Author: Peter Fritsch
Publication: The Wall Street Journal
Date: October 12, 2001
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan -- The most
important event in Mohammed Ahsan Dar's life happened six years before
he was born. One day in 1953, he says, police patrolling the Indian-controlled
part of Kashmir pistol-whipped his father, rendering him "half mad until
he found peace in death."
An inbred hatred of India and a
fierce Islamic nationalism made a killer of Mr. Dar. First he founded a
militant youth group to oppose mostly Hindu India's influence in mostly
Muslim Kashmir. Landing in an Indian prison, he says he was tortured for
months before escaping in 1989.
Next, parlaying the fame of his
jailbreak into a recruiting tool, he assembled a band of fierce anti-India
fighters. Again imprisoned by India, he says he languished in an eight-by-five-foot
cell before winning release two years ago.
This week, as U.S. cruise missiles
struck nearby Afghanistan, Mr. Dar was once again preparing to do guerrilla
battle for his cause, Muslim control of all of Kashmir. "This fight is
my unfinished agenda. And the attack of Afghanistan just made me even more
of a problem for you in the U.S.," Mr. Dar said, sitting on the floor of
his home near an Afghan refugee camp.
Should the U.S. distance itself
from Pakistan given its links to alleged terrorists? Participate in the
Question of the Day.
The existence of Muslim guerrillas
inside Pakistan does indeed put the U.S. in a difficult position. The U.S.
badly needs Pakistani support for its global alliance against terrorism,
and has it. But while the Western world applauds Pakistan for its stance,
the country remains a dangerous crucible for extremists prosecuting a jihad
of their own. The decades-long struggle to control Kashmir has taken an
estimated 30,000 lives.
The latest episode, an explosion
in Indian-controlled Kashmir Oct. 1 that killed about 40, sent tensions
even higher between Pakistan and another key U.S. ally in the anti-terror
coalition, India. The Indians, increasingly angry with Pakistan over the
Kashmir issue, say that if the U.S. is serious about attacking the roots
of terror, it should expand its terrorism dragnet to Pakistan.
Secretary of State Colin Powell
will have to walk this diplomatic high wire on a visit early next week
to Pakistan and India. His mission to the two nuclear neighbors suggests
a new urgency for the West in trying to resolve one of the world's most
intractable territorial disputes.
Those seeking to oust India from
Kashmir want to turn back the clock to before the 1947 partition of India,
which created the Muslim state of Pakistan and left much of Kashmir in
Indian hands despite the region's Muslim majority. Today, many of the anti-India
fighters are young men who were trained in Afghanistan with U.S. weapons
left over from the anti-Soviet war -- in some cases in training camps run
by Osama bin Laden. A score of militant Muslim groups sponsor and carry
out brutal acts of terror in Indian-controlled Kashmir, which they say
is payback for decades of abuse by Indian police and military forces.
Pakistan openly gives moral support
to some of these groups. Western diplomats and former Pakistani intelligence
officials say Pakistan also gives financial and covert military support
to a few of the groups, though Pakistan denies this. A U.S. House of Representatives
Task Force on Terrorism said in 1993 that Pakistan was sponsoring and promoting
separatism and terrorism, "primarily in Kashmir, as a strategic and long-term
program."
In Pakistan, many draw a distinction
between terror and freedom fighting when it comes to Kashmir. "The Pakistani
government exerts an influence on these mujahedeen groups. And why shouldn't
it if they are legitimate freedom fighters?" asks Shireen Mazari, director
of a Pakistan-government think tank called the Institute for Strategic
Studies.
Claiming responsibility for the
Oct. 1 explosion in Indian-controlled Kashmir, in the city of Srinagar,
was a Pakistan-based group called Jaish-e-Mohammed. Some of its fighters
have been trained in Afghan camps linked to al Qaeda, the Afghan-based
network run by Osama bin Laden. A relative newcomer to the Kashmiri war
theater, Jaish-e-Mohammed is fed by Islamic schools in Pakistan, where
its leader, Masood Azhar, is a hero to many of the nation's idle disaffected.
Pakistan's Foreign Office condemned
the Srinagar bombing, yet did so with an edge: "This act of terrorism is
especially reprehensible," it said, "as it appears to be aimed at maligning
the legitimate struggle of the Kashmiri people for their self-determination."
Such varnish, in the view of India and others, suggests an implicit support
for brutal methods in a forgotten region at a time when all eyes are trained
westward on Afghanistan.
Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez
Musharraf, responded angrily Monday to Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee's allegations that Pakistan continues to sponsor terrorism in
Kashmir. India responded coolly to a subsequent phone call from Mr. Musharraf
to Mr. Vajpayee inviting fresh talks on the Kashmir conflict. Indeed, Indian
officials suggested that another attack such as that in Srinagar could,
in certain circumstances, lead India to launch military strikes against
camps in Pakistan where Kashmiri militants train.
Such a bellicose exchange between
two heavily armed powers has the U.S. on edge and is quickly moving Kashmir
back onto the West's radar screen. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has
pleaded for cool heads on the Kashmir issue and said the conflict should
be addressed by the West as part of the long-term campaign against terrorism.
While Pakistan denies that Muslim
Kashmiri militants thrive on its soil, that's not the story suggested by
visits to the poor neighborhoods of Rawalpindi. A rundown hotel restaurant,
advertising Pepsi in giant block letters, is one of many local rallying
points for mujahedeen fighting in Kashmir.
Donation boxes, though recently
declared illegal here, are stuffed with five-rupee notes worth about eight
cents each. The boxes belong to Jaish-e-Mohammed and to Lashkar-i-Tayyba.
The second group, whose name means "Army of the Pure," is a Kashmir group
that claims to have sent thousands of fighters to help the Taliban resist
the U.S.
"Look around," says the restaurant's
cashier. "These boxes are full all over town. Ask a Pakistani to contribute
five rupees for the struggle in Kashmir and he will give you 10."
Nearby, a safe house for the group
Harkatul Mujahedeen functions openly, although visitors are discouraged.
"It is wise for you to go quickly," says a guard. The U.S. branded Harkatul
a terrorist organization in 1995 after it kidnapped five Western tourists
in Kashmir, beheading a Norwegian. In 1998, several Harkatul militants
died in U.S. missile attacks on Mr. bin Laden's Afghan hideouts.
A man named Pervez Ahmad freely
discusses Pakistan government support for his own organization, the Kashmir
Liberation Cell, whose activities, he says, are limited to pamphleteering
and organizing street protests. "We are like an NGO [nongovernmental organization]
like any other, supported by the government of Pakistan-administered Kashmir,"
Mr. Ahmad says in clean English, flashing a diamond-encrusted gold watch.
Two former high-ranking Pakistan government officials say the Kashmir Liberation
Cell is supported by Pakistan's intelligence service, ISI.
While Mr. Ahmad says his group does
no fighting, he adds that he counts among his friends men he describes
as "mujahedeen warlords," among them Mr. Dar. Mr. Ahmad reaches a few warlords
on their cell phones, trying to arrange a meeting with outsiders, but apologizes
that "the jihad council has decided it does not wish to speak at this time."
Government support for the Kashmir
struggle is suggested, too, on the so-called Line of Control separating
the parts of Kashmir administered separately by Pakistan and India. A doctor
who works with the Pakistan army there says that he sometimes treats wounded
mujahedeen and that the army provides covering fire for incursions into
India launched by militant groups. "It would be inhumane not to provide
such cover when the mujahedeen are attacked by India," he says.
The ties among Pakistani, Kashmiri
and Afghan militants trace back to the early 1980s, when Pakistan allowed
entry to anyone arriving to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan. Pakistan's
ISI intelligence service and a radical Islamic political party called Jamaat-e-Islami
organized reception committees, receiving funds from Saudi Arabia to funnel
fighters to the Afghan resistance. An estimated 35,000 Muslim fighters
from 43 countries arrived under that covert program between 1982 and 1992.
Many of their weapons were made in the U.S.
When the Soviets turned tail in
1989, some of these fighters trained their sights on Kashmir, where simmering
discontent with India's sometimes-harsh rule erupted into full-scale rebellion.
As men like Mr. Dar took up arms, many Kashmiri fighters crossed into Pakistan
for more succor and more sophisticated military training.
"We lacked experience and technical
support," says Mr. Dar, who in 1989 founded a group called Hizbul Mujahedeen.
"But what we needed even more was an umbrella group to support us."
He found that in Jamaat-e-Islami,
Pakistan's oldest and best-connected Islamic political party, known as
JI. But gradually, what for Mr. Dar and his 20,000 followers began as a
purely Kashmiri movement for independence was taken over by Pakistan and
used as a political bludgeon to check India.
When the U.S. a decade ago considered
branding Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism, say military analysts,
Pakistan's government moved Kashmir militant groups to eastern Afghanistan.
It shifted responsibility for their training to the JI. Then in 1996, when
Mr. bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan, the suspected terror leader established
training camps for Kashmir fighters in the Afghan city of Khost. This move,
say analysts, cemented Pakistan's support for Mr. bin Laden's hosts, the
fundamentalist Taliban rulers of most of Afghanistan.
Pakistan's JI party has been particularly
vocal since the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., hanging shrill anti-Semitic
banners around Pakistan's major cities. Other propaganda blasts the U.S.
as "unrighteous, seditious, arrogant." JI spiritual leader Qazi Hussain
Ahmad recently made the chilling statement that if U.S. ground forces enter
Afghanistan, Pakistan's nuclear program "cannot remain safe."
Although Pakistani President Musharraf
banned radical organizations months ago and recently placed a virulent
pro-Taliban religious leader under house arrest, Western diplomats say
his government has been reluctant to crack down on groups supporting the
Kashmir cause or to attack their sources of funding.
To Mr. Dar's way of thinking, it
is time for those fighting for the independence of Kashmir to emerge from
the shadow of Pakistan's influence and get back to their roots. "Our cause
wasn't created in Pakistan," he says. "It's created from our own soil."
Mr. Dar, now 42, says he wants to
return to his family's fruit orchards in Kashmir's lush valleys, resuming
the schoolteacher career he abandoned long ago. But until Kashmir is free
of Indian control, he plans to train his four sons in the life and tactics
of the mujahedeen. "I will do this for my father," he says, jabbing the
air with an angry finger. "You in America will call me a terrorist, but
I am a freedom fighter. You will pay for forgetting me."
Write to Peter Fritsch at peter.fritsch@wsj.com