Author: Praveen Swami
Publication: The Hindu
Date: Mar 24, 2006
URL: http://www.hindu.com/2006/03/24/stories/2006032405381200.htm
A March 17 encounter in Ahmedabad shows that
the Pakistan-based Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, until recently thought to be defunct,
has been reborn from the ashes and has joined the growing Islamist terror
campaign against India. A register in the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen's office in
Islamabad lists the names of those who gave their lives for its cause: 238
men who were killed fighting, the forces of first the Soviet Union and then
the United States in Afghanistan, and another 433 in Jammu and Kashmir.
Earlier this month, a clerk at the Harkat
office may have added a new entry to the list of countries against which the
terrorist organisation had gone to war - and then written the names of the
first men to die in this campaign.
On March 17, police in Ahmedabad shot dead
Sialkot resident Imran Shehzad Bhatti, the commander of the first Harkat terror
cell to attempt strikes against India outside of Jammu and Kashmir. Bhatti,
who had earlier served for three years as a field commander in Jammu and Kashmir,
died along with his lieutenant Mohammad `Furkan' Iqbal, who hailed from Karachi,
and two long-standing ethnic-Kashmiri Harkat operatives, Mohammad Ayub Butt
and Mudassir Rather, both from the apple-growing region of Shopian.
Last summer, Bhatti had been given charge
of building a new house for the Harkat: a house from which it could wage war
across India. Bhatti, Indian counter-intelligence officials have found, travelled
across much of India, scouring towns for both recruits and base. He seems
to have had more than a little success in this enterprise. From Punjab, for
example, the Harkat commander even succeeded in purchasing for himself fake
documents that identified him as a policeman serving in the State's vigilance
organisation.
Much of Bhatti's network was set up by Butt,
a fruit trader from the village of Laddi, near Shopian in southern Kashmir.
Butt's brother, Yakub, had served for several years with the Jaish-e-Mohammad,
before being shot dead in an encounter last year. Although he worked closely
with Bhatti's south Kashmir Harkat group, Butt's apparently unremarkable life
helped him stay off the radar of the Jammu and Kashmir police. His fruit business,
however, would be critical to Bhatti's plans to expand the Harkat's terror
capabilities.
Travelling with Butt on his visits to fruit
markets across India, Bhatti was introduced to some of the businessman's associates
as a friend - and to an inner circle by the nom de guerre `Azaan,' the term
Muslims use for the call to prayer at mosques. One of Butt's contacts in Punjab
helped the Harkat commander obtain his fake identification; others provided
homes and references to right-wing clerics in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore,
Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, and at least half-a-dozen smaller cities.
By late last year, the basic elements of Bhatti's
new network were falling in place. Iqbal, who had long been one of the Harkat
commander's most trusted lieutenants, was able to make contact with newly
recruited associates in New Delhi, Goa, Gwalior, Agra, and Kota. Like Bhatti
himself, Iqbal travelled posing as a businessman linked to Butt's fruit business,
using fake identification - in this case, a driver's licence obtained from
the Yashwantpur Regional Transport Office in north Bangalore, issued against
a false address.
A house of war
For his part, Rather succeeded in obtaining
admission to a madrassa near the southern Gujarat town of Valsad, on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad
route both Bhatti and Butt were now regularly using. Investigators have found
that at least three seminaries in the State rejected the ethnic Kashmiri's
application to study there, unimpressed by his credentials. The fourth, however,
proved less suspicious of Rather's claims that he wished to become a cleric.
Soon afterwards, in January, Bhatti rented the Ahmedabad apartment.
Bhatt's Harkat cell now had a home, soon to
be stocked with explosives and weapons. Days after the house was rented, Butt
told his parents he was going to close a fruit deal. He never returned. His
worried family filed a missing persons report later that month, but the Jammu
and Kashmir police had no success in locating Butt - until, that is, the morning
of March 18, when photographs of the four terrorists killed in Ahmedabad reached
the police headquarters in Srinagar.
Jammu and Kashmir police officials had been
increasingly concerned about the Harkat's rebirth long before those photographs
arrived. Late last year, investigators had learned that a new commander, operating
under the code-name `Talha,' had been despatched across the Line of Control
to rebuild the group's apparatus. The commander, they discovered, had hidden
out in the Bandipora forests in northern Kashmir, before moving to a safe
house in Srinagar.
Weeks of work finally led the Jammu and Kashmir
police's crack Special Operations Group to a small shop in Srinagar's Soura
area. Local residents thought the shop, which specialised in embroidering
woollen shawls and cloaks, was owned by an Urdu-speaking migrant from Uttar
Pradesh. Officers of the Special Operations Group, however, had learned he
was a long-standing Harkat operative named Mohammad Shehzad, a resident of
Sialkot in Pakistan - the man who called himself `Talha.'
On December 21, a brief fire fight outside
the shop led to Shehzad's death - and to the uncovering of a sophisticated
communications centre equipped with satellite phones. Before the week was
out, however, the Harkat appointed a successor. Abdul Qadir Mughal, a resident
of Rawlakot in Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir, was given charge of
the networks Shehzad had begun to build. Mughal's term in office proved remarkably
short, though: before dawn on January 1, he was shot dead.
Several second-rung Harkat commanders were
eliminated as a consequence of these strikes targeting the terrorist organisation's
top leadership. Mohammad Iqbal Khan, the Pakistani national who was ordered
to succeed Mughal, was shot dead by police in Baramulla. So too was Azad Ahmad
Bhatti, a Harkat commander from the Pakistani city of Multan who had served
as the terrorist group's division commander in southern Kashmir for over five
years.
As investigators interrogated suspects detained
during these operations, the scale of the Harkat's plans became clear. Between
January 14 and February 18, at least nine Jammu and Kashmir residents were
arrested on charges of helping the Harkat. Each member of the network had
been assigned a specific task aimed at providing key operatives cover identities.
Pulwama resident Mohammad Yunus Mir, for example, had applied for Indian passports
for the Harkat's key commanders, using fake names and photographs.
But why should the Harkat's revival be of
particular concern? Answers lie in the special place the outfit has in the
history of Islamist terrorism. Until 1984, the Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami was
the largest clerical organisation engaged in the U.S.-funded jihad against
the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. After the death of its founder, Maulana Mohammad
Irshad, the HuJI began to disintegrate. Maulana Qari Saifullah's succession
as the HuJI's supreme leader led his opponents to form the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.
Under Maulana Fazl-ur-Rahman Khalil, the Harkat
dramatically increased its presence in both Afghanistan and Jammu and Kashmir.
Factional disputes with the HuJI, however, continued to be a serious concern.
In June 1993, a committee of clerics arranged for both organisations to merge
into a new group, the Harkat-ul-Ansar. Maulana Azhar Masood Alvi, the terrorist
released from jail in return for the lives of the hostages on Indian Airlines
flight 814 in 1999, was one of the key figures in this new group.
The HuA gained international attention when
it kidnapped European and American hostages in 1994 and 1995, in murderous
efforts to secure Azhar Masood's release. In 1997, the U.S. declared the HuA
a terrorist organisation, which led the group to resume calling itself the
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. A year later, the U.S. fired missiles at two Harkat-run
camps in Afghanistan. The hijacking of IC 814, however, demonstrated that
its capabilities had not been diminished.
Ironically, however, Azhar Masood's first
action on his return to Pakistan was to found a new organisation, the Jaish-e-Mohammad.
Much of the Harkat's cadre defected to the new group, which also took over
its offices and financial assets. Matters came to a head in 2001, when the
Harkat provided support to the Taliban in Afghanistan against the U.S. By
2003, both the Harkat and the Jaish had lost their primacy to the Lashkar,
which did not challenge Pakistan's new pro-U.S. stance in Afghanistan.
Now, though, it seems clear that the Harkat
is being reborn from the ashes it was reduced to by the events of September
11, 2001, and the U.S.' war in Afghanistan. Indian intelligence officials
estimate that of the 240-odd terrorists who have crossed the LoC since the
Kashmir earthquake in October 2005, upwards of 80 belong to the Harkat. If
these figures are accurate, it would suggest that the group is rivalled, in
terms of cadre recently pumped into Jammu and Kashmir, only by the Lashkar.
Does this rebirth have state patronage? It
has become clear in recent weeks that Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf
finds himself in increasing conflict with some of his one-time allies, notably
Islamist hardliners in the Lashkar. As such, Pakistan's covert services could
be throwing their weight behind the Harkat as a counter-weight. On the other
hand, the Harkat revival could be part of a generalised Islamist offensive
leading into the 2007 elections in Pakistan, in which pro-jihad clerical parties
hope to acquire power. What is clear, though, is this: Pakistan's Islamist
armies have no intention of joining in a détente with India that promises
them only their obliteration.
