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NEIGHBOURS:
PAKISTAN
Fear
is the key
 It
is not just that security forces are baffled by the planning, they are
getting scared by the fidayeen attacks as well. Panic, and fear, in large
measure can be found on the faces of the local police. No one quite knows
when a daring squad would storm a police post, and at what hour. Fear
among lawkeepers has become the key to the LeT's success, something which
the police control room attack managed to instill. And to its delight,
an open letter in Daily Alsafa, a local Urdu newspaper, from a Kashmiri
policemen, even sought mercy. The writer of the missive, a head constable,
claimed that the local police "had never indulged in anti-movement
activities" and that "the kith and kin of policemen had also
contributed in equal measure to the struggle for azadi in Kashmir".
To win the
awe of locals, the LeT has had to change strategies. Now it knows that
without local support it is like just another defunct PSU in India. When
it started out sometime in June 1994, the LeT was fully a Pakistani outfit.
But of late there has been a dilution in the homogeneous composition.
Indian intelligence reports say 70 per cent of the cadre (estimated to
be around 3,000 in Pakistan) today is made up of Pakistani and Afghan
nationals (some born in the UK), the rest are Kashmiris. "Without
the support of the locals, we would have been wiped out of Kashmir,"
claims Abu Usama, a LeT spokesperson.
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| NO GIVEAWAYS:
Arrests of suspected LeT members seldom lead the police anywhere |
There is
reason why local support for the LeT, more than that to any of the other
half-a-dozen militant outfits in the Valley, has gone up in the past two
years. The LeT cadres are told not to extort from the local Kashmiri or
do anything "that amounts to being anti-Islamic". Intelligence
officials say that rations bought from villages by the LeT are paid for
handsomely, a U-turn from the past when jehadis in army uniform would
forcibly extort money, and rape Kashmiri woman. The results now are stark:
the local Kashmiri has actually started supporting the fidayeen attacks.
Whispers like "the Mujahideen are dying for us ... we should at least
bury them with all respect" can be heard. Scenes of local people
attending the last rituals and offering the namaaz-e-janaza for the dead
LeT members are becoming common.
With local
help, therefore, what the daring LeT strikes have managed to do is to
gain the confidence of the masses. The claims of Jammu and Kashmir Chief
Minister Farooq Abdullah that the militants in his state were on the run
have been refuted, at least for the present, with the sound of gunfire
and plenty of bloodshed, and in no uncertain manner. The biggest gain,
of course, has been that the local police have been cowed down. There
are disconcerting examples of how the police have started informing the
militants, a case of the protectors turning hostile. So when Ashfaq Ahmed
(see box), Shamaal's fidayeen counterpart based in Delhi and arrested
after the Red Fort attack, was flown to Srinagar in a government aircraft,
the local police tipped off the LeT. And though the operation to fly Ahmed
was kept a top secret, the police party from Delhi carrying him was attacked
by grenades. "We came to know that the local police had informed LeT
members about Ahmed's arrival in Srinagar," rues a senior member
of the Delhi Police team that flew with Ahmed.
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| FED
ON ISMS: The anti-India feeling is imbibed at a very early age |
Such open
cooperation with the militants by the local police is leaving the Indian
Government with fewer options. As part of its strategy to break the nexus,
the Government has started deputing non-Kashmiris to key positions like
deputy commissioners and senior superintendents of police, especially
in the troubled districts. The growing feeling in North Block is that
the local administration had seven years to punch holes in the militants'
game plans, upset their calculations and work out critical channels of
counter-intelligence. Instead what has happened is that the militants
have improved their own strategies, set up more bases than expected, increased
infiltration, and by winning the trust of the locals cut down the paths
of intelligence gathering for the police. Worse, they have even begun
to drive fear in the law. Their means of attack and communication are
now more sophisticated-satellite phones help "commanders" in
Srinagar to touch base with counterparts in Muridke and elsewhere. Their
mindset is now more violent: they come to create mayhem, and nothing less,
and will do whatever it takes to achieve those bloody ends.
The militants
are now more on the attack mode than ever before. Says Asiya Andrabi,
chief of the Dukhtran-e-Millat, a political outfit: "I constantly
appeal to our mujahideen brothers, especially those engaged by the LeT and Jash-e-Mohammed, to increase their attacks on Indian troops and continue
the jehad so that all cease-fire measures are disrupted." It matters
little to people like Andrabi and Sayeed that Kashmir today nurtures over
30,000 children orphaned in the quest for azadi. It matters little that
when these orphans pick up grenades and Kalashnikovs, they will create
another generation of orphans. The Andrabis of the world are not talking
of education or creation of jobs or roads. Besides the larger jehadi cause,
the immediate mission for them is to blunt any peace initiative between
India and Pakistan. Till they succeed, the camps in Muridke will not sleep,
nor will their guns in the Valley fall silent.
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