Crumbling Taliban and Kashmir 'Jehad'
Men, Matters & Memories

By M L Kotru

As the seemingly mighty Taliban totter to their doom in Afghanistan there is one feature of the Taliban collapse which may not be without interest to use in our fight against Pakistan sponsored terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan, more vociferously after Gen. Pervez Musharraf took over, has for the past two years been tom-tomming the terrorist activity in Jammu and Kashmir as an indigenous freedom movement. When it suits him, the General forgets having described the terrorist phenomenon in the Indian State as a jihad, making it incumbent on all Muslims to help their Muslim brethren in Jammu and Kashmir. It's another matter that Pakistan's principal plenipotentiary in Srinagar Ali Shah Geelani insists on it being an Islamic Jihad rather than a movement to assert the Kashmir (Muslim) right to freedom, or independence, if you will.

Much against my better judgement, even if I were to assume for a moment that the terrorist movement in Kashmir is wholly indigenous, let's look at what the indigenous Afghan Taliban have achieved when challenged. The Taliban, despite a decade of indoctrination and fanatical religious motivation provided in Islamic seminaries across Pakistan and Afghanistan, seemed to lose interest when confronted by the might of the Americans or those backed by the US-led alliance. The ones who have chosen to stay back and fight are all from Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda drawn, from many Arab lands, Pakistan, Chechnya et al.

They are the so-called "Afghan Arabs" who fought alongside the Afghan, Mujahideen in their war against the former Soviet Union in the decade of the 80s. Osama, who had been deeply involved in the anti USSR operations, before he returned to Saudi Arabia and back to Afghanistan after being externed by the Sudanese, took over the reins of the Taliban, along with Mullah Mohammad Omar on his second coming to the region, as it were. By then the Pakistan Inter Service Intelligence had vastly increased its reach and influence among the Pushtun's. Osama, Omar and ISI, thus set about strengthening the Taliban movement, recruiting young Islamists from all over the globe to the numerous madrassas in Pakistan and Afghanistan training them before deployment in Afghanistan.

The Afghan component of the Taliban, mainly drawn from among the majority Pushtun tribes, did profess allegiance to the Taliban doctrine but their basic loyality, as it appears in retrospect, stayed with their tribal concerns. That's why we saw Kabul being surrendered with almost not a shot fired. The drama at Konduz where Afghans and "Afghan Arab's (from within the Taliban ranks) fought among themselves before the former chose to surrender, only highlights the conflicting interests of the Afghans and those who had joined to fight on their behalf. The Pakistanis for their part looked the most embarrassed by the Konduz episode.

Imagine one of the prime US allies and the President of a "frontline" State, Gen Musharraf pleading with the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw for the safety of the Pakistanis fighting by the side of the Al Qaeda and Taliban men in Konduz. An unambiguous no from Straw, couldn't have been more politely worded. He rejected the suggestion in his meeting with the Pakistani military leader in Islamabad and later the same day at a joint Press conference with Abdul Sattar, the Foreign Minister.

The message in simple words was: "You cannot ride two horses at the same time, Mr President". And that's precisely what Musharraf was trying to do. Having denied the presence of the Pakistani hand in Afghanistan or among the Taliban how exactly did Musharraf seek to intercede on behalf of the Pakistani Jihadis at Konduz? After all he couldn't have been unaware of the fact that some three dozen other Pakistanis had been killed in the US aerial attack on Kabul immediately after the Americans launched their assault on the Afghan capital. Reports have since persisted from the United Front, comprising the Northern Alliance and some former Mujahideen warlords, that Pakistani aircraft have led some stealthy missions to Konduz and an a other place to evacuate senior ISI operatives and military advisers, including a Brigadier, from the besieged encampments inside Taliban-held territories. If this latter allegation is true it could not have gone unnoticed by the American surveillance net and may indeed have contributed to reports about the US - led Alliance developing doubts about Pakistani commitment. Gen Musharraf may not personally be suspect in the eyes of the Alliance but the ground reality is that the continuing presence of Pakistanis and some ISI elements within the Taliban-Al Qaeda ranks has come to be accepted as a hard reality.

That may be why the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld too has gone on record that no mercy can be shown to those fighting for causes espoused by Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Then, there is the other possibility. Pervez Musharraf may seem to be in total command of the situation in Pakistan currently but neither he not his advisers can ignore the strong undercurrent of active sympathy among a large section of people particularly among the Pashtuns and Baloch's, for the Taliban. It doesn't really matter to this section of opinion in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province or Balochistan that the Afghan Pashtuns themselves are more than disenchanted with the Taliban. There is another possibility, though. The shared tribal loyalties across the border may help the Pakistani Generals to contain the initial anger shown by fellow tribesmen on the Pakistani side of the border.

More ominously for the Pakistani military leader more and more nations seem to be veering away from the long-trumpted claim by Islamabad that it has nothing to do with terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir. The existence of fundamentalist training camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir has now become an accepted fact. Equally evident is the other fact that a lot of foreign terrorists (mercenaries) are engaged in operations on the Indian State. Even the so-called indigenous militant movement, the Hizbul Mujahideen, headed by the Islamabad-based Salahuddin, has had to admit the presence in its ranks of "guest" jihadis. The just side-lined Hizb commander in Kashmir valley, Abdul Majid Dar has gone on record saying that he does not want Taliban to shift their activities to Kashmir after the debacle in Afghanistan. Even after he was removed from his command in the Valley Dar has said that he expects the guests jihadis to work "under" the command of the Hizbul Mujahideen.

Dar, a moderates, living within the Valley, realises it better than Salahuddin, that the Kashmiri Muslim civil society is in no mood to accept brutish foreign terrorists even if it means the (doubtful) realisation of the dream of independence. Even those who would want to see the foreigners continuing their operations in the Valley are, however, doubtful about the future Pakistani role in furthering terrorism in Kashmir. Islamabad may now find it increasingly hard to sell its cliched pronouncements regarding Kashmir to the West. From Bush down to Rumsfeld to Blair and Straw most leaders of the anti-Taliban alliance have declared their opposition to terrorism in all its manifestations. They have committed to help crush all terrorist movements once the war in Afghanistan is over. No more the old one about one man's terrorist being another man's freedom fighter. And herein lies the opportunity for New Delhi to set its house in Kashmir in order.

Unfortunately, the Indian leadership somehow appears to be stuck with the idea that any exercise aimed at giving Jammu and Kashmir a clean, representative and responsive administration must be preceded by an accord with Pakistan. Frankly, we should tell Pakistan to get lost if it is not interested in resolving outstanding problems in a peaceful manner. Likewise we don't have to buy Farooq Abullah's autonomy deal as one offering a solution to the problem in the State. If anything, the Farooq proposal will only aggravate the communal divide between the various regions of the State. As a first step New Delhi must ensure a free, fair and democratic election in the State. We don't have to wait for Hurriyats and their ilk to participate. If they wish to, they are welcome to do so. But the important thing is that the election should mark a new watershed in the democratic life of the State. You can be sure Farooq Abdullah will not like a free election. And the more New Delhi waits, the more there will be a flurry of legal and other trial balloons released by him. All aimed at confusing New Delhi. And, it does not take much to confuse an unfocused New Delhi.

Whose case do they plead?........
Yours Randomly

By Dr R L Bhat

As the various disabled groups and people came out to ply their trades in the Taliban free Afghanistan, one did miss the tribe of lawyers not coming out to speak or plead of justice they must have been denied advocating during all those years. Certainly no lawyer valuing his/her life would have dared stand in the way of the 'supreme leader' wanting to hang a man or woman by the goal-post of the stadium in Kabul, or prevent him from carrying out his or that of one of his underlings' wish to flog a woman, or a dozen of women for that matter, for the grave offence of studying or teaching in a school. Possibly they have eliminated all the pleaders from that soil, for pleading is a profession that can live only in a society that has a tradition, a commitment to listen to, that has judges who are not pleaders, prosecutors and executors all rolled into one. Naturally one did not see any lawyers resuming work in Kabul for there may simply be none left there. Advocates need a terror-free environment to work in to ply their trade and make their living.

Their profession is a privilege of the freedom of the people when those people have that freedom and exercise it. It is well known that during the last decade or so the courts have been virtually out of business in most of the parts of the Valley. In the early nineties when it was, so to say, the militants' heyday they had even appointed their own rola-cola judges who did all the pleading-prosecuting-judging-and-executing in large parts of the Valley. And none of them even had a nodding acquaintance with the law. It is doubtful if all the courts have resumed full function yet. Still the high court Bar Association of Kashmir has found occasion to decry the ordinance aimed to prevent terrorism. And have even force -crippled the whole Valley for a day. Every law they say is a lawyer's delight. But not this one apparently, not to this group. Certainly they would not want the terrorist to be at large and flourish to appoint laymen to posts and functions that need not only specialized knowledge of law but even a potent opponent to bring full justice to play.

In fact, the conscious citizens that they are, they must have all the arguments of freedoms and privileges of the people at the backs of their minds, even if those people happened to be terrorists menacing everybody else. They must also have an eye on the potential abuses of POTO too though none, seems to see the damning of law and justice by the terrorists hereabouts, day in and day out? Yet a strange phenomenon comes to light in this lawyers' stir in the Valley. Today all the political outfits representing the terrorist interests are out of business, so to say. Some have been described by the terrorists themselves, by reminding them of the unaccounted monies and all. Others have fallen foul with them over the shifting sands of Pak policy. Then there is dissidence within the ranks of the terrorists themselves after some have woken up to the plight they have brought the people there to. All in all, there is a vacuum of sorts in those Pak-promoting ranks.

It has happened before. It happened in the mid-nineties when another group of Kashmiri militants awoke to the devastation they had inflicted upon their society and State at alien instigations. Then there was a vacuum too. And to fill in the stand-by role sundry other organisations, even employees' organizations in one case, and kept the flame high till the masters across the border reorganized their devotees. Incidentally those employee federations did not join in the historic employee-struggle spread over long months in early nineties, nor the one in the later years of that same decade. Yet they suddenly got organised to thwart the effort of this State to throw the terrorists out. Over the long decades prior to the insurgency breaking out in a big way there were pockets and groups who kept the masters happy by doing the needful. And they have always gotten exercised, not over the plight of the people, but the waning of the destructive fires. The lawyers, for example, never protested over the summary justices that were handed out to people in these nineties. But when Hurriyat is out and militants are in the disarray, they get active to keep the sagging flags up.

A question that cannot but strike the minds is why these sections are doing this to the people. These are also the people who would never tire of telling you, in informal chats, how hard they have been hit by the terrorism and the stream-rolling that they enforce. They would be ever ready with graphic tales of the how terrorism has devastated the ethos and culture there. How it has lead to disproportionate and irrational differences in the status of peoples. How these years of ordeal have weighed upon the identity and distinction that Kashmir once was. And they would tomorrow be running for tickets from any and every winnable combination that would be in the electoral foray. You would be had put to reason out that behaviour, as we are unable to understand this present one. It was not this specific group that Bakshi once called his 'forty-lakhs' but it is quite an approximation; he included other too in that. And, to be sure the others are there too, waiting in the wings evaluating their flying apparatuses.

And all that does not answer the question why they are doing it to themselves and the people there. Are they helpless at some force that just pushes them out and they know not what they are doing? Are they astute mask-men who never give out what they really stand for and plunge into things, which they deem answer to those hidden objectives, baffling all the analysts and observers? Or are they ignoramii who know not what they do even as they plunge whole peoples and nations into chaos and confusion?