ABSTRACT
It is not only that many Kashmiri Hindus abandoned their homes and land. Bloodshed, destruction, abductions, rapes, extortions, robberies, and inter-group armed encounters disillusioned the majority of the Muslim Kashmiris as well. Innocent citizens, including the Valley's large Hindu Brahman minority, are constantly under threat and attack. Especially the fear of rape, which the armed militants have used as a weapon to punish, intimidate, coerce, humiliate and degrade, was a factor in the flight of whole families, Hindu and Muslim.33 The Kashmiris, on the whole, are exhausted and crave for a return to at least pre-1988 normality. Pakistan has not been able to wrest away the whole of J&K from India. But the Valley has become one of the most weaponized societies in that part of the world. While supporting violence there, Pakistan failed to control its spread into its own social fabric, and became more and more "Tali bani zed", as a result of the destabilizing export of Afghan-style radical Islam.34
