Kandahar continues to haunt Indians
Men, Matters & Memories

By M L Kotru

In a limited way Kandahar seems to continue to haunt us Indians. Notbecause of the stories one heard in one’s childhood of the famed Afghan city. Nor even because Mullah Omar, the one-eyed Amir-ul-Momnein of the Taliban in that country, had made it his headquarters. What haunts is the images of External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh landing up in Kandahar in 1999 to negotiate the release of the hijacked passengers of the Indian Airlines flight. And among the bargaining chips he had brought along with him were Maulana Masood Azhar, Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar and Saeed Omar Sheikh, all three of them released from Indian jails to be able to accompany Jaswant Singh who then was expected to strike a deal with Mullah Omar and his men, hand over the three terrorists to the latter and in return get the Mullah’s okay for the release of the hapless passengers and of the aircraft. Weakness was palmed off as diplomacy and the consequences have never ceased to haunt us.

All three released terrorists were handed over promptly by Mullah Omar to the Pakistanis, Masood Azhar to launch his Jaish-e-Mohammad, Mushtaq (Latrum) Zaragar to soon surface in Srinagar and to return to his stewardship of the AI Badr group and Saeed Sheikh, a former alumnus of the London School of Economics, who had spent some years in Indian jails, and now turns out to be one of the key players in the terrorist assault on New York and Washington. Sheikh, if you need to be reminded, is said to have sent one hundred thousand dollars to Mohamad Atta, one of the wreckers of the World Trade Centre Tower, from his Pakistani haven. The money was then disbursed by Atta among follow terrorists connected with the September 11 occurrences, And this was not the only foreign payment received by the. US-based and bin-Laden-inspired angels of death.

Masood Azhar has, of course, never looked back after his release in Kandahar. He was feted by Mullah Omar on his return visit to Kandahar after a short and rousing welcome in Karachi. Omar and Azhar were both students of the notorious Binouri seminary in Karachi, Masood Azhar after founding the Jaish-e-Mohammad declared India, US and Israel as the three greatest enemies of lslam and he hardly lost any time in announcing that his first priority would be, the liberation of Kashmir. The Jaish has since established itself as a major terrorist force, with Lashkar- e-Toiba and the Harkatul Mujahideen giving it a close run for top of honours, in Kashmir. Given his commitment and his willingness to ignore Islamabad’s authority, whenever it suits him and the Pakistani government Azhar didn’t have the slightest hestitation in claiming the authorship of’ the outrage at the Srinagar legislative complex which claimed 38 lives, most of them innocent civilians. It was only 24 hours later that he chose to disown his first claim. Not surprisingly the disclaimer came after Islamabad, realising the, damaging potential of the attack, had condemned it. But Azhar is no ordinary terrorist, as he has repeatedly demonstrated.

He is the founder and mastermind behind the Jaish-e-Mohammad that has declared a Jihad in Kashmir and which had little hesitation in claiming credit for the 38 deaths in the suicide attack on the Kashmir legislature. If the happenings in the US on September 11 bore the signature of Osama bin Laden the massacre on October 1 in Srinagar had Azhar Masood written all over it, never mind the subsequent retraction Masood Azhar is not as shadowy or mysterious a person as some are trying to make him out to be. He is a known bigot, fundamentalist who has, very close links with the Taliban, with Mullah. Omar and, of course, with Osama bin Laden. It may sound like a take off on a Delhi-based weekly’s description of him but Azhar Masood could well be described as someone who be to India what bin Laden is to the Amricans. 1 don’t know how good an orator bin Laden is but 1 have sampled some of Masood Azhar’s. He is a fiery orator with a capacity to move his audiences into a frenzy. Some of hit, speeches in Karachi, Bahawalpur and Lahore after his release at Kandahar had young men driving in droves into the fold of Jaish-e- Mohammad, And that escort of tall armed guards who always accompany him - Islamabad is supposed to have placed a ban on displaying fire-arms- gives him an awesome aura.

Given the dimensions of the menance posed by men like Masood Azhar and those of his ilk from the Lashkar (one is not quite sure under what name the newly banned Harkatul Mujahideen - at birth it was the Harkatul Ansar - will re-emerged) it is surprising that Prime Minister Vajpayee has not been able to project, in the Indian context, men like Azhar as our version of bin Laden. Vaipayee did well though in ticking off Tony Blair’s assertion that the principal concern of the anti-terrorist coalition currently was to beat the Osama-Taliban challenge. Jaswant Singh, too, may have believed that he was being very logical when he said that "a country that is part of the problem (Pakistan) is now being attempted to be used by the US towards a solution. Good luck". But the sarcasm was obviously lost on his audience of the, ground coalition.

Vajpayee was even more, blunt in stating that India disapproved of the manner in which the so-called global coalition against terrorism had ignored the harsh reality that Pakistan was a major sponsor of terrorism and was therefore not qualified to join the coalition. India was equally disturbed by the US failure to name the Jaish-e-Mohammad and the Lashkar-e-Toiba as terrorist outfits. Tony Blair tried to skirt the issue at his brief Press meeting in New Delhi but he could not possibly have missed the strong feelings of his Indian hosts on the role sought to be given to Pakistan, May be it was Tony Blair or, who knows, it may well have been the Indian disappointment, so eloquently demonstrated by Jaswant Singh in Washington, which finally persuaded President George W Bush to call the Prime Minister first, to inform him of the commencement of strike, against Afghanistan and second, and, more importantly, that his administration unequivocally condemned terrorist strikes all over the world including in Jaminu and Kashmir.

Bush, more significantly, assured Vajpayee that the Jaish-e-Mohammad would be put on the list of’terrorist organisations very soon. It was in this context that he spoke to Vajpayee of the visit to New Delhi next week of the US Secretary of State, Gen. Colin Powell, The telephone call made by Gen. Musharraf to Vajpayee on Monday may well be another link in the US efforts to mollify India. It could also be that the General wanted to be assured of Indian intentions by making that unexpected phone call about the need to lower the tension between the two countries. That suggestion sounds odd when read in the context of the unwarranted comments made by General Musharraf, if in regard to the possibility of India playing any role in evolving a new political dispensation in Afghanistan. Or, may be Gen, Musharraf was only playing to the Western gallery knowing, as he does, that both Washington and London have been left in no doubt that India does not appreciate the role assigned to Pakistan in the global war against terrorism. You don’t fight global terrorism in compartments or only where it suits the US. That was the message which Vajpayee conveyed to Tony Blair in New Delhi and which Jaswant Singh echoed in Washington.

Translate those tears, sahib' ...........
Yours Randomly

By Dr R L Bhat

Given a different time and place Farooq could have proved a patron saint of art and artists; he has that strong emotional streak that makes for a good feel of life, which is an artist's hallmark. He is moved by the tragedies, sees the truth behind the happenings and utters them too, without any of the politicians' reserves, or calculations as we generally call them. He showed that when, after first taking over the reigns of power, he openly castigated the cohorts of the late Sheikh for their greed and corruption. Again when the militancy was rearing its head in the late eighties , and administration had grown sly, he openly admitted at a rally in Kashmir that he was sick of the wily administrators and politicians and wished he could go away and be out of it all. Circles with intimate access to him, speak of how he openly blames the 'architects' of Kashmir problem not sparing even his late sire there. And, like a feel-full heart he weeps, openly bashlessly, truly.

He did it at the time he took the oath after the State saw the return of a semblance of normalcy, in the late nineties. He did it again last week when the assembly mourned the dead of the first-October attack. Many people have tried to see it as a political gimmick, but that is being uncharitable to a generous heart. It may as well have been a realization that the terrorists had kept asking for him. But isn't it always the most personal warnings that evoke the most innate emotions? We feel for others when the pain becomes personal. It is so with all men; it could be so with the very human Farooq. He is human, he is affected, he feels. But he is also a politician. A most astute one, a wily one if you like. The tears come; the heart breaks and then comes the politics and takes all away- the tears, the feelings and the human touch. When he was in wilderness in the early nineties- shall we call it the first phase of militancy ? - he most feelingly corroborated the pangs and pain of the migrants of Kashmir. He pointed unrelenting fingers at his own colleagues for having systematically bred the militancy in the valley with their devious declarations over long decades.

He castigated party-men for their and cunning. Clearly he had seen the light. Only the light could not stand the winds of clever politicking. No sooner had the elections been completed than all those clarities of vision vanished. The very people, who had been involved in the militancy indirectly, if not directly and actively, came to be the trusted man in the government. Virtual saboteurs were to restore 'peace' and normalcy. The issues that had bred the mistrust in the hearts and minds of people came to be the 'central' planks for the party and government. The proclivities that had been undermining clear nationalism came to be encouraged. And the people, who had brought about what little normalcy there was, came to be hounded out of the administrative machinery and public life. Over the next five years all the tears were forgotten. And, there began the second phase of militancy more deadly than the first, more dastardly. It has made more tears flow from the eyes of the innocent and infants, the men and women of Kashmir and brought even more innocent people in the hills and dales of Jammu into the sweep of barbaric terrorism.

The high tide of this renewed militancy struck the legislative complex and made those feel-full tears to flow again. Most believably in true faith and feeling. Most possibly, they would also dry up in the chilling draughts of hot politicking. Observers say the lines have already been said in that '...we are caught between two countries'. What countries? What we? Are we not embarking again on a path that only goes to the militants' ideologue? The seeds of militancy lie in the prevarications of the Kashmir politicians, with the post-77 National Conference at their head. They were sown when, for the political ends, a stable people were unhinged and told to 'fight' their nation for Sheikh's 'chair' that had been upturned by his own companions. They were told to fight their nation again when Farooq's chair was usurped by his own brother and sister. Indira-Sheikh accord had put all doubts on the center-State relations vis-a-vis this State at rest yet the beat and burnt of this party and leader for the last two decades has been a redefinition of that relationship.

Sheikh Abdullah with Vakil Baig and jurist. Thakur went through the whole gamut of 'central laws' and found that there was nothing that was discriminatory to the State there or undesirable, yet the 'review of central laws' has been the refrain of Farooq's ruling team for all this time. And, of course, till yesterday the terrorists were 'mistaken youth' and the security forces 'oppressors'. And, the party vowed to end all 'oppressions', whatever that was supposed to mean. Whatever that was supposed to mean did not matter. What has mattered are the connotations these cunning positions have meant to the average Kashmiri. They have meant that there are stark 'grievances' that need correction. That there are 'oppressions' that need to be fought. Incidentally, the instances that the average Kashmiri cites to substantiate his case of 'grievances' and 'oppressions' are the acts of highhan- dedness and corruption of the National Conference workers and activists. An instance being the oft-repeated 'beatings' and 'torture' of Javed Mir, Yasin Malik and now forgotten Hamid Sheikh, not to mention Shabir Shah, at the banks of NC minsiters during the eighties.

Of course, now everybody knows where the terror is manufactured, and what instigates the terrorists, what they are seeking. Also whence the flood of tears for Jammu and Kashmir is planned. But that realization needs to be translated into action. It needs be used to tell the truth of Kashmir to our own selves. To prevent more tears we need to see that the spurious 'justifications' for wrecking jihads on Kashmir go dry. That the politicking on Kashmir ceases. That the truth of emotions visits the politician's trickstry. Then nobody would need to weep, nor shed tears.