Neighbours: Afghanistan; The Fire Next Time

The Taliban's successes and the American attack on terrorist trainning camps point to the dangerous mix of fanaticism and anarchy whose effects could singe India.

It began as a struggle for azadi, but it has now become a jehad (holy war). Fanatics from more than a dozen countries find themselves drawn to Kashmir not by its scenic beauty but by a religious duty to rid it of the "Hindus". But Kashmir, as Hafiz Mohammed Sayeed, Pakistani chief of the Markaz Dawa-ul-Irshad (MDI), stresses, is only the gateway into India to liberate it and eventually the entire world from the yoke of "polytheists".

Not surprisingly, there was a quiet celebration among the Indian security forces in Kashmir on August 21 -- the day news came of the US air strikes on the Khost guerrilla training complex in Afghanistan. Graduates from institutions run by extremist religious groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan, these militants are today the driving force in conflicts against the Philippines, India, Bosnia, Chechnya, Egypt, Algeria and the US. But Kashmir remains a favoured destination. Over 1,000 of them have died there since 1990, the bulk from Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as from Bangladesh, Sudan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Chechnya, Yemen, Kazakhstan, Iraq, Iran and Turkey.

The victory of the Taliban, whose medieval fanaticism has shocked even the Ayatollahs of Iran, has created a sombre mood in Kashmir. In Srinagar, Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah warned the state Legislative Assembly on August 26, "The victory of the Taliban has posed a new threat to our security which needs to be understood and met collectively." This finds an echo in the belief of Major-General (General Staff) P.P.S. Bindra of the 15 Corps that the Taliban consolidation over Afghanistan "could lead to battle-hardened Afghans being diverted to Kashmir". Other experts, however, are more cautious. Major-General (retd) Afsir Karim, a counter-insurgency specialist, points out that the Taliban has no means of overcoming the enormous difficulties it would encounter from the terrain and the tough Indian Army.

But the challenge of the militants lies not just in Kashmir. Their "war", effectively propelled by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), now covers most of India. The bombing campaign that rocked Delhi in 1997-98 was conducted by fundamentalists trained in Pakistan. Among them were Indian recruits of the MDI and the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA). These organisations now have sympathisers across the country. It would be foolhardy in this context to be complacent about the Taliban which has disproved its critics more than once in its spectacular four-year campaign that has brought them close to absolute power in Afghanistan. Ahmed Rashid, a leading authority on the Taliban, points out that many of the members have lived in Pakistan, speak Urdu and do not see themselves as foreigners. Pakistani ulemas are their leaders who tell them that there are no national frontiers for believers.

Indian security forces have considerable experience in dealing with the "Afghanis" and are confident they can handle any challenge that may emerge. They have built up an information bank on these camps from 200 or so "graduates" they have apprehended. Among them is Rasheed, 18, who crossed over from his native Kupwara district to Pakistan occupied Kashmir (POK) and after being screened by the ISI was sent to the Al Badr Camp II run by Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen in Khost. Rasheed underwent a two-month basic training course to build up physical fitness and learnt how to use weapons and explosives. Then he underwent four months of special task training that included long marches in mountains with the recruits carrying their arms and ammunition and water bottles. "The only time the instructors allow you to halt is for offering namaz five times a day," recalls Rasheed.

Ironically, the camps the Americans attacked were, in some cases, set up with their money and aid to train Afghan Mujahideen to fight the Russian occupation in the '80s. To avoid embarrassing Pakistan, the US ignored evidence that since 1991 these camps were being used by the ISI to train Kashmiri "freedom fighters". The first set of Afghans, though, were sent from Jalalabad by Hizbe-Islami chief Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and were attached to the Hizbul Mujahideen. Another group, mainly mercenaries, came in May 1992 as the result of a deal brokered by the ISI and the Al Barq group in the Valley close to the Hurriyat leader Abdul Ghani Lone. Since then, the Afghans have been coming in as members of various Pakistani and Kashmiri groups such as the Hizbul Mujahideen, the HUA and the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The HUA, now called Harkat ul-Jehad-e-Islami, trains its cadres in the Khost area in the Zhavar, Al Badr I and other camps. This was the organisation that kidnapped six western tourists in Pahalgam in 1995. While one, an American, managed to escape and a Norwegian was beheaded, four others -- one American, two Britons, and a German -- are believed to have been executed. Osama Bin Laden, who is associated with the Salman Farsi camp used for training Arab militants, was supposed to be at the HUA camp at the time of the US attack. That camp and two others, including a Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen camp for Kashmiri militants, were reduced to rubble.

The Afghan leadership, be it the Hizbe-Islami or the Taliban, has till now not been directly involved in activities in India. It has provided training facilities and the occasional cadre, leaving the control and direction of anti-Indian operations to the Pakistanis. With things settling down in Afghanistan, the question is: where will the Taliban go next -- north and westwards towards Central Asia and Iran or east to Pakistan and India? "Their main attention would be Central Asia," says Major-General Karim, even while pointing out that the Taliban consolidation should not be taken for granted. But the Taliban, under sustained US pressure, could well go berserk. For the moment, at least, all India can do is to be vigilant and keep its fingers crossed.

Armies of Faith
Islamic radical groups espouse jehad as a way of life

Harkat-ul-Ansar (Movement of Friends), originally named Harkat-ul-jehad-e-Islami (HUJI), was set up in 1980 as a refugee-aid group by the Jamiat-ul-ulema Islami (JUUI) or the Organisation of Islamic Teachers, a Pakistani political party headed by Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Later, it took up the recruitment and training of youth to fight the jehad against the communist government of Afghanistan. In 1991, the Karachi ulemas persuaded a rival faction to reunite with the HUJI and the new outfit was named the Harkat-ul-Ansar, a militant pan-Islamic organisation which believes frontiers cannot divide Muslims. After the American ban, the organisation is believed to have reverted to its earlier name.

Markaz Dawa-ul-Irshad (The Centre for Spiritual Guidance) was founded in 1987 by three university professors. It was not active in the Afghan jehad but has since emerged as the most fanatical of groups involved in organising young Pakistanis and Afghan refugees to fight the jehad against India under its military wing, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET). Headquartered in Muridke, its annual meetings are attended by a cross-section of the Pakistani elite. This year, Minister of Information Mushahid Hussain was a guest at this function where Kashmir-returned cadres often detail blood-curdling tales of how they kill "Hindu" soldiers. The let training facilities are in Maksar-e-Taiba in the Kunar province of Afghanistan and its cadres are remarkably dedicated, if a misguided lot.

The Taliban (Students) are the children of the Afghan jehad. Many of them studied in the 1,500 or so madarsahs or religious schools founded for the Afghan refugees in the north-west frontier province and Baluchistan in the '80s. Yet the Taliban's actual emergence in 1994 is somewhat mysterious, as indeed are the origins of its one-eyed leader Mullah Mohammed Omar of Kandahar, the main city of southern Afghanistan. Its religious outlook is not just puritanical but medieval. It has strong institutional links with the JUUI, a factor that helps the Harkat-ul-Ansar to maintain its camps in the Khost area, a stronghold of the famous Afghan war veteran Jalaluddin Hakkani. Most observers believe that Pakistan and the US played an important role in aiding and advising the Taliban in defeating forces associated with President Rabbani and Hekmatyar. Pakistani Army handed over arms dumps to the outfit and its officers are advisers of the Taliban army that has established control over most of the strife-torn nation.