BACK in the summer of 2005, Shabbir Ahmad Wani had applauded as Sartaj Ahmad Shah led Wakais cricket team to a historic win against the village Chawalgam. In the last moments of his life, Wani watched Shah draw a Kalashnikov assault rifle and press the trigger, ending two hours of brutal torture in a paddyfield outside Wakai. Since the cricket match, Shah had become a local commander for the Hizbul Mujahideen and Wani, a special police officer. Less than a week after Wanis killing, the Jammu and Kashmir Police shot Shah dead.
In the crumpled photograph found on his bullet-ridden body, Shah has his arm wrapped around the shoulder of a slender young woman: a woman he hoped to marry one day, his neighbours in the small south Kashmir village of Okay say. The assault rifle that Shah fired at Indian troops minutes before his death is draped over his right shoulder.
Hours after Shah and his bodyguard, Ashiq Husain Paddar, were shot dead near Kulgam, the Pakistan-based United Jihad Council (UJC), announced a unilateral ceasefire on the occasion of Id-ul-Fitr. In an October 8 statement, UJC chairman and Hizbul Mujahideen supreme commander Mohammad Yusuf Shah commanded the mujahideen leadership and cadre engaged in armed confrontation to strictly comply [with] the directions with regard to the unilateral decision to cease fire.
In New Delhi, the three-day ceasefire which ended on October 14, Id-ul-Fitr day met mostly with derision. Union Defence Minister A.K. Antony, among others, flatly ruled out a reciprocal cessation of Indian counter-terrorism operations. Officials said that, had the UJC been serious, it ought to have opened negotiations with New Delhi rather than sending fax messages to newspaper offices. But the ceasefire suggests that what was once Jammu and Kashmirs most powerful terror group is now desperate to join in the political dialogue on the States future, an outcome that until recently seemed inconceivable. It may, however, be too late: underpinning Shahs new peace bid is the stark fact of his organisations inexorable demise.
Ever since Nisar Ahmad Bhat took charge of the Hizbul Mujahideens Kashmir Valley operations in 2004, his message to his Rawalpindi-based organisation has been simple: the terror group is comatose and its decline possibly terminal. With the termination of direct Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) funding, and with its political base eroded by competitive politics within the State, the Hizbul Mujahideen is no longer a credible military factor.
Operating under the code name Ghazi Misbahuddin, Bhat was entrusted with rebuilding the Hizb after it lost a series of top operatives in 2003-04. He discovered, though, that the organisation no longer had the popular legitimacy or political influence that it needed to remain a credible force. Internecine feuding had plagued the organisation since 2000-01, when the Hizb first aborted a ceasefire announced by the pro-dialogue commander, Abdul Majid Dar, and then arranged for his assassination. Bhats strategy rested on shipping in trusted Hizb operatives from across the Line of Control (LoC) to revive its dwindling fortunes.
For the most part, the strategy has failed: long before the ceasefire declaration, the Hizb had one imposed on it by its own disintegration. Hizb central Kashmir division commander Tajamul Islam Abdullah, for instance, has been unable to mount a single operation of consequence in over six months.
Desperate to demonstrate success, he put in place plans for a series of bombings in and around Srinagar on October 30, when Muslims across Kashmir were due to commemorate the historic battle between the forces of Prophet Mohammad and his opponents in the tribe of Quraish at Badr. However, the State Police penetrated the cell tasked to execute the bombings and arrested Shabbir Ahmad Ganai and Mehrajuddin Mir, both long-standing Hizb operatives who had been dispatched from Pakistan to help rebuild the organisations central Kashmir networks. A laboratory built by Mir to fabricate electronic circuits for bombs was detected and shut down. Ganai had last served in Jammu and Kashmir in 1996-1997, while Mir had left for Pakistan in 2001. Neither any longer commanded the kind of loyalty which could have helped them rebuild the organisation.
Abdullahs failures, similarly, were linked to his lack of local political legitimacy. His family migrated from Srinagar to Karachi during the first India-Pakistan war of 1947-1948, and although it retains ties of kinship and marriage within Srinagar, it has little direct relationship with the Islamist networks in Jammu and Kashmir from which the Hizb draws its sustenance. What influence Abdullah possesses among the Hizb cadre in Jammu and Kashmir draws on his connections in Rawalpindi, not Srinagar: his father, Malik Abdullah, runs Sada-i-Hurriyat, the radio station of Hizbul Mujahideen.
Conflicts between local commanders and lieutenants of the Hizbs Rawalpindi command have also been evident in southern Kashmir. In the wake of Mohammad Ashraf Shahs killing, his lieutenant-turned-rival Javed Seepan Sheikh moved to pre-empt the succession decision that his Pakistan-based superiors would take. He ruthlessly eliminated his rivals in mafia-style hits, notably the Bijbehara-based Mohammad Jehangir Master-ji, whose body was found dumped in an Anantnag alleyway.
Alarmed, the Hizb command responded by drafting in old hands from Pakistan. Farooq Ahmad Dar, who operates under the alias Hanif Khan, was assigned control of the south Kashmir division. With the support of his lieutenant, Pervez Ahmad Dar, who uses the code-name Musharraf, Farooq Dar set about rebuilding the Hizbul Mujahideen. Several districts were handed over to Hizb commanders drafted in from Pakistan, such as Bijbehara district commander Tariq Lone. However, Sheikhs hostility ensured that the new commanders achieved little. In one-time strongholds such as Kulgam and Shopian, the Hizb has been decimated.
Evidence of the Hizbs diminishing influence is not hard to come by. Earlier in October, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) dissident Ghulam Hasan Mir made a bid to garner support among Islamists by offering prayers at the graves of nine Pakistani terrorists killed by the Indian Army along the LoC in Tangmarg not ethnic-Kashmiri Hizbul Mujahideen cadre. Mohammad Ashraf Shahs own funeral rites were ignored by State politicians, a marked departure from 2001-03, when the PDP actively courted the terror groups support. Nor did a single south Kashmir politician see it fit to condole with the families of Sartaj Ahmad or Pervez Ahmad Padder.
Just four years ago, when tacit Hizb support helped propel the PDP to power, the terror group seemed to hold the keys to power. Today, its own long-term prospects are in question. I believe, Shah told the Pakistan-based Islamist newspaper Jasarat on September 20, that Kashmir will only be freed through jehad, not dialogue.
Despite the rhetoric, Hizb insiders have long known that Shah has wearied of the long jehad he helped initiate in 1988. What is unclear is whether he has the stomach for the risks needed to transform the three-day ceasefire into a durable peace process.
An affluent apple farmer who participated in Kashmirs electoral politics, Shah was from the outset an improbable radical. His family embodies stolid Kashmiri bourgeois aspirations not neoconservative Islamist radicalism. Shahs eldest son, 35-year-old Shahid Yusuf, works as a teacher, while 30-year-old Javed Yusuf is an agricultural technologist. Twenty-six-year-old Shakeel Yusuf works as a medical assistant at a government-run hospital. Wahid Yusuf, 24, graduated from the Government Medical College in Srinagar, where the familys contacts helped him obtain a seat through a quota controlled by the Governor. Momin Yusuf, at 20, the youngest of Shahs sons, is an engineering student.
Last year, Shah gave a series of interviews that fuelled speculation that he was in search of a road that could bring him home. For instance, speaking to the Srinagar-based Kashmir News Service in August, he said the organisation was willing to initiate a dialogue with New Delhi. A ceasefire, he said, could also come about if India brought troop levels in Jammu and Kashmir to the 1989 position, adding that it should release detainees, stop all military operations, acknowledge before the world community that there are three parties to the dispute. New Delhi flatly refused to meet the Hizbs extravagant terms.
Now, however, there is new reason for hope. Pakistans domestic crisis has made President Pervez Musharraf increasingly keen to contain Islamist forces active in Kashmir. Shah was thrown out of Rawalpindi for several weeks after the Lal Masjid crisis a sign of Islamabads diminishing patience with violent Islamists.
| Civilian fatalities from January to September 15, 2006, stood at 314. This year, the figure for the same period is just 136. Whereas 125 Indian soldiers, police personnel and irregulars were killed from January-September 15 last year, only 86 were lost in combat during the same period this year. Terrorist fatalities have dropped from 429 to 327 but arrests have risen from 275 to 313. |
Ever since the 2001-02 India-Pakistan crisis, the ISIs slow distancing of Pakistan from the jehad in Jammu and Kashmir has been manifesting itself in the level of violence. Civilian fatalities from January to September 15, 2006, stood at 314. This year, the figure for the same period is just 136. Whereas 125 Indian soldiers, police personnel and irregulars were killed from January-September 15 last year, only 86 were lost in combat during the same period this year. Terrorist fatalities have dropped from 429 to 327 but arrests have risen from 275 to 313.
Declining violence has opened political space. More likely, the Hizbul Mujahideen does not expect immediate negotiations. On the face of it, its political position remains hostile to negotiations with India. Indeed, the UJC resolved that the struggle for freedom will continue on every front until the dawn of freedom, and condemned bilateral negotiations with New Delhi as futile.
In practice, though, the Hizb hopes to strengthen actors such as the PDP and the National Conference, which have been calling for terror groups to be eased into political power. In the wake of the UJC ceasefire, former Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Saeed renewed his calls for progress towards demilitarising the State demands both New Delhi and Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad have ruled out. In addition, local Hizb operatives have opened channels to the National Conference rank and file. Moreover, the Hizb has been reaching out to moderates in the Jamaat-e-Islami moderates opposed to hardline secessionist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, and inclined to back independent candidates in the next Assembly elections.
Does all this mean the long jehad is about to end? Not quite. Given the withering of both its military capabilities and its political presence, the Hizbul Mujahideen may simply lack the resources to deliver what everyone in Jammu and Kashmir wants: peace.
Ramzan murders
Waves of excitement washed over Nishat Park in Bandipora, where children participated in the most vibrant Id-ul-Fitr celebrations Jammu and Kashmir has seen since the long jehad began in 1988. An hour away, in the small mountain village of Chak Arslan Khan, Id was spent grieving for the dead. The local mosque was locked, since most families had been spending their nights with friends or relatives in Bandipora. Here, the three-day ceasefire passed unnoticed.
On the night of Shab-e-Qadr one of the holiest nights of Ramzan, when believers say the first verses of the Quran were revealed to Prophet Muhammad by the angel Gabriel Zaitoona Mir was shot dead below the walnut trees that arch over her home. Zaitoona Mirs murderers were Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists, part of a group of six known to operate in the Bandipora mountains. Her husband, Bashir Ahmad Mir, was a long-standing Lashkar operative. After he was killed in a 2002 encounter with the Indian Armys 14 Rashtriya Rifles, Zaitoona Mir sought vengeance by opening her doors to shelter Lashkar operatives hiding out in the forests around Chak Arslan Khan.
On October 3, the Lashkars top commander in Jammu and Kashmir was killed in a firefight with Indian troops. Mohammad Amjad, a resident of Wazirabad in Pakistans Punjab province, was shot dead at Rampora, just a short walk from Chak Arslan Khan. Given that Amjad had spent the previous night at Zaitoona Mirs home, Lashkar cadre assumed she had betrayed their commander and delivered retribution seven days later.
Her next-door neighbours had earlier suffered the same fate. Police constable Manzoor Ahmad Mir had walked to Rangdori behak, a high-altitude pasture where his relatives were tending their livestock. Hours after he returned to Chak Arslan Khan, two Jamait-ul-Mujahideen (JUM) terrorists were shot dead in a military ambush. Days later, Mir and his father, Mohammad Yakub Mir, were executed outside their home by the JUM.
Before the Ramzan murders, nine residents of the villages Malkhiana Mohalla had been killed. Two were terrorists who were shot in combat. One was an al-Badr operative who was assassinated by his one-time comrades after he surrendered, while six died at the hands of various Islamist terror groups.
Hours before the ceasefire ended, nine-year-old Mushtaq Ahmad Gujjar bought himself a toy pistol with the money his mother gifted him: a shiny black weapon which, somewhat surreally, plays Hindi film tunes when the trigger is pressed. In much of rural Jammu and Kashmir, peace is still a long way off. |
SRINAGAR -After days of clashes, Jammu remained peaceful yesterday with only sporadic incidents of stone-throwing reported in a few localities. In the evening, the authorities relaxed curfew for an hour by rotation in Gandhi Nagar, Bakshi Bagar and Janipura areas. The clashes between irate Hindu mobs and police have left scores of people injured whereas at places houses and other properties of minority Muslim community, too, came under attack from angry Hindus.
SRINAGAR - The People's Democratic Party (PDP), crucial partner in the Congress-led ruling coalition in Jammu and Kashmir, has pulled out of the government in a latest development in the Amarnath land row.
SRINAGAR: Tens of thousands angry demonstrators filled the streets in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Friday, burning flags and effigies of Indian leaders on the fifth day of protests against the transfer of land (99 acres) to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, a trust running a popular Hindu shrine.
To be fair, Pak has stood by paralyzed with fear as the turbans extended their sway. They've only just started -- since the initiation of the Swat operation -- fighting against being hezbollahed in their own country. I don't think much of the capabilities of the Pak military, but neither do I think much of the actual fighting capabilities of the Talibs. We see them manage to kill themselves in droves on the other side of the border, and they spend more time waving guns and uttering blood-curdling threats as they do shooting it out with real soldiers. I don't count the local levies and the paramilitaries in that number, by the way.