SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 1, No. 38, April 7, 2003

INDIA

J&K: A Revamped Terrorist Strategy
Kanchan Lakshman
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management; Assistant Editor, Faultlines: Writings on Conflict & Resolution

In a major counter-insurgency operation on April 2, the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen's (HM) 'chief commander of operations', Saif-ul-Islam @ Ghulam Rasool Khan @ 'Engineer' Zaman, was killed at Nowgam Chowk, on the outskirts of Srinagar. Within a span of 10 days, two front ranking cadres of the HM have been liquidated. Earlier, Majeed Dar was killed by unidentified gunmen on Mach 23 in Sopore town [J&K: Jehadis Strike as Kashmir Recedes from Global Focus, SAIR 1.36]. Dar's killing was followed by the massacre of 24 Kashmiri Pandits (descendants of Brahmin priests) at Nadimarg village. The intensity of violence in recent weeks is an indication that the relative quiet in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) since a new coalition government under Mufti Mohammad Sayeed took over in October 2002 has been broken.

An emergency meeting of the 'command council' of the HM in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) named Ghazi Nasiruddin as the new chief for Kashmir, to succeed Saif-ul-Islam, on April 3. However, sources indicate that a process of churning is underway within the HM and its guardians in Pakistan. With an approximate cadre strength of 4000-5000, the HM has for long been regarded as having a considerable number of Kashmiris in its ranks. However, the relative dominance of foreign cadres within the HM has, in the past, progressively impaired the operational capacity of the group. Strained relations between local and foreign cadres have, at times, culminated in violent clashes in some places. Prior to his elevation as the 'chief commander', next only to chief Syed Salahuddin, Saif-u-Islam had functioned as a 'divisional commander' in south Kashmir for seven years. When Salahuddin removed Abdul Majeed Dar and some 'divisional commanders' loyal to him in January 2002, Saif was installed as 'chief commander of operations'. Dar had, of course, fallen out of favour with Salahuddin and the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) ever since he announced an ill-fated cease-fire in July 2000.

Frontline's Praveen Swami reports from Jammu that, for the past two months, Pakistani intelligence officials had been pushing Dar to return to Pakistan. Although the Salahuddin-led faction was hostile to Majeed Dar, the ISI was keen on a rapprochement. More important, Dar believed that American pressure on Pakistan to move forward with the dialogue process would ensure his safety. But, subsequent events have proved otherwise and the recent killings have led to a split in the HM, with followers of the slain Dar saying that they were parting ways with 'supreme commander' Salahuddin. "We have launched our own faction of Hizbul Mujahideen," Tufail Ahmed, a former 'operational chief' of the Hizb, and Dar supporter said in a March 27 report. Ahmed is the younger brother of Zafar Abdul Fateh, who was expelled along with Majeed Dar by Salahuddin in May 2002. He claimed that commanders of the new faction on both sides of the border had 'unanimously' appointed Ahmed Yasin as their 'chief commander'. "Around 40 per cent of the Hizb activists are with us," claimed Ahmed.

The Dar killing was also an indication that any attempt to pursue a 'moderate' line in Kashmir would be construed as a deviation from the enforced course of action and would invite violent retribution. Earlier, the assassination of Abdul Gani Lone, senior separatist leader from the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), in Srinagar on May 21, 2002, was symptomatic of the fact that charting a 'moderate' course in Kashmir can prove suicidal.

Pakistan has apparently revamped its strategy on cross-border terrorism since the successful completion of the Legislative Assembly Elections in J&K in September-October 2002, and as the passes become more penetrable with the onset of summer, the impact of these changes grow more visible. A 'Joint Command Council' (JCC) of terrorist groups has been established, and at least a hundred launching pads have been set up to increase infiltration across the Line of Control (LoC) and the International Border. These launching pads are located near the border outposts of Pakistani Rangers and Army and terrorists are lodged there before they are pushed across at an opportune moment. Sources indicate that Pakistan has also directed terrorist groups to launch joint attacks on security forces after realizing the increasing ineffectiveness of suicide attacks by individual outfits.

The JCC brings together nine terrorist groups, including Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Al Badr, HM and the Harkat-ul-Jehadi-e-Islami (HuJI), under the direction of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). The attack on a remote police post in the Gool area of Udhampur district on March 16, in which 11 police personnel and two civilians were killed, was the first joint strike after the formation of JCC. At least 30 terrorists from four groups - LeT, JeM, Al Badr and HM - attacked the police post, for the first time in such a large group. Intelligence inputs have suggested that there could be more such attacks on security forces involving a large number of terrorists. Terrorists have also stepped up their operations in the Rajouri-Poonch-Gool belt of the State since the formation of the JCC and infiltration, which had briefly decreased immediately after the Elections, is again increasing dramatically.

Reports also indicate that recruitment to terrorists' training camps in Muridke in Pakistan has risen to record levels in recent months. Defence analysts in some reports (including one in the Sunday Times, London) put the number of Jehadis at more than 200,000, their ranks bolstered by the war in Iraq. The fact that the Pakistani supply lines for Jehad are intact is borne out by Anwar Ahmad Zia, Assistant Secretary for Education for Sind Province, who confirmed, "Our educational institutes have become nurseries for all these militants."

The new strategy may, however, in part be influenced by severe internal problems within the HM, the largest of groups currently active in J&K. The Lahore-based Daily Times reported that police in PoK arrested 14 cadres belonging to rival factions of the HM on April 2, to prevent them from clashing. The two Hizb factions have often blamed each other for the arrest and deaths of their leaders in J&K. Seven Hizb 'chief operational commanders' have been killed in J&K since 1989, according to the Daily Times. They include Ahsan Dar, Ashraf Dar, Maqbool Allai, Commander Baangro, Naseerul Islam, Masood Nantary, and Abdul Majeed Dar. Barring Majeed Dar, all these 'commanders' were killed in encounters with Indian security forces. Saif-ul-Islam's name now also belongs on this list. At least two of these 'commanders' were reportedly killed after they formed splinter Hizb factions.

Majeed Dar came into prominence when he returned from Pakistan three years ago to announce a unilateral cease-fire with Indian security forces on July 24, 2000. However, while Hizb 'commanders' were holding talks with a high-level official team of the Government of India, headed by the then Union Home Secretary, Kamal Pande in Srinagar, Hizb's Pakistan-based chief Syed Salahuddin called off the cease-fire, and a permanent rift between the Hizb leadership in Indian Kashmir and PoK came into being. When Saif-ul-Islam was appointed as 'chief commander of operations' in place of Majeed Dar, the Hizb was reportedly facing problems on account of 'commanders' who continued to support Dar. In November 2002, Salahuddin expelled three more pro-Dar commanders - Tufail Altaf, Nadeem Usmani and Almas Khan. These 'commanders' reportedly took their 'case' to the Kashmir Committee, the supreme council of the HM. The Kashmir Committee gave them six months of 'probation' to prove their loyalty to the Hizb before they could be allowed to rejoin the organisation.

Hizb sources indicate that Salahuddin was less than happy with this decision, and discussed the matter with Jamaat-e-Islam (JeI) chief Qazi Hussein Ahmad in January 2003. The JeI chief also ordered both the groups to work for the reunification of Hizb. While Salahuddin continues to maneuver for exclusive control of the Hizb, available intelligence now suggests that the HM's Pakistani patrons are now losing patience. Sources suggest that the ISI will wait till the end of May 2003 for a new HM leadership to emerge and consolidate its position in J&K, but if the battle for supremacy continues between the two factions, Pakistani handlers may bring in a much larger proportion of foreign cadres into the group. Official sources in India note that there has been no significant 'exfiltration' of locals for terrorist training in Pakistan in recent months, and a combination of these factors suggests that the HM may gradually be transformed into a purely foreign mercenary dominated group like the LeT and the JeM.

Reports from Pakistan also indicate that the various proscribed groups in that country have renewed their activity after a self-imposed hibernation. The Jaish-e-Mohammed and Harkat-ul-Ansar have renamed themselves as Khaddamul Islam and Jamiaat-ul-Ansaar respectively, and both groups have resumed organisational work to restore all their former provincial and district units. At the central level, Maulana Farooq Kashmiri and Fazlur Rehman Khalil continue as chief and secretary general of Jamiaat-ul-Ansaar. More than 40 Jehadi publications have reportedly mushroomed in Pakistan over the past year, including a magazine called Allah's Army and a daily called Islam, currently the second largest selling paper in the country. Although collecting money for Jehad is officially banned, collection boxes have re-appeared in shops and teahouses. These developments, with mounting evidence of Pakistan's intent to escalate violence in the State, suggest that a long and arduous summer awaits the security forces and the people of J&K.

INDIA

Assam: A New Rebel Turf War
Wasbir Hussain
Associate Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management, New Delhi, & Consulting Editor, The Sentinel, Guwahati

Ethnic rebels in Assam, in India's Northeast, are engaged in a bloody turf war that has not only opened a new front in the strategic border State's insurgency scenario, but has drawn a large civilian population into the vortex of this latest conflict. In a night raid on March 31, 2003, some one hundred cadres of the ragtag Hmar People's Conference - Democratic (HPC-D), dressed in battle fatigues and armed with guns and machetes, descended on a cluster of villages inhabited by Dimasa tribes people in South Assam's Cachar district. They torched more than 70 hutments and herded together nearly 30 villagers in a four-hour offensive. The police say that the rebels, assisted by some Hmar youth, led the abducted Dimasas to a hillock along the densely wooded Bhuban hills, on the Assam-Manipur border, tied their hands and shot them from close range. After combing the hills for 48 hours, the police could locate the bullet-riddled bodies of 23 of these civilians killed by the Hmar rebels. Several people are still reported missing.

The root of the Hmar-Dimasa ethnic feud can be traced to the February 24, 2003, abduction of three important members of the Dima Halim Daogah (DHD), a rebel group active in the area, by cadres of its former ally, the National Socialist Council of Nagalim - Isak-Muivah faction (NSCN-IM). This abduction, apparently carried out with the help of Hmar rebels of the HPC-D, led to a string of retaliatory attacks by the Dimasa armed group. On March 3, Dimasa militants, said to be cadres of the DHD - a group that had entered into a ceasefire with the Government last year - struck back by kidnapping three Hmar farmers. Two days later, on March 5, armed Dimasas attacked two Hmar villages in North Cachar Hills district (adjoining Cachar district where the March 31 killings took place), forcing nearly 800 Hmars to desert their homes and flee to Lakhipur, on the Assam-Mizoram border. Again on March 26, Dimasa rebels launched a fresh attack on some Hmar villages in the area, and ordered the Hmar people to leave North Cachar Hills or face dire consequences.

These attacks and counter-attacks culminated in the latest massacre that has worsened relations between the two ethnic groups that are concentrated in the Southern Assam districts of North Cachar Hills and Cachar on the border with Manipur and Mizoram, two other Northeast Indian States. Both tribal groups are very small in number. The 1991 Census put the total population of Dimasas in Assam at 65,104, and the Hmars at 11,189. The immediate provocations aside, the latest string of attacks is seen as a battle for territorial supremacy. The DHD, formed in 1995, has been fighting for a Dimasa homeland (Dimaraji) in southern Assam and has laid claim to Dimapur, Nagaland s commercial hub, which is the ancient capital of the Dimasa royalty. This, in fact, is one of the reasons for the DHD and its major ally or mentor, the NSCN-IM, parting ways and turning hostile. The NSCN-IM, rather, wants parts of Assam to be merged into its proposed 'Greater Nagaland' plan. The other reason why the DHD severed its ties with the NSCN-IM was the latter's claim to a large chunk of the 'tax' extorted by the DHD, either on its own or jointly, from areas dominated by the Dimasas. After it parted ways with the DHD, the NSCN-IM has moved closer to the little-known HPC-D.

The situation has become extremely murky, increasing the possibility of full-scale ethnic riots in the under-policed area sooner rather than later. Several factors contribute to the messy situation: the first is the alignment of rebel groups that are at play in the local conflict, in this case, the Hmar rebels and the NSCN-IM; second, is the turf war between the two ethnic groups, backed by rebel outfits claiming to represent the respective communities; and finally, the entire conflict has assumed religious overtones: the Hmars are mostly Christians while the Dimasas are generally Hindus. While the police is convinced that the HPC-D was behind last week's killing of the Dimasa farmers, an unheard of group called the Hmar People - Defence Wing (HP-DW) faxed a statement to some local news organizations saying it had carried out the March 31 massacre, and not the HPC-D. The group's self-styled commander, Hmar Hnam Santu, said in the statement that, on March 16, a group of DHD militants barged into a church in North Cachar Hills district while a service was in progress. "The DHD militants molested churchgoers, snatched away their offerings and forced them to bow down before them saying they were more powerful than the Almighty," a local media report quoted Santu as saying. The latest bout of feuding between the Hmars and the Dimasas, who have been coexisting peacefully for decades in the area, has added to the problems of security forces battling violent insurgencies and ethnic conflagrations in this State of 26 million people. The ethnic riots between the Bodo and the Adivasi Santhal communities in western Assam since 1996 have already drained the State exchequer, besides tying down Army, police and paramilitary troopers in a vast stretch in the State's western parts. More than 100,000 displaced people, belonging to both the Bodo and Santhal communities, are still living in so-called relief camps, in sub-human conditions. Moreover, rebels of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) are still active, completing 24 years since the group's formation on April 7, 2003. The banned National Democratic Front of Boroland (NDFB), like the ULFA, is also engaged in a bush war for an independent homeland, though its rival Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT) has given up arms to join the mainstream after the signing of an Accord with New Delhi in February this year.

If the hands of the counter-insurgency authorities in Assam are still full, the post-massacre threat by the DHD to call off the ceasefire has led to some new fire-fighting measures by the government. The DHD wants the Dimasa people to be protected by the authorities. But no one can provide full-proof security to a widely dispersed population that lives in isolated hill areas, surrounded by dense jungle. The inability to prevent further attacks, or even counter-attacks by the Dimasas (one misdirected retaliatory killing - in which an unfortunate Kuki tribal was killed by the DHD in a case of mistaken identity, has already occurred), could easily see the situation going out of hand. In the absence of any other coherent options or strategies, the Government has, once again, fallen back on the Army. The troops have moved in. The scene is uneasy, and the quiet, nothing but ominous.

 

ASSESSMENT

BHUTAN	INDIA

The Media as Spoiler
Guest Writer: Palden Tshering in Thimpu
Journalist and Commentator

Since March 27, 2003, the Indian Press has brought out some extraordinary headlines: 'India puts Bhutan on Notice'; 'Bhutan asks ULFA to vacate camps by June'; 'Bhutan sets June deadline for ULFA'; 'Brajesh talks with King on Bhutan forest flush out'.

Reputed papers in India carried these reports quoting an unnamed 'Bhutanese foreign ministry official' as saying, "We are giving the militants a final chance to leave the kingdom peacefully by the end of June or else we will be forced to use our military forces to remove them from our territory." The truth is, this was a bogus quote that ended up being the lead in several Indian papers. The Bhutanese foreign ministry has categorically asserted that no such statement was ever made. In all the reports published, only one Bhutanese foreign ministry official was named, and his statement was a bland, "We cannot provide details."

The deadline quote originated after India's national security advisor (NSA) Brajesh Mishra made a one-day visit to Bhutan on March 27. Indian papers 'reported' that Mishra conveyed India's ultimatum to the King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, to close the militant camps on its soil. While Indian papers were full of assertions about the June deadline, Bhutan's news agencies carried no reports that bore any resemblance to these.

Who to believe? Was an ultimatum actually given or did reporters under a deadline sensationalize an event by fabricating facts. During a Press briefing on March 30, the official spokesman for India's ministry of external affairs, Navtej Sarna, in response to a question about the national security advisor's visit to Bhutan, issued a denial, stating, "We have seen the report in a major daily regarding the visit by the national security advisor during which he is said to have delivered some sort of ultimatum to Bhutan. I must clarify that this report grossly distorts the facts." He added, "The meeting covered a wide range of our bilateral relations. Of course the question of the camps in Bhutan of Indian insurgent groups was discussed, but no ultimatum or anything of that sort was given. Incidentally, the story also relates an account of a purported CCS meeting. That account is entirely fictional."

Bhutanese foreign secretary, Dasho Ugyen Tshering, also confirmed that discussions covered "a wide range of topics, particularly on issues of security concerns to the two countries."

The presence of Indian militants, particularly of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the National Democratic Front of Boroland (NDFB) has been an irritant in Indo-Bhutanese relations since these groups set up camps in Bhutan after they were driven into the Bhutanese foothills by a major Indian military offensive in 1990-1991. With nowhere to go, they found the 266 kilometer Bhutan border convenient because of its proximity with Assam. Earlier, in August 2002 the King of Bhutan informed his Cabinet that it was his responsibility to remove the Indian militants from Bhutanese soil [Militant Camps: Ending a Foreign Scourge, SAIR 1.10]. The King added that in accordance with the national assembly resolutions the government would make one more attempt at finding a peaceful solution to the problem by asking the ULFA to remove their main camp, which was used as their headquarters. The King had also expressed deep concern about the security implications of the presence of the militants in Bhutan. That same month the Indian foreign minister, Yashwant Sinha, during his visit to Bhutan, had said that the camps established in Bhutan by ULFA and Bodo militants were a matter of concern to both governments, and that the Government of India was fully behind the royal government of Bhutan.

On December 17, 2002, in his address to the nation, the King reiterated, "We will hold talks with the militants who have established camps inside Bhutan. During the talks, it will be our objective to ensure that the militants remove their main camp, which serves as their headquarter, from Bhutanese territory. If our efforts to resolve this problem peacefully do not yield results, and the militants from Assam and North Bengal refuse to leave our country through the process of peaceful dialogue, we will be left with no option but to use our military forces to remove them from Bhutan."

"This will result in war and it is very important for all of us to be fully aware that in such a situation the security of the country will be threatened. We will have to face loss of lives and economic hardship and all sections of Bhutanese people will be seriously affected."

The role of the media is vital in correctly portraying important events. The fabrication of reports complicates already complex issues, creating unreal situations with potentially dangerous consequences for both countries. It should, moreover be clear that, when an ultimatum or a deadline is issued by Bhutan to the Indian militants on its soil, the news will first be released from Bhutan.