SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 2, No. 44, May 17, 2004

Data and assessments from SAIR can be freely published in any form with credit to the South Asia Intelligence Review of the
South Asia Terrorism Portal

ASSESSMENT

INDIA

J&K: Democracy Without Freedom
Guest Writer: Praveen Swami
New Delhi Chief of Bureau, Frontline magazine, and also writes for its sister publication, The Hindu

Elections can be fair, it would seem, and at once profoundly unfree.

Voters in the small village of Mirhama queuing up to vote on the morning of May 5 found a Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin (HM) poster pasted on the wall alongside the polling station. "The Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin considers it its primary purpose to punish those who have aided this election," it read. "Such people should not confuse our benevolence with weakness. They should know the Mujaheddin have a programme in place which will make the Indian rulers quake." "We want to vote," said Manzoor Ahmad, "but we have to answer to the Mujaheddin tonight, when none of these soldiers will be around. So, some of the people in our village asked the soldiers to coral us to the polling booth." Mohammad Rafiq was more blunt. "The only safe voter tonight," he said, "is the one who has a couple of lathi (baton) blows to show along with the ink on his finger."

Several issues arising from the just-concluded Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) elections in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) need clear-eyed examination. First, what do the election results in fact tell us? Has there been, as several media commentators have claimed, a revival of the National Conference (NC)? And what do voting patterns in J&K mean for the future of political life in the State? As important, though, the results provide a prism through which the working of terrorism in the State may be understood. The wages of a security policy which protects the state but not citizens need to be examined, and solutions considered.

Some within the NC have sought to represent the two Lok Sabha seats they have won in the Valley, to the single one taken by the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP), as the first signs of a renaissance.

The NC had sought, in the course of the election campaign, to appropriate several issues traditionally projected by Islamists, and elements of the PDP: criticism of alleged atrocities by Indian forces, demands for dialogue with terrorist groups, including the HM, and claims that the Union Government was hostile to Muslims at large. At one stage, former Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah had even threatened to revive a movement for a plebiscite in J&K, and had refused to attend the marriage of his daughter to a Hindu.

Two seats notwithstanding, the rightward lurch has done the NC little good: notably, the party would have lost the Baramulla seat by a wide margin had the PDP contested it along with its coalition ally, the Congress. Its share of votes polled in the Kashmir Valley has increased only marginally, from 34.9 per cent in the decisive 2002 Assembly Elections to 38.4 per cent now. Had this been an Assembly election, the NC would have won 21 seats in the Valley, up from 18 in 2002

However, this gain needs to be read in the context of an even sharper rise in support for the PDP-Congress alliance. Where the two parties together picked up 40.7 per cent of the Valley vote in 2002, they have now won 48.5 per cent of the vote. Of this, the Congress share is only 9.2 per cent - but through its 'friendly' contest with the PDP in Baramulla, it has proved its coalition ally will loose ground through Kashmir unless it concedes some space to its junior partner. Both will have to work together, or perish alone.

As such, the election results have also shown no party can claim to speak for all the people of the Valley, a proposition underlined by the fact that the overwhelming bulk of PDP assembly segment wins, 13 of 22, were concentrated in south Kashmir, while the overwhelming majority for the NC, 13 of 21, came from Srinagar. In a curious inversion of history, it would seem, the National Conference is emerging as the party of the city, and the PDP occupying its position as the party of the peasantry.

Close analysis of the results in Jammu province throws up similar surprises. Although the Congress has won both Lok Sabha seats from Jammu, its victory masks a revival of the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) fortunes. Where the BJP won just one Assembly seat in 2002, it has now taken 15 segments, ten from Jammu city and its surrounding border areas. The Congress has also raised its share of the segment-cake, from 15 in 2002 to 20 now. Both parties, together, seemed to have squeezed out smaller players, like the Jammu Kashmir Panthers Party, which could win just a single seat this time around - a decisive repudiation of its hostile regional-chauvinist stance against the Congress-PDP alliance, in which it is a partner.

Here again, the National Conference's new-found efforts to appropriate Islamist causes cost it not a little. Its biggest reverses came in the form of a wholesale desertion of its traditional supporters among the Gujjar tribe in the districts of Rajouri and Poonch. Gujjar leaders had been protesting against the PDP's advocacy of granting reservations for the upper castes, Hindu and Muslim, residing in the mountains. Instead of acknowledging these concerns, the NC put up a Rajput Muslim candidate, and paid the price. In 2002, the NC won nine seats in Jammu; now it would pick up a single segment.

The lessons? The transfiguration of politics in J&K that began in 2002 is proceeding apace. Any of the two main actors in Kashmir must ally with one of the two main actors from Jammu to hold power. In a rational world, this would lead to alliances which could defuse regional tensions, and enable dialogue and reconciliation. It could, however, also lead to calls to sunder the State on its ethnic-communal lines once and for all: something which both underestimates the cultural diversity in the State, and which would have calamitous repercussions for Hindu-Muslim relations across India.

All of this, of course, assumes that the elections in J&K were fought in normal circumstances, which they weren't. The Kashmir Valley results contain within them an ugly subtext: the use of terrorist groups to facilitate democratic victory.

Consider, for example, the case of southern Kashmir. Half of the PDP's votes came from high-turnout segments, notably Dooru, Devsar, Noorabad, Pahlgam and Kokernag. In all these areas, the PDP is strong - and so is the Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin. Yet, the HM focussed its anti-election campaign - comprising attacks on political workers and posters warning citizens with reprisals if they voted - in areas where the NC was strong. The All Parties Hurriyat Conference's (APHC's) rival factions also concentrated their boycott campaign in NC dominated areas. The end result? The PDP won massive leads in its segments, while its opponents' supporters bunkered down at home on election day.

What the election results do show is that the PDP's relationship with the HM, troubled as it might be, has paid it ground-level dividends. Anantnag Member of Parliament (MP) Mehbooba Mufti - Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's daughter - and HM 'central division commander' Abdul Rashid Pir, were the architects of this alliance. In 2001, Pir crossed the Line of Control along with the then-HM 'supreme commander', Ghulam Hassan Khan. His introduction to the Valley was part of a large-scale reshuffle within the HM, intended to marginalise the pro-dialogue rebel Abdul Majid Dar.

Pir's main task was the construction a new pool of overground sympathisers, to compensate for diminishing support from the ranks of the HM's traditional political patron, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), which had backed Dar. Pir successfully built a wide network of contacts with grass-roots PDP cadre as well as its top leadership, contacts that were crucial to the PDP's thumping victory in the 2002 Assembly Elections. The relationship, however, rapidly soured. One key cause was the March 2003 elimination of the 'supreme commander' Ghulam Hassan Khan, who operated under the code-name Engineer Zamaan. The HM believed their 'supreme commander' was eliminated several hours after his arrest, with PDP consent.

Whatever the truth, the HM responded by initiating a full-scale assault on the PDP. Pir is believed to have ordered the assassination of several PDP cadre, including one of Sayeed's relatives, in April 2003, and the subsequent bombing of the Parimpora Fruit Market in Srinagar two months later. Sources, however, said he subsequently acceded to requests by a top PDP leader for a peace meeting, along with the HM's 'southern division commander', Arif Khan. The meeting, held in the south Kashmir village of Chattergul, ended with the top PDP leader promising to do all that was possible to scale back offensive operations against the HM.

Nothing of the kind could, in fact, be secured by the PDP, although follow-up meetings were held in the Pahalgam area. In January this year, the HM lost Ghulam Rasool Khan's replacement as supreme commander, Ghulam Rasool Dar. Soon after, Indian troops shot dead Arif Khan as well. Pir was now nominated to hold the job. While many within the HM wanted to end the relationship with the PDP, Pir prevailed - with the support of several influential south Kashmir figures, including Mohammad Abid, the HM's new 'southern division commander', the Nagbal 'area commander', Ashiq Shah, and Kokernag 'area commander', Shabbir Bahduri.

Pir was shot dead by Indian forces acting on Intelligence Bureau (IB) information on May 6 - hours after the end of polling in the penultimate phase of elections in J&K. He is likely to be replaced by Amir Khan, a member of the HM's Pakistan-based Central Jihad Council who also uses the nom de guerre Khalid Saifullah. Although some HM commanders, notably Bandipora's Bashir Ahmad Pir, want a change in line on the PDP, the organisation is likely to value the protection PDP rule gives its overground apparatus, in the name of protecting 'innocents and human rights'. In material terms, many south Kashmir commanders have also secured significant financial gains, notably in the form of construction contracts granted to immediate relatives. Politically, the electoral dividends of the PDP-HM relationship are obvious: and have led the NC into a competitive effort to win terrorist favour.

Indian armed forces have focussed their election efforts on protecting candidates and their workers - not on actually making sure citizens are safe to exercise their political options. Put simply, politicians are now relatively safe, but not the people.

Election 2004 was considerably safer than that seen in 2002. Just 17 political workers were killed in the campaign - from February to May 7 - a figure that stands in stark contrast to the 99 lost in 2002. Yet, the results show that organisations like the HM continue to wield considerable influence over civil society. The sad fact is that terrorists, not the Indian state, rule J&K by night. The use of killings as an index with which to gauge security is profoundly misleading.

Two reforms seem imperative. First, the Indian Army and Border Security Force (BSF) need to get out of their suicide-attack shell. Sharp increases in commitments to perimeter security have brought a near end to night operations, except those generated on specific information. Knowing that troops will rarely move out of their camps at night, terrorists take shelter in nearby villages, recruit their residents, and target those perceived as pro-India. Significantly, kidnappings are the one kind of terrorist crime that increased between 2002 and 2003, when they reached levels not seen since 1997. No prizes are available for guessing who is being targeted.

Some within the Army are sensitive to the need for physical domination of villages at night, a fact made clear by the creation of new, locally-raised battalions. These initiatives, though, need to be institutionalised. Personnel also need to be freed from Srinagar, the domination of which has become a reflexive obsession forged during the urban warfare era of the early 1990s. An estimated 16,000 personnel of all forces are now in Srinagar, the vast bulk squandered on static duties and personal protection tasks. Many are simply posted in poorly designed bunkers from which they can see little, as such a curious case of Indian forces providing sitting targets which can be attacked with impunity. Such numbers, however, are simply no longer needed to protect the city, and would be better-used providing security in the countryside.

Finally, some of the self-delusion on attrition among terrorist ranks needs to be abandoned. From January to May 13, just 353 terrorists have been shot dead across J&K - figures marginally higher than last year, it is true, but well below the figures recorded in 2001 and 2002. Given that the kills constitute just a tenth of the estimated presence of terrorists in J&K, the lull in cross-border infiltration will do nothing to significantly dent the capabilities of Pakistan's jihadi armies. The fact that attacks on security forces have declined means little. Terrorists, it would seem, have learned the real lesson: that dominating civil society is more important than raids and bombings. It is time Indian forces also did some thinking.

INDIA

Terror and Democratic Resilience
Kanchan Lakshman
Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management; Assistant Editor, Faultlines: Writings on Conflict & Resolution

Democracy and terrorism are opposite poles of the political continuum, and they came into direct confrontation, once again, in India's recently concluded elections. By all accounts, democracy emerged victorious, though terror did inflict limited damage in some areas.

The Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) elections, as well as State Assembly elections in four States, were held under the circumstances of calls for a poll boycott by a plethora of violent anti-state groups across the country, widespread voter intimidation, as well as targeted violence against candidates, party machinery, security force personnel and civilians. Calls for poll boycott have long been an essential feature of the terrorists' strategy in the various theatres of sub-conventional conflict in India.

In Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), for instance, terrorist groups and their proxy over-ground separatist organisations called for a boycott, arguing that elections could not resolve the decades-old conflict. Terrorist cadres attacked politicians, polling booths and party offices since campaigning started for the four-phased elections held between April 20 and May 10. The intimidation strategy was clearly illuminated when the Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen (JuM) stated, after a grenade blast targeted an election rally of the State Health Minister and Congress Party nominee for Udhampur parliamentary constituency, Choudhury Lal Singh, in the Banihal area of Doda district on April 14, that it would "continue to target election rallies as it was only by force it can demonstrate that parliamentary elections could not be held in Kashmir."

In the four phases of polling, a total of 31 persons were reportedly killed and 109 incidents of grenade attacks, Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blasts, firing incidents and other poll-related incidents of violence occurred in the entire State. These numbers compare favourably with the 2002 State Legislative Assembly elections, which was marred by higher levels of violence and intimidation. Various terrorist formations had organized a series of attacks against political parties, security forces and the electorate in 2002, and 41 political workers were killed in the month of September alone. There was also an organised attempt to intimidate civil society ahead of those elections, and 168 civilians succumbed to terrorist attacks between the beginning of August and September 22, 2002. 1999, the year of the last Lok Sabha elections, saw the deaths of 49 political activists. In 1998, the year of the previous Lok Sabha elections, 41 political activists were killed; and the 1996 Assembly Elections saw 69 such deaths.

The relatively low levels of violence during the 2004 elections signal the increasing disarray in terrorist ranks as a result of a series of security forces' successes, as well as some declines in infiltration from Pakistan. They are, moreover, also an indication of the resilience of democracy. Despite intimidation and attacks on top politicians, including the chief of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP), Mehbooba Mufti, National Conference (NC) chief Omar Abdullah, various State Ministers, political workers and the general public, J&K witnessed an voter turnout of 35.11 per cent. While Baramulla saw a voter turnout of 35.93 per cent, in Jammu it was 44.34 per cent. However, the terrorists' campaign was felt in the State capital Srinagar, where the turnout was just 18.45 per cent and in the Anantnag constituency where it was 14.76 per cent.

While the poll boycott is reported to have succeeded in towns and cities, as visible in the figures for Srinagar, people voted in large numbers in the violence-afflicted regions and the areas close to the Line of Control (LoC). A large turnout was also reported from areas where terrorist cadres attempted to disrupt the electoral exercise with violence. For instance, in the border town of Uri, where eleven people died during an attack on an election rally on April 8, 57.62 per cent polling was recorded. In other areas close to the LoC, while Lolab witnessed a voter turnout of 44.15 per cent, Karnah recorded 54.34 per cent. Strikingly, Gurez, which in the past has been a constant target of Pakistani shelling, recorded a turnout of 82.72 per cent.

Elsewhere in India, the electorate in some Left Wing extremist (also called Naxalite) affected States like Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Orissa, also defied threats and coercion to exercise their franchise in relatively large numbers. A poll boycott had been called, and a campaign of widespread violence and intimidation preceded the elections. Two days before the April 20 polling, senior TDP leader Yerran Naidu survived a landmine blast near Singupuram in the Srikakulam district. Earlier, in a similar blast, the then Chief Minister, Chandrababu Naidu, had a narrow escape on the Tirumal Ghat road in Chittor district on October 1, 2003. Director General of Police, S.R. Sukumara disclosed, at the State capital Hyderabad on April 19, 2004, that there had been 78 Naxalite attacks during the pre-poll period (the election announcement was made on February 29). Out of these 78 incidents, TDP activists were targeted in 32 cases and Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress in one case each. A 25,000-strong armed police force and 57,000 civil police personnel were deployed to ensure free, fair and incident-free elections in Andhra Pradesh. Despite persistent threats, the turnout in the State was 69.83 per cent, and areas in which the People's War Group (PWG) is active saw relatively large turnouts. For instance, Khammam in north Telangana witnessed a turnout of 78.53 per cent; in Warangal it was 75.82 per cent; Karimnagar saw a turnout of 65.02 per cent; Adilabad: 72.81 per cent; Medak in the south Telangana region: 71.58 per cent; Srikakulam in north coastal Andhra witnessed a turnout of 75.46 per cent; at least 70 per cent of the total electorate in the Guntur district of south coastal Andhra cast their vote.

In Jharkhand, where the pre-poll campaign was marred by a series of attacks on security force personnel, the voter turnout was recorded at 55.71 per cent. Among the more lethal incidents of pre-poll violence, on the night of April 7, at least 26 police personnel were killed in a series of landmine blasts triggered by the proscribed Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) in the Saranda forest of West Singhbhum district. The districts of Palamu, Hazaribagh, Singhbhum and Lohardaga, where Left Wing extremists dominate, the voter turnout ranged between 49 and 60 per cent.

In Orissa, also affected by significant Left Wing extremism, while the State-wide turnout was 66.04 per cent, Koraput, Mayurbhanj and Berhampur, which are particularly affected by Naxalite subversion, registered a turnout between 60 and 70 per cent. Jehanabad in the State of Bihar, dominated by the PWG, witnessed a voter turnout of 68.30 per cent.

While there is a growing disillusionment with the Left Wing extremist ideology, the relatively high voter turnouts are also an indication of the deepening engagement with the democratic process in large swathes of 'red-flag' territory in India. This is crucial, considering the fact that the Naxalites, who violently espouse the cause of peasant rights and radical re-distribution of land, have traditionally boycotted elections besides targeting rich landowners and state installations. To the extent that the Naxalite groupings in India have an unwavering commitment to engineering a militant upsurge, unlike the mainstream Communist parties or the social democrats, a strategy of poll boycott is 'rational'. However, fewer incidents of violence and the absence of visible retribution for 'dissent' (considering the large voter participation) thus far, possibly indicate a change in strategy. There are reports of clandestine deals with one or the other political party or candidate in areas of Naxalite influence during the elections, though the open collusion of at least some past elections was not visible. The only report of retributive violence so far has come in from the State of Jharkhand, where the MCC killed two persons, including an 'area commander' on May 7, and punished several others for their alleged participation in the electoral process. Earlier, on May 6, the group held a Jan Adalat ('People's Court') at Pokharia village in the Hazaribagh district, and five persons who had worked as polling agents of a particular party were assaulted. A day earlier, the MCC had held another Jan Adalat at Uppargath in the Chatra district and awarded 'punishment' to 15 villagers for participating in the elections.

Among the possible reasons for the relatively low-levels of violence and large voter participation in conflict-afflicted areas is the exhaustion factor. This could particularly be seen in J&K where, according to the State police chief Gopal Sharma, at least 31 senior 'commanders' of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM), Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), have been killed by security forces in the last 18 months. There are also indications that the handlers of these groups in Pakistan do not want to vitiate the ongoing d�tente and prefer to wait and watch for a 'miracle breakthrough' on the Kashmir issue.

The discourse on elections in India has, more often than not, ignored the relatively large-scale participation of people living in conflict affected areas. In Nagaland, home to the country's oldest insurgency, a record 91.41 per cent of the total electorate exercised their franchise. 72.82 per cent of the total electorate exercised their franchise in the Outer Manipur constituency and 56.23 per cent in the Inner Manipur constituency, in a State that had witnessed the most extraordinary campaign of intimidation in the months preceding the elections, and significant acts of disruption during the electoral process itself. In the State of Meghalaya, while 46.89 per cent of the electorate cast its vote in the capital Shillong, in the Tura constituency, the proportion was as high as 61.79 per cent. The rebuff to the bullet was also felt in Tripura, where the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) has been at the receiving end of a militancy fuelled largely across the border from Bangladesh. In the two Lok Sabha seats in Tripura, voter turnout was 67.52 per cent in Tripura West and 66.18 per cent in the Tripura East constituency. Evidently, voter apathy, a much-used term among psephologists in India, does not find an echo in India's Northeast, a region plagued by socio-economic deprivation and insurgent violence.

It is interesting to contrast these figures against some of the high profile constituencies in 'peaceful' areas. In the outgoing Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's constituency of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, for instance, the turnout was a meagre 35.41 per cent. In the six constituencies of the Mumbai metropolis, the average voter turnout was between 44 to 49 per cent; while in the affluent Bangalore South constituency, it was 48.95 per cent; and in the national capital of Delhi, the average voter turnout was 47.02 per cent.

The voter turnout in terrorism-afflicted regions of India is only a small measure of the fact that terrorist groups are minority elements within the populations of these areas. They may be an over-riding part of the everyday life of the people living in conflict-affected areas, but they are not dominant politically and are, in fact, unlikely to be representative in any meaningful way within the democratic paradigm.

Conducting elections, however, is the relatively easier aspect of the liberal democratic experiment in India; it is the institutional consolidation of democracy that is harder to achieve, and that is why terrorism is unlikely to fade away in the foreseeable future.

While it may, consequently, be premature to assert that people are rejecting the idea that power flows from the barrel of the gun, it is nevertheless the case that the fundamental features of liberal democracy - political contestation and civic participation - appear to have triumphed, at least for the time being.

NEWS BRIEFS

Weekly Fatalities: Major Conflicts in South Asia
May 10-16, 2004

	Civilian	Security Force Personnel	Terrorist	Total
BANGLADESH	0	0	11	11
INDIA
Assam	0	0	1	1
Jammu & Kashmir	13	4	23	40
Left-wing Extremism	5	0	2	7
Manipur	0	0	1	1
Tripura	0	0	1	1
Total (INDIA)	18	4	28	50
NEPAL	15	17	49	81

Provisional data compiled from English language media sources.

BANGLADESH

Islamist vigilante group intends to establish Taliban-like rule: The Islamist vigilante group, Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) led by Bangla Bhai, has been reportedly involved in subversive activities for the last six years to allegedly establish a Taliban-like rule in Bangladesh, even though the outfit came to limelight only recently. JMJB leaders and activists have reportedly stated that their organization supports Islamist extremist leaders and also follows the ideals of the Taliban and spearheads a movement based on jehad. To achieve their objective, the JMJB has created a three-tier organization with estimated cadre strength of 10,000. Bangla Bhai claimed that JMJB is headquartered in Dhaka but refused to disclose its exact location. It allegedly has strong bases in the Khulna, Satkhira, Bagerhat, Jessore, Chittagong, Joypurhat, Rangpur and Bogra districts. According to Daily Star, the JMJB is another name for the Jama'atul Mujahedin Bangladesh (JMB) which was in the news during 2003 and whose armed cadres fought with police for hours in Jaipurhat during August that year. Documents seized from their secret training camp in Khetlal, Jaipurhat, in August 2003 indicated the outfit's subversive plans. Though the police failed to arrest Rahman, JMB 'chief commander', they arrested his brother Ataur Rahman Ibne Abdullah and 18 other militants. Rahman now associated with the JMJB and has links with the Islami Chhatra Shibir and Jamaat-e-Islami. He is also alleged to have traveled to many countries, including India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Malaysia, with the latest visit to Pakistan in 2003. The Daily Star, May 17, 2004; May 13, 2004.

INDIA

Peaceful polling in last phase of parliament elections: Amidst some incidents of terrorist violence, including grenade attacks and firing in which a Border Security Force (BSF) Inspector and a civilian were injured, polling to the Udhampur-Doda Parliamentary constituency on May 10, 2004, passed off peacefully. In election-related violence, terrorists lobbed a grenade on a BSF patrol party at Kali Masta in the Gool area of Udhampur district causing injuries to a BSF Inspector. Terrorists also fired a grenade targeting a polling station at Chakka near Bhaderwah. The grenade, however, exploded in mid-air without causing any damage. Separately, terrorists opened firing targeting polling stations Panjgrain and Malothi Bhalla in Bhaderwah simultaneously. A civilian sustained injuries in the firing at Malothi Bhalla. Further, the terrorists also attacked the Patnazi polling station and a booth at Kither in Doda district without causing any damage. A grenade attack on the troops was reported from Hilli Nullah in Bhaderwah. However, it failed to cause any damage. Daily Excelsior, May 11, 2004.

NEPAL

24 Maoists and two soldiers killed in Bhojpur district: At least 24 Maoist insurgents and two soldiers were reportedly killed during a clash at the Deurali Village Development Committee area of Bhojpur district on May 12, 2004. While 17 bodies of insurgents were recovered from the incident site, four soldiers sustained injuries during the clash. The Himalayan Times, May 13, 2004.

PAKISTAN

Government hopes peace process will continue under new Indian regime: Pakistan on May 13, 2004, expressed confidence that the peace process with India would continue despite the defeat of the incumbent Government led by Atal Behari Vajpayee in the recently concluded elections. Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri said Pakistan was looking forward to seriously engaging with the new Government in India to promote the process of peace and resolution of all outstanding issues. Meanwhile, the Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, said that the change of Government in India would not affect the on-going peace process. "We hope any change in the Government in India will not affect the peace process between the two countries� This process is not linked to personalities, it is an outcome of the desire of the people of the two countries for peace," said Ahmed. Jang, May 14, 2004.

Pakistan has no links to terrorist outfits in Jammu and Kashmir, claims US official: The Government of Pakistan has "no connections" with terrorist organisations operating in the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) "none today, whatsoever", claimed Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Michael G. Kozak while testifying before the House Sub Committee on Human Rights and Wellness. Kozak was asked by Congressman Crowly if the Pakistani Government or any Pakistani intelligence agency continued to have links with terrorist organisations, based in Pakistan, which continue to "infiltrate" into J&K. Kozak said there were only two such organizations, i.e. Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and Harkat-ul-Ansar (HuA). He also claimed Pakistan had "some links" with these organisations in the past but not anymore. Jang, May 13, 2004.

Al Qaeda video threatens revenge for fighters killed in Wana: In a video posted on May 11, 2004, on an Islamist militant website showing the beheading of an American civilian in Iraq, an Al Qaeda-affiliated group said it is 'ready to take on Pakistani soldiers on the borders with Afghanistan', according to reports in Associated Press. In the video, titled 'Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American', a masked man reads a statement with a message for President Pervez Musharraf. "Another message to the agent traitor Pervez Musharraf, we tell you that we are eager to meet your soldiers. By God, we seek them before the Americans and we will avenge the blood of our brothers in Wana and others," the masked man said. Daily Times, May 12, 2004.

The South Asia Intelligence Review (SAIR) is a weekly service that brings you regular data, assessments and news briefs on terrorism, insurgencies and sub-conventional warfare, on counter-terrorism responses and policies, as well as on related economic, political, and social issues, in the South Asian region.

SAIR is a project of the Institute for Conflict Management and the South Asia Terrorism Portal.

South Asia Intelligence Review [SAIR]

Publisher
K. P. S. Gill

Editor
Dr. Ajai Sahni

A Project of the
Institute For Conflict Management

To receive FREE advance copies of SAIR by email Subscribe.

Recommend South Asia Intelligence Review (SAIR) to a friend.

SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW Weekly Assessments & Briefings Volume 2, No. 44, May 17, 2004

SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 2, No. 44, May 17, 2004