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Volume 3, No. 9 - February 2004 << Back to formatted version

Haze Shrouds the Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin

Praveen Swami

"DON'T SHOOT," Ghulam Rasool Dar had shouted out to photographers on August 3, 2000, "my life is in danger." Its unlikely the Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin's (HM) overall commander of operations in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) had time to make the same plea to the Indian troops who surrounded his hideout on January 16, 2004 - but his prediction turned out to be prophetic.

Dar had made his way across the Line of Control in 2000 to participate in the HM's first - and so far, last - official contact with the Government of India. His task was to represent his Amir, or supreme commander, Mohammad Yusuf Shah, who is widely known by his nom de guerre, Syed Salahuddin.

Shah had become increasingly suspicious of the pro-negotiations HM commander who spearheaded the dialogue, Abdul Majid Dar. Majid Dar himself was told not to meet India's then-Home Secretary, Kamal Pande, and to send his deputy, Farooq Sheikh Mirchal, instead. Rasool Dar represented the hardliners. Soon after the talks, Shah shut down the dialogue process.

Majid Dar held his ground, only to be expelled from the Hizb. In August 2001, the HM organised Mirchal's assassination, who had emerged as the key organiser among the pro-dialogue HM faction. Not so long afterwards, in March 2003, Majid Dar himself was executed by a HM hit squad near his home in Sopore.

The assassination provoked a split within the HM's cadre in Pakistan, but with the help of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence, Shah remained firmly in control of the organisation. Now, it appears, the HM doves have had their vengeance.

Operating under the aliases Ghazi Nasiruddin, Riyaz Rasool and Zubair, Rasool Dar was second in seniority in the Hizb command, reporting only to its Amir, Mohammad Yusuf Shah. Dar's elimination is a significant blow to the HM command structure, and could have consequences for the imminent dialogue between the Union Government and secessionist politicians in J&K.

Dar was killed in a brief encounter with the 2 Rashtriya Rifles battalion at Zainakot, near Srinagar. Fayyaz Ahmad, a HM deputy divisional commander in charge of southern Kashmir, was shot dead along with him. A resident of Tral, Ahmad also handled finance and publicity work for the Hizb.

The elimination of the HM commander marked the climax of a long-running hunt, which began soon after Dar took charge of the operational command in November 2003. The key breakthrough came when Indian intelligence began intercepting calls made by Dar on his Thuraya hand-held satellite phone. India is among the few countries in Asia with a significant satellite signal interception capability, which is enabled by a string of listening stations run by the Research and Analysis Wing's National Technical Intelligence Communications Centre.

While RAW's technical intelligence helped security personnel gain a general idea of where Dar was operating, not a little work remained before the jaws of the trap finally closed. At 5:30 PM on Thursday, January 15, Border Security Force (BSF) personnel succeeded in eliminating the Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin deputy commander, Mohammad Abbas Malik, at a safe house in Srinagar. Malik, a resident of Gund in Doda had earlier served as a divisional commander in the mountain district.

A series of raids began after Malik's elimination, targeting the locations of all local telephone numbers dialled from his satellite phone. Correctly believing that Indian security forces would soon locate him, and knowing his safe houses had been identified, Dar fled Srinagar to a suburban safe-house used by Ahmad. Soon after they arrived there, a source working for the 2 Rashtriya Rifles informed the battalion that two unidentified terrorists were hiding out in the area.

Dar's elimination will have considerable consequences for the HM's military operations. The organisation has lost a string of top-level commander over the last year - a sign, some believe, of a blood-feud within the organisation sparked off by the 2002 assassination of the pro-dialogue commander Abdul Majid Dar.

In April, Indian security forces succeeded in eliminating Rasool Dar's predecessor as military commander, Ghulam Rasool Khan, who operated under the code-names Saif-ul-Islam and Engineer Zamaan. Dar's deputy, Pakistani national Saif-ul-Rahman Bajwa, was subsequently killed by the BSF in November. Khan's killing would have given considerable satisfaction to the HM dissidents, since he had ordered Mirchal's execution, hoping to remove pro-dialogue elements from the key border district of Kupwara.

As things stand, the Hizb will be hard-pressed to find a credible successor for Dar, a Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) veteran who enjoyed the personal confidence of the organisation's Amir. Dar himself had been reluctant to serve in the Kashmir valley, and delayed filling the post for several months after Khan was killed. He had narrowly escaped several security force operations while serving in J&K, and his family had left for Pakistan on the New Delhi-Lahore bus service inaugurated by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Now, Shah needs to nominate someone from among his diminishing circle of confidantes on the HM's central command council, since the organisation is fighting against time to stall the imminent dialogue between All Parties Hurriyat Conference (
APHC) moderates and New Delhi. In recent days, the HM, as well as sister jihadi organisations like the Jamait-ul-Mujaheddin (JuM), have held out threats to the life of APHC moderates. Shah himself also opposed the ongoing détente process between India and Pakistan.

Shortly before his death, Dar is also believed to have personally met the JeI chief Syed Nazir Ahmad Kashani, to demand that the organisation throw its weight behind the Islamist leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Geelani has opposed the talks soon scheduled to take place between the APHC and New Delhi, although, unlike the Hizb itself, he has backed the parallel India-Pakistan détente. Dar's efforts to swing support for Geelani had, however, met with little success. Notably, Kashani did not attend Dar's burial ceremony.

If the failure to coral the JeI is indicative of a larger split within the constituency from which the HM draws its ranks, the consequences for the terrorist organisation could be calamitous. Majid Dar's initiative did not quite pose as much of a challenge to the Hizb as do the moderates within the JeI. Both Majid Dar and Qureshi had their political roots in the People's League, not the JeI, and served in the Tehreek-i-Jihad before joining the HM.

Shah is also confronted with discipline issues within the organisation. Local HM units in some areas, notably Budgam and Anantnag, are believed to have entered into profitable protection-rackets involving contractors working on the Qazigund-Baramulla railroad. Such activity, obviously, does little for organisational discipline. Although disaggregated data for Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin activities is not available, 97 terrorists were killed against just 19 Indian security personnel in December 2003, an unusually adverse ratio, indicating rising pressure on and disarray within terrorist ranks.

Unfortunately for the Hizb Amir, he is open to criticism for having made deals of his own with the Indian state. Shah has five sons, not one of who has joined the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir. One, Wahid Yusuf Shah, studies at the Government Medical College in Srinagar, to which he was controversially granted an almost-unprecedented transfer from a privately run institution in Jammu. The other brothers are either students, or work in government and private sector jobs.

What could the HM's options now be? Both Dar and the Hizb's central division commander, Abdul Rashid Pir, had in recent weeks met senior political leaders from the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP), as well as the opposition National Conference. One meeting, with a top PDP leader, is believed to have taken place only four days before Dar was eliminated. Dar is also believed to have met a senior National Conference leader from central Kashmir with substantial support among the Gujjar community.

Little is known about the possible content of this dialogue track. While the PDP has enthusiastically backed the New Delhi-APHC dialogue, it has also been calling for the Hizb to be invited for negotiations. Some analysts believe the PDP has a long-term interest in actually seeing the APHC dialogue fail, since the moderates and the party compete for essentially the same mass constituency. If this is, indeed, the PDP's objective, its covert negotiations with the HM have obvious significance.

Courtesy: South Asia Terrorism Portal

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