HVK Archives: In militants' hands (Hostage in Kashmir - Part I of IV)
In militants' hands (Hostage in Kashmir - Part I of IV) - The Sunday Observer
Kim Housego
()
10-16 August 1997
Title: In militants' hands (Hostage in Kashmir - Part I of IV)
Author: Kim Housego
Publication: The Sunday Observer
Date: August 10-16, 1997
For the first time in over two years, the families of the four Westerners
taken hostage by the Al-Faran militants in Kashmir have been assured
release by the President and prime minister of Pakistan. Kim Housego,
kidnapped by the Al-Faran in 1994, recounts the horrors of being hostage in
a four-part series.
The news came to me suddenly, while on holiday in an isolated village in
Southern France. It was a dazzlingly beautiful morning in August 1995. One
of the five hostages kidnapped in the north Indian state of Kashmir, Hans
Christian Ostro, a Norwegian, had been killed. His severed head was found
lying next to his body, his hands and feet bound, and the signature
Al-Paran engraved on his chest. I was stunned. I felt sick and frightened
at the brutality of the murder.
A single, overwhelming thought haunted me: could this have happened to me?
It was two months after Ostro and four other Westerners had been kidnapped
by Islamic militants in Kashmir in circumstances hauntingly close to those
in which David Mackie and I had been taken hostage a year before, but only
for 17 days. In both cases the militants were demanding the release of the
same militant commanders held in Indian prisons.
My kidnapping had not left me scared and school life was returning to
normal. However, from the moment Ostro and the others were abducted, all
that changed. I was in the news again. Phones rang, journalists asking for
comments and interviews - "How were you treated? What do you think the
current hostages are facing?" I was subjected to long and detailed
debriefings by various intelligence and security agencies, as well as
having to look at photos and sketches of militants, both dead and alive, in
an attempt to identify them. I searched hidden corners of my memory for
the smallest details. There were also painful conversations with relatives
of the two English people and one American who had been taken hostage with
Ostro - Keith Mangam, Paul Wells and Donald Hutchings.
The longer this continued, the more I found myself wrenched back into the
violent world of hostages, terrorism and guerrilla warfare in which I had
accidentally been caught up in the summer of 1994.
Now, a year after my ordeal was over, I would pick up a newspaper in the
school library and headlines such as 'Militants threaten to kill hostages
in Kashmir' would again and again raise the same questions in my mind: "Are
these the same guys?"
The names, places and people that had been so significant in my kidnapping
- Pahalgam, Masood Azhar and Harkat-ul-Ansar - constantly-jumped out of the
pages of the paper, endlessly drawing my thoughts back to Kashmir and the
Himalayas.
"We are Islamic fundamentalists, you are our guests. Our guns are for the
Indian army. With your help, we want to release our supreme commanders from
Indian prisons," Rashid, a Pathan from the Pakistan-Afghan border, had
said. His face was heavily bearded and badly pock-marked, still bearing
the scars of guerrilla warfare that helped defeat the Soviet army in
Afghanistan.
David Mackie, a 36-year-old video special effects director, and I had just
been separated from his wife and my parents at gunpoint. It was a moonless
black night and we could not properly see their faces. I felt frozen -
shivering, half from cold and half from fear, on the verge of breaking down
at the thought of what was happening. We began to walk, crossing several
mountain streams in the dark, further into the vastness of the mountains.
I remember waking up in a crumbling, uninhabited shepherd's hut high above
the snow-line, as dawn was breaking. We were lying right in front of the
militants who were standing in rows, preparing for their first prayers of
the day. The dying embers of the fire created powerful silhouettes of them
across the room with their dark wild hair and long beards.
Swathed in blankets and shawls, wearing Mujahideen woollen hats, their
Kalashnikovs were placed on the ground before them on which they would rest
their foreheads while prostrating. The soft murmur of their prayers, Allah
O Akbar, dedicated to the glory of god and of their jihad (holy war,) ran
through the smoky room.
As I looked at this terrifying yet amazing scene, I did not dare open my
eyes more than a squint for fear of angering them. Half asleep, I was
momentarily convinced we were about to be killed.
On one occasion we reached a road, close to where we had first been
abducted. Dusk was falling and it began to rain. Suddenly, the militants
stopped and began to pray. They were nervous at being on a road to which
the army had easy access. An old decaying taxi arrived. They first argued
over who should get in, and then over the fare, like a group of misguided
tourists. Some crammed in with us into the vehicle, whilst others got into
the boot.
The car refused to go up the hill. More debate over how to make room,
before they finally decided to put their guns in the boot. No sooner had we
started, we had a puncture. It was raining still, we were soaked to the skin.
They would sometimes stop and demand that David take pictures of them
posing in mock-battle, their guns raised high, a battle cry on their lips,
and occasionally with me forcibly rigged up with gun and bandolier as the
centrepiece. This was to demonstrate that I was one of them and also their
trophy.
(Courtesy: Kashmir Today)
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