate lands contiguous to the border. Ringed by the paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF), scores of farmers work their fields until sundown, careful not to stray across the narrow patch of "no man's land" that lies in between.

Pakistan, on the other hand, has not cut down the thick forests on its side, where the wild pigs proliferate. Anticipating an Indian military attack, it has built well-fortified bunkers inside the forests.

Since the two armies were mobilized last December, Pakistan has moved armored columns into the clearing on the jungle's periphery.

Wild pigs, however, are unwelcome only when they forage in the agricultural fields at night. During periods of relative calm, India's border farmers would shout across to the Pakistani Rangers to chase some wild pigs over to their side for hunting. Wild boars are useless to Pakistanis since pigs and related species are considered unclean in their Islamic religion.

In return for the wild boars, the Indian farmers would shoo across nilgai (wild blue bulls) and deer for the Rangers to hunt and feast on. The nilgai, like its domestic cousin, is revered by Hindu farmers in the Jammu region of Kashmir and Punjab. Farmers in these areas are glad to be rid of them because like the wild pigs, they destroy crops.

Farmers in these remote regions eagerly await news of de-escalation. There are plenty of wild boars to be had on this side, and on the other side, the Pakistani border troopers must be missing their beef and venison steaks.

(Inter Press Service)