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War and peace-making in Kashmir

Praveen Swami

Even as Hizb-ul-Mujahideen commander Mohammad Ashraf Shah led a grim war against India in which hundreds were killed, he was a key player in a secret search for peace.

"NEXT WEEK," top Hizb-ul-Mujahideen commander Mohammad Ashraf Shah had told a confidant in October, a few days before Eid, "this war ends."

On Tuesday morning, Shah's bullet-ridden body lay inside a safe-house he had used since August for a series of secret meetings with politicians to push a peace deal with the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen: the latest victim of a search for peace that has proved just as dangerous and difficult as the grim, 17-year war in Jammu and Kashmir.

In the summer of 1991, not long after he completed his final year of school, Shah abandoned both his home in the south Kashmir village of Jablipora, and his hopes of one day becoming a doctor, to train at a Hizb-ul-Mujahideen terror camp near Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

By 2001, Shah was leading the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen's terror operations in Rajouri and Poonch, operating under the code name "Sohail Faisal." He took charge of the strategically vital south Kashmir division — the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen's strongest and most affluent command — after the elimination of his predecessor, Shabbir Bhaduri, in a February 2005 encounter.

Shah soon demonstrated his exceptional skills in covert warfare, forging an alliance with the Lashkar-e-Taiba that facilitated a series of successful car-bomb attacks across southern and central Kashmir. His cadre demonstrated the exceptional brutality that was increasingly needed to put down growing public anger against terrorism, beheading suspected informers, shooting dissenters, and even bombing anti-Islamist Sufi clerics.

Privately, though, Shah was sending grim messages to his boss, the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen amir-i-jihad, Mohammad Yusuf Shah, who operates using the nom de guerre Syed Salahuddin. Hizb-ul-Mujahideen cadre, he said, were demoralised and desperate. The terrorist group needed to listen to its friends in the People's Democratic Party, he argued: to put a ceasefire in place, and come to the negotiation table.

Shifting stand

Signs that the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen was listening to these calls first became evident in the course of an August 18 interview given by its amir-i-jihad to the Srinagar-based Kashmir News Service. Mohammad Yusuf Shah called for "India and Pakistan to withdraw troops from both parts of Kashmir." "We will encourage any move that will lead to withdrawal of troops," he said.

In the interview, Yusuf Shah for the first time publicly announced that the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen would be willing to join a dialogue with New Delhi on solutions other than the implementation of United Nations resolutions calling for Jammu and Kashmir's final status to be determined by a plebiscite. He suggested that the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen would even be willing to contest an internationally-supervised election.

Pronouncements such as these were driven by changing circumstances in Pakistan, which had began to slash direct funding for the jihad after 2002. In March 2006, the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen had even been driven to launch public protests against Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's policies. Sensing that he was losing control over Hizb-ul-Mujahideen units on the ground, Yusuf Shah wanted to take what he could get, while a deal was still on offer.

As things turned out, though, the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen could not deliver on its end of the proposed ceasefire deal. Its allies, for one, had no political equities in Jammu and Kashmir, and therefore little to gain from joining the peace process. A joint statement issued by front organisations of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, al-Umar, and the Jammu Kashmir Islamic Front attacked the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen for making "pointless calls for a ceasefire."

Without the support of these groups, a ceasefire was pointless. The Lashkar, after all, had demonstrated its military capability to undermine the movement towards peace during the Ramzan ceasefire of 2000, when violence against civilians rose to record levels. Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, then as now, refused to call the Lashkar to heel, arguing that dismantling the jihad would relieve all pressure on India to make concessions.

Secondly, the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen confronted serious internal problems. For a ceasefire to have worked, its central leadership ought to have been able to compel its field cadre to locate to pre-determined positions, and then punish ceasefire violators. However, its highly criminalised field units were making cash hand-over-fist from extortion and organised crime — and the cash-strapped central leadership could not compete.

Finally, the organisation itself proved to be a house divided. Its southern division commander bitterly resented the fact that his subordinate in Poonch, Mohammad Yunus, was made the overall commander for Jammu and Kashmir. Yunus had served as the amir-e-jihad's chauffeur in Pakistan, and came from a family with a long history of service to the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami — and these links counted more than pure combat experience.

Perils of peace-making

Where might things go from here? Amir-i-jihad Shah's latest remarks on a ceasefire, delivered just hours before the southern division commander was killed, illustrate that the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen understands just how serious the crisis facing it is. For its part, the PDP knows that its best hope of emerging as the principal political actor in Jammu and Kashmir is to conjure up a successful peace deal.

Both groups have also found an ally in the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC). Its chairman, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, hopes to marginalise rivals such as the hardline Tehreek-i-Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani and the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front's Yasin Malik. Interestingly, PDP president and Anantnag MP Mehbooba Mufti used a recent conference in Cairo to brief the APHC chairman on her party's self-rule proposals.

Major secessionist groups, armed and political, thus have good reason to continue to walk the road to peace, dangerous though it might be, with the PDP playing minesweeper. Yet there is no evidence that any of these formations have the tools needed to deal with the problems confronting peace-making: the criminalisation of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and the ISI's unwillingness to shut down the Islamist armies it gave birth to.

Consider the record. Abdul Gani Lone, the politician who laid the foundations for the peace process in Jammu and Kashmir, was killed by a jihadi hit squad just before the 2002 elections. Abdul Majid Dar, the Hizb commander who led it during the 2000 ceasefire, died at the hands of comrades a year later, not long after the elimination of his deputy, Farooq Mirchal. His arch rival, Ghulam Rasool, was in turn eliminated by Indian forces in April 2003.

"Don't shoot," Hizb-ul-Mujahideen commander Ghulam Rasool Dar had shouted out to journalists on August 3, 2000, just before the first and only official meeting between the Government of India and the terrorist group, "my life is in danger." He was right: Indian counter-terrorism caught up with the commander in January 2004, just as it has now done with Mohammad Ashraf Shah.

Dialogue survived Dar's death — and will, almost certainly, proceed apace despite Shah's elimination. India's covert services are known to have maintained discreet channels of communication with the Hizb leadership in Pakistan, and a Government of India envoy is believed to have held at least one round of discussions with a prominent Islamist leader in New York.

Just where this will lead, though, is anyone's guess: if the sad history of the war in Jammu and Kashmir demonstrates anything, after all, it is that human life is more often than not sacrificed in vain.

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