Author: Masood Haider
Publication: Dawn, Karachi
Date: June 10, 2002
URL: http://www.dawn.com/2002/06/10/top2.htm
With Pakistani soldiers blocking
Kashmiri fighters from crossing into the Indian side of the Valley, the
militants maintained that they would defy any such orders and many fundamentalist
parties have sworn to oust President Pervez Musharraf.
A report in the June 17 issue of
Newsweek quotes militant leaders as saying "our men manage to sneak past
the Indians, so how can the Pakistanis stop us?", adding "we will continue
to fight. God always creates ways for us."
The weekly said that Gen Musharraf's
order was conveyed to two dozen commanders by a major- general from the
Inter-Services Intelligence agency during a meeting at a Pakistani army
base 25 miles from the front lines. But one commander of militants told
Newsweek that the commanders denounced President Musharraf by name. "After
ditching the Taliban, Musharraf has now betrayed the Kashmiri cause," shouted
one commander. "How can we accept this?"
The New York Times in a similar
report said that the Kashmiri leaders maintained the Pakistani government
appeared to be fulfilling a key condition laid down by Indian leaders,
who have threatened to launch a strike into Pakistan unless infiltration
into Kashmir is halted.
"We have not sent anyone across
for the past month," Hussein Rizvi, leader of Hizbul Momineen, one of the
groups battling Indian rule in Kashmir told the New York Times. "Now we
have two armies against us, the Indian and the Pakistani. Our problems
have doubled."
Rizvi, who claims that his group
has hundreds of fighters in both parts of Kashmir, said he was able to
send a small group of activists across the border in early May, just as
the Himalayan passes had begun to clear of snow, but now he has given up
even trying. "We are trying to devise a new strategy," he said in an interview
with the Times on Sunday.
The Times said that the claims of
difficulties by the Kashmiri militants fit into recent assurances by President
Musharraf and statements from Indian leaders, who acknowledge a reduction
in the number of fighters coming from across the border.
The paper noted that with the threat
of Indian military action looming, the Pakistani government had begun to
press the militants to declare a ceasefire inside occupied Kashmir, militant
leaders said. But some groups, including Hizbul Mujahideen, have vowed
to carry out new attacks against India.
The shift from the armed struggle
comes at a great personal risk to Gen Musharraf, who has already inflamed
the passions of a large segment of the population by joining the United
States in its campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda and vowing to lead
his country to a more moderate path. Next week, the country's largest fundamentalist
party is planning to lead a rally in Azad Kashmir that some people here
believe is intended to mark the beginning of a campaign to oust Gen Musharraf,
the paper said.
The Kashmiri militants themselves
say they feel betrayed by the new efforts to block their movements into
India. "People are angry," Sher Khan, a senior leader of Harkat Mujahideen,
told the paper. "We have reason to be angry."
The paper said that this week, Gen
Musharraf summoned Kashmiri leaders to his office to reassure them that
he was not walking away from the Kashmiri cause, a deeply-felt issue for
many Pakistanis. One of the Kashmiri leaders who attended that meeting
said the president appeared concerned about the possibility of a takeover
by fundamentalists.
"It will be difficult for him to
survive," Altaf Qadri, leader of the All-Party Hurriyat Conference, which
represents 23 Kashmiri groups, was quoted as saying by the Times.
