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What price counter-terrorism?

By Praveen Swami

SRINAGAR SEPT. 20. The Jammu and Kashmir Government is yet to pay compensation to the family of Abdul Hameed, a member of an anti-terrorist militia recruited from among the Gujjar community in Poonch's Hil Kaka area. Hameed was killed in action during a May 27 encounter carried out by the 20 Rashtriya Rifles which claimed the lives of three terrorists.

No insurance

Although the Army has given his family a compassionate payment of Rs. 80,000 from its internal funds, and the Jammu and Kashmir Police have released Rs.10,000, the Government is yet to release the Rs. 1.2 lakhs due to all civilians killed by terrorists.

Family members told The Hindu that local officials were asking for bribes of up to Rs. 20,000 to expedite the files. Unlike police, military or paramilitary personnel killed in duty, Special Police Officers are not covered by special compensation or insurance schemes. There is also no formal provision for disability allowances or pensions.

Members of Special Group III, a counter-terrorist militia set up by the Saudi Arabia-based Gujjars to protect their community from Islamist terrorist groups, have been at the cutting-edge of counter-terrorist groups in Poonch. Like members of Special Groups I and II, Special Group III is made up of SPOs hired locally at a stipend of just Rs. 1,500 a month.

Special Police Officers were, in the late 1990s, promised recruitment as regular police constables if they performed well in operations. Those promises have not, for the larger part, been kept.

Although members of Special Group III were involved in encounters which led to the elimination of 27 terrorists in 2002, and hold citations for several operations conducted in the course of Operation Sarp Vinash this summer, not a single member of the group has yet been hired as a regular police officer.

Nonetheless, members of the Special Groups continue to fight on. A Jammu and Kashmir Police-led encounter in August which claimed the lives of seven terrorists at Dara Sangla also cost the life of a SPO, Shakeel Ahmad Sheikh.

Posts set up by SPOs in several Hil Kaka villages, such as Marhot and Marrah, have ensured that terrorists find it hard to find shelter or food in the region's mountains.

The Special Groups have also played a role in consolidating public opinion against terrorism. After the August killing of the village headman of Marhot, Haji Noor Mohammad, members of the group demanded redress from eight local men who had joined the Tehreek-e-Jihad. Using ties of kinship, the men were persuaded to join the Special Group, and fight the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists who had killed the respected village elder.

"The Government urgently needs to formulate a scheme for the welfare of our boys," says Fazl Hussain Tahir, who left his marble business in Saudi Arabia to set up Special Group III.

"We are willing to die," he says, "but, surely, we are entitled to better salaries and a proper compensation scheme for those who are martyred."

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