For the first time in almost two decades, India on Wednesday deployed army in Srinagar, Kashmir's summer capital, to quell huge anti-India protests that have killed 15 people and threaten to destabilize the region. The soldiers were called in after police failed to control weeks of street protests in a disputed region whose peace is crucial for relations between India and Pakistan. Most of the deaths were in police firing. While locals say the protests are spontaneous, the Indian government has blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group accused of carrying out the 2008 Mumbai attacks, for being behind the latest protests. The demonstrations are the biggest since 2008 when violent anti-India protests killed about 40 people. “The Indian government doesn't want a repeat of what happened in 2008 when it was deeply embarrassed, which is why they have called in the army to damage-control early on,” said Noor Ahmad Baba, dean of social science at Kashmir University. The violence could hurt a tentative peace process since the Mumbai attacks. Both India and Pakistan claim the Kashmir region in full but rule it in part. Many analysts say the latest protests stem in part from frustrations among the youth against the failure of the government to generate employment and weed out corruption. A survey carried out in May by Chatham House, a UK-based think tank, found that 87 percent of the people of the region felt unemployment was their biggest issue, followed by corruption, economic development and human rights. On Wednesday, armored vehicles and soldiers in riot battle gear patrolled deserted Srinagar streets, some of which were covered with “Go India Go Back” grafitti. Police equipped with assault rifles blocked off lanes with razor wire and iron barricades. Separatists have been arrested or placed under house arrest, but thousands of people took to the streets in rural areas of the valley to protest against the latest killings, police said. Meanwhile, an exchange of fire at the border near Pakistan's Punjab province killed two Indian troops and wounded a Pakistani soldier and several villagers, Pakistani officials said on Wednesday.
