Hindu Vivek Kendra
A RESOURCE CENTER FOR THE PROMOTION OF HINDUTVA
   
 
 
«« Back
The mask of Syed Salahuddin

The mask of Syed Salahuddin

Author: Wilson John
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: December 24, 2003

Syed Salahuddin, in more ways than one, is more powerful than the world's most wanted terror fugitive, Osama bin Laden. He has been running a terrorist organisation for several years without being branded a terrorist. His organisation, the United Jihad Council, has never been banned. Despite heading one of the well-known terror groups operating in Kashmir, the Hizbul Mujahideen, neither the Pakistani Government nor the US State Department has ever thought of declaring him a terrorist and his group a terrorist outfit or of freezing his source of funds.

Though his area of operation is limited, Salahuddin runs one of the most efficient terror networks in the world with fairly effective media management. His interviews appear frequently in the Urdu press in Pakistan. His press statements are distributed both in Islamabad and Srinagar with equal ease. He operates unshackled from his headquarters in Muzzafarabad even in these days of the "War on Terrorism".

There is a reason for his invincibility. He is an extension of the Pakistani Army. Salahuddin, an Indian Kashmiri by birth, is one of the lynchpins of Pakistan's Kashmir policy. He is the terror tap which General Pervez Musharraf once mentioned. Unlike the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad, the United Jihad Council is fully controlled and managed by the Pakistani Army. Salahuddin's Jihad Council-unlike Lashkar which claims to draw its sustenance from a particular Islamic school of thought based in Deoband-is a purely terrorist machine. Though he has no religious affiliations, he has close associations with religious parties like the Jamaat-e-Islami. He has no known sources of funding; there have never been reports of Salahuddin asking for donations, but he has been operating quite unhindered for several years, both in Pakistan and Srinagar. Neither does he have any known links with Lashkar or Jaish, except sharing the cause of spreading terror in Kashmir.

This well-thought out policy of keeping a low profile has enabled Salahuddin to remain off the radar screen of international scrutiny till date. The Bush Administration has not factored in his terrorist group in the war on terrorism, nor has the Indian establishment while pursuing peace in Kashmir.

Salahuddin's main agenda is to play spoilsport at the behest of the Pakistani Army. Whenever things begin to get out of hand for the latter, Salahuddin's outfit is activated in Kashmir. If one cared to look at the past peace initiatives in Kashmir, Salahuddin had a decisive role to play in their failure. That is why it would be naive to ignore his statements, which seem to have only increased during the latest peace initiative, on Kashmir. This is not surprising, since he is General Musharraf's knight in Kashmir.

In one of his latest interviews given to the Jamaat mouthpiece, Jehad-e-Kashmir (a fortnightly magazine), Salahuddin takes a seemingly anti-Islamabad view on Kashmir. He says the Pakistani Govern-ment could not ignore the liberation movement of the Kashmiris and change its Kashmir policy. He debunked the Indian peace moves as farcical, and said the liberation movement would not end so easily till the final goal of delivering Kashmir was achieved.

Referring to General Musharraf's statements on India-Pakistsan talks, Salahuddin said they were strategic moves and, if Islamabad and the world community thought a ceasefire to be essential for holding a dialogue on Kashmir, there was nothing wrong in such a move. In another interview to Nawa-i-Waqt (an influential Urdu daily in Pakistan), Salahuddin praised General Musharraf and Pakistani Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali for initiating confidence-building measures but said India could not be trusted.

I would attempt to draw inferences from the above references. Quite a few things are clear. Salahuddin does not openly criticise the Pakistani General or Prime Minister. This establishes his credentials. He is 'their' man in Muzaffarabad. For a terrorist leader, he is in fact quite supportive of the establishment. He does not criticise the US either. Unlike Lashkar chief Hafiz Saeed and Jaish leader Maulana Azhar Mohammad, Salahuddin's script does not contain any references to Washington. Strangely enough for a terrorist leader with 'wide popular support', he is not known to address public meetings, at least not outside Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. All his statements known to the world are the ones that appear in the Urdu press in Pakistan and some newspapers published from Srinagar. That means he doesn't have a network outside PoK. Is this because he is an Indian and not a Pakistani citizen? Or is it because he is a stooge of the Pak istani Army?

There is another myth about Salahuddin which needs to be busted. He is a self-confessed well-wisher of the Kashmiri people. He never misses an opportunity to proclaim that his jihad is to liberate Kashmir for the people of Kashmir. Yet strangely enough, he never talks about liberating the PoK for the Kashmiri. If the acquisition of Kashmir is what he wants to achieve, then he should have launched a terror campaign in PoK and forced Islamabad to speak about a united Kashmir.

So when Salahudddin talks about the welfare of Kashmiri people, what he actually means is the welfare of Pakistan. His stated agenda is, in fact, to annex Kashmir for Pakistan and make it another impoverished, neglected region like PoK. I would quote his latest interview to Nawa-i-Waqt (December 11) to support my argument. He said the leaders of the All Party Hurriyat Conference who have expressed their willingness to talk to the Indian Government were engaged in a futile exercise and were working against the interests of the Kashmiri people. At a meeting held on December 9, the terrorist group condemned Hurriyat leaders and said they would not allow such anti-movement activities. He said they would not accept any formula which ignored the UN Resolutions and threatened to continue the armed struggle despite the peace talks.

It is quite clear from these statements that the Hizbul Mujahideen and other terror groups controlled directly by the Army GHQ have fallen out with the Hurriyat. The Hurriyat, in fact, till Maulvi Abbas Ansari took over, was a handmaiden of Islamabad, a mirror organisation of Salahuddin's Council, with the difference that the former had never openly espoused the path of terrorism even though it has been quite supportive of terrorist groups.

There has been an almost dramatic change in the Hurriyat after the State Assembly elections and the present moderate leadership (the Maulvi is a Shia) has been keen on talking to New Delhi rather than walking the path of violence. This has certainly not gone down well with the terror groups. Salahuddin sees a clear threat in the Hurriyat being given the opportunity to be at the centrestage of discussions on Kashmir. Obviously, this has irked Islamabad too. And hence Salahuddin's tirade against the Hurriyat.

The reason for pointing out a few details about Islamabad's terror mouthpiece is simple. Here is a sureshot publicity winner for General Musharraf. Since he has been so keen on unloading the past baggage on Kashmir, one of the steps he could take for peace is to shut down this terror mouthpiece. Salahuddin should be arrested and handed over to the Indian authorities. He is not a Pakistani national. This would be a small but significant step towards peace in Kashmir. Once Salahuddin is out of the scene, the Jihad Council would peter out in days, since its leader had never promoted a second or third rung of leadership. The immediate fallout would be the crippling of the Hizbul Mujahideen and its terrorists operating in Kashmir.
 


Back                          Top

«« Back
 
 
 
  Search Articles
 
  Special Annoucements