The Story of the Kashmir Welfare Trust

The Future

Beyond the work of the Kashmir Welfare Trust we are exploring a broad psychiatric programme that we hope will spread to even the most rural areas of the region. One of the most painful and brutal side effects of extended conflict is widespread mental damage. It manifests in hundreds of forms across the full range of depression, from attention disorders to total mental and physical breakdown. A leading psychiatrist in the Valley, Dr Mushtaq Margoob, says that up to 90% of the population of the Kashmir Valley have been living with depression since the conflict began in 1989. With some local friends and doctors we began holding health camps, particularly targeting women in the rural areas where health care is so basic that the rates of infant and birthing mother mortality are still high in comparison to most of the rest of India. This outreach work has now become a new organization called Healing Kashmir.

By working in this way, on small local projects throughout the region, we hope to build a resource of trust, one of the human essentials that has been shattered by the conflict.

When you ask people in Kashmir what they think is the greatest loss as a result of the fighting, almost without exception they talk of the death of trust. We believe that if we keep our aims small and continuous we hope that the work will be a forum for rebuilding trust, and from there the healing can really begin. Please contact me for more information.

With the villagers and the army at one of our main project areas in Kamalkote, right on the Line of Control between Pakistan and India

With schoolchildren and army officers in Kamalkote