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HIJACKING Harkat-ul-Ansar: Terror Unlimited By Ramesh Vinayak In December 1995, Masood Azhar, one of the 40-odd foreign mercenaries lodged in Block 13 of the high-security Kot Bhalwal prison in Jammu sent his first letter since his arrest on February 11, 1994 to his family in Pakistan. "The abduction of foreign nationals by Al Faran to seek my release has brought a lot of mental torture on me " he wrote. "I will be out of the Indian prison when Allah wishes so."
Since 1994, the Harkat had masterminded two kidnappings of foreign nationals to force the Indian authorities to swap Azhar for them. While in the first attempt four British nationals were abducted from Delhi by two Harkat activists, the second one in July 1995 was by Al Faran, a shadowy front of the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA). Even the Pakistan Government -- as External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh revealed in the midst of the flight IC 814 hostage crisis -- had demanded Azhar's release. The Harkat's desperation reinforced India's assessment of Azhar's importance in the ISI-led proxy war in Kashmir. For the past two years the HUA -- operating as HUJI, and as Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) after the US banned it for abducting a US national among five others -- had been lying low. In recent years it had transferred most of its Afghan-trained cadres to the Lashkar-e-Toiba, now the main outfit of foreign mercenaries in Kashmir. Tapering off its Kashmir operations, apparently, was part of the Harkat's deception plan in its mission to free Azhar. "Stealth has been the biggest strength of the Harkat," says IG-BSF (Kashmir Frontier) K. Vijaykumar. Officials believe that the plan to hijack the Indian Airlines plane was masterminded following the sensational jail-break attempt at Jammu on June 15, 1999. Sajjad Khan alias Sajjad Afghani -- a PoK resident who led the HUA in Kashmir till his arrest along with Azhar in February 1994 -- was shot dead during the jail riot that followed the escape bid by foreign mercenaries. For the Indians, the aborted jail escape came in handy. At a time when Azhar was hoping to be repatriated to Pakistan, he was booked as one of the masterminds of the jail-break. But for Harkat, Sajjad's killing raised doubts about Azhar's safety and perhaps spurred a diabolic plan to hijack the IA plane. "Getting Azhar out of India became a matter of prestige for the Islamic warriors," says a top security official in Srinagar. What makes Azhar, a 5 ft 4 in, stodgy cleric, so important to the Harkat? The answer lies in his background as a "die-hard" jehadi. Azhar combines in him the qualities of a master motivator who raises the morale of the soldiers of Islam, a cool-headed ideologue and an astute fund collector for the religious war the Harkat is fighting in several countries. "His importance lies in the vast contacts and assets he seems to have created for the Harkat," says Girish Saxena, governor of Jammu and Kashmir. Azhar has admitted to having raised Rs 1 crore from countries he visited in 1993, in the name of running his magazine Sada-e-Jehad (Call of the Holy War). "His expertise as a fund raiser and an organiser was his major asset," says a security official in Jammu.
hird among 12 offspring of a Punjabi landlord, Azhar was introduced to pan-Islamic culture when as a seven-year-old he joined a fundamentalist seminary. Fluent in Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Punjabi, his fondness for jehad led to his association with Farzal-ur-Rehman Khalil, one of the founders of HUJI in the early '80s which provided volunteers for the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. In 1993, when HUJI and hum merged to form HUA, Azhar was its secretary-general and one of the key planners for increasing the role of Harkat cadres in Kashmir. Azhar also embarked upon his secret mission to Kashmir and entered India on a fake Portuguese passport. After coming to Srinagar he got in touch with Sajjad Afghani. Azhar's mission was threefold: one, consolidating the pro-Pakistan HUJI and the Kashmir-based militant outfit Tehrik-ul-Mujahideen into HUA with Sajjad as its commander; two, facilitating transfer of command of militancy into the hands of foreign mercenaries, and three, imparting a pan-Islamic touch to the Kashmiris' struggle. Azhar's visit took place when the ISI had begun diverting the foreign mercenaries, free from the Afghan war, into Kashmir to sustain the local militancy which was waning. While Azhar was the ideologue, 1994 was the year when battle-hardened and highly committed militant leaders like Mast Gul, Abu Jindal and Akbar Bhai appeared in the Valley to lead militancy. "Azhar was one of the pioneer organisers of foreign mercenaries in the Valley," says a police official. "His implicit aim was to study the layout of the Valley to prepare the ground for induction of Afghan-trained mercenaries in greater numbers," adds Jammu and Kashmir DGP Gurbachan Jagat. "His idea was to put the Kashmiri struggle on a pan-Islamic footing," says Javed Shah, former commander of the Al Jehad and now MLC of the ruling National Conference. Shah, who has met Azhar, vouches for his skills at motivating recruits into the jehad. According to Shah, young cadres were in awe of him. "Ideologues and motivators like Azhar are much more important for Harkat than gun-totting jehadis," says IG, Jammu range, Radhavinod Raju. However, it was a mission unaccomplished for Harkat. Azhar and Sajjad were arrested by the army barely two weeks after the cleric's entry into the Valley while returning from a meeting with mercenaries near Qazigund. Initially Azhar stuck to his claim of being a mere maulana, but cracked subsequently to unveil the sinister strategy the Harkat had devised for Kashmir. The duo's arrest was a severe blow to HUA's plans to be at the vanguard of Kashmir militancy. Three months later, another senior Harkat commander, Nasrullah Langriyal, also fell into the army's net and has been detained since. Unable to provide direction and command to its fighting cadres in the Kashmir valley, and with the Laskhkar-e-Toiba gaining ascendancy, HUA was reduced to just one of the many militant outfits. It soon became desperate. Since these mercenaries prefer to die fighting, only a few of them have been caught alive. However, at least 120 of them -- mostly from Pakistan and PoK are in jails in Jammu and Kashmir. For the Indian government they are incontrovertible proof of Pakistan's involvement in Kashmir. However, security officials insist that keeping foreign mercenaries in custody without a speedy trial is like "rearing tigers and inviting trouble". The hijack has proved them right. Police officials point out how a foreigner is treated like an ordinary criminal after arrest. "They must be treated as prisoners of war and brought to justice sooner than ordinary laws allow," says a senior police official. "Our laws on terrorism are medieval but our expectations are futuristic." Contrary to his reputation in the Harkat as a gifted orator, Azhar, now in his sixth year in detention, is a picture in contrast -- a reticent man who, according to jail officials, likes isolation. "He treats even Indian prisoners as infidels," says a police official. With such religious zeal, it isn't any wonder that the Harkat took a step like hijacking IC 814 to save a "Muslim life".
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Azhar,
charged first under the Public Safety Act and subsequently the Terrorists
and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, was resigned to his fate. But
the soldiers of Islam were not. For them Azhar, a school dropout was a
maulana -- religious scholar -- and the ideologue and founder
secretary-general of the Karachi-based Harkat-ul-Jehad-Islami (HUJI).