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India clampdown hits Kashmirs Silicon Valley

Afp, Srinagar, India
The coffee machines have been cold, computer screens blank and work stations empty for two months in Kashmir's Silicon Valley as an Indian communications blockade on the troubled region takes a growing toll on business.
The dozen software development companies in the Rangreth industrial estate on the edge of Srinagar bring tens of millions of dollars of crucial revenue into the region each year.
But the cutting of internet and mobile phone links on August 5, when the New Delhi government ended Kashmir's semi-autonomous status, has crippled business. Rangreth has become a ghost town, a symbol of suffering across the region.
The government said the
crackdown, backed by the presence of hundreds of thousands of security forces, was needed to head off trouble by Pakistan-backed militants in the Muslim-majority territory.
Pakistan also claims Kashmirwhich the two neighbours divided when they became independent in 1947 and have squabbled over ever since.
Markets, banks, schools, clothes stores and the fledgling hi-tech industry have all been closed. Many locals say the shutdown is in protest at the government action. Authorities blame militant threats.
Rangreth's warehouse-style halls, normally packed with young T-shirted programmers, are empty.
"It's a devastating blow to the software business in Kashmir. Internet is like oxygen to our business and it has been taken away," the owner of
one company with clients all over the world told AFP on condition of anonymity. The businessman said clients' patience was running out. "We're likely to lose them."
Jahangir Rasool, chief executive of internet provider STC, said he was detained by police for six days for keeping lines open for a few hours to help another company in his building that has clients in the United States.
Rasool said his firm and others have the firewalls and protocols to block social media or "political propaganda” on the internet. But he said Indian authorities would not listen.
"They sent police and intelligence agencies to inspect our systems. We told them that the IT sector will collapse (without the internet). They said: 'Let it. We are not taking any risks'," declared the director of another company with clients in the Middle East.
Authorities have unblocked most landlines. But apart from 6,000 mobilesusedbypoliceandgovernment officials, most of Kashmir's 880,000 mobile connections and internet services remain suspended.
State governor Satya Pal Malik in August said the lines were mainly useful as a "weapon" for "terrorists and Pakistanis for mobilisation and indoctrination".
Some IT companies have already laid off workers, many are preparing to move their business away from Kashmir.
Rasool at STC said his company had lost more than $2.8 million in business since August 5 and has laid off two thirds of its 370 employees.
"We can't function in a total blackout," said STC's finance chief Abid Bhat who compared the shutdown to being "blind".