India’s Ministry of Home Affairs contends that the incidence of violence has declined progressively since 2004. It sees “a perceptible improvement” in the overall security situation in Kashmir, due to “several holistic measures taken by the government and the people’s yearning for peace.” Successes include countering the challenge “posed by the terrorists and violence sponsored from across the border.”

Although lack of independent data makes it difficult to evaluate such statements, the Institute’s recent Small Arms Survey, quoting some authoritative sources says that the conflict situation in the Kashmir valley is still alive.

In 2010 the conflict re-emerged suddenly as a locally led uprising, where civilian protests are more important than insurgent attacks, in a scenario comparable to the Palestinian Intifada of 1987-91. Outbreaks of violence still occur. In lop-sided clashes, Indian security forces killed 100 Kashmiri protestors and by-standers in 2010. Protestors have also been perpetrators of some deadly violence, as in November 2010 when Kashmiri men killed two police officers.

The continued violence suggests that exclusive reliance on armed forces to deal with terrorism or insurgency brings limited results. At the same time, democratic governance and a massive infusion of development aid to the state has not contained or reversed discontent among Kashmiris, especially among surrendered militants. The problems posed by reintegrated surrendered militants are not unique to India, the Survey says. Rather, they illustrate the importance of issues that have proved hard to manage everywhere.

Estimates of the number of Indian soldiers and paramilitary troops deployed to Kashmir range from 170,000 to 500,000. Even the lowest estimate would make this the largest military deployment in the world today, larger than the total armies of Britain, France or Germany, bigger than the entire International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. Accusations of human rights abuses by the security forces are rampant. Amnesty International’s 2009 report on abuses in Jammu and Kashmir claims that in 2008 security forces killed at least 40 people for defying curfew restrictions. The report also found that “impunity continued for past offences including enforced disappearances of thousands of people during the armed conflict in Kashmir since 1989.”

The survey says that beginning in 1989, foreign insurgents, including veterans from wars in Afghanistan, infiltrated Kashmir and Pakistan. These incursions, coupled with an escalation of public uprisings, marked the bloodiest period of militancy in Kashmir. Since then these militant groups have engaged Indian security forces in a protracted conflict which has cost at least 42,657 lives, according to official data, and more than 80,000 according to other sources. This is an average of at least 1,900 deaths per year between 1988 and 2009 and possibly twice as many.

According to Survey report in 1988-2009, about 22,174 terrorists were killed, while 14,566 civilians and 5,917 security forces were killed.

India ranks among the world’s most terrorism-afflicted countries. SATP statistics show in 1994-2009 terrorist violence across India resulted in 55,643 deaths, an average of more than 3,400 per year. Of this total, 52% of the dead were reported to be civilians or members of the security forces.