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.