Author: By John Chalmers
Publication: Reuters
Date: September 25, 2001
Frontline guerrilla outfits fighting
in Kashmir were left off a list of people and groups whose assets in the
United States have been frozen by President George W. Bush.
The move is likely to fuel concern
in New Delhi that -- despite its declaration of war on all terrorism --
Washington is overlooking a region former President Bill Clinton branded
as perhaps one of "the most dangerous places in the world".
On Monday Bush ordered a freeze
on the assets of more than two dozen individuals and organisations.
Saudi-born Islamic militant Osama
bin Laden, whom Bush accuses of masterminding the September 11 hijacked
aircraft attacks on New York and Washington, figured on the list along
with his Al- Qaeda network and several related organisations.
Only one of the outfits named, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen,
has had any history of activity in Jammu and Kashmir.
And even that group has faded into
the background of the insurgency in recent years, leaving the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba,
the Hizbul Mujahideen and the Jaish-e-Mohammad -- a newcomer -- at the
forefront.
INDIA FRUSTRATED
"What we're hearing on the Indian
side is the Lashkar, the Jaish and the Hizb. They're the three we worry
about the most, and none of them appears there," said Kanti Bajpai of New
Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, referring to the U.S. list.
"It's almost like the three we care
about have deliberately been left off the list... I don't think it's going
to go down very well in Delhi again."
Some Indian ministers and officials
have already expressed frustration that Washington's focus on Osama bin
Laden could undermine a broader assault on terrorism around the world.
"Fighting against one bin Laden
here or there hardly matters," Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan
said last week. "The U.S. and all other countries should fight against
terrorism as a system, and not only the symptom..."
U.S. LIST A "POLITICAL GESTURE"
But analysts say Washington is unlikely
to put pressure on Pak-backed terrorists operating in Kashmir at a time
when it is trying to use Islamabad as a lever on Afghanistan's ruling Taliban
to get at bin Laden.
"I think this asset freeze list
is a very preliminary one," one Western diplomat in New Delhi said. "It
has to be taken for the political gesture that it is, and it has to be
seen as the first phase of this war on terrorism."
He said Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, declared
a "foreign terrorist organisation" by the United States before it changed
its name from Harkat-ul-Ansar in 1998, was probably on the U.S. list because
of its links with Afghanistan and the Taliban.
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen was formed
in 1985 through the merger of two Pakistani political activist groups.
A Sunni organisation which -- like
the Taliban -- follows the strict Deobandi school of interpretation of
Islamic thought, it became a network of fighters in 1992 for defending
the rights of Muslims around the world, including in Kashmir.
It became Harkat-ul-Ansar the following
year, and then came under international scrutiny in 1995 when six Western
tourists were kidnapped in Kashmir. One of the tourists escaped, one was
found beheaded and the others are still missing.
A shadowy group called Al-Faran
claimed responsibility for the abductions, but India says Harkat-ul-Ansar
was behind them.
Authorities arrested a string of
the group's leaders, gradually reducing its role in Kashmir's militancy.
The captured included Maulana Masood
Azhar, who founded the Jaish-e-Mohammad after he was freed by India in
exchange for the release of an Indian aircraft hijacked to Afghanistan
in 1999.
