SOME HOME TRUTHS ABOUT INSURGENCY IN KASHMIR

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

    Considering that 2009 marks the 20^th year of full-blown insurgency in Kashmir, it is somewhat surprising that there are not many books that go behind the scenes and beyond newspaper reports to lay bare what actually was happening on the ground and to the people of the state. In recent years, however, Praveen Swami and David Devadas have done some remarkable work to fill some of this empty space. But until now, very little was known of how the insurgency was guided from across the border in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Much of what we know is based on information handed out by the Indian security agencies. There was however no means to corroborate this information. The absence of any independent source of information, which was also reliable, left a huge gap in our knowledge of how the insurgency was planned and how it played itself out inside Pakistan. Also missing was the story of the jihadists and Kashmiri separatists who operated from Pakistan.

    In his book "Shadow War – The Untold Story of Jihad in Kashmir", Pakistani journalist Arif Jamal, unveils the involvement of Pakistan in the insurgency and provides some new and quite startling details of the 'jihad' that Pakistan waged against India in Kashmir. Having covered and observed this 'jihad' from very close quarters, Arif was ideally placed to write this book. There is little that he doesn't know about the people and organisations involved in spawning militancy and terror in Kashmir. But while he is brutally honest in exposing all the misdeeds and murders that were committed in the name of 'Kashmiri struggle for independence', he has concentrated more on the involvement of the Jamaat Islami and its terrorist arm, Hizbul Mujahideen, in spreading murder and mayhem in Kashmir. In the process, Arif has ignored the role of terror outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-i-Mohammed because, according to him, "they have a global agenda in which Kashmir is no more than a training ground."

    Arif busts many myths in his book, not the least of which is the commonly held view that the alleged rigging in the J&K state assembly elections in 1987 sparked the insurgency. According to Arif, right from the time of partition, Pakistan was always on the lookout for opportunities to stir up trouble in Kashmir. There were occasional lulls in Pakistani efforts to destabilise Kashmir, for instance after the 1971 war. But these periods had more to do with Pakistan's compulsions rather than any change of intentions. As Arif puts it, "Jihad, holy war and diplomacy were thus the first elements of Pakistan's foreign and defence policy – and they remain so more than sixty years later."

He reveals that in early 1980, Gen. Ziaul Haq held a meeting with the chief of Jamaat Islami in PoK, Maulana Abdul Bari. In this meeting Zia told Bari that he "had decided to contribute to the American-sponsored war in Afghanistan in order to prepare the ground for a larger conflict in Kashmir". Zia predicted that "the Americans would be distracted by the fighting in Afghanistan and as a result would turn a blind eye to Pakistani moves in the region" [If one goes by what Arif writes later in this book, a similar calculation is being made by the Pakistan army today]. When Bari asked Zia who in Afghanistan will receive the biggest share of US assistance, Zia said "whoever trains the boys from Kashmir".

Arif puts a lie to the propaganda that the insurgency in Kashmir is a localised phenomenon and has no links with Jihad international. The book clearly points to the organic links that were established between the Islamists who were waging jihad in Afghanistan and those waging jihad in Kashmir. According to Arif, "in the early days of fighting, Hizbul Mujahideen had all its fighters trained at camps in Afghanistan run by Hizbe Islami [ of Gulbadin Hikmatyar]. In particular, they made use of al Badr in Khost province...Kashmiri fighters also made use of other camps in Afghanistan, including Khalid bin Walid, Al Farooq and Abu Jindal." The camp, Abu Jindal, was known as a site for training Arab fighters and in 1998 Osama bin Laden held a press conference there. Later, Arif reveals, training camps were established all over Pakistan and in PoK.

According to the book, the Hizbul Mujahideen learnt its brutality and savagery at the feet of Gulbadin Hikmatyar, who advised the HM chief Syed Salahuddin to eliminate all his rivals. The book quotes a HM commander who said that his organisation eliminated over 7000 political rivals. But according to another dissident HM commander the number was "many times higher". The method of killing rivals – chopping bodies, beheading them, sawing them, hanging them publicly are all eerily reminiscent of the tactics used by the Pakistani Taliban in Swat recently. Not only HM, but also its greatest patron, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, has been named as ordering the killing of political rivals, including Mirwaiz Farooq. Geelani is blamed not only for ordering Allah Tigers to kill his rivals, but also for using an outfit called Lashkar-e-Jabbar for carrying out a talibanisation campaign inside Kashmir.

    In a sense, Arif corroborates a lot of what Indian security agencies had already revealed to the Indian media. But where Arif breaks new ground is by informing his readers the suppleness with which the Pakistani military establishment adapts to unfavourable international situations and calibrates the jihad in Kashmir accordingly. This is something that holds important lessons for those in India who once again have started suffering from the delusion that Pakistan army has realised the futility of the jihad and that therefore the time is ripe for striking a workable deal with Pakistan. Arif believes that the appointment of Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani as army chief signals "a continued strengthening of Pakistani support for jihadi groups". He quotes an HM commander as saying that the jihadis "never had it so good since 1999".

    In a clear indictment of the Pakistani policy of unending jihad against India, Arif writes that "in the spring of 2007, the ISI arranged several meetings between a group of Pakistani and Kashmiri jihadis and the Afghan Taliban...these meetings were aimed at creating coordination between the two jihads, in Afghanistan and in Kashmir...As a result of these meetings, some Pakistani jihadi groups joined their Afghan comrades in the tribal areas of Pakistan and also inside Afghanistan. However, most importantly, more jihadis were pushed across the LoC or use other routes to reach India...In a new strategy, most of them were ordered to establish sleeper cells". The aim of this link-up is apparently to reduce Indian support to the Karzai government and Arif speculates that the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul is probably a result of this new strategy.

    Given that it now appears only to be a matter of time before India and Pakistan re-start the stalled dialogue process, this book should be an eye opener for the Indian negotiators. While negotiations are always a preferred way to resolve disputes, they will never be fruitful until and unless there is a genuine desire on both sides to seek some sort of a middle ground on which a deal can be struck. But if negotiations are only a smokescreen or a diversionary tactic for a nefarious game-plan, then quite obviously the negotiations will be a dialogue of the deaf. The book, Shadow War, only reinforces the apparent futility of any dialogue with Pakistan at this stage.

*******************************************************************

    <1250 Words>                    25^th June, 2009

*******************************************************************

BACK TO SQUARE ONE

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

     Regardless of the spin that is being put on the reasons for India going back to the dialogue table with Pakistan, the fact remains that the Pakistanis were correct in their assessment that the Indians did not have what it takes to stick to the hard-line that the Indian leadership had taken vis-a-vis Pakistan after the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. Even at that time, the Pakistanis were confident that all the tough talk by the Indians was only that. They had made light of the show of outrage by the Indian establishment and suggested that domestic politics – four crucial Indian states were in the midst of an election and the general election was just a few months away – was behind the decision of the Indian government to suspend the bilateral dialogue process. The Pakistanis were cocksure that after the elections the Indians would be back on the talks table. And if the Indians continued to play hard-ball, the Americans would make sure that they fell in line, as indeed they have done. What is most galling, however, is the timing of resumption of dialogue. Coming as it does barely a fortnight after the release of the Lashkar-e-Taiba founder, Hafiz Saeed, it almost appears as though India has rewarded Pakistan for this subterfuge.

    Surely, the government of India owes an explanation to the Indian people for the volte-face in Yekaterinburg. It is simply not good enough for the bureaucrats to say that they "don't want to give the terrorists a veto" or that they "don't want to set any markers for resumption of the dialogue because then the terrorists know what they have to do to stop the process". Even worse is the argument that India has no choice, much less option, except to talk to Pakistan to resolve bilateral problems. Has it taken these people over six months to realise this simple reality? Didn't all these arguments hold true even after the 26/11 attacks took place? What then was the point of derailing the dialogue process? What has India achieved or what has changed in all these months that made India resume the dialogue process?

Indeed, if talks are the only option left, as is being made out by the Indian government, then it obviously follows that the dialogue process between India and Pakistan must continue no matter what the provocation. This is so for two reasons. First, rather than reacting in a knee-jerk manner and suspending the dialogue, perhaps India would have been better off by using the dialogue process to press home its demands on Pakistan to curb terrorism against India, especially since the Pakistanis were bending over backwards to keep the dialogue process on track. What is more, the peace process is not being held only for the benefit of Pakistan, but also because it served India's interests. If India thought it has something to gain from the peace process then who was India trying to punish by refusing to talk until Pakistan met some minimum conditions? And, by now agreeing to resume talks without a single of these conditions being met, who has India harmed more – Pakistan or itself?

Secondly, it makes little sense to adopt a hard-line position which you don't have either the will or the capacity or both to sustain for any length of time. It is even worse to take such a position when the other side knows that it is only a matter of time and right amount of pressure before you resile from your hard-line position. In the end you damage your credibility in the eyes of your own people as well as rest of the world.

All this should have been known to the mandarins in the foreign office. But the problem is that while earlier we had political leaders thinking that they could leave their mark on history by solving all problems with Pakistan, now some of the Babus too have started deluding themselves that they can make a substantial contribution to make in terms of breaking the Indo-Pak logjam. While in principle there is nothing wrong with harbouring such sentiments, the question is whether these people are correct in their appreciation and understanding of the situation. In other words, have the objective conditions that obtain changed to a point where these people are justified in their efforts? Or is it the case that their romantic notions about Indo-Pak ties has made them embark on a mission that is doomed to end in failure.

One common argument in favour of re-engaging the Pakistanis is that there are enough indications to suggest that President Asif Zardari is genuinely serious in seeking good relations with India. So too is the case with some other important political players in Pakistan, including Nawaz Sharif. About Asif Zardari it is said that he is very clear on three things: one, defeating the Taliban; two, closer cooperation with Iran; and three, normalising relations with India. While Asif Zardari's intentions must be welcomed and even encouraged, India must also ask whether he, or for that matter any other political leader, has the capability to a) enter into a deal with India, and b) deliver on such a deal. Can Zardari or even Nawaz Sharif make the Pakistan army read from the same page on relations with India? Are they in a position to veto the army in case it opposes a middle of the road deal with India? And if the answer to these questions is negative, or even 'can't be sure', then perhaps extreme caution and not exuberance or unnecessary optimism about the future of relations with Pakistan would be in the order of things.

    Perhaps, it is a sign of a cautious approach that the decision to bring the composite dialogue process back on track will be taken at the political level after the foreign secretaries of the two countries meet and discuss the issue of terrorism. But the foreign secretaries meeting could just as well be another fig-leaf, no different from the joint anti-terror mechanism that was devised to save the peace process after the Mumbai train bombings. In either case, the resumption of the dialogue process appears unavoidable. All that India can do after the foreign secretaries meet is to hold out for some more time before going back to the talks table. For India to stay away from the dialogue process for any length of time is now no longer a tenable position to take.

    The lessons of the post-26/11 diplomacy are clear. Since on its own India doesn't have any way to ensure compliance from Pakistan, it depends on the support of the Western powers to make Pakistan behave. As long as India remains dependent on outside powers to pull its chestnuts out of the fire in Pakistan, it will perforce have to follow the nudges and shoves that the West – in particular, the US – gives it on Pakistan. Perhaps, these are the wages of entering into a 'strategic partnership' with a superpower. The big question now is whether the demands of the superpower will remain limited to asking India to reassure Pakistan that it poses no security threat to them. Or will these demands extend to asking India to give Pakistan what it seeks on Kashmir. If it is only the former then India would be more than willing to play along. But if it is the latter, then India will have to make a simple choice: It can either tell the Americans to go take a walk or else the Indian babus can tell the people that India had abandoned Kashmir in order to give Kalavati electricity generated through nuclear power plants imported from the US.

********************************************************************

    <1280 Words>                    21^st June, 2009

*******************************************************************

WITHERING WRIT OF THE PAKISTANI STATE

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

The devastating suicide bombing of the Pearl Continental hotel in Peshawar, which followed within days of a similar attack on the ISI office in Lahore, is a rude reminder, if ever one was needed, that Pakistan's war against the Taliban and sundry Islamists is far from anywhere near a closure. If anything, the security situation is likely to get much worse before it gets any better, if at all. Even as the Pakistan army opens new fronts against the Islamists to oust them from the areas they control, the Islamists are widening the arena of conflict by striking at high-value and high-visibility targets in urban centres like Peshawar, Lahore, Islamabad, and Karachi. The targets selected by the Islamists have not only demonstrated their reach and their ability to hit the Pakistani state where it hurts the most, but have also dealt a body blow to the confidence of the people in the ability of the state and its security services to protect them from the depredations of the Islamists.

Clearly, Pakistan is in the throes of a conflict that it cannot afford to lose and probably lacks the material resources, ideological commitment and moral fibre, strategic clarity, social cohesion, political will and consensus, and most of all, the military single-mindedness required to win. Although both the supporters of the war effort, and its detractors, agree that this is going to be a very long haul, there doesn't seem to be an adequate appreciation, much less any preparation, of all the measures and reforms that need to be undertaken to win this war. Worse, there is utter confusion as to who the bad guys really are and the reasons why this war is being fought.

What, after all, is the big idea for which this war is being fought? Is it to preserve the way of life of the Pakistani elite? Is it a war for protecting traditional social and cultural values? Is it a war to define what is or is not Islam? Is it a war for a liberal, modern, progressive Pakistan or is it merely a war for the survival of the state? Is the war against both the methods adopted by the Taliban as well as their version of Islam, or is it the case that while the Taliban version of Islam is acceptable (with a few tweaks here and there) the opposition is only to their methods? Is this a war which is being fought only to sustain the flow (or should we say flood) of dollars coming into the Pakistan economy? Is it a war being fought purely because of the immense US pressure (military and economic) but for which the Pakistanis would have handled the Taliban in a very different way?

The answers to these questions become unavoidable every time Pakistani officials talk of imposing the 'writ of the state', or when they rather pompously declare that no one will be allowed to challenge the 'writ of the state'. Perhaps this is a phrase that is not properly understood by the people who keep mouthing it tirelessly. What, after all, do they mean by the 'writ of the state'? Surely it must mean more than just acquiring the control of a particular place by the police and army after forcing millions of people out of their homes and then flattening entire towns and villages by artillery shelling and aerial bombardment.

No doubt, retaining the monopoly over coercion by all means possible constitutes an essential element in enforcing the 'writ of the state'. But what use is it to establish the authority and majesty of the state if the social contract that operates is not that of the state but of the Taliban. Indeed, matters are fast reaching a stage where even if the Taliban are decimated, their ideas and indeed the social and cultural mores that have been mandated by them will survive. In other words, the Islamisation, rather Salafi-isation or Arabisation, of Pakistan is not likely to end with the defeat of the Islamists or the Taliban.

The facts on the ground suggest that while the Pakistan army claims to have wrested the physical control of many areas from the Taliban, albeit at a very high human cost, psychologically the Taliban remain pretty much on the ascendant, not only in the areas where they held a sway, but also in areas where their presence was supposed to be negligible. The signs of this are everywhere: one letter to the main CDs market in Lahore, and the next day all the shopkeepers made a public bonfire of all pornographic CDs in their shops; in Muzaffarabad people are scared of hiring women workers and are considering firing women employees after receiving a threat from the Taliban; doctors in Peshawar have started wearing Shalwar Kameez instead of trousers and shirts which have been declared un-Islamic; music and CD shops and barbers have been forced to change their line of business; there are markets in NWFP and Quetta where women are forbidden.

Obviously people take the diktat of the Taliban far more seriously than they respect the laws made by the Pakistani state, which they flout with impunity. What is more, while the Taliban enforce their laws even on the pain of death, the state appears incapable of ensuring compliance with the laws it makes. This being the state of affairs in places where the Taliban influence is more notional than real, it is hardly surprising then that in places where the Taliban have held sway, not many people are willing to defy them. So much so that despite the army's claims of having cleared many areas of the Taliban, the fear and terror of the Taliban lingers on, more so after incidents of renewed Taliban activity in some of the areas from where the Taliban were supposed to have been thrown out.

The failure of the army to so far kill or capture even a single top ranking Taliban commander has added to the sense of disquiet among the people, many of whom are still not entirely convinced or continue to doubt that the army is no longer patronising the Taliban or that the army is not playing favourites among the Taliban leadership or even that the army has finally decided to give up the use of Taliban as strategic assets once and for all. The sheer magnitude of distrust in the state and its security forces, coupled with the growing anger over the ineffective and inefficient handling of the Internally Displaced People (IDPs) is going the severely compromise the image of the Pakistani state in the eyes of these people, many of who have probably lost their homes forever because their towns and villages have little or no chance of ever again becoming habitable.

Ironically, unlike the Punjab where there is a tendency to romanticise the Taliban, many of the people from NWFP, especially those who have suffered the Taliban, have no love lost for them. And yet, the treatment these people have received at the hands of the Pakistani state is in some ways worse than what was inflicted upon them by the Taliban. Indeed, the greatest danger to the writ of the Pakistani state is not so much from the Taliban as it is from the disaffection, disillusionment and disenchantment among the people in whose name the war is being fought. Unless the Pakistani state can provide succour (and not lip-service) to the people affected by the war, and at the same time initiates on a war footing reforms that firmly put Pakistan on a liberal, progressive path, the writ of the Pakistani state will continue to wither away, and that too at an alarming pace.

********************************************************************

    <1290 Words>                    12^th June, 2009

*********************************************************************

HAFIZ SAEED'S RELEASED USING OLDEST TRICK IN THE BOOK

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

    Why is anyone surprised that Hafiz Saeed, the chief of the international terrorist organisation Jamaatud Dawa (JuD), has been released by the Lahore High Court, ostensibly on grounds of lack of sufficient evidence proving his involvement in acts of terrorism? If anything, Hafiz Saeed's release conforms to a well-established pattern of behaviour on part of the Pakistani state especially when it comes to prosecuting terrorists who are closely associated with Pakistani intelligence agencies and have been very active and obedient in following the orders and instructions to export murder and mayhem in India and other parts of the world.

    As it now transpires, the entire case against Hafiz Saeed was, right from the beginning, nothing more than eyewash. After the international pressure that was mounted on Pakistan in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks last November, it was no longer possible for Pakistan not to be seen to be taking some action against the perpetrators and planners of the mass murders in Mumbai. Only, the action taken was no different from what had been done numerous times in the past. The terrorists and their handlers were arrested with great fanfare and taken in from the front door, only to be let out from the back door, which often enough doubles up as the front door of the Pakistani courts.

    In a way, the oldest trick in the book of the police has been used to let the terrorists to get away scot free, but of course after putting up an elaborate charade in the law courts. The modus operandi is sickeningly familiar: first the terrorist is booked on very weak charges and then the case is made even weaker by presenting extremely flimsy evidence against the accused before the judges. Once the court acquits the accused, it is pretty much the end of the matter, as is evident from the rather disingenuous, if self-righteous, statement issued by Pakistan's foreign office spokesman: "It is best not to comment on a court judgement...Polemics and unfounded insinuations cannot advance the cause of justice in civilized societies. Legal processes cannot and must not be interfered with".

    It is of course quite another matter that the Pakistani authorities don't allow such legal niceties (or if you will legal fiction) to come in the way of taking action against people who are seen to be enemies of the state. To jog the memory of the Pakistani foreign office spokesman: just a couple of weeks back, three prominent Baloch political activists were picked up by the Pakistani intelligence agencies from the office of their lawyer and then brutally murdered, their bodies mutilated; there is also the case of hundreds of 'missing people' who were made to disappear because the authorities felt they posed a threat to the state of Pakistan and that it would be a waste of time and effort to use the due process of law to bring these people to book.

    Obviously, such extra-legal measures were never going to be used against Hafiz Saeed. He is, after all, a strategic asset of the Pakistani establishment. No surprise then that despite the Attorney General of Pakistan presenting 'secret documents' linking JuD with al Qaeda, the court ruled that "prima facie the government has no sufficient grounds to detain the petitioners [Hafiz Saeed and his associate, Col. (retd) Nazir Ahmed] for preventive measures".

Clearly, either the so-called 'secret documents' contained no real evidence or else the judges preferred to ignore the material contained in these documents. The latter case could be because of one of two reasons: first, the judges were cowed down by the firepower of the JuD; and second, many judges in Pakistan increasingly share an ideological affinity with the Islamists and this could have tilted their ruling in favour of Hafiz Saeed. But it is entirely possible that regardless of the ideological proclivities of the judges, the evidence presented could never hold in any court

    Given the extremely close relationship between the JuD and the Pakistan Army, it is unimaginable that the Pakistani authorities will ever produce any material evidence against the JuD leadership. After all, such evidence would tantamount to a mea culpa on part of the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment that raised, nurtured and used organisations like the JuD and its military wing, Lashkar-e-Taiba, as instruments for attaining strategic objectives. Even if the military and intelligence establishment was to somehow whitewash its own role and present the case against the JuD/LeT, they cannot afford the possibility of people like Hafiz Saeed exposing the role played by the Pakistani state agencies in sponsoring and exporting terrorism in India, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Bangladesh, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and even the US and UK.

    Apart from the fear of exposure, there is another factor that must be bearing upon the Pakistani authorities as far as the JuD/LeT leadership is concerned – the emergence of this organisation as a virtual state within the state. The JuD has been steadily replacing the Pakistani state in the field of education, health, and other welfare activities. Its cadres have been more efficient and effective than the Pakistani state machinery in providing relief to people affected by both natural calamities (Kashmir earthquake and the floods in Balochistan) as well as man-made disasters like the displacement of nearly 3 million people during the military operations in Swat, Buner and Dir.

More worrisome is the army of jihadis that the LeT has raised over the years. In a path-breaking book, 'Shadow War: The Untold Story of Jihad in Kashmir', Pakistani journalist Arif Jamal reveals that nearly 200,000 militants have been trained in the LeT jihadi camps and that the infrastructure has expanded so much that even the ISI has lost track of its scale. According to Arif, the LeT has "a global agenda in which Kashmir is no more than a training ground". He writes that the LeT is an emerging threat, one that is even more powerful and dangerous than the al Qaeda. Add to this the fact that like Sufi Mohammad of Swat fame, Hafiz Saeed too considers parliament, democracy, and indeed, the constitution un-Islamic. It is therefore not difficult to imagine the danger that the JuD/LeT pose to the Pakistani state, more so since the LeT's power base lies in Pakistan's heartland – Punjab.

While the reluctance of the Pakistani state to dismantle and destroy the LeT/JuD arises partly from the fear of creating a civil war like situation in Punjab and partly because the military continues to see the LeT as a useful instrument against India (and also against the Taliban), it is clear that the longer the Pakistani state delays action against the LeT, the more difficult it will become to slay this monster. The problem is likely to get worse now that Pakistan's 'independent' judiciary has granted both legitimacy and respectability to the JuD to carry out its murderous business with impunity.

On its part, the Pakistani government confronts a ticklish problem: if despite being the head of an internationally proscribed terror outfit, Hafiz Saeed can be set free by the Pakistani judiciary, then either the court has acquitted Saeed wrongly, or else the ban on JuD has been imposed wrongly. Chances are that Pakistan will obfuscate this obvious contradiction by not lifting the ban but at the same time allowing the JuD to continue with its business. This will be the best of both worlds – the international community will be satisfied, while Hafiz Saeed will also be willing to play along.

*******************************************************************

    <1260 Words>                    4^th June, 2009

*********************************************************************