The mental toll of the violence wrought by the 13-year-old civil war in India's disputed Kashmir state is showing on both young Kashmiri men, as well as soldiers assigned there.

As a result, there is a thriving market for the anti-impotency drug Viagra among depressed, stressed-out young Kashmiri men who are seeking out medical help for sexual dysfunction.

Doctors in the state's summer capital Srinagar say Kashmir's insurgency has spawned a generation of youngsters suffering from depression and stress, which in turn had led to ''psycho-sexual malfunction''. Signs of emotional and mental stress are also emerging among soldiers on counter-insurgency duty in Kashmir, where a war for an independent Islamic homeland has claimed over 35,000 lives and brought India and Pakistan to war three times.

Defence Minister George Fernandes told Parliament recently that ''combat stress'' in fighting insurgents in Kashmir had led to more 20 incidents of army personnel killing their own colleagues since 1997. Deployed on a constant state of alertness, an increasing number of army and paramilitary personnel are cracking under pressure and instances of ''fragging'', where soldiers shot dead their colleagues before killing themselves, are steadily multiplying. Other soldiers report having conditions ranging from hypertension to psychological problems during or after their assignments in Kashmir.

''Depressive disorders are common here,'' Dr Mushtaq Margroob said of the atmosphere of conflict in Kashmir. And, the psychiatrist added, the problem does not end unless the underlying depression is not treated.

Victims of torture

Other doctors said some of their young Kashmiri patients who come with sexual dysfunction problems are victims of torture by the security forces who may suspect them of involvement in militant activity. Some, they say, are interrogated brutally with electric current passed through their genitals.

''Often the victim is rendered impotent, not by the electric shock but by the psychological fallout of the torture,'' one doctor said, declining to be named. In all such cases, he says, he always prescribes Viagra because it has an immediate effect, easing the young man's fears that he is impotent for life.

''Since the problem in many cases is more psychological than physiological, the patient feels his libido has been restored after taking Viagra a few times and does not need it any more,'' the doctor said. In truth, one chemist explained, ''many youngsters feel humiliated asking for Viagra in public and come when we are about to close for the day or wait until there is no other customer in the shop.

'' Scores of chemists in Srinagar admitted to selling Viagra clandestinely to a host of young men for more than 500 rupees (US$10.40 ) a tablet. One chemist at Dal gate in the heart of the city boasted about having charged 10,000 rupees (US$208.33) for one Viagra tablet from a desperate youngster when the drug was relatively new two years ago.

Medical officials say that Viagra sales are not permitted in the state, but that they had neither the personnel nor the motivation to prevent it being sold. The tablets are imported into the state from the capital New Delhi by hundreds of wholesalers and distributed to thousands of retail chemists across the Kashmir Valley.

Out of respect

There are more than 4,600 chemists and some 700 wholesale medicine dealers in the Kashmir Valley, whose five-odd million residents are among the largest consumers of medicine in northern India. But as reports of ''fragging'' by soldiers show, it is not only young Kashmiri men who are suffering from mental stress in the violence-riven state. In fact, senior army officers in Kashmir privately admit to many more ''fragging'' instances that are never made public out of respect for the dead soldiers' families and for reasons of insurance payments.

''Kashmir's continuing insurgency has imposed another burden on the overextended army and one it is ill equipped to handle,'' said a senior officer, who declined to be named. Nearly 4,100 security forces personnel, mostly from the army, have died in counter insurgency operations in Kashmir since 1989.

Until the mid-1990's, said the senior officer, infantry battalions assigned to counter-insurgency operations for two years were assured a three-year peace tenure thereafter. But with the armed rebellion in Kashmir nowhere close to ending, the peacetime duty tours of infantry troops have decreased to around two years. Leave has become infrequent and incidents of lack of discipline have multiplied.

Meantime, an increasing number of soldiers are complaining of hypertension, high blood pressure and excessive sweating. Many of them are treated for psychological disorders months after being posted out of Kashmir.

Under constant tension

''Those fighting insurgencies remain under constant tension 24 hours a day and 365 days a year,'' stated Lt Gen Javed Nasir, former head of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI ) in the Pakistani Defence Journal.

The insurgents can strike anywhere, any time, leading to short tempers and frustration, stated the former head of the counter-intelligence agency that successfully ran the Afghan 'mujahideen' or freedom fighters against the Soviets occupying Afghanistan in the 1980s. India accuses the ISI of fuelling militant activity in Kashmir, which it calls ''terrorism''.

Meantime, many infantry units that had done at least two and even three counter-insurgency duty tours in Kashmir are now being readied for yet another.

''In counter-insurgency operations, the biggest challenge a field commander faces is constantly motivating his men to fight a war within the country,'' said Lt Gen V K Nayar, former Western Army commander and a low-intensity warfare expert.

The shortage of around 14,000 officers, mostly captains and majors, has also adversely affected the combat performance of battalions in Kashmir, military officials say. They say frontline units often operate with less than half their sanctioned strength of officers. — IPS