Since 1990, the BSF has been responsible for the elimination of 2,653 terrorists, among them the architect of the 2001 attack on Parliament in New Delhi, Shahbaz Khan. It also succeeded in securing some 9,375 arrests, including theJaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) ‘chief’ Maulana Masood Azhar, who was subsequently released from prison as part of a prisoners-for-hostages swap that took place when an Indian Airlines jet was hijacked in 1999. Almost 700 BSF personnel died in the course of its fifteen-year commitment in Srinagar
Coming days after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s meeting with the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference(APHC) leadership, in which the secessionist formation had called for the phased reduction of Indian counter-terrorism formations, the decision to withdraw the BSF from Srinagar appears to be aimed at consolidating the ongoing dialogue process.
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New Delhi had decided to hand over urban counter-terrorist operations to the CRPF in 2003, on the basis of the recommendations of a Group of Ministers who reviewed India’s security posture in the wake of the Kargil war. Some numbers of BSF troops were subsequently withdrawn from urban areas of Srinagar north of the Jhelum River. However, the withdrawal plan bogged down last year amidst concerns about CRPF’s ability to deal with the challenge before it. Two weeks ago, however, the BSF received orders to withdraw from Srinagar – the timing of which suggests that New Delhi wished to have a post-talks gift in hand for the All Parties Hurriyat Conference.
While most Srinagar residents are likely to react to news of the BSF withdrawal with some happiness, further evidence that the process of normalisation is gathering momentum, no great imagination is needed to see that India’s decision to withdraw the BSF from Srinagar involves considerable risks.
For one, CRPF units posted to areas in the city north of the Jhelum River a year ago have secured no great success. Bar the recoveries of some small amounts of weapons and ammunition, the CRPF has not succeeded in conducting a single independent offensive operation. Nor, on occasion, have its personnel displayed great competence: not a little criticism was generated by the CRPF’s failure to defend Srinagar’s Tourist Reception Centre against a fidayeen (suicide squad) attack in April 2005, on the eve of the departure of the first bus from Srinagar toMuzaffarabad. While the criticism might be unfair, for every counter-terrorism force in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has had its share of dismal performances, it does point to the challenges ahead.
Principal among these are the recoveries of well over a thousand kilograms of chemicals used in manufacturing explosives from recent raids in southern and central Kashmir. In the main, these caches have consisted of commercially-available substances, like potassium permanganate and aluminium nitrate, rather than the Research Department Explosive(RDX), the traditional explosive of choice for terrorist groups in J&K. Used in several recent car bomb attacks – terrorists have, notably, learned to evade anti-sabotage road patrols by driving along with military convoys and then parking bomb-laden vehicles a short distance ahead of them – the new explosives caches suggest that the infrastructure exists for a major escalation of violence. The new materials suggest that Pakistan’s covert services have instructed jihadi groups to take measures to vest that country’s denials of involvement in terrorist activity in J&K with some plausibility.
If a large-scale bombing campaign does get underway this winter or next spring, the CRPF will be relatively ill-prepared to play an offensive role in targeting its perpetrators. Unlike the BSF’s somewhat obscurely named intelligence wing, the ‘G-Branch’, the CRPF does not as yet have a large network of assets within terrorist groups. For reasons that will be obvious to intelligence professionals, the G-Branch’s assets have been more than a little reluctant to work for new and inexperienced masters.
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Moreover, the CRPF’s independent signals intelligence capabilities, unlike those of the ‘G-Branch’, are rudimentary; its staff, unlike that of theBSF, has not acquired an intimate knowledge of the wireless operators of jihadi groups. Finally, the CRPF’s medium-weapons and explosives capabilities are frugal, as is appropriate for a policeorganisation. While such resources are rarely used in counter-terrorism work inSrinagar, they have on occasion been essential to success.
To all of these concerns there are, of course, credible counter-arguments. Much signals-intelligence work in Srinagar now relies not on the interception of traditional wireless traffic but of mobile phone communication, a task which is in the domain of India’s domestic covert service, the Intelligence Bureau. Given this fact – and the existence of Indian Army’s sophisticated signals intelligence apparatus – the loss of the G-Branch’s technical assets could be argued not to be of great significance.Second, the J&K Police, which will be the principal director of counter-terrorism operations, has demonstrated considerable competence in both offensive counter-terrorism operations over recent years. Its counter-terrorism officials have long worked with the G-Branch and, in many cases, have jointly handled its assets. As such, the handover may be smoother than might be expected in other circumstances.
India’s apparent willingness to experiment with its counter-terrorism formations has been in no small part enabled by the significant scale-back in the activities of the Hizb ul-Mujahideen (HM), and can be read as an effort to test the seriousness of Pakistan’s commitment to continuing its de-escalation of its not-so-covert war in J&K.
The largest terrorist group in J&K – and the one of greatest political significance, since its cadres for the most part hail from thestate and have linkages with local political formations, both mainstream and secessionist – the HM has carried out few strikes of importance since 2002. Its posture has led politicians to call for efforts to bring about a ceasefire with the group, although it has rejected such overtures. India had ordered its Forces not to initiate offensive combat operations in the wake of the Kargil war, after some elements in the HM initiated a dialogue process with New Delhi. While that enterprise collapsed, amidst an escalation of violence Indian military commanders have made clear they have no wish to see repeated, some politicians believe it ought to be resuscitated.
Could something of the kind be brought about, at least in the mid-term? Since the May, 2004 elimination of Abdul RashidPir, the HM has not had an overall ‘commander’ for operations in J&K.Pir, a trusted confidante of the organisation’s Muzaffarabad-based ‘supreme commander’, Mohammad Yusuf Shah aka SyedSalahuddin, had been attempting to build a new support base for the organisation among mainstream political groups, like the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, following its desertion by its long standing patron, the J&KJamaat-e-Islami. His loss was a considerable blow to the HM, coming less than five months after the killing of his predecessor, Ghulam Rasool Dar, just over a year after the elimination of the previous commander for operations, Ghulam Rasool Khan. Through the last several months, the HM also lost a number of powerful provincial commanders, notably Arif Khan, ShabbirBhaduri, and, this March, Ashiq Butt.
For reasons that are unclear, the HM never despatched Amir Khan, Pir’s intended successor, to J&K. The alias GhaziMisbahuddin, which the organisation now uses to refer to its ‘operational commander’, is in fact used by a several separate functionaries. Indian intelligence analysts, for the most part, believe the HM’s failure to despatch a ‘commander’ reflects organisational weakness. Another explanation is, however, possible: the HM may have learned its lessons, and sees no reason to have a single-point leader who can be targeted with ease. As things stand, the tasks of command have now been handed over to relatively low-profile second-rung leaders like Ibrahim Dar, a long-standing military aide to Shah, who has returned to J&K from Pakistan in recent months, and an individual code-named SalimHashmi, believed to be a South Kashmir resident with over a decade of field experience with the HM.
If this second explanation is correct – and it should be underlined that it is at best speculative – there is the possibility that the HM’s relative quiescence in recent months is not only the consequence of its mainly-ethnic Kashmiri cadre’s wait-and-watch attitude on the peace process.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s September 11, 2005, declaration that he can "do business" with General Pervez Musharraf points us in the direction of an important component of the détente process in South Asia. There is, however, another component: getting security issues right within J&K itself.
If the somewhat quixotic conduct of Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s governmenton security issues is a guide, there is at least some reason for concern. Consider, for example, its use of the Public Safety Act, a legislation that enables the preventive detention of terrorism suspects. In recent weeks, Chief Minister Sayeed’sgovernment used the PSA to detain Asiya Andrabi, the head of an ultra-right Islamist women’s group known as the Dukhtaran-e-Millat(DeM). Andrabi’s offence was to have carried on a raucous campaign against restaurants in which men and women committed the crime of sitting together, as well as the sale of liquor. While Andrabi’s conduct during the protests was without dispute disgraceful, her activities posed no great threat to thestate. Her arrest seems to have been carried out to embarrass the Hurriyat Conference, which had claimed New Delhi’s willingness to review the detention of PSA prisoners as a major gain from its talks with Prime Minister Singh.
On the other hand, Chief Minister Sayeed has shown a conspicuous unwillingness to act against those who do pose a demonstrable threat to both citizens and thestate. In 2003, the Jammu and Kashmir Police detained Nasir Ahmad Jan, a government-employed engineer, on charges of having aided terrorists who attacked a telephone exchange in Srinagar’s Indira Nagarneighbourhood, killing an Army officer, two CRPF troopers and an employee of the telephone company in the process. Jan’s arrest was based on thestatements of Janzeb Kashmiri, a member of the two-person fidayeen squad who is now in jail in Jammu. Two years on, the Sayeedgovernment has refused to issue PSA warrants enabling Jan’s arrest – as indeed, it has done in hundreds of terrorism-related cases across Kashmir. Since Andrabi’s arrest makes it clear the Sayeedgovernment has no principled objection to the PSA, its conduct is mystifying.
Such conduct is symptomatic of a larger malaise. Officials complain that covert funds sent by New Delhi for use in counter-terror operations have not reached cutting-edge formations: intelligence operations conducted by both the BSF and J&K Police have suffered from the hoarding of these funds bystate officials for the last ten months. Service regulations within the police service have also been flouted, with a crippling impact on officer morale. Where vacancies existed for 37 officers to be promoted to the rank of Superintendent of Police, for example, 59 were granted the job – the last on the list, in order of seniority, being a member of the personal security staff of the Chief Minister. All of this is, of course, part of business-as-usual in J&K. Suchstate-level messing with the apparatus of counter-terrorism, however, makes it that much more likely that the worst-case possibilities opened up by the BSF withdrawal will be realised – something that ought to merit, at the very least, a discreet nudge from New Delhi.
Praveen Swami is Chief of Bureau in New Delhi and Deputy Editor, Frontline.Courtesy, South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal.
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