For the most part, the war in the highmountains of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) remains invisible: it is war that seemsto have neither perpetrators nor victims. But strung along the banks of the Tawiriver in Jammu, if one cares to look, are the makeshift homes of hundreds ofrefugees, both Hindu and Muslim, who have fled the Islamist assault that hastorn apart communities on the Pir Panjal range. Their stories, though, rarelyfigure outside of the antiseptic press releases issued by the J&K Policeeach evening.
Until, that is, there is a large enough massacre.
Last month, the invisible war once again made its way intonewspaper headlines when thirty-two Hindu villagers were killed in two separatecommunal terror strikes in the Districts of Doda and Udhampur, north-east ofJammu. Nineteen residents of the mountain hamlets of Kulhand and Tharwa,including an eight year old girl, were shot dead outside their homes late in thenight of April 30, 2006. A further thirteen shepherds were shot dead north ofthe Lalon Galla, a high-altitude meadow above the town of Basantgarh.
Witnesses say that a group of six terrorists arrived in Kulhandand Tharwa at around 11:00 PM on April 30. Men from some forty adjacentbuildings were ordered to gather at the home of Gopi Chand, the village headman.Once there, the victims were made to form a queue, and then fired on withassault rifles at point-blank range. The terrorists continued to fire untiltheir ammunition was exhausted. Ten people were seriously injured, and survivedonly because the bodies of others had fallen over them.
Hours before the killing began in Kulhand and Tharwa, a separateterrorist unit kidnapped two shepherds near Lalon Galla. Mohammad Siraj-ud-Dinand his son Rukun-ud-Din were ordered to guide the terrorists to a nearby dhok,or meadow, on which Hindu herdsmen from the village of Basantgarh had set upcamp for the summer. Once there, the terrorists marched the thirteen men theycould find into the forest. Four of the victims were shot near the meadow wherethey were kidnapped; nine others a short distance away.
Neither set of villagers were expecting trouble. Kulhandresidents, like many Hindus in Doda, had for long maintained a quiet peace withterrorists operating in the area. When Village Defence Committees were set up inthe area after a series of massacres in 1998-1999, local residents refusedweapons and training. A police post was set up in the village four years ago,but removed after villagers insisted that its presence was more likely toprovoke terrorist retaliation than protect them from harm.
On the night of the massacre, Kulhand residents had notanticipated trouble. The men who were marched out of their homes thought theterrorists needed help hauling supplies up the mountains, a task for which theyhad used villagers at regular intervals. Many could have escaped into thedarkness �" but saw no reason to do so. The shepherds at Lalon Galla, too,marched willingly into the jungles with the terrorists, perhaps thinking thattheir labour was needed to build a hideout or bury weapons and ammunition.
What evidence is available so far suggeststhat the killings were the work of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) - thePakistan-based terrorist group responsible for sixteen similar massacres inJ&K since 1993, in which at least 150 civilians have been killed. Notably,Siraj-ud-Din and Rukun-ud-Din identified one of the terrorists who carried outthe Lalon Galla killings as Aijaz Ahmad, a long-standing Lashkar operative whohails from the village of Raichak, near Basantgarh.
Both massacres are thought to have been executed on the ordersof 'Abu Talha,' the Doda-area 'divisional commander' of the Lashkar whois so far known only by his nom de guerre. Of the six terrorists whoactually carried out the killings, four have been identified �" 'Ashraf,'who also uses the alias 'Omar,' 'Doctor Shabbir' alias Asghar, 'Saifullah,'and 'Ahram' alias 'Abu Din.' Investigators are also examining the roleof Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) commander Mohammad Asraruddin, who has often workedclosely with 'Abu Talha.' Believed to be a Pakistani national, 'Abu Talha'narrowly escaped a May 5, 2006, encounter which claimed the life of hislieutenant, 'Abu Akasha'. Police and army personnel also made fire-contactwith the terrorist group thought to be responsible for the Udhampur killings thesame day, but without success. While elements of both groups will more likelythan not be eliminated in coming weeks, given the scale of operations directedat them, little is known about the motives behind the twin massacres or theirtiming.
Some of these motives, however, appear obvious. Prime MinisterManmohan Singh was scheduled to meet with the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC)chairman, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq less than forty-eight hours after the killings.Prime Minister Singh is also to hold a round-table conference involving allmajor political parties at Srinagar on May 25, 2006. Jihadiorganisatiowns, ho do not wish to join in the dialogue process have no interestin its perpetuation.
Terrorist groups have long used death as an instrument to derailefforts towards detente. In August, 2000, a month after the pro-dialogue HM 'commander' Abdul Majid Dar declared a unilateral ceasefire, cadrefrom his organisation and the Lashkar carried out a series of communal massacresin an effort to sabotage the movement towards peace. In less than 48 hours,starting with the massacre of 30 pilgrims near the shrine of Amarnath, sixstrikes were carried out in the districts of Anantnag, Doda and Kupwara.
Such a direct link may, however, besimplistic. Communal massacres long predate peace efforts in J&K. Aftertargeting prominent members of the state's Pandit minority forassassination and intimidation in the first phase of jihadi violence,terrorists began executing large-scale killings from August 1993, when thirteenHindus were massacred at Sarthal, in Doda. Three years later, sixteen Hinduswere again executed in the Doda village of Barshalla. Local feuds over grazingrights often facilitated the violence.
From 1998, communal massacres gathered momentum and scale. In1998, 132 civilians died in six massacres conducted across the State and inadjoining Himachal Pradesh. After a lull in 1999, the massacres resumed in 2000.In 2001, 108 people were killed in 11 major incidents, while 83 people werekilled in five incidents in 2002. Most of these killings targeted desperatelypoor communities in the State's more remote mountain regions: the bridegroomwhose wedding procession was targeted in Chapnari did not even possess sandals.
Although the scale of communal terror strikes diminished after2002 - a fact Bharatiya Janata Party president Rajnath Singh omitted tomention when he called for the imposition of governor's rule after thekillings - periodic attacks continue. Just in October 2005, a unit of theHM's 'Pir Panjal Regiment' targeted two hamlets in Rajouri's Budhal areafor such attacks. While women in the village were ordered to prepare food forthe terrorists, eleven Hindu men aged between 18 and 57 had their throats slitone by one.
One motivation for this gruesome campaignhas been to bring about large-scale migrations of Hindus from Muslim-majorityareas north of the Chenab river. Jihadi groups hope that mass killingsand communal terrorism directed at Hindus would help realise a sundering ofJ&K along ethnic-religious lines. As such, communal massacres are aninstrument to replicate the communal logic on which the Partition of India wasbased - Pakistan's long-standing aspiration.
Partition-based ideas haveemanated, in recent years, from the United States of America-based Kashmir StudyGroup and Pakistan's back-channel negotiator during the Kargil war, Niaz Naik.Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's calls for a division of J&K intoseven separate provinces, although couched in language based on geography ratherthan religion, would have much same effect if implemented. Mirwaiz Farooq of theAPHC, interestingly, presented all these ideas to the Prime Minister duringtheir meeting.
Notably, however, Muslimvillagers opposed to Islamist terror groups have also faced savage assault. In2001, for example, fifteen Muslim villagers, including seven children, wereexecuted at the village of Kot Charwal in Rajouri, for having set up a self-defencegroup to keep Islamist terrorists out of the area. Muslim Village DefenceCommittee (VDC) members and others hostile to the jihad have regularlybeen targeted since. In January 2006, Rashid Begum and two members of her familywere killed in Arnas for campaigning against the Hizb.
Despite the high media impactof communal killings of Hindus, internal Union Home Ministry data makes clearthat Muslims are the principal victims of the jihad that Islamist groupsare fighting in their name. In 2005, for example, just 54 of the 489 civilianskilled by terrorists were Hindu. In most years since 1989, less than 15 per centof overall civilian fatalities have been Hindu. Only in 1990 did that figurecross 20 per cent, a figure considerably lower than Hindu representation in theState's population.
It would be mistaken,therefore, to see communal massacres as a means to an end: in the Lashkar'sworld view, they are the end. Lashkar ideologues see the conflict in Jammu &Kashmir as a consequence of the fact that, as one of the organisation'sarticles suggests, "the Hindus have no compassion in their religion." In theworld of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the overall head of the Lashkar, "the Hindu isa mean enemy and the proper way to deal with him is the one adopted by ourforefathers who crushed them by force."
All who stand in the wayof the creation of the Lashkar's utopia are legitimate targets, simply byvirtue of their existence. Part of the answer to this challenge lies withinIndia, both through providing better security cover to remote mountaincommunities and, more important, in pushing political parties to work towardsbuilding a genuine consensus against communal chauvinism. As long as the Lashkar's base camps in Pakistan remain active, though, both these measureswill only be palliatives - and weak ones at that.
Praveen Swami is Deputy Editor and Chief of Bureau, FrontlineMagazine, New Delhi. The South Asia Intelligence Review of the South AsiaTerrorism Portal
