Author: Rahul Bedi in New Delhi
Publication: Jane's Intelligence
Date: October 5, 2001
URL: http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/misc/janes011005_1_n.shtml
The suicide bomber attack in northern
India's Kashmir state on 1 October, which killed 38 people and seriously
injured 60 others, focuses attention once more on the close involvement
of Pakistan-backed insurgents in the 12-year-old civil war in the disputed
state.
The Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM, or Army
of Mohammad) group, based in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-administered
Kashmir, claimed responsibility for detonating the explosive-filed jeep
at Kashmir's assembly building in the state's summer capital, Srinagar.
Three other JeM militants, taking advantage of the confusion surrounding
the blast, infiltrated the legislature premises but were killed after a
six-hour gunfight with the security forces.
Pakistan denies any connection with
the JeM. A government spokesman in Islamabad said the attack was "aimed
at maligning the legitimate struggle of the Kashmiri people for their right
to self-determination" but did not elaborate on who might have been responsible.
Pakistan occupies a third of Kashmir
and lays claim to the rest but denies Indian allegations of fuelling the
insurgency in the disputed state, which has claimed over 35,000 lives.
Pakistani President General Pervaiz Musharraf has repeatedly claimed that
the Kashmiri insurgents are "freedom fighters" to whom his country provides
only moral and diplomatic support.
The JeM was established in Pakistan
in March 2000 by Maulana Masood Azhar, a 33-year-old Islamic cleric, shortly
after he was exchanged along with three other militants for 155 hostages
hijacked aboard an Indian Airlines aircraft flown to Kandhar, southern
Afghanistan, on New Year's Eve in 1999.
Jailed in India in 1994, the bespectacled
Azhar who sports a patterned keffiyeh similar to the one worn by Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat, was an ideologue and fund-raiser for the ultra-fundamentalist
Harakat-ul-Ansar (HuM, or Movement of the Faithful), one of the most feared
terrorist groups in Kashmir. The HuM was responsible for kidnapping five
Western tourists in Kashmir in 1995 and beheading one of them, a Norwegian.
The other four are missing, presumed dead.
After his release Azhar travelled
to Afghanistan to meet Saudi fugitive Osama bin-Laden, who is believed
to have extended generous funding towards raising the JeM and whom the
US holds responsible for the 11 September terrorist attacks in New York
and Washington. Azhar also organised large rallies across Pakistan that
were shown on the country's state-owned television, at which he launched
recruitment drives for jihadis (Islamic warriors) to 'liberate' Kashmir.
'Freeing' Kashmir is also one of Bin Laden' s goals.
Srinagar's suicide bombing has heightened
tension between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, who have been to war
three times since their independence in 1947 and who fought a bitter, 11-week-long
border engagement in 1999 in which 1200 soldiers died. In a letter to US
President George W Bush Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said
India's patience was "wearing thin", hinting that Delhi would not tolerate
such attacks without retaliating.
"If the US wants to use Pakistan,
that is a major sponsor of terrorism, in its global war against terrorists,
then it is merely fielding the problem to resolve the solution," said Indian
Foreign and Defence Minister Jaswant Singh in an interview with CNN in
Washington the day after the Kashmir bombing. The US is working closely
with Pakistan in its fight against Bin Laden's Al Qaeda organisation and
the Taliban regime hosting its training camps Afghanistan.
Singh, who met President Bush and
other senior US officials including National Security Advisor Condoleeza
Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
claimed to have "appraised" Washington about Indian concerns over Pakistan-backed
terrorism in Kashmir and other parts of the country but did not elaborate.
Intelligence officials said that
besides JeM Kashmir's three major militant groups -Laskhar-e-Toiba ( LeT,
or Army of the Pure), Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM, or Islamic Freedom Fighters
Group) and Hizbul Mujahideen (Freedom Fighters) - were part of the United
Jihad Council headquartered at Muzaffarabad. The HuM, however, was recently
proscribed by the US along with 27 other insurgent groups worldwide. The
LeT, based at Mudrike near the Pakistani border city of Lahore, is the
fiercest group operating in Kashmir and believes that the necessity for
jihad has always existed. It considers democracies, inherited from the
'alien' West, a menace that should be eradicated.
Indian military officers in Kashmir
said Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), which 'runs' the state's
insurgency, recruits Afghans (mostly Taliban members) and youngsters from
madrassahs (Muslim seminaries) across Pakistan. It provides these recruits
with military training before pushing them across the porous line of control
(LoC) that divides the disputed state between India and Pakistan. An official
Indian spokesman in Kashmir said 13,609 militants had been killed in the
state since the insurgency erupted in 1989, of which 2150 were foreigners
- mostly Pakistanis and Afghans. Over 3140 Indian security force personnel
have also died on counter-insurgency operations, according to the official.
Foreign mercenaries began infiltrating
Kashmir's tanzeems (militant groups) around 1996 to bolster the insurgency
at a time when the security forces seemed to be prevailing. The number
of local militants also declined, and those who remained felt the pinch
in terms of financial and material support from the ISI. This resentment
resulted in disgruntled locals deliberately leading the outsiders into
ambushes.
Disparity in militant allowances
also caused resentment. Indian intelligence officials say a 'foreign' militant
'hired' for two years received around Rs400,000-500,000 rupees ($8500 to
$10,630), with half the money paid in advance to his family and the rest
at the end of his contract. Local hire received a pittance.
Special incentives were offered
to those who pulled off sensational 'hits' attracting international media
attention. A bonus was paid for killing Indian soldiers, particularly officers.
If killed, the foreigners' family also received 'insurance' of around Rs200,000-300,000
from the ISI. Relatives of dead Kashmiri militants received either a meagre
amount or nothing at all. Indian security officers say foreign mercenaries
have also raised the 'weapon profile' in Kashmir to include anti-aircraft
guns, rocket launchers, heat-seeking missiles and anti-tank mines.
Meanwhile, the 'Talibanisation'
of Kashmiri children is rapidly underway, with an extremist Islamic group
connected to the Taliban establishing free madrassahs in remote rural areas
to indoctrinate them for jihad.
Officials in Srinagar said Din-e-Mohammad
Taliban, backed by the Taliban and Pakistan-backed extremist organisations,
had recently launched madrassahs in the northern Kashmiri districts of
Pulwama, Anantnag, Kupwara and Baramulla staffed by Islamic scholars with
good oratory skills. Similar madrassahs had also been established in remote
regions like Kargil (the world's second coldest place after Siberia), Ladakh
and Zanskar to the north.
"These children are being prepared
as soldiers for Islam," said Gurbachan Jagat, Director General of the Border
Security Force that is fighting Kashmir's insurgency. "This [the setting
up of schools] is Pakistan's long-term design to create future recruits
who will not falter in their commitment to fight for a Muslim homeland
in Kashmir," said Jagat. He added that it is a repetition of what Pakistan
did in the mid-1990s in creating the Taliban (meaning Islamic student)
in thousands of madrassahs across the country.
District officials said students
are flocking to the Din-e-Mohammad Taliban-run schools as their parents
are delighted at the thought of their children getting a free education.
Being illiterate, many parents were unconcerned over the sectarian content
of their children's curriculum.
