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KASHMIR: AFTER 10 YEARS OF VIOLENCE
This year would mark 10 years since the outbreak of violence in
Jammu & Kashmir (J&K).
Since 1996, there has been a qualitative change in the ground
situation marked by the following features:
The restoration of a democratically-elected
Government.
A significant decline in violence by indigenous
militant groups.
A realisation in the constituents of the all-party
Huriyat comittee that continued violence is leading them nowhere. This realisation is
discernible even amongst some sections of the still staunchly pro-Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami
(JI).
Signs of a revival of the tourist economy.
As against this, there are still certain persisting negative
indicators such as:
- The sporadic acts of violence by mercenaries of the
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the militant wing of the Markaz Dawa
Al Irshad. These organisations, strongly influenced by Wahabism, look upon the Kashmir issue not as a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan,
but as an ideological dispute between the Hindus and Muslims. They view Kashmir as
the gateway to the Muslim community in the rest of India and the Markaz and its Lashkar,
in particular, make no secret of their ultimate aim of another partition of India to
create two more “homelands” for the Muslims of the North and the
South. With this objective in view, they have been trying to create a wedge between
the Hindus and Muslims not only in J & K, but also in other parts of India by
spreading their activities outside J & K.
- The lack of progress in the efforts to restore the confidence of
the Kashmiri Hindu refugees to enable them to return to the Valley and resume their
rightful place in the local society.
- The failure of the State Government to make a dent in the
unemployment situation which originally drove many unemployed Muslim youth to take to
arms.
- The continuing sullenness of the Huriyat leaders and their refusal
to take their place in the political mainstream by participating in the democratic
process.
- The continuing Pakistani encouragement and assistance, despite the
Lahore Declaration, to extremist groups in J & K in order to sustain Western interest
in and concerns over the issue.
Extremism in some sections of the Muslims, not only in
J & K, but also in the rest of India, has passed through the following stages:
- 1986-89: Alienated Muslim youth from J & K started going to
Pakistan for arms training and then to Afghanistan for participating in the Jihad against
the Soviet troops. The training was organised by the Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) of Pakistan with the private Islamic organisations playing only a marginal role. Details regarding this were forthcoming not
only from the Indian intelligence community, but also from the Najibullah Government, then
in power in Kabul. However, unfortunately, the reports were not given the merited
attention and the long-term impact of the Afghan war, not only on the situation in
Kashmir, but also on sections of the Muslim community, particularly the youth, in the rest
of India was not adequately analysed and appropriate follow-up action was not taken.
- 1989-92: This period saw the outbreak of violence in 1989 and its
subsequent intensification by groups which had returned from Pakistan and
Afghanistan. In its efforts to re-activate the Kashmir issue, Pakistan assisted all
groups, irrespective of whether they advocated independence or merger with
Pakistan.However, the ascendancy established by the pro-independence groups created
concerns in the Pakistani establishment . To weaken the pro-independence groups and
to strengthen the pro-Pakistan groups, the ISI started starving the pro-independence
groups of financial and military assistance and favouring the pro-Pakistan groups,
particularly the Hizbul Mujahideen of the JI. It also
encouraged the HUM and the Lashkar to step into Kashmir, not only to strengthen the pro-Pakistan groups, but also to assist Muslim extremist
youth in the rest of India by training them in
secret camps in the Kashmiri territory and by helping some of
them to go clandestinely to Pakistan and Afghanistan for
further training and indoctrination . The movement of the initial group from
the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) to Pakistan for
training took place during this period. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the
US was fully aware of this as it was aware of the role of
Osama bin Laden and his supporters in bringing nearly
6,000 Arab and other Muslim volunteers, including some from
the Afro-American community of the US, for being trained in Pakistan and used in
Afghanistan, but turned a blind eye to it. It was during the
visit to New Delhi in May,1990, by Robert Gates, then in the
National Security Council, that the US first informed the Government of India of the role of the ISI in training the Muslim extremists from J
& K.
- 1992-95: Three important developments in 1992 were to have a
bearing on the Kashmir situation—the fall of the
Najibullah Government in April, 1992, and the capture
of Kabul by the Afghan Mujahideen, following which a large number of the Arab
volunteers returned to the country of their origin and joined
militant movements against the local Governments and the US presence; India’s establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel;and the
attack on a group of Israeli tourists by Kashmiri extremists. Concerned over the
threats to the pro-US Governments of West Asia and the Stinger missiles issued to the Afghan Mujahideen getting into the hands of Iran and Iraq,
the CIA pressurised the ISI to stop the activities of the
Arab remnants and to get back the unused Stinger missiles. A special CIA team was
flown to Peshawar to persuade the Mujahideen leaders to sell
back the Stinger missiles.
They declined to do so and the ISI, then headed by Lt.Gen. (Retd) Javed Nasir
of the Tabligi Jamaat, was reluctant to act against the Arab
remnants. Angered over this, the Clinton Administration, which came to office in
January, 1993, placed Pakistan on the so-called watch
list of suspected State-sponsors of international terrorism
and demanded the removal from the ISI of Lt.Gen. Nasir
and some other officers, who were accused by the CIA of aiding terrorism in India, the
Philippines and West Asia. The indignation of the American
Jewish community over the attack on Israeli tourists and the recovery from the site of the bomb blasts in Mumbai in March, 1993, of
explosive timers of US manufacture issued to the Pakistan
army hardened the US stance against the then ISI leadership. In 1992, the Israeli
authorities arrested
a Palestinian
student from the West bank and recovered from him an explosive device. He reportedly told them during the interrogation that he was
studying in South India, from where he was recruited by the Libyan intelligence, taken
to Libya during his summer vacation for training via Kuwait without
any entry in his passport, sent back to South India to resume
his studies and, then, after a few months, instructed by a
Syrian diplomat to proceed to Israeli-controlled-territory and organise an attack on
Israeli targets. The subsequent investigation gave
strong grounds for suspicion that under Lt.Gen. Nasir, the ISI had been collaborating
not only with the intelligence agencies of Libya and
Syria, but also with the Hamas and the Hizbollah in recruiting volunteers from the
Palestinian and other West Asian student communities in Pakistan for terrorist operations against Israel. Faced with the prospect of
Pakistan being declared a state-sponsor of
international terrorism, Nawaz Sharif, who was then in his
first term as the Prime Minister, removed Lt.Gen.Nasir and other ISI officers named by the
CIA and ordered the privatisation of Pakistani assistance to
the Kashmiri and other Muslim extremists in India. Under this policy, the ISI started channelling financial and arms assistance to the
extremists indirectly through the JI, the Markaz, the Lashkar
and the HUM, instead of directly as before July, 1993, and made them shift their training
camps to the Afghan territory. The Markaz, the Lashkar and the HUM were assisted in
increasing their presence in Indian territory and given the primacy
in the orchestration of the operations. The interrogation of
some arrested suspects after the bomb explosions in India on the first anniversary of the
Babri Masjid incident in December, 1993, corroborated earlier
suspicions about the use of some SIMI elements by Pakistan for its operations.
- After 1995: The kidnapping of two British nationals by the HUM in
1994 and of some Western tourists in 1995 by the so-called Al
Faran, a front organisation of the HUM, drew the adverse
notice of the US, which declared it an international
terrorist organisation in October, 1997 and bombed its training camps in Afghan territory in August, 1998. The Markaz, its Lashkar
and the HUM stepped up their attacks on the Hindus in the Jammu region and in Himachal
Pradesh in order to create fresh fears in the minds of the Kashmiri Hindu refugees who might be contemplating their return to the Valley.
Annoyed over the support extended by the JI to Gulbuddin
Heckmatyar, the anti-Taliban Pashtoon leader, the Taliban
declared the Hizbul Mujahideen of J & K persona non
grata, ordered it to close its training camps in Afghan territory and handed
them over to the HUM. Thus, the entire responsibility for the
orchestration of continued violence in J & K has now been taken over by the
Markaz, its Lashkar and the HUM all three of which are members of Osama’s
International Front for Jihad against Israel and the US. The indigenous Kashmiri militant groups find themselves marginalised.
During the last 10 years, Pakistan’s diplomatic efforts on
the Kashmir issue have passed through the following phases:
- 1989-1995: During this period, Pakistani diplomacy projected the
Kashmir issue as a major humanitarian disaster comparable to
what was happening in Bosnia and hence calling for the intervention of the Islamic Ummah
and the West. The action taken by the Government of India to counter
this by allowing independent observers such as foreign diplomats, representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross and similar organisations
to visit the State for an objective study of the ground
situation took the wind out of the sails of the Pakistani
campaign.
- 1995-1999: It was during this period that Pakistani diplomacy
started painting before Western eyes the spectre of a nuclear
holocaust in the region if the Kashmir issue was not settled
. This campaign picked up feverish momentum after the Pokhran II and Chagai nuclear
tests of last year. This campaign, initially, did add to the Western concerns,
but the recent meeting of the Prime Ministers of India and
Pakistan and the resulting Lahore Declaration have softened
this campaign.
- Since March 1999: One could see the beginning of a new campaign on
the human rights issue by comparing the alleged human rights
situation in J&K to that in Kosovo and creating in Western minds the spectre of a
similar humanitarian disaster in J&K if the West did not
act in time.
This new campaign has been ignored by the West so far, but the
Markaz, its Lashkar and the HUM and their patrons in the Pakistani establishment would
have strong temptations to step up violence with the hope of creating a human rights
situation. This is a danger to be guarded against.
B.RAMAN
2-4-99
(The writer is Additional Secretary (Retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and presently Director,
Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai.
E-mail: corde@vsnl.com
)
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