On 22 May 1992, the
Statesman carried its own Srinagar correspondent's report saying: "The State
Government has begun investigation following the reports that several hundred
Afghan Mujahideen have sneaked in or (sic) fight alongside Kashmiri insurgents
for separation of Jammu Kashmir (sic) from Indian Union, official sources
said in Srinagar. It is not known how far that investigation proceeded
and what, if anything, was done to nip the mischief in the bud.
The Times of India of 23 July 1992 carried a report
by Ravi Bhatia suggesting that Governor G.C. Saxena had Been sufficiently
concerned about the implications of the influx of the Afghan Mujahideen
so that he rushed to New Delhi to apprise the Prime Minister of the danger.
The ex-Collectors who take decisions in such matters apparently assured
the worried Governor that some more paramilitary forces would be made available
for doing what the Soviet Army could not do. The politicians in control
groped, fumbled and dithered, and did nothing that ought to have been done.
Reports about Afghan Mujahideen operating in the
Valley of Kashmir continued to appear in the press. While the Central Government
which is responsible and accountable for handling Kashmir affairs observed
a deafening silence, the Additional Director of BSF, P.C. Dogra, said in
Jammu on 17 August 1993 that "foreign mercenaries" had taken over command
of most of the militant outfits operating in Jammu and Kashmir "in a bid
to boost the sagging morale of the militants", especially in the Kashmir
Valley. The Hindustan Times of 24 August 1993 carried a longish report
from A.R. Wig definitely naming, on the basis of local briefing, the Inter-Services
Intelligence Directorate of Pakistan (ISI) as the master-mind behind the
launching of Afghan Mujahideen into The Valley. Again. on 22 October 1993,
the Kashmir Times quoted Prakash Singh, Director General of BSF saying
that more than 2300 Pakistan-trained "foreign mercenaries" from at least
six countries were fighting against the Indian security forces in the Kashmir
Valley. To cap all this, there appeared in the Hindustan Times of 4 December
1993 the salient points in the report titled New Islamist International
submitted by a task-force set up by the US House Republican Research Committee
to probe the "growing teeth of international trans-border Islamic terrorism".
This report revealed that the ISI had sent highly trained Pakistani and
Arab terrorists into the Indian territory via Nepal to establish a "countrywide
network and support system of subversion and terrorism."
Two conclusions follow from all this: first, there
was worse than inadequate, if any at all, appreciation of the implications
of the induction of Afghan Mujahideen into the Valley, and, secondly, the
Central Government does not have a clue to the proper action to be taken
in a situation of this kind. The second conclusion by no means implies
that the-Army and the paramilitary forces have no ideas as to how to tackle
the situation, but, it does suggest that the ruling party is still mesmerized
into paralysis of will by its self-created mirage of what is called the
"Muslim vote-bank".
The grave danger posed by the induction of Afghan
Mujahideen into the Valley cannot be wished or negotiated away. It cannot
be handled as if it were no more than a problem of policing an area infested
with criminals. It cannot be conveniently downgraded to the class of what
is called Low Intensity Conflict (LIC), and then sought to be tackled with
a priori principles which have never worked anywhere. It has to be taken
as a thing-in-itself, analyzed, understood, and then combated in the proper
manner with the proper means. It requires cold-blooded decision-making
and ruthless execution.
The first question to be asked is who these Mujahideen
are. To describe those operating in the Valley contemptuously as mercenaries
is to commit a grave error. A mercenary is a soldier of fortune without
any loyalties or commitments. Anyone who uses them does so at great risk
to the purpose in view. The first objective of any mercenary is to remain
alive in order to get paid; the second is to carry out the assigned task
with minimum risk to oneself; and the third is to run away safely when
the going gets too hot. Can these objectives be attributed to the Afghan
Mujahideen in the Valley?
These Mujahideen emerged as the fighting arm of
various groups resisting the regime of Sardar Mohammad Daud who had overthrown
King Zahir Shah in 1973, and instituted an oppressive regime, the "modernization"
and leftist policies of which went against the grain of the Afghan people
and their religious leaders. There were three stages of their evolution
as remarkably successful irregulars: (I) resistance to Daud regime, (2)
intensified resistance and armed conflict during the Taraki- Amin period
(April 1978 to December 1979), and (3) guerrilla warfare during Soviet
occupation and puppet Babrak Karmal regime from 27 December 1979 to 15
February 1989, the date on which the last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan,
and, thereafter against the Najibullah regime. During the last phase, there
was considerable fighting between The rival groups for overall control
and dominance in Kabul. The conflict is far from over.
It was during The Taraki-Amin period that there
was a general uprising of the Afghan people against the imposition of radical
socio-economic reforms. Persecution by the leftist regime led to a massive
exodus of men, women and children over the border mainly into Pakistan.
Among them were armed artisans who had already begun to call themselves
mujahideen, and also those who wanted to go back into Afghanistan and wage
a jehad against the "godless" regime and then against the Soviet interlopers,
the shuravi. These were an unorganised lot carrying out sporadic and un-
coordinated attacks by independent groups of "freedom fighters". Soon,
over 50 different political groups with their own bands of armed people,
had put up their offices in Peshawar.
The Soviet Union under Brezhnev had seriously
misled itself about the limits of what was then called the Kissinger Doctrine,
and thought that the apparent vacuum created by the withdrawal of American
involvement from some parts of the US strategic perimeter could be filled
by it and used as springboards for further expansion. A Soviet putsch in
Afghanistan had been predicted by this author in 1969. When it came about
ten years later, the Indian government was caught napping and entirely
clueless as to its implication for the security of the country it ruled.
Naturally, it missed a golden opportunity to give a decisively new turn
to Indo-Pak relations by offering security assurances to the neighbour,
and using them to limit US involvement in Pakistan's India policy which
the USA had slowly but surely started dissociating itself even during the
latter days of Nixon administration.
In terms of Kissinger Doctrine, the refashioning
of the Northern Tier assumed the continuance of Afghanistan as a buffer
state. There were not enough grounds as US saw them for active interference
with the Daud regime as its Russophilia was more tactical then ideological.
Still, those who resisted the regime were valuable as a corrective, and
fell within the scope of the US strategic compulsion to resist the expansion
of Soviet power and influence. It was, therefore, willing, together with
its allies, to support proxy wars against the Soviet Union and its satellites.
Thus, with the commencement of the second stage of Mujahideen resistance,
foreign aid including liberal supplies of arms and ammunition for the Mujahideen
began to arrive through the port of Karachi or down Karakoram Highway.
Rawalpindi and Peshawar became the centres for the distribution of CIA
supplied military hardware for the Afghan Mujahideen.
It is one thing to provide arms for "freedom fighters",
it is another thing to ensure that they got to the hands which could use
them best. A CBC- TV documentary titled "The Seeds of Terrorism" which
was telecast on February 1, 1994 demonstrated as to how the seeds of international
terrorism were sown by USA's alliance with Pakistan and its ISI for supporting
Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan. "The Mujahideen had
to be organise into identifiable groups so that some kind of control could
be exercised over them. Since Pakistan had a military government at that
time, the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) was given the task
to act as the co-ordinator of all military assistance provided to the Mujahideen
by friendly nations". The first task was, of course, to reduce the 50-plus
political groups to a manageable number. According to Lt. Gen (Retd) Kamal
Matinuddin, President Zia gave this task to the Martial Law Administrator
of the Frontier Province, Lt. Gen. Fazle Haq who managed to persuade the
disjointed elements to form a limited number of groups. Thus came into
being seven major groupings each of whom would have a number of ''field
commanders" under its control. These did not include nine Iran-based Shia
groups who, together, formed the Hizb-e- Wahdal. Of the seven Sunni groups,
four were and are conservative and radical Islamists of varying degrees,
the rest not quite so. Of the four, the Hizb-e-Islami af Gulbadin Hikmatyar
is the most trenchant, the most numerous, the most uncompromising and the
most ruthless while in terms of performance in the field, Prof. Burhanuddin
Rabbani's Jamiat-e-Islami (which includes Ahmad Shah Masood, the~ Lion
of Panjsher) is probably the most experienced, the most battle-hardened,
and the best guerrilla warriors.
Never in history have the Afghans been noted for
unity amongst themselves. The primary loyalties of an Afghan are to his
tribe and its chief, and to the territory in which his hearth and home
and family are. The one single factor that overrode the innate divisiveness
of the Afghan people was the motivation to save Islam from the danger posed
by the atheistic cult of socialism-communism, and by the "godless" shuravi
(Russians) with their abhorrent ways. Additional fuel was provided by the time-honoured Afghan tradition of
badal, i.e. exacting blood-revenge for
those killed by the leftist regime and the Soviet occupation forces. This
composite motivation made it possible for the mutually exclusive groups
to fight as one under the overall control and guidance of ISI. President
Zia's total support to the Mujahideen was no secret to anyone. He had risked
a great deal in confronting the Soviet Union, albeit with US support, but
came out successful. A half jocular question is said to have gone round
the GHQ at Rawalpindi: "what do you think the Indian Army is going to do
if one fine morning it saw Russian troops on the other bank of the Sutlej?"
The objective of Mujahideen activity was the liberation
of their country from Soviet occupation and the puppet leftist regime it
had installed. Why and how has it been possible for Pakistan to induce
and encourage them to infiltrate into the Valley and fight alongside the
militants? President Zia obviously had two purposes in mind, first to counteract
the threat to his country posed by Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and
secondly, decisively to destroy the traditional Indo-Afghan friendship
through the eminently realistic and the most obvious means, viz., the forging
of an Islamic front with the Mujahideen and their political groups. He
achieved both. The bonus he earned was in the renewed involvement of the
USA with Pakistan, which the Republicans would have kept within reasonable
bounds, and which the Clinton administration has managed, for good or evil,
to deepen.
It may sound strange but the fact is that President Zia, in his attempt to drive a wedge between the Afghans and India, received
considerable help from India itself in a form which Pakistan is even now
finding very crucial. When at the ungodly hour of near-midnight of 27 December
1979, the Soviet Ambassador in New Delhi called on Foreign Secretary, R.D.
Sathe to tell him the blatant lie that Soviet forces had entered Afghanistan
on invitation, he got the dressing down of his life. Sathe had minced no
words. The 'caretaker' government of Charan Singh was hardly to be found
anywhere. Between that dressing down and the infamous speech by India's
Permanent Representative at the UN before the Security Council in mid-
January 1980, an extremely grave miscalculation was made by people yet
to hold the reins of government, and, a hapless - because bossless - Foreign
Secretary was railroaded into sending utterly shameful instructions to
the PR in New York. The PR, not having been put wise, criticised certain
unidentified nations for arming, training and encouraging subversive elements,
and asserted that India had no reason to doubt the Soviet claim about the
invitation. President Zia must have chortled with glee at the news.
It is impossible to believe that the Indian government
had been totally unaware of the struggle of the Mujahideen against the
Taraki and Amin regimes, and how close to success they were when Brezhnev
moved his troops to save his puppets. It was obvious to anyone who eared
that the Mujahideen would continue their struggle with outside help, and
would prefer death to dishonour. It was also obvious that the Russians
will get as bogged down in Afghanistan as the Americans had been in Vietnam.
There was time, but, not for long, to acknowledge one's error and retrace
one's steps. For some inexplicable reason, the saga of blunders continued.
Within the much wider horizon of the long-term implications of what was
going on in Afghanistan, India concentrated on the small gnat, viz., the possibility that the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan might induce USA
to arm Pakistan. Thundered Foreign Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in the Parliament
on 17 June 1980, "It is time to ask ourselves if Afghanistan has not become
or is not likely to become, a pretext for those who wish to create further
instability in that country". It was also the view that the Russians had
moved in to prompt the Americans. How easy it was for Pakistan then to
convince the Mujahideen groups that India was hand in glove with the atheistic
communists and the shuravi! A fortiori then, Islam must also be in danger
in India, and particularly in Kashmir which was under "Indian occupation".
It is one thing to indoctrinate the Mujahideen
against India while their own liberation struggle is on, but, it is very
much a different thing to make them take time off from the internal struggles
that followed, and go to fight in the Valley. It is self-evident that the
Mujahideen as organised units could not have moved into the Valley, and
cannot continue to do so without planning by the ISI, and logistical and
other support from that organisation. It is not just the love for Islam
that has provided the ISI with the motivation. It is necessary to attempt
a probe into the rationale behind the move in the light of the objectives
of Pakistan's India policy. Is it a spur-of-the- moment opportunistic decision
in furtherance of a given policy, or is it the unfolding of a new phase
in a strategic plan formulated in the past? Is it a part of plan"K-2"?
What is the kind of material that has been available
to Pakislan's planners? The Mujahideen are of three types: (1) those who remained behind in Afghanistan to carry on the
jehad, (2) those who came
out in order to go back again, and fresh recruits from the refugees in
Pakistan, and (3) Islamic fundamentalist militants, soldiers of fortune,
and "specialists for hire" from various Arab countries from the Gulf to
Algeria, and some Iranian elements. The ouster of the Najibullah regime
after the withdrawal of Soviet troops did not lead to a massive return
of Afghan refugees from Pakistan. In fact, the unsettled situation within
Afghanistan and the continuation of violent factional conflict has discouraged
a lot of them from returning while encouraging others to come out to a
safe haven in Pakistan. It is also a fact that an appreciable number of
Afghans with access to arms supplies had fanned out inside Pakistan, and
were a source of both actual and potential law and order problem. As the
experience with the PLO "fighters" evacuated from Lebanon (some 13,000
of them) in mid-1982 has shown, part-time partisans generally gravitate
back to where their families are and where they have some means of peaceful
livelihood. It is, therefore, likely that some Mujahideen returned to Pakistan
after carrying out their task, although their further presence in that
country was neither necessary nor desirable. Something had to be done with
and about this population.
At this point, Pakistan's Afghan and India
policies come together in active convergence. The slumber-prone and incoherent Home
Minister has belatedly woken up to the fact that Pakistan has been working
on a plan to balkanise India in which the Valley is the first step while
it has been evident to every intelligent Indian since 1972 that sooner
or later Pakistan will engineer a riposte to the emergence of Bangladesh
and India's involvement in that affair. Such a riposte would have clearly
defined targets, and would be carried but according to carefully laid plans
taking into account not only the realities on the ground but also every
possible twist and turn in the international situation. And, it will require
a very strong motivation for a sustained and long-term operation because
1971 had taught the lesson of the futility of a direct military assault
based on unreal presumptions.
In order to understand the real character of Pakistani
depredations inside Indian territory, it is necessary to recognise certain
aspects of the Pakistani psyche. "The dominant factor is the mental attitude
of the armed forces, complemented by that of the bureaucracy - both dominated
by the Punjabi elite." And this elite is thoroughly infiltrated by adherents
of Maududi's Jamaat-e-Islami. "This elite believes that Pakistan ought
to have included the whole of Punjab, Hyderabad, Kashmir, the whole of
Bengal, and Assam with a corridor connecting non-contiguous areas."
Baladitya adds: All cadets on training in various
military establishments in Pakistan are given an intensive course of indoctrination.
The sum and substance of this indoctrination consists in instilling the
conviction that Islam is superior to all other religions, that Muslims
by consequence are superior to all others and are destined to rule over
the world, that it is the duty of every Muslim to spread the sway of Islam,
that a part of this duty is to 'liberate' Muslims from infidel rule everywhere,
that cowardly Hindus can never win a battle against Islamic forces, and
that glory of Islam and its flag has to be restored on this 'sub-continent'.
And, also: "The only way this revenge can be sought is through first cutting
India down to size by engineering secession of various areas, and then
to administer a military coup-de-grace. It is at this particular point
that the aims of the Pakistani military establishment coincide with those
of Jamaat-e-Islami and Muslim Brotherhood".
Whether or not the Afghan imbroglio at its very
inception gave Pakistan the idea of killing two birds with one stone is
a matter for conjecture. What is established as a fact is that through
it, the Pakistan army and the ISI gained a great deal of extremely useful
and relevant experience in conducting a clandestine operation on a large
scale. It is evident at the same time that Pakistan cannot devote all its
energies and resources for the pursuit of its India policy, so long as
Afghanistan does not settle down to at least a semblance of peace with
a truly Islamic regime in control. Therefore, a relatively peaceful Afghanistan
is a necessary pre-condition for the successful pursuit of the policy of
balkanising India.
As the Pakistani planners and operatives took
stock of the situation after a composite Mujahideen government assumed
control in Kabul, however fragile that device was, they may have seen it
like this: (1) Afghan love of independence was not enough to forge the
diverse resistance groups into a unified body; (2) unification, at least
for tactical purposes, was brought about by the overriding motivation of
saving Islam from "godlessness" of the leftists and the shuravi; (3) with
the departure of the Russians and the downfall of the communist regime,
this basis for unity no longer existed in Afghanistan as a binding force;
(4) in the foreseeable future, there is every likelihood of intense factional
warfare with various groups trying to secure exclusive Pakistani support
(5) it is necessary, therefore, selectively to weaken various factions
so that on the one hand the dimensions of the problem within Afghanistan
are reduced while on the other hand promoting the interests of the particular
faction or factions that Pakistan desired to see in control; (6) this objective
can be at least partially achieved if the focus of jehad is shifted elsewhere,
viz., the Valley, and a sufficient number of the Mujahideen are diverted
into that area; (7) induction of battle-experienced Mujahideen trained
in the use of not only sophisticated arms, but also better techniques of
sabotage and more effective tactics would greatly increase effectiveness
of the militants in the Valley; (8) such a move would facilitate the transition
from the hit-and-run phase to that of defensive-offensive operations in
the classic guerrilla operational method; (9) the induction of the Mujahideen
into the Valley will make it that much more difficult for the Indian security
forces to gain the upper hand; (10) such induction will attract international
attention to the problem of Kashmir, and plausible claims to virtue could
be made by saying that involvement in the Valley is keeping the Mujahideen
away from spilling over the borders in to any of the Central Asian Republics.
The guiding principle behind this calculation is the fundamental military
wisdom which says that if irregulars do not lose decisively, they win,
and, if the regulars do not win decisively, they lose. This is the substratum
of plan 'K-2'.
To conclude from interrogation reports that Afghan
Mujahideen have been sent to the Valley in order to put some spine back
into the local militants is a serious error arising generally from a wishful
interpretation of what apprehended militants say to their interrogators,
and from the basic mistake of swallowing the myth that the militants in
the Valley are "misguided youth". "In any organised terrorist activity,
there is an assumption that if a member of an operation squad is apprehended,
he will be thoroughly grilled by 'hostile intelligence'. He is, of course,
carefully briefed beforehand as to what to say if apprehended. As regards
the "misguided youth", only an imbecile will described them as such, and,
only a bigger imbecile will imagine that there are, among these, young
men who have been forced to become insurgents and are not really willing
to be so. In any organised insurgency, there is no place for the weakling,
the unwilling and the undependable."
What does the induction of Afghan Mujahideen into
the Valley then imply? Pakistan's internal compulsions apart, the real
purpose behind this move is two-fold, first to escalate the level of militancy
in the Valley from the hit-and-run stage to that of defensive-offensive
operations carried out from well-protected bases, and involving increasingly
long engagements with the security forces, and, secondly to use this stage
to train and harden the local militants to go on to the tactical offensive
stage with better arms, better logistics, better fighting methods, and
experience in field command. The development will generally follow the
pattern seen elsewhere.
Propaganda-wise, the whole business of escalation
will be presented as new phase in the ''liberation struggle" a la Afghanistan,
as well as an Islamic struggle against infidels - the latter for consumption
in the Islamic countries. By seeing a parallel between the two situations,
Ms. Robin Raphel, in her address to the Asia Society, has already clearly
indicated the extent to which Pakistan has succeeded in putting across
its own story. No mistake should be made about the wider implications of
this Foothold in US policy-making.
There is no point in reading non-existent
meanings in the tie-up of particular groups or the Mujahideen with particular
groups of militants in the
Valley. The tie-ups may not indeed mean anything
more than territorial divisions for purposes of operations. The Mujahideen
are not at all free agents in this matter. Their joint operations will
have to conform to the lines and targets set by the ISI on which they have
to depend entirely for support in all forms. The Islamic umbrella will
ensure overall operational co-operation.
Some may argue that the Mujahideen cannot
be very effective in the Valley as they will not be "fish in water", and
that the memory of the atrocities perpetrated by the Pushtun Tribals in
1947-48 will make the local Muslims hostile to them. Both arguments are
false. If the Mujahideen are seen merely to be Afghans, they will not be
"fish in water", but, if they are seen as valiant fighters on a jehad mission,
they will be, and the mullahs will insist on everyone honouring the Islamic
obligation to assist mujahids. The trained Mujahideen operating in the
Valley are not the marauding rabble from the Tribal Area launched by Pakistan
in 1947 with the lure of loot and women: they are, by and large, a disciplined
lot who have learned the importance of securing local support. Even the
memory, if it survives at all, of the oppression during the Afghan rule
in Kashmir in the past, will not work against them; for, according to strict
Islamic doctrines, even a tyrannical Muslim regime is always preferable
to infidel rule, however benign, and, ruling by force was legitimised six
hundred years ago by the Chief Qazi of the Mamelukes in Cairo.
What has to be realised first is that what is
going on in the Valley is no longer a local affair, and that it has now
become an integral part of the world-wide offensive of militant fundamentalist
Islam which now supports Pakistan's hostile intentions regarding India.
In fact, Pakistan has become a willing partner in that offensive.
It may be comforting to imagine that the international
community can somehow be aroused to shake a warning finger at Pakistan,
but, the truth is sadly otherwise. That community, particularly the West,
is sick and tired of the decades-long Indo-Pak squabbles, the only exception
being the United States where the Clinton administration is on a Bible-belt
morality binge abroad. For the US, South Asia is a low-priority area, and,
therefore, there is tendency to embrace the criminal in an woolly-headed
attempt to be even-handed. The situation, thus, has to be tackled by us
with our own means which must exclude the futile and litigious gambit of
distributing "evidence" of Pakistani interference in our internal affairs.
The more we let Pakistan know what we know, the easier it becomes for that
country to deceive us and rest of the world.
Those who are not congenital defeatists know that
it is possible to liquidate the militancy in the Valley at some cost but
not too much. The guerilla loses his effectiveness when he can no longer
use his tactics. The 'hammer and anvil' tactics used by the Soviet Army
in Afghanistan will not work; used, it will only create more enemies. Guerrillas
need people; deny them the people, not with bribes of 'economic packages',
nor with dangling the rotten carrot of 'political process', but by making
the people inaccessible to them, and by denying them the steady supply
of replacements and recruits they are always in need. There are tested
ways to do this, but, do we have the courage and the determination to adopt
them? Force the guerrillas to fight conventionally by denying them the
essentials of war by irregulars. More than the militants in the Valley,
it is our political decision-makers who need the spine.
These gentlemen had better wake up fast and shake
themselves out of their stupor. There is a growing suspicion that there
exists a bunch of 'moles' who ensure that the Central government will either
not do anything, or do precisely the wrong thing. There is also the suspicion
that behind all the PR exercises, it is a "sell-out" that is being planned.
