Kashmir insurgency is being 'Talibanised'
Jane's Defence Review
By Rahul Bedi in New Delhi
Oct 5, 2001
The suicide bomber attack in northern India's Kashmir state on 1 October, which killed 38 people and seriously injured 60 others, focuses attention once more on the close involvement of Pakistan-backed insurgents in the 12-year-old civil war in the disputed state.
The Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM, or Army of Mohammad**) group, based in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, claimed responsibility for detonating the explosive-filed jeep at Kashmir's assembly building in the state's summer capital, Srinagar. Three other JeM militants, taking advantage of the confusion surrounding the blast, infiltrated the legislature premises but were killed after a six-hour gunfight with the security forces.
Pakistan denies any connection with the JeM. A government spokesman in Islamabad said the attack was aimed at maligning the legitimate struggle of the Kashmiri people for their right to self-determination? but did not elaborate on who might have been responsible.
Pakistan occupies a third of Kashmir and lays claim to the rest but denies Indian allegations of fuelling the insurgency in the disputed state, which has claimed over 35,000 lives. Pakistani President General Pervaiz Musharraf has repeatedly claimed that the Kashmiri insurgents are 'freedom fighters' to whom his country provides only moral and diplomatic support.
The JeM was established in Pakistan in March 2000 by Maulana Masood Azhar, a 33-year-old Islamic cleric, shortly after he was exchanged along with three other militants for 155 hostages hijacked aboard an Indian Airlines aircraft flown to Kandhar, southern Afghanistan, on New Year's Eve in 1999.
Jailed in India in 1994, the bespectacled Azhar who sports a patterned keffiyeh similar to the one worn by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, was an ideologue and fund-raiser for the ultra-fundamentalist Harakat-ul-Ansar (HuM, or Movement of the Faithful), one of the most feared terrorist groups in Kashmir. The HuM was responsible for kidnapping five Western tourists in Kashmir in 1995 and beheading one of them, a Norwegian. The other four are missing, presumed dead.
After his release Azhar travelled to Afghanistan to meet Saudi fugitive Osama bin-Laden, who is believed to have extended generous funding towards raising the JeM and whom the US holds responsible for the 11 September terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. Azhar also organised large rallies across Pakistan that were shown on the country's state-owned television, at which he launched recruitment drives for jihadis (Islamic warriors) to 'liberate' Kashmir. 'Freeing' Kashmir is also one of Bin Laden's goals.
Srinagar's suicide bombing has heightened tension between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, who have been to war three times since their independence in 1947 and who fought a bitter, 11-week-long border engagement in 1999 in which 1200 soldiers died. In a letter to US President George W Bush Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said India's patience was 'wearing thin', hinting that Delhi would not tolerate such attacks without retaliating.
'If the US wants to use Pakistan, that is a major sponsor of terrorism, in its global war against terrorists, then it is merely fielding the problem to resolve the solution,' said Indian Foreign and Defence Minister Jaswant Singh in an interview with CNN in Washington the day after the Kashmir bombing. The US is working closely with Pakistan in its fight against Bin Laden's Al Qaeda organisation and the Taliban regime hosting its training camps Afghanistan.
Singh, who met President Bush and other senior US officials including National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, claimed to have 'appraised' Washington about Indian concerns over Pakistan-backed terrorism in Kashmir and other parts of the country but did not elaborate.
Intelligence officials said that besides JeM Kashmir's three major militant groups 'Laskhar-e-Toiba ( LeT, or Army of the Pure), Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM, or Islamic Freedom Fighters Group) and Hizbul Mujahideen (Freedom Fighters)' were part of the United Jihad Council headquartered at Muzaffarabad. The HuM, however, was recently proscribed by the US along with 27 other insurgent groups worldwide. The LeT, based at Mudrike near the Pakistani border city of Lahore, is the fiercest group operating in Kashmir and believes that the necessity for jihad has always existed. It considers democracies, inherited from the 'alien' West, a menace that should be eradicated.
Indian military officers in Kashmir said Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), which 'runs' the state's insurgency, recruits Afghans (mostly Taliban members) and youngsters from madrassahs (Muslim seminaries) across Pakistan. It provides these recruits with military training before pushing them across the porous line of control (LoC) that divides the disputed state between India and Pakistan. An official Indian spokesman in Kashmir said 13,609 militants had been killed in the state since the insurgency erupted in 1989, of which 2150 were foreigners, mostly Pakistanis and Afghans. Over 3140 Indian security force personnel have also died on counter-insurgency operations, according to the official.
Foreign mercenaries began infiltrating Kashmir's tanzeems (militant groups) around 1996 to bolster the insurgency at a time when the security forces seemed to be prevailing. The number of local militants also declined, and those who remained felt the pinch in terms of financial and material support from the ISI. This resentment resulted in disgruntled locals deliberately leading the outsiders into ambushes.
Disparity in militant allowances also caused resentment. Indian intelligence officials say a 'foreign' militant 'hired' for two years received around Rs400,000-500,000 rupees ($8500 to $10,630), with half the money paid in advance to his family and the rest at the end of his contract. Local hire received a pittance.
Special incentives were offered to those who pulled off sensational 'hits' attracting international media attention. A bonus was paid for killing Indian soldiers, particularly officers. If killed, the foreigners' family also received 'insurance' of around Rs200,000-300,000 from the ISI.
Relatives of dead Kashmiri militants received either a meagre amount or nothing at all. Indian security officers say foreign mercenaries have also raised the 'weapon profile' in Kashmir to include anti-aircraft guns, rocket launchers, heat-seeking missiles and anti-tank mines.
Meanwhile, the 'Talibanisation' of Kashmiri children is rapidly underway, with an extremist Islamic group connected to the Taliban establishing free madrassahs in remote rural areas to indoctrinate them for jihad.
Officials in Srinagar said Din-e-Mohammad Taliban, backed by the Taliban and Pakistan-backed extremist organisations, had recently launched madrassahs in the northern Kashmiri districts of Pulwama, Anantnag, Kupwara and Baramulla staffed by Islamic scholars with good oratory skills. Similar madrassahs had also been established in remote regions like Kargil (the world's second coldest place after Siberia), Ladakh and Zanskar to the north.
'These children are being prepared as soldiers for Islam,' said Gurbachan Jagat, Director General of the Border Security Force that is fighting Kashmir's insurgency. 'This [the setting up of schools] is Pakistan?s long-term design to create future recruits who will not falter in their commitment to fight for a Muslim homeland in Kashmir,' said Jagat. He added that it is a repetition of what Pakistan did in the mid-1990s in creating the Taliban (meaning Islamic student) in thousands of madrassahs across the country.
District officials said students are flocking to the Din-e-Mohammad Taliban-run schools as their parents are delighted at the thought of their children getting a free education. Being illiterate, many parents were unconcerned over the sectarian content of their children's curriculum.
**U.S and Britain have since frozen the assets of Jaish-e-Mohammad. |
