Author: Kautilya
Publications: The Herald
Date: September 21, 2001
One wonders if the human rights
groups who have been worrying all along about the rights of the killer
terrorists will recognise the right of the Kashmiri women to choose their
dress code without being compelled forcibly to conform to the dress prescribed
by the Lashkare Jabbar terrorist outfit.
The incidents of throwing acid on
young girls without burqa and threats of more such attacks on Muslim women
who do not accept the so-called Islamic dress code are patently aimed at
the "Talibanisation" of the Kashmiri body social and pulling it away from
Kashmiriat based on liberal Sufi traditions.
The Talbanite designs of the terrorist
outfit are obvious also from its decree that non-Muslim women display some
symbols to identify their faith to escape such attacks. It does not need
much ingenuity to see through the game and appreciate that this would,
in fact, make these women sitting duck targets for their communal attacks.
While many indigenous Kashmiri militants
have been rather reluctant to pursue a blatantly communal line, Pakistani
and other foreign mercenary terrorists have been aiming at the virtual
ethnic cleansing of the valley with a view to changing its demographic
map. The same policy is now being pursued by the Pakistani terrorists in
Doda district and other areas across the river Chenab.
Their objective obviously is to
prepare the ground for what is called the Chenab plan touted by certain
US-based think tanks. The plan seeks to partition the State along communal
lines on the basis of the notorious two-nation theory and violates the
spirit of both secularism and all that Kashmiriat stands for.
No wonder, then, that sharp differences
have reportedly arisen between the local militants and the foreign mercenary
terrorists. The Hizbul Mujahideen Pir Panjal Range (HMPPR), which is dominated
by foreign mercenaries - most of them Pakistani and Afghan, for example,
broke away from the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) and has reportedly merged with
Jaishe Mohammed now.
The group operates on the Jammu
side of the Pir Panjal range and has reportedly been responsible for most
of the killings of innocent Hindu villagers in and around the Doda district.
Some of its local leaders, however, are said to have rejoined the parent
HM while its foreign "activists" have joined Jaishe Mohammed, the Pakistan-based
terrorist group formed by Maulana Azhar Masood, who was released in exchange
for passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane in Kandahar.
Jaishe Mohammed, though far smaller
than the more notorious Lashkare Taiba (LeT), is also committed to the
cause of global jehad to convert the entire world into Darul Islam (the
home of Islam). Much of the world, according to fundamentalist Islamic
ideologues like Sudan's Hasan al-Turabi, is Darul Harb (the enemy's land)
at present.
Turabi, who is well-versed in modem
Western thought as well, argues forcefully and convincingly against the
colonial exploitation - both economic and cultural - of West Asia and northern
Africa by the developed countries and views the Islamic terrorist struggle
against them as a freedom struggle .
Afghanistan-based Osama bin Laden,
the Taliban and the Pakistani terrorist or jehadi outfits like LeT, however,
do not share Turabi's erudition and their vision of Islam is by and large
medieval. To them, the liberating role of Islam consists of pushing society
back to medieval mores and norms as well as medieval form and system of
government as defined by the orthodox Deobandi school or the Wahabis.
The so-called Jehad by foreign mercenary
terrorists in Kashmir, therefore, is not aimed at the so-called liberation
of Kashmir but at its conversion into a bulwark of fundamentalist Islam
like Afghanistan. No wonder the only firm supporters of Pakistan-based
foreign mercenary terrorists in Kashmir are obscurantist forces like Jamaite
Islami and its leaders like Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
To the Jamaite Islam, which is all
but a branch of the Jamaat Islami founded by Maulana Abul Ala Maududi,
thus, the jehad in Kashmir by Pakistan-based mercenary terrorist groups
is but a part of the global jehad led by Turabi, Osama bin Laden and the
Taliban.
No surprise, therefore, that the
jehadis trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan are fighting to destablise
not only India but also Russia, Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan,
Turkmenistan and Tajikistan and even China and the Philippines. Even Iran,
Egypt and Kuwait are feeling threatened by them.
Although Islamic fundamentalism
is not a recent phenomenon, its present virulent form can be traced directly
to the US CIA's assistance to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
in building up, arming and assisting an Afghan-Pashtun resistance movement
against the Communist coup in Afghanistan with Soviet support.
In fact, the CIA and ISI had already
been assisting Islamic fundamentalists like Gulbuddin Hikmetyar and Zahir
Shah-loyalists in Afghanistan against the Daoud regime that the Communists
overthrew. The Soviet sponsored Taraki-Karmal revolution only rendered
the situation ripe for a large-scale US intervention in the region.
And the US knew only one way to
counter any national, egalitarian or anti-West force in a Muslim country.
It had used Islamic fundamentalism to counter all nationalist forces in
Arab and Muslim countries - and succeeded in achieving its objectives.
It had utilised Wahabi Saudi regime effectively to counter Arab nationalist
aspirations in Egypt, Iraq and Syria.
So had it used this regime and the
Islamic fundamentalist organisations like Ikhwanul Muslimeen (Muslim Brotherhood)
to gain control over the oil wealth of West Asia and keep at bay the Baathist
regimes in Arab countries.
The US, therefore, had good reason
to pursue the same policy in Afghanistan and to plan the use of well-armed
and trained Afghan-Pashtun terrorists, accompanied by committed mercenaries
from other Islamic countries, against then Soviet Central Asia, most of
whose people were Muslims.
And in doing so it helped Pakistan's
ISI create a Frankenstein's monster in the form of organised, trained and
well-armed Islamic fundamentalist terrorists which it fully used to push
the Soviets out of Afghanistan and create disaffection against Moscow in
then Central Asian Republics (now independent States).
That the present outgrowth of Islamic
fundamentalist terrorism is a consequence of this Afghan development, which
was further compounded by the ISI's creation of the Taliban, is obvious
from its sequential relationship with the employment of terrorism by Pakistan
to destablise India's border States, including Punjab and Kashmir.
The US, has so far been wary of
declaring Pakistan as a terrorist state; for fear that further economic
sanctions against it may throw it to 'die wolves. It has, however, declared
the Harkatui Ansar, an outfit owing allegiance to the Deobandi school,
as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO). It has also expressed concern
about the activities of the LeT, but stopped short of declaring it an FTO.
The reasons for such a weak response
to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism lie perhaps in the soft comer the US
has always had for Islamic fundamentalism and the hope that it may again
utilise it, say, against Central Asian states and China to gain access
to the former's oil and gas reserves and to contain the latter if and when
required.
Such an opportunist approach to
this form of global terrorism, however, could prove fatal in the ultimate
analysis. Pakistan is already reeling under the pressure of these jehadi
groups, which are threatening to destroy all that is modem in that country.
The noises currently being made
against these groups by President Pervez Musharraf may be just for appearance's
sake, but are not baseless.
A time is fast approaching when
this monster will pose a fatal threat to its creators, the military-dominated
ruling establishment of Pakistan.
Prompt global action against Islamic
fundamentalist terrorism has become essential to not only help resolve
Indo-Pak disputes but also save the Pakistani State from failure - economic,
political and social.
President Bush owes it to Pakistan,
which rendered the US such help in handling the Afghan question, to help
contain and defeat Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and save Pakistan.
