Author: Saeed Naqvi
Publication: The Indian
Express
Date: August 11, 2000
I have given instructions
to our cadres to plan target oriented actions." This is just a tiny fraction
of what Syed Salahuddin, Chief of Hizbul Mujahideen, announced in Pakistan.
It was not a press note, furtively put out. It was an announcement
made at a crowded press conference.
Supposing a militant
leader in one of the Carribean Islands made such an announcement, threatening
"target oriented actions" against some part of the United States, what
would the American response be?
And this is not the first
time that Pakistan (the regime) has accorded hospitality to such anti-India
venom. How is New Delhi supposed to respond to such nonsense?
We are told Gen.
Musharraf had actually given a tacit nod to the ceasefire announced by
the HM (Hizbul Mujahideen) chief commander in Kashmir, Abdul Majid Dar.
The pace at which HM's talks with the Government of India progressed unnerved
the Pakistan extremists, who scuttled the ceasefire. So, poor Gen.
Musharraf cannot stick his neck out too far: it will be chopped.
Remember what happened to Nawaz Sharif! He took a few brave steps towards
friendship with New Delhi and Gen. Musharraf himself was forced to
remove the plank from beneath Nawaz Sharif's feet. And now should
the General demonstrate such audacity and endorse initiatives that will
bring down the temperature in Kashmir the mullahs breathing down his neck
will topple him and take over. Pakistan will then slide down inexorably
into the abyss of fundamentalism.
How long will the world
community be witness to this sort of blackmail? During my travels in the
course of my journalism, what strikes me most is a singular lack of appreciation
in most world capitals of the nature of the regime in Pakistan, an entity
distinct from the people of that country. This regime and the establishment
it has spawned has at its very core a basic hostility towards India.
A clich, sometimes embodies
essential truths. Simply to put it aside because it is a yawn inducing
clich, entails that an essential truth be put aside as well. Pakistan
was born in hostility to India. It would have a problem of national
self-definition if this anti-India edge were not in a perpetual state of
accentuation. The creation of Bangladesh in 1971 demonstrated that
cultural, civilisational identity supercedes religious links. An
unnerved Pakistani establishment has since been working overtime to manufacture
a double and triple distilled Islam that will somehow blur, even erase,
all other identities.
This project was always
in the hands of a small coterie - call it the Jamaat-e-Islami. Between
this coterie and the people of Pakistan there was always an enormous gap.
In every election the Jamaat-e-Islami was trounced. Its power and
influence on the establishment were not related to its popular appeal.
The remedy lies in grasping this fact. The emergence of the Ayatollahs
in Iran and the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union provided the
Saudis with a double incentive to finance the Mujahideen training camps
in Pakistan - to fight the Soviets and to resist Iranian Shiaism.
The project was endorsed by the Americans, financed heavily by the Saudis
and carried out by the Pakistanis.
Since the collapse of
the Soviet Union and the rapprochement between Teheran and Riyadh, this
high voltage Islamic energy has been looking for causes stretching upto
Chechnya, Sudan and beyond but focusing heavily on Kashmir.
And this is not conjecture
but a claim made by, among others, theMujahideen-e-Lashkare-Taiba on its
website under the title `Allah's army'.
"Mujahideen-e-Lashkar-e-Taiba
had been engaged in a Jihad-e-Afghanistan where they fought bravely against
the Russian Army. At the end of the Russian war, they shifted to
Kashmir for the help of oppressed and innocent Kashmiris".
Let me quote some more
from this website.
"In the field of combat
the Lashkar fighters give as good as they get. Since it is not possible
to bring their captives back to Pakistan, and the Indian government does
not bargain for the return of hostages, all Indian prisoners are killed
in the occupied valley.
"The Lashkar fighter
will usually execute an Indian soldier by slitting his throat. However,
beheading and disembowelling are also common methods, employed mostly for
psychological reasons. In at least one case, a Lashkar fighter, Abu
Haibat, brought the head of an Indian soldier back with him to Pakistan.
"The Quran orders us
to hit them on every joint" says Abdur Rehman Al Kakhil, commander of the
Lashkar in occupied Kashmir." Now, Al Kakhil is not a subcontinental name.
The website continues: Al Kakhil "does not agree with the common argument
that fighters from outside the region are complicating the situation in
Kashmir and causing problems for the local population. To the contrary,
our presence gives moral support to the Kashmiris."
This is just one of the
16 such organisations held together by an apex body called the Muttahida
(United) Jehad council.
A website of this council
takes one's breath away for its imaginative plans for a new world order.
In this world order North and South America will be Muslim in the next
100 years. It will be called the United States of Islam.
It was from this body
that Syed Salahuddin was removed when Hizbul Mujahideen declared a ceasefire.
Let me point out just
one of the numerous reasons why the Hizbul Mujahideen is different from
the other militant groups operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
It is almost entirely Kashmiri and the most powerful in the valley.
By giving these snippets,
what is the case that I am presenting? Remember my old mantra. Indian
secularism provides protection, among a billion others, to the world's
second largest Muslim population. This Islam, for obvious reasons,
has to be Indian and composite in its texture. Perpetual hostility
to India as a guarantor of nationhood enjoins upon the Pak establishment
to keep radicalising its Islam until it becomes totally unsubcontinental.
In other words the world is witnessing the evolution of history's most
intolerant, fundamentalist regime unless the Pakistani people are quickly
brought into play through a democratic process. Ayub Khan's military
dictatorship was different. He did not have the mullahs breathing
down his neck. Gen. Musharraf does.
