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The Sipah-e-Sahaba factor

Here's a bit from The News of October 19 that should warm the heart of every Atal Bihari Hajpayee devotee: "While addressing the Jehad Conference at Eid Gah Cantt, Maulana Masood Azhar asserted that affairs in occupied Kashmir had reached the point of no return and freedom fighters could not afford to drop their guns by way of a compromise. He again clarified that... Jaish-e-Muhammad believes in continuous jehad. He urged the Ulema to create a passion for jehad among Muslims in order to add force to the current efforts made by freedom fighters."

And then: "The main event of the Conference was Dastar Bandi of Chairman Supreme Council Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, Muhammad Ziaul Qasmi, by Masood Azhar to whom Qasmi also offered bait [sic]. 'Now we go hand-in-hand, and Sipah-e-Sahaba stands shoulder to shoulder with Jaish-e-Muhammad in Jehad,' said Azhar."

Wunderbar. The Hajpayee-released bastard has enlisted the assistance of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, a super-extremist Deoband-Wahabi Sunni set-up that targets Shia Muslims. SSP's death squad, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, by its own admission, has conducted massacres of Shias at the sites of their religious congregations and killed Shia religious leaders, VIPs and commoners in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

The import of this news can't be seen in isolation. It's not just a matter of the umbrella group of Jaish-e-Muhammad ("Army of the Prophet," founded by Masood post-release) adding SSP cadres to its ranks, which already contain remnants of the banned Harkat-ul-Ansar as well as Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, Al-Umar Mujahideen, Al Fateh, Tehrik-ul-Mujahideen and Harkat-e-Jehad-Islami. It has to be examined in context of the overlapping stories of the SSP, Masood Azhar, Taliban and Gen Musharraf. See if you can fit the separate pieces together:

The SSP was born in 1982 in reaction to the Iranian Revolution and increased Shia militancy in Pakistan as the Saudi government began backing the Deobandi school of thought in retaliation to the Jafferia Shia discipline. The ultra-fanatic and virulently anti-Shia organisation has been campaigning for the proclamation of Pakistan as a Sunni State, and its death squad has murdered many Shia leaders in Pakistan, and actively assisted the Taliban in the massacre of the Shias of Bamiyan province in Afghanistan. In October 1997, Jang quoted Malik Ishaq, leader of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, arrested for the assassination of five Iranian technicians: "I have been instrumental in the killing of 102 human beings."

The Taliban, too, is rabidly anti-Shia. In March 1999, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan detailed horrific massacres by the Taliban when they captured Mazar-e-Sharif: Between 4,000 to 5,000 Shias, including women, children and the elderly were killed after its supreme leader, Mullah Omar, issued a fatwa declaring that the killing of Shias was not a crime as they were kaffirs. Osama bin Laden, a Deobandi Saudi, is with the Taliban.

Masood Azhar, general secretary of the erstwhile Harkat-ul-Ansar, was a student of Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, a sworn anti-Shia fanatic and founder of the SSP (he was killed in 1990 in Sunni-Shia clashes). After Masood was arrested in February 1994 in India, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen became powerful in (Paki) Punjab because SSP militants joined the org. With Masood's reappearance (courtesy: the Indian prime minister), the Harkat split, with at least three-quarters of its J&K cadre, and the old SSP cadre, migrating to Masood's new terror org, Jaish.

The split in Harkat finished Maulana Yusuf Ludhianavi, a vital figure in the Deobandi movement who was the spiritual guide to two key Deobandi leaders, Maulana Fazlur Rahman of the Jamiat-i-Ulema-e-Islami and Maulana Azam Tariq of the SSP. The acolytes' Deobandi connection with Mullah Omar, the Taliban Ameer-ul-Momineen, strengthened their presence in Pakistan, especially in Karachi where the Banun Masjid emerged as the centre of the Paki wing of Taliban. After Masood was escorted safely to Kandahar, he directly came to this masjid and announced his anti-India plans.

The Kargil Committee Report states that "Gen Musharraf himself served in Afghanistan and had ties with Osama bin Laden and other extremists... He had served in the Northern Areas for several years and had been associated with the crackdown on the Shias. He had commanded the SSG which launched an attack on Bilafond La in Siachen but was frustrated." The Northern Areas, locally called Baltistan and Balawaristan, is inhabited by Shias; they do not enjoy the rights that Pakistani citizens elsewhere have.

On August 14, the Balawaristan National Front submitted a memorandum to the UN office in Islamabad, exposing the Paki game plan in Kargil (Gilgit, the nerve centre of the Northern Areas, is the headquarters of the Northern Light Infantry which led the intrusions). The BNF said the area was being choked by the army and the ISI; the citizens were treated like slaves and not allowed basic human, economic and cultural rights; the ISI was forcibly sending Balawari youths into India for terrorist activities; and, the Paki "occupation forces" used Shias as cannon fodder in Kargil. Note: During the Kargil conflict, the bodies of soldiers that Pakistan refused to accept from India were those of Balawari soldiers.

Classified intelligence reports warn that Masood has been listed by the ISI as the "real guiding force" of thousands of Kashmir-bound jehadis. Following his release, Masood became "quite popular" at the Pakistan Army HQ at Rawalpindi, and in Islamabad, the seat of the government and the headquarters of the ISI. Following the July "peace" overtures by the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, the ISI is said to have "worked out a new strategy aimed at arranging quick and effective moral and material support" for Jaish-e-Mohammad, specifically meant to enhance its striking power. Also, Pakistan's powerful mullah lobby has proclaimed Jaish as the "right weapon" against India (The Daily Excelsior, August 30).

In August, Masood told a gathering of armed militants in Peshawar his three "ambitions": To have Jammu's Kotbalwal jail blown up; to hoist Pakistani flags all over J&K; to see the "soldiers" of Jaish entrenched in all major cities and towns of India, particularly Delhi's Red Fort. Then, documents recovered from Jaish's 21-year-old Valley commander, Abdul Haseeb Khan, who was eliminated by the Indian Army in July, provide an insight into the agenda of the dork who was so hurriedly released by Hajpayee: Abdul's diaries repeatedly mentioned a war against "kaffirs" and identified India as the "main source of polytheism that has to be captured" (Frontline, Vol 17, Issue 15).

Assimilated that much? (I know, those Mullahs and Harkats get confusing; maybe that's why the PM couldn't see beyond the Nobel.) But none of the preceding makes a point apart from that that Paki and Afghan Shias are targeted by Sunni militants; the terrorist groups creating havoc in Kashmir are led by incestuously tangled Sunnis; Musharraf has a dangerous anti-Shia history; Masood is the current darling of the military and the ISI; and, the conquest of Kashmir is not the sole aim of the Paki dogs -- it's India they want to lay waste.

But add to that these facts:

• The Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (not to be confused with the Anjuman S-e-S), has been active only in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan; rarely, if ever, have its dorks entered J&K.

• Nearly 800,000 Kashmiri Muslims are Shias; together with Gujjars, Bakerwals, Dard and Balti Muslims, they form about half of J&K's population. About 100,000 Shias live in different parts of Jammu region and an equal number in Kargil district of Ladakh. All these are totally indifferent to the separatist movement introduced in 1989.

• Ladakh is a sensitive and strategic area lying in the vicinity of China, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Central Asian republics. Any demographic change here could well extend the canvas of or even upset the delicate geo-political game in the neighbourhood.

• The areas of Drass, Kargil, Batalik, Suru Valley and Leh are predominantly Shia and Buddhist. Even before the last Kargil incursion (Pakistan had attacked Kargil town in 1997 and 1998, too), infiltrators never got local support since the Shias have no love lost for the Valley's or Pakistan's Sunni majority. It's the Sunni element of J&K -- including the leadership -- that has a problem with India's absolute sovereignty.

In the Indian Defence Review, Volume 14, Mr B Raman, director of the Institute For Topical Studies, when asked if it was possible for the ISI to spread insurgency to Kargil, replied: "Very difficult. Kargil is a predominantly Shia area. So is Gilgit. The Shias of Gilgit have for many years been fighting against the Sunni-dominated local administration. The Taliban of Afghanistan is a strongly anti-Shia organisation, which has been training the cadres of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, which has been systematically eliminating the leaders of the Shia community in Pakistan. The Taliban itself massacred the Hazaras of Bamiyan in Afghanistan last year. Therefore, the Pakistan Army and the ISI using Afghan mercenaries to start an insurgency in the Kargil area doesn't make sense."

Perhaps. But what would happen if the SSP is enlisted to target and eliminate the Shias of Kargil...? So far, all the massacres in J&K were aimed at the ethnic cleansing of Hindus -- which made refugees of Kashmiri Pandits, who left the Valley open to Sunnis. Ladakh, being a meeting point of various religions and cultures from ancient times, has evolved a secular and composite ethos; its Shias retain many characteristics of that ethos. What if they were to flee and leave Ladakh open...?

"Sipah-e-Sahaba stands shoulder to shoulder with Jaish-e-Muhammad in Jehad," said Masood Azhar... Over 2 centuries ago, John Locke wrote that the chief role of government is to protect people's lives and property from the transgressions of their neighbours. Can this government shield Shias from Jaish and SSP? Does protection mean visiting Pahalgam after the Yatri massacre? That responsibility, you see, is the Indian Army's. And when the army captures to neutralise, the prime minister liberates to earn brownie points...

Vijendra Singh Jafa, former chief secretary of Assam and an authority on counter-insurgency, writes, "The history of insurgencies, militant movements, and of widespread and protracted terrorist activities in India over the past 50 years is, in some measure, a history of rulers, legislators, civil servants and intelligence agencies who went to bed at 10 o'clock and failed to notice the signals of impending disasters. The truth is that the process of governance in India are rendered nonfunctional by crippling conventions, the art of equivocation, recurring errors of judgement, innumerable intangibles such as personal attitudes, the politics of a particular point of view... and acts of omission and prevarication in the face of urgent imperatives for taking bold and *unpleasant* decisions. These have themselves created the conditions for, or have failed to thwart or neutralise, the trends towards terrorism and separatist insurgencies in the country." I wonder to whom he's referring...

I received many letters lauding Hajpayee for "enlisting US support against Pakistani terrorism." I spat at that pervasive mommy-mommy-he's-beating-me mindset. Those who consider America as The Saviour should remember that God helps those who help themselves. The downing of the Atlantique was a great show of force by the IAF, and that news was on the front pages across the world -- with respect, however grudging. Those who believe that gunboat diplomacy and muscle flexing won't take India far are better off in the chudiyaan business. Do leave defence to people of an unambiguous sex.

Varsha Bhosle