Author: Prem Shankar Jha
Publication: Outlook
Date: June 3, 2002
Introduction: Pakistan won't spare
Kashmiri nationalists too, as Lone's murder proved, if they opposed the
state's merger with it.
As happened after the massacre of
Sikhs in Chitsinghpura, no militant organisation has taken credit for the
murder of Abdul Ghani Lone, the most highly respected member of the Hurriyat's
executive council, in Srinagar on Tuesday. Precisely who had him killed
is an open secret in Kashmir. The killers were named by none other than
Sajjad Lone, the slain leader's son, who stood before the news cameras
and told the world that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence had engineered
his father's murder. More tell-tale was the cry of fear that went up from
the women, including family, who were sitting behind him as he made the
accusation. Sajjad stood his ground, turned and told the women that he
would tell the truth no matter what the consequences, but the cameras caught
the fear that washed over his face. Today, he too knows that his life hangs,
as did his father's for 18 long months, by a thread.
Terror is in fact the leitmotif
of everyday life in Kashmir. General Musharraf and his glib foreign office
spokesmen miss no occasion to tell an ignorant and uncaring world that
Kashmiris live in terror of the Indian security forces which regularly
kill innocent civilians and molest their wives and daughters. What he doesn't
tell them is that his irregulars- Pakistani jehadis and the Kashmiri Hizbul
Mujahideen-have also sought to 'liberate' Kashmiris from the cruel Hindu
yoke through brute terror. For 13 years, anyone with influence who has
worked towards a goal other than Kashmir's secession from India and merger
with Pakistan has become a target for elimination.
The figures maintained (with perhaps
a little under-reporting) by the Kashmir and Indian governments tell their
own story. Of the over 32,000 people killed between 1989 and the middle
of this month, 4,500 were security forces personnel, 14,000 were militants
(more than 2,000 of whom were non- Kashmiris) and a little over 3,000 were
civilians killed in 'crossfires' between militants and the security forces
(often an euphemism for revenge killings by security force members who
went berserk after sustaining casualties in an ambush). However, 10,200
were Kashmiri civilians killed by their Pakistan-backed "liberators". Of
this, 1,200 were Hindus. The remaining 9,000 were Kashmiri Muslims.
The militants who died had at least
taken up arms against the state. But the civilians whom the terrorists
killed hadn't even done that. Perhaps a third died because they were at
the wrong place at the wrong time. But the remaining two- thirds died simply
because they did not subscribe to Pakistan's goal for Kashmir.
The largest number, several thousand,
were National Conference cadre. In earlier years when the insurgency was
in the hands of Kashmiris, they were simply shot. In the past six years,
since the "guest militants" and jehadis arrived, they have been tortured,
reviled and paraded through their villages before being lynched or beheaded,
often in full view of the villagers. Two NC workers were beheaded (a "punishment"
favoured by fundamentalist jehadis from Kashmir to Algeria) on the same
day that Lone was killed.
NC cadre, and those of other mainstream
Indian parties, have been singled out for death because they want Kashmir
to remain a part of India. But Pakistan has not spared even Kashmiri nationalists-if
they opposed Kashmir's merger with it and opted instead for independence
or guaranteed autonomy from India. Lone's assassination is a case in point.
Lone first incurred Pakistan's displeasure
in November 2000 when, while in Islamabad for his daughter's wedding, he
welcomed the ceasefire announced by Vajpayee and asked Pakistan to stop
sending jehadis into Kashmir.
Pakistan's displeasure deepened
when he returned and took up cudgels publicly against Syed Ali Shah Geelani-who
had welcomed the jehadis and called the Kashmiri struggle a religious and
not a democratic one.This led to the first explicit threat against Lone's
life, one saddling him with police protection for the rest of his days.
Lone's outspokenness and Geelani's
almost daily diatribes against him as "New Delhi's man" made him a marked
man. Lone was aware of it. In July last year, after a wedding reception
for his son Sajjad, he pointed to the half-dozen Kashmiri state policemen
lounging at his gate and asked me how long they could protect him against
a determined assassination bid. Three subsequent half-hearted attacks on
him at his home and on his car, in November, December and January, were
probably meant as warning shots across his bows. But Lone couldn't be cowed
so easily.
As debate raged on whether the Kashmiri
nationalist parties should participate in the coming polls, it became clear
that Lone, although keeping a low profile, was in favour of it. This led
to the next, more serious threat on his life. In January, an Islamabad-based
Kashmiri outfit called the Students Islamic Front warned ten Kashmiri nationalist
leaders that if they so much as thought of taking part in the next elections,
they would be killed. Among them were all the members of Hurriyat's executive
council except the overtly pro-Pakistan Geelani, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, Shabir
Shah, and three prominent lawyers closely associated with JKLF and the
Awami Action Front. This was echoed by the United Jehad Council from Muzaffarabad
the next day. Incidentally, the SIF is known in militant circles in Kashmir
as an organisation owned lock, stock and barrel by the ISI.
The final straw was Lone and Mirwaiz
Umer Farooq's meeting with Azad Kashmir leader Sardar Abdul Qayoom Khan
in Dubai and their joint demand that Pakistan stop sending foreign militants
to Kashmir. The decision to assassinate Lone on the anniversary of the
day 12 years ago when two members of the Hizbul Mujahideen assassinated
the Mirwaiz's father Maulvi Farouq, was intended to not only remove Lone
from the scene and terrorise other Kashmiri leaders, but as a cold-blooded
reminder to the Mirwaiz and his traumatised family that if he did not back
away from elections he too would meet his father's fate.
