Author:
Publication: www.tehelka.com
Date: January 3, 2001
In the first month of the ceasefire
as many as 70 surrendered militants and informers were gunned down by the
militants. This is said to be the highest number of counter-insurgents
killed by militants in a month, writes Masood Hussain
Although Prime Minister Atal Behari
Vajpayee's unilateral ceasefire move has led to a significant decrease
in the militancy-related casualties in the strife-torn state, it has however
proved a costly affair for the surrendered militants helping various security
agencies in counter-insurgency (CI) operations. In the first month
of the ceasefire as many as 70 surrendered militants and informers were
gunned down by the militants. This is said to be the highest number
of counter-insurgents killed by militants in a single month.
There is not a single day when a
surrendered militant does not fall to the bullets of the militants.
In one of the cases, the militants ambushed a Maruti van carrying renegade
militants at Wailoo village in south Kashmir's Anantnag and killed five
of them.
Surrendered militants, it may be
recalled here, has been the main force on which the state's counter-insurgency
operation rests. During the initial days of CI operations when the
security forces were actually groping in the dark, it was these outfits
which would help them to identify the real targets of the operations.
Initially, they would remain hooded and help the troops track down militants
and their sympathisers from the population of a particular locality that
was summoned out by the troops in 'crackdowns' - the name locals have given
to cordon and search operations.
After the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimoon led
by Mohammed Yousuf alias Kukka Parray, now a sitting MLA, broke away from
mainstream militancy and avowedly shifted his sympathies with New Delhi,
the renegades started asserting. They began their war against the
separatists by killing more than 500 militants and their sympathisers,
mostly from the Hizb ul Mujahideen (HM) and the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), and
dominated the scene for more than three years.
Their patronage by the army, paramilitary
forces and the governor's administration made the Ikhwan cult an instant
success and at one point of time there were more than six CI outfits -
more than the militant outfits which were actually operating. They
started operating with impunity and did whatever they wished. They
made huge money by extortions, asking for ransoms and plundering public
property including forests.
This led to a situation that when
Dr Farooq Abdullah decided to participate in the 1996 polls, which sent
him back to power, his promises of ending the Ikhwan culture were more
pronounced than the restoration of autonomy. Once in power, he felt
it quite difficult to do away with the Ikhwan cult and in fact used some
of them. While he made one of the Ikhwan leaders, Javed Ahmad Shah,
an MLC (Member of Legislative Council), his party literally accepted defeat
from Sonawari constituency, the place where Kukka Parray had won, much
before the polling took place.
However, in the post-Kargil era
when militancy assumed demonic proportions, the Ikhwan cult also went on
the defensive. Militants started targeting them and literally in
1999, most of Kukka Parray's faithful commanders were killed in an IED
(improvised explosive device) explosions. This, however, did not
deter them because they were given huge perks by the Indian army's Srinagar-based
15 Corps.
However, this is for the first time
that they seem to be literally on the edge. Since there are no public
sympathies left and the ceasefire is not permitting security forces to
operate outside the camps, the renegades taking the risk of moving out
of the well-secured camps are getting killed. And wherever they are
being killed, they are taken by surprise.
On Tuesday evening a pro-government
militant Farooq Bhat was killed in Nowgam (Srinagar) after a chase of over
15 minutes. In Sumbal, the erstwhile den of the Ikhwan, Hamza Wani,
one of its top leaders was killed in the main market. The outfit
had to resort to beating up people to garner support for a mourning strike
from this north Kashmir township.
While official records suggest that
there are over 1,200 militants who have surrendered and are working with
the security forces, unofficial estimates put them at around 2,200, of
them 400 dead. The state government has managed the adjustment of
327 of them in the Border Security Force (BSF) and in the Central Reserved
Police Force (CRPF) while rest of them are either functioning with the
state police's anti-militancy SOG (Special Operations Group) or with various
other security agencies.
The state government is paying a
sum of Rs 1,800 to each of them while army and other agencies are also
supporting them through their secret fund system. However, the renegades
are alleging that the state government's attitude is lackadaisical towards
their problems.
Apart from the small bands of surrendered
militants operating with different security agencies independently, at
the moment, there are two main groups of them. One is the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimoon,
the main group led by Kukka Parray operating in particular stretches in
north Kashmir - mostly in Sumbal-Bandipore belt. Its influence has
gone down after foreign militants made this area their base. This
outfit has given birth to the Awami League, the party from which Parray
contested the polls.
The second is Al-Ikhwan which operates
in south Kashmir's Anantnag and is led by Liyaqat. It was earlier
a part of the Kukka-led party, but separated in 1997. After several
of its leaders were killed by militants, the outfit lost its influence
and is defunct at the moment.