Military roadblocks on Kashmir’s main highway are delaying ambulances carrying patients and leading to confrontations with motorists that occasionally turn physical, residents and medical staff say, as India’s crackdown on separatists in the state causes major disruption to daily life.
Tensions in Jammu and Kashmir have been elevated since a suicide car bomb attack killed at least 44 paramilitary police in the state’s Pulwama district on February 14.
The nuclear-armed neighbours both launched air strikes last months, forcing world powers to urge calm. Tensions between the two countries have temporarily eased.
But India has kept up pressure on militant groups on its side of the border, boosting its military presence there and arresting hundreds of alleged separatists.
Hundreds of thousands of troops patrol the valley, and motorists say security around military convoys has increased delays.
Roadblocks on a 100km stretch of NH-44, Kashmir’s picturesque main highway linking the summer capital of Srinagar with the rest of India, are sometimes trebling the time it has taken for sick patients to reach hospitals in the capital, several users of the road told Reuters.
The military denies this, saying troops are instructed to stop traffic for only a few minutes at a time, and that ambulances and school buses are getting priority.
“School buses, ambulances will be give priority during the convoy movements,” said defence department spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia yesterday.
“We have given directions to the troops on the ground that they are not stopped.”
But the Kashmir Private Schools Association sees no difference in the security forces approach, and its chairman G N Var said it may have to close down the schools because the disruption is so great.
“The school buses were stopped even today,” Var said. “It is harassment. We can’t run schools like this.”
Irfan Ahmad, 45, a resident of Awantipora in south Kashmir, said it took him three hours to take his mother, Sajja Begum, for treatment at a hospital in Srinagar on March 11, a journey that usually takes an hour.
“She was crying with chest pain but who listened, there were long queues everywhere we were stopped”, he said.
Mohamed Yusuf, an ambulance driver who frequently ferries critical patients from nearby Qazigund to hospitals in Srinagar, said commuting on the highway has become increasingly difficult.
“We are stopped (in) five to six places on the way,” he said. “It takes four hours to take patients from Qazigund to Srinagar and normally it hardly takes 70-80 minutes.”
Waqar Ahmad, a doctor at north Kashmir’s main Baramulla hospital, said he faced similar delays making him late for work shifts.
“Every few kilometres we are stopped by troops on the highway,” he said. 
“They are very aggressive and they don’t listen to us. We feel insecure. Earlier, they would nicely talk to you and now they are abusive. We are stopped in at least five to six places in a 60km journey. It is a routine now and we feel dejected.”
The hospital’s medical superintendent, Syed Masood, said most of its doctors were now late for work.
“It affects the functioning of the hospital which caters to lakhs of people,” he said.
A rail line intended to link mountainous north Kashmir to the winter capital of Jammu is more than a decade behind schedule.
That means the highway - India’s longest that begins in Srinagar and terminates at the country’s southern tip - is a vital lifeline to Kashmir, where many residents say they feel cut off from the rest of the country.
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