The Wrath Of The Lashkar

… were not afraid of Allah but [US President George W.] Bush. At his behest, they wanted to purge our schoolbooks from verses on jihad, befriend India and recognise Israel. They banned all the jihadi outfits and abandoned jihad. They made jihad an abusive term. They blatantly ridiculed the commandments of Allah. Thus they invited the wrath of God in the form of the earthquake.

Ever since the Great Kashmir Earthquake of October 8, 2005, the Lashkar hasbeen engaged in a mission to avert further displays of divine wrath. Indianintelligence officials believe that well over a hundred Lashkar cadre havecrossed the Line of Control (LoC) thereafter, and if these assessments arecorrect, the renewed Lashkar build-up would mark the highest level ofcross-border infiltration since November 2003, when a ceasefire was establishedalong the LoC. Using mountain hideouts along the arc from Bandipora to Kupwaraand Handwara as bases, newly-arrived Lashkar cadre have participated in a seriesof high-profile fidayeen (suicide squad) attacks in recent weeks.

Just what is going on, on the ground? Optimists see no real cause for alarm:the decline in jihadi violence in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), whichbegan after the India-Pakistan ‘near-war’ of 2001-2002, continues apace.What is also evident, though, is that the decline seems to be reaching sealevel. While the drop in violence, measured by indices such as fatalities in theconflict or numbers of violent incidents, was dramatic in the years after thenear-war, it has begun to level off in 2005. In some weeks this winter, violencelevels have been higher than in 2004, which seems to negate fond hopes that anend to the jihad is in sight.

Many Lashkar operatives involved in these attacks appear to have infiltratedinto J&K in the wake of the earthquake, using the opportunity offered by thedisruption of Indian border defences. Ejaz Ahmad Butt, a Pakistani nationalarrested in the course of a November 28 fidayeen attack at Srinagar’sLal Chowk, said he had crossed the LoC on October 25 along with six otherLashkar cadre, by cutting the fencing along the LoC. Butt said his group hadmade three abortive infiltration attempts after the earthquake, turning backfearing interdiction by Indian patrols on two occasions, and being ordered toreturn by Pakistani troops on another.

Other recently arrived Lashkar operatives have used the same route to operatein the Jammu region, to the south. On December 16, the Jammu and Kashmir Police(J&KP) arrested Lashkar operative Samiullah Arain, who had been tasked toexecute strikes in the State’s winter capital, Jammu. A resident of theBadshahi Masjid area in Lahore, Arain operated under the code-name ‘AbuMuslim’. Like Butt, Arain had spent time at hideouts in the Rajwar Forestsbefore being despatched on his mission. Lashkar cells, the October 29 serialbombings in New Delhi make clear, have also been switched on outside J&K.

From the testimony of Lashkar organiser Shabbir Bukhari, a Srinagar residentarrested in November 2005 for his role in transporting terrorists into strikepositions in the city, it is apparent that the organisation had been workinghard to build and maintain new covert cells ever since 2002, to be activatedwhen cadre became available. Investigations into the Arain case also threw upevidence of the activation of new Lashkar cells in the Jammu region. Arain, ittranspired, was to be received in Banihal by a long-standing Lashkar operativenamed Abdul Ghaffar, a resident of the village of Patnala. Ghaffar, who hadtrained at Lashkar camps in Pakistan since 2001, is also believed to have beendespatched across the LoC shortly after the earthquake.

Few civilians in J&K would dispute the proposition that the securitysituation has deteriorated in the wake of the earthquake. Residents of themountains above Bandipora, for example, have been reporting an increasedterrorist presence for several weeks. In November, Army authorities were forcedto temporarily close a military-run school for villagers in the small village ofAragam after Lashkar terrorists threatened the students’ parents. A government-runHigher Secondary School in the area was also forced to relocate after theLashkar denounced the practice of co-education as ‘un-Islamic’.

One reason for the growing infiltration might lie in problems with patrollingalong the LoC. While senior Army officials insist the heightened infiltration isnot a consequence of failures in policing the LoC, Indian defences do seem tohave suffered some degradation as a consequence of the earthquake. Several dozenbunkers, essential to positioning troops on the high mountains forcounter-infiltration patrols, were destroyed during the tremors, along withconsiderable stretches of counter-infiltration fencing. Field commanders saytroops have been reluctant to reoccupy some bunkers because of aftershocks.

Two supplementary causes for the unusual intensity of violence this wintermight lie in Pakistan. General Pervez Musharraf’s legitimacy has been severelyeroded by the appalling performance of the Pakistani state in mitigatingearthquake-related hardship. Beset by revolts by feudal elites in Balochistan,battling Islamists in the North West Frontier Province, and hard-hit by protestin the Northern Areas, General Musharraf is in no position to act against groupslike the Lashkar, which have won enormous public support in PoK because of theirwell-funded relief efforts.

It is also possible to argue that the escalation in violence suits GeneralMusharraf’s larger objectives. India has not yielded the kinds of dramaticconcessions on J&K he may have wished for. New Delhi has responded withill-concealed disdain to General Musharraf’s successive ‘formulae’ forforward movement on the ‘Kashmir issue’, including his so-far-unexplainedproposals for ‘self-governance’. Given that the absence of forward movementmakes General Musharraf increasingly open to criticism from both Islamists andmilitary hawks in Pakistan, the rise in jihadi violence may be intended tosignal to New Delhi that it cannot take the post-2002 de-escalation for granted.

All these possibilities, however, need to be read against factors intrinsicto the jihad: the fact that the world the Lashkar operates in is afiction authored by fanaticism. What else does one make of an organisation whichproclaims, as the December issue of the Lashkar house organ Voice of Islamdoes, that the European Union’s "ex-foreign secretary" believes thecontinent will soon "be Islamised"? That Prince Charles has secretlyembraced Islam? Or that the death of western materialism being imminent, it is"Islam only which has all the basic ingredients to form the most harmoniousand peaceful society that ever came into being in human history"?

Put simply, the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s headquarters at Muridke is not just ashort drive from Lahore, but also at some distance from the real world.Pragmatic motives do indeed inform its recent actions, but the events which havebegun to unfold after the Great Earthquake cannot be understood as a response toopportunity alone. For organizations like the Lashkar, the decline in violenceafter 2001-2002 was no more than a tactical retreat, forced on Pakistan by thevagaries of history. Resuming the jihad in J&K is more than just anopportunity to capitalise on changed circumstances: it is mandated, as Saeedinsisted, by God himself.

For decades, the United States of America and Europe have allowedPakistan’s military establishment to indulge its Islamists. Some cause or theother – defeating the Soviet Union, the Iranian revolution, the war on terror– has always made it expedient to defer compelling Pakistan to confront the jihadiarmies, which threaten not just regional stability, but the country’s ownfuture as a modern state. More than once, the West has been stung by the tail ofthe jihadi scorpion; each time, it has bellowed its wrath, but stoppedshort of stamping out the reptile. Events after the great earthquake make itimperative for policy-makers in Washington DC and European capitals tocontemplate whether this course of action is either useful or wise.

Praveen Swami is Deputy Editor and Chief of Bureau, Frontline Magazine,New Delhi. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South AsiaTerrorism Portal