K.N. Pandita

When Yasin declared himself Chief of JKLF Kashmir, Amanullah Khan, the initial sponsor based in Luton, UK, said the organization had been hijacked. Nobody could say whether he was indirectly castigating Yasin or ISI. The ISI needed a valley-based JKLF chapter to absolve it of the stigma of murdering Indian diplomat Mhatre in UK.

Hashim Qureshi, who says he rejected ISI’s plan of recruiting Kashmiri Muslim youth for terrorist activity, claims that Amanullah Khan got Mhatre murdered through his PoK activists of KLF in UK as he knew the Indian government would, in reprisal, execute Maqbul Bhat, the original founder of KLF, and in this way a big obstacle in his (Amanullah’s) path would be removed.

Hashim had throughout rejected ISI’s plan of making Kashmiris fodder for the Indian defense establishment. Nothing distanced Amanullah from ISI once Maqbul Bhat and Hashim Qureshi were no more on the scene.

ISI created the parallel branch of JKLF under local leadership (Yasin Malik) in Kashmir. It knows that Kashmiris are more comfortable with a local rather than non-Kashmiri leader. This is despite the fact that Amanullah is not a Punjabi (he is a Bhautia Muslim) and speaks Kashmiri, and has also studied in Srinagar.

Yasin has been visiting Pakistan under the garb of a peacenik. His present visit has led to a row when he was recorded sharing dais with rabid anti-Indian Hafiz Saeed of Pakistani organization al Dawa wal Irshad and the chief of LeT implicated in 26/11 attack in Mumbai.

Hafiz Saeed is a patent terrorist on whose head the US once placed ten million dollar prize. UN and USA banned his organization.

Yasin says he has met with Hafiz earlier also and this time he spent just ten minutes on latter’s platform in Pakistan.

Yasin’s presence on the dais with Hafiz Saeed has been objected to by some quarters in the country including the ruling coalition and the opposition. Even impartial commentators, too, have raised eyebrow. Their question is how come somebody with Indian passport is meeting and talking to the enemies of India like Hafiz Saeed in Pakistan?

LeT is the lap-child of ISI and the Army. It has closest connection with the Army. The Army calls it the frontline of Pakistan’s defence.

Should or should not have Yasin decided to be on Hafiz’s dais is the question under discussion. To him, and to everybody of his ilk, Hafiz Saeed is an Islamic crusader and not a terrorist. As he is committed to the “liberation of Kashmir from Indian occupation”, Yasin and all separatists in Kashmir idolize him as the Islamic warrior.

Yasin met him or meets him as a Muslim committed to “liberating Islamic land of Kashmir from the clutches of an infidel”. That is not only Yasin’s forte but also the general approach of ambivalent leadership in Kashmir reflected in the recent utterances of many of them following the execution of Afzal Guru. Mirwaiz, too, is reported to have had secret meetings with Hafiz Saeed and Salahu’d-Din.

Keep this in mind, and gauge the tone and tenor of speakers at the Kashmir Day rally organized by Hafiz Saeed-led Jamaatud Dawa on 5th of February at Shohada Mosque in Lahore. The rally expected a large number of 50,000 participants but actually just 5.000 people attended. Contrary to good indigenous publicity, there was little international coverage of the event.

Not ready to concede its political status, JUD decided to go solo. It did not use the platform of Difa-e Pakistan Council (DPC) although other religious groups were asked to send their representatives.

DPC Chairman Mualana Samiul Haq stayed at the rally for a few minutes only but made bombast in his short address saying “the power of jihad had disintegrated three superpowers — Britain, the USSR and the US. Now it was India’s turn.” But, “what he doesn’t realize is that the power of jihad is also on the brink of disintegrating Pakistan. The state has little writ, not even in the capital Islamabad”, wrote a Pakistani commentator in current Friday Times issue.

The leaders of the two largest outfits in the DPC did not attend the rally — Fazlur Rehman Khalil, head of the defunct Harakatul Mujahideen, and Mohammad Ahmad Ludhianvi, head of Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ). Junior leaders of the groups represented them.

Muavia Azam Tariq from ASWJ, son of deceased cleric Azam Tariq, said he would not let the government re-open supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan. The organization was reiterating its earlier claim of disallowing drone attacks on Waziristan terrorist. But he did not know that despite DPC’s resistance, NAT supplies have already been reopened, about seven months ago.

Ali Shah Geelani, chief of his own faction of Hurriyat Conference in Srinagar, addressed the event on the phone. He said the Kashmir issue must be resolved through tri-partite dialogue. This is his usual repeat exercise. But are their takers of the tripartite solution among policy planners in Pakistan? Before that, the speakers at the rally had been raising their fists in the air vowing to free Kashmir through jihad. They did not seem to agree on whether they wanted to liberate Kashmir, Gurdaspur, or Delhi.

Ziaullah Shah Bokhari of Muttahida Jamiat Ahle Hadith said Pakistan should first take back Gurdaspur, because it was part of Pakistan, before talking about Kashmir. Jamaatud Dawa number two Prof Abdur Rehman Makki, who is said to be among the best speakers in the group, said the Mujahideen would decorate Delhi like a bride on their way to Srinagar.

Elaborating the statement Qari Muhammad Yaqub said the Mujahideen would conquer India and “enslave their women, becoming bridegrooms of Delhi.”

Hafiz Saeed made a 30-minute speech. He said India was a terrorist country, as admitted by its own home minister, and that he was only working for peace and humanity. But he also said Jamaatud Dawa would play a great role in India’s destruction, and that Pakistan would conquer not just Kashmir but the entire India through jihad.

Keeping the tone and tenor of these utterances in mind, the question one may put to Yasin Malik and others of his ilk is this: Where is the third option of which the Kashmir Hurriyatis including Yasin are talking about?

How do you imagine that after “conquering India followed by the conquest of Kashmir” (in their words), are they going to accept your trilateral option? Would Yasin explain what will be the position of his party after Pakistani fundamentalist organizations have hypothetically achieved their objective?

Lastly, when the Indian and External Affairs Ministries know it better than we do what the ideology of people with whom Yasin and others of Hurriyat are hobnobbing is how was the passport, short time or long time, issued to him? Are we right in dismissing the quip of Mustafa Kamal who said that “they are all double agents”? What a great truth said so innocently.