Author: B L Kak
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: May 2, 2001
With his aim of wresting Kashmir
from the kaafir, Masood Azhar, chief of the dreaded jihadi outfit, Jaish-e-Muhammad,
has warned the Government of India that it should "prepare for the worst"
if it continued its "brutal" activities in "Muslim Kashmir".
The warning, significantly, is contained
in his anti-India outbursts that are now available in audio-cassettes.
Clearly, his warning has the same malice that he once spread in mosque
after mosque in the Kashmir valley.
Masood Azhar has declared that the
liberation of Kashmir is not the only item on his agenda; the rebuilding
of the Babri Masjid at its original place in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh "is
equally important". And his ultimatum: "We will do it by hook or by crook
because we now know where India's lifeline is".
Masood Azhar, who claims he did
not see sunlight for more than 12 months, now thinks nothing of asking
for the moon. He wants Islamabad to end all contacts with New Delhi until
a plebiscite is held in Kashmir.
Azhar's taped speech contains other
demands as well: immediate release of prisoners, withdrawal of Indian forces
from the 'hot spot' and settlement of the Kashmir dispute in accordance
with the wishes of the Kashmiri Muslims.
Azhar exudes confidence: The future
of the jihad in the Valley is bright. He has emphasized that he will continue
to spew venom against India. Following his release by the Government of
India, in exchange for the freedom of the passengers on Indian Airlines
flight 814 at Kandhar in Afghanistan, Masood Azhar is thirsting for blood
again.
Azhar has reiterated: "If five people
can hijack a plane and get us released, they can cut India's lifeline too".
His claim that Kashmiri militants are getting help from Indians is not
off the mark. It was actually an Indian who revealed the extent of the
operations that the ISI, Masood's ally in the anti-India campaign, had
launched against Nepal.
Not long ago, the Mumbai Police
recovered a cache of arms and ammunition from five persons. The entire
haul had been smuggled in from Nepal through West Bengal. Two Pakistanis,
Mohammed Rehman and Mohammed Iqbal Malik, of the Al Faran faction of the
erstwhile Harkat-ul-Ansar, and a Nepali, Gopal Bahadur, were arrested along
with two Indians, Mushtaq Ahmed and Abdul Latif.
In a bid to obtain information,
the Military Intelligence (MI) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) recruit
local youth in the Valley but this had backfired to a major extent in Kargil.
Many of these youth acted as double agents and vital information about
Army deployment was passed on to the Pakistanis.
The Mumbai Police have become hyper-active.
They have cast their net far and wide for the ISI operatives who have set
up base in the country's commercial capital, Mumbai. Gone are the days
when the CID and the Crime Branch too were doing a splendid job earning
laurels for the Mumbai Police and comparisons with Scotland Yard. But then
terrorism had not been on the city police beat, Maharashtra Chief Minister,
Mr Vilasrao Deshmukh, argued.
Mr Deshmukh told EXCELSIOR that
the scenario changed when secessionism reared its head in Punjab and Jammu
and Kashmir. Its tentacles soon spread to Mumbai. "We have alerted the
police and other agencies and directed them to sternly deal with anti-socials
and anti-nationals", he said in reply to a question.
Even the best detectives find it
difficult to identify the genuine job-skkers from the extremists arriving
with a wave of migrants in Mumbai. The Shiv Sena leadership has cried itself
hoarse about the hostile elements among the migrants from Bangladesh and
'visitors' from Pakistan who overstayed or went underground.
The Pakistan connection, EXCELSIOR
was also officially informed, has taken on a dangerous hue ever since don
Dawood Ibrahim established base in Karachi. Believed to be remote-controlled
by the ISI, his gang is being used to recruit sympathisers to the ISI's
anti-India crusade.
