Author: Muzamil Jaleel
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: December 18, 2005
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/archive_full_story.php?content_id=84163&spf=true
Introduction: Nurtured by the likes of Maulana
Masood Azhar, to these jihadis suicide is not an act; it is an ideology
They celebrate death and when they go out
for an attack, they know they will never return. Surrender is impossible and
even security agencies admit it is rare to trap such militants alive. Unlike
indigenous outfits, their agenda transcends the demand for right to self-determination
or the creation of an independent Kashmir. The pan-Islamic militants seem
to have changed the course of insurgency in Kashmir.
First came the foreigners - the Pakistani
and Afghan recruits - but the complexion of these groups is fast changing.
Both the main outfits, Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, are emphasising
local recruitments. Since the July 13, 1999, fidayeen attack on a BSF camp
in Bandipore, the involvement of local recruits in suicide attacks has increased.
Fidayeen attacks were at their peak just before
September 2001. The frequency came down substantially after the December 13,
2001, attack on Parliament. The situation actually changed after President
Pervez Musharraf's January 2002 speech and the subsequent ban on Islamic militants
in Pakistan.
But soon these militant groups went out of
the control of the Pakistani establishment and even attempted the assassination
of Musharraf himself.
Although the number of suicide attacks dropped
in the Valley, the militants still used these sensational strikes at regular
intervals. There was, however, a sudden spurt in fidayeen attacks, especially
in Srinagar, after the October 8 earthquake.
THE fidayeen groups were introduced by Lashkar-e-Toiba
(Army of the Pious) as a post-Kargil strategy. In a statement issued during
a three-day congregation of LeT at Murdike, 30 km from Lahore, soon after
the war, Lashkar chief Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi said: ''These fidayeen missions
have been initiated to teach India, which is celebrating after the Kargil
war, a lesson.''
The fidayeen are a special squad of the Lashkar,
kept for the most dangerous missions. However, they are not like the suicide
squads of, say, the Tamil Tigers. The fidayeen do not go on missions where
death is certain, like ramming a truck filled with explosives or where the
riders are fated to consume cyanide.
As Islam clearly forbids suicide, the fidayeen
typically select missions where they do have a chance, however slim, of returning
alive.
THE parent outfit of the fidayeen, the LeT,
has emerged as the most powerful pan-Islamic group, especially after the sneak-in
attack at the Red Fort in Delhi, which killed three armymen. Though security
forces in Srinagar believe LeT has been active since 1993, there was little
information of its organisation and ideology for years.
The group operates discreetly. According to
a senior security officer, it is difficult to keep track of Lashkar militants
as they ''use a set of code names. And when a militant dies, he is replaced
by a new recruit with the same code name''.
LeT is the militant wing of the pan-Islamic
Markaz-e-Dawat-ul-Irshad, which has its headquarters at Murdike and runs around
2,200 madrassas and training centres across the country. The Markaz has a
clear agenda. Starting with the complete Islamisation of Pakistan and Kashmir,
it hopes Islam will finally dominate the world.
For this, the organisation established the
Jamia Dawat-ul-Islam, or University of Dawat-ul-Islam, in 1989. Located on
a four-acre campus, it imparts religious education and military training.
According to a 2004 essay in the Lashkar mouthpiece Jihad Times, around ''50
of the students of this University had died fighting in Kashmir''.
The basic ideology of the group states that
religion is not the private affair of Muslims and politics cannot be separated
from religion. Launched in 1985, Markaz rejects democracy as a western concept
full of flaws.
In 1987, Lashkar-e-Toiba was launched by Markaz
with an aim to take part in the Afghan war. Its militants fought the Russians
in the Haji area of Paknea province along with the Afghan mujahideen outfit
Itihad-e-Islami. Then they turned their attention to Kashmir.
Jaish-e-Mohammad was formally launched from
Masjid-e-Falah, Karachi, on February 3, 2000. Founded by Maulana Masood Azhar
- freed thanks to the IC-814 hijacking in December 1999 - the Jaish's first
attack on the Valley was the suicide car bombing outside the 15 Corps headquarters.
A few days later, a 24-year-old British national, also a militant, blew up
an explosive-laden vehicle.
Azhar created the Jaish by bringing together
supporters from the two factions of Harkat-ul-Ansar, put on the list of terrorist
organisations by the US State Department in 1995. The group managed to gather
300 Afghan commandos.
Azhar, an ideologue, motivator and fund-raiser
of the pan-Islamic Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, had been arrested with another Harkat
commander, Sajjad Afghani, in Anantnag in 1994.
After several unsuccessful attempts to free
Azhar, the Harkat was able to get him and two others - Mushtaq Latrum, a commander
of Al-Umar Mujahideen, and Omar Sayeed Sheikh, a British national jailed for
kidnapping three tourists - in Kandahar.
