Dangerous Encounters By Zahid Hussain

Though international pressure may have toned down India’s war rhetoric, the inherent danger of border clashes turning into a wider conflagration is very much a reality. Pakistan’s belated efforts to curb Islamic militant groups has failed to appease India which is using the US “war on terrorism” to force Pakistan’s hand.

India began amassing troops along the Line of Control and on the borders with Pakistan immediately after the December 13 attack on the Indian parliament. Within two weeks India had moved more than 49 divisions of troops, as well as a number of missiles into offensive positions in what is seen as the biggest ever troop deployment in the area for more than 50 years. “This kind of Indian military build-up was not in place even during the 1971 and 1965 wars,” says a senior Pakistani military official. Both countries came to the brink of war on December 21 and December 22 when Indian airforce jets were loaded and put on an offensive alert during General Musharraf’s visit to China. “It was a very close call,” says a senior Pakistani military official.

It is quite apparent that the Vajpayee government is blatantly trying to use the December 13 attack, for which it blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammed, to mount a military action in Azad Kashmir. The Indians went all out to use current international anti-terrorism sentiments to push Pakistan into a corner and settle the Kashmir issue to its own advantage. Significantly enough, Indian belligerence was followed by a statement from a senior Indian general that his forces were in a position to capture Azad Kashmir. The Indian strategy was apparently based on the premise that in the prevailing international situation it would be impossible for Pakistan to use nuclear weapons.

Delhi’s threat of war has not only brought Pakistan under tremendous pressure, but also succeeded in rallying international support to pressurise Pakistan to crack down on Islamic militant groups. Despite General Musharraf’s support for the US-led coalition, the Indians have managed to shift the onus on Pakistan to ease regional tensions. According to highly placed Pakistani official sources, General Musharraf has not been left with much choice but to move against those Islamic groups closely linked with the Taliban in the military government’s most serious crackdown yet against Islamic militancy.

The action also marks the end of a two-decade long “unholy” alliance between the Islamic militant groups and the military. Most of these organisations which have been fighting Indian forces in Kashmir have been patronised by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which has not only provided them guerrilla training, but also weapons and funding. Now with the ISI abruptly pulling its support line, these groups have been reduced to little more than paper tigers. Given the close links between the militant groups and the government, there should have been no problem for the military to round them up. The virtual lack of any resistance from the Islamic militant groups has also shattered the myth of their perceived clout and influence, clearly indicating that their very existence was dependent on military support.

Although the crackdown has largely been inspired by pressure from the United States and the looming threat of war with India, it also reflects the military government’s new thinking that its reliance on the Islamic militants for the solution of the Kashmir issue has been counter-productive. “There is a growing realisation that militancy has not yielded any positive results in Kashmir,” says a high-ranking Pakistani diplomat. “There is no change in our policy on the Kashmir issue, but there is a shift in approach. The emphasis will now be on a political struggle rather than on guerrilla action.”

The ISI’s involvement in the Kashmiri struggle deepened in the mid-’90s when Pakistani-based groups like Harkatul Mujahideen and Lashkar-i-Taiba became the dominant guerilla forces that sidelined indigenous Kashmiri groups. There was also an attempt to “Islamise” the Kashmiri freedom movement, with disastrous long-term effects. The “guest fighters,” most of them from the Punjab and other parts of Pakistan, alienated the local Kashmiris by trying to impose their own interpretation of hardline Islam. Pleas from local Kashmiri leaders to Pakistan to refrain from sending in guerilla fighters fell on deaf ears. Pakistan’s short-sighted policy helped the Indians twist the Kashmiris’ struggle for self-determination to a foreign-sponsored terrorist movement and Delhi used the influx of “foreign fighters” to intensify its state terrorism. The goal of Kashmiri freedom remained elusive while thousands of Kashmiris were killed. Nothing could have served Indian interests better when the Lashkar killed two Indian soldiers last year in an attack on Delhi’s Red Fort and then vowed to extend the war to the Indian mainland.

The rise of the jihadi groups had even more serious domestic implications. Under the patronage of the military establishment they openly recruited volunteers giving rise to a new militant culture. Armed jihadi groups virtually became a state within a state. Given free rein to flout the law of the land, militant groups were free to hold public rallies while mainstream political parties were not. To the shock of the international community, Maulana Masood Azhar after his release from an Indian jail in the Indian Airlines hijacking case, went on a campaign to recruit “half a million” Muslim volunteers and called for the destruction of India. All this jingoism and bellicosity that reigned unchecked was to cost Pakistan dear in the future.

Most of these groups, particularly Jaish-e-Muhammed, were closely linked with Sipah-e-Sahaba and directly involved in sectarian violence. The spillover of Kashmiri militancy into Pakistan has also been cause for concern for successive governments whose attempts to take action have seemingly been held hostage by the ISI. There is strong evidence that the Jaish was directly involved in sectarian killings, while spiralling sectarian violence involving jihadi groups threatened to plunge the country into a religious war. The militant groups also posed a serious challenge to General Musharraf’s liberal policies. Despite the military government’s decision to restrict the activities of jihadi and sectarian groups, the policy was not effectively implemented for fear of a backlash, while the government’s inaction was also influenced by concerns that it may harm the Kashmiri struggle.

The military authorities have arrested 300 militants in a nation-wide sweep over the last one week. Most of the detained militants belong to Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, the groups designated as terrorists by the United States, and blamed for the attack on the Indian parliament. The crackdown forced Jaish and Lashkar to move their headquarters to Kashmir, while other Islamic guerrilla groups have closed down operations in Pakistan and advised their supporters to go underground to escape the crackdown. A Jaish-e-Mohammed spokesman said the group was shifting its headquarters to Kashmir and would confine their activities to the disputed territory. He said Jaish leaders would infiltrate Indian-controlled Kashmir, despite heavy Indian security at the borders. “We have decided to shift offices to Indian-occupied-Kashmir,” says Mohammad Abdullah, a Jaish leader. “We will open our offices on the mountains of Kashmir and no one can stop us from doing this.” Other groups have taken similar steps to avoid arrest. “There are no offices of our organisation in Pakistan any more,” says Yahya Mujahid, a Lashkar-e-Taiba spokesman. Most of the group’s activists have gone into hiding after the arrest of their leader, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, earlier this week.

According to Pakistani military officials, action against the militants will continue as their activities still pose a serious threat to the country’s security. “We are closely watching and monitoring activities of certain groups and organisations. If they are found to be involved in any kind of illegal activities, action will be taken against them,” says Aziz Khan, a foreign ministry spokesman. The government, however, still appears reluctant to clamp down on other Islamic groups in the face of warnings from some Islamic leaders who have threatened General Musharraf with retaliation for what they describe as “treachery,” Amirul Azeem, a Jamaat-i-Islami leader, said General Musharraf’s action has “broken the hearts of freedom-loving Kashmiris.” The General’s action has, however, won the support of liberal Pakistanis.

The list of suspected terrorists was delivered to Pakistan the day after the military government arrested Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group accused of planning the attack on the Indian parliament. Pakistani officials maintained that many of the fugitives named by India were not even on Pakistani soil. They have denied the presence of Ibrahim in the country, though some reports suggest that Ibrahim is living in Karachi under the protection of Pakistani military intelligence.

The military government appears increasingly concerned about a possible backlash from the Islamic parties over the latest crackdown. Extremist groups are already on the warpath against the military regime, after General Musharraf abandoned the Taliban and supported the military action against Osama bin Laden. “Our latest action against militant groups fighting in Kashmir may give a fillip to Islamic extremists to whip up opposition against the government,” claims a senior military official. “It will not be as easy to change our long-standing policy on Kashmir as it has been to manoeuvre the shift in our Afghan policy.”