SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 9, No. 51, June 27, 2011

INDIA

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J&K: Range of Terror
Sanchita Bhattacharya
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

On June 8, 2011, Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) Director General of Police (DGP) Kuldeep Khoda warned Security Forces (SFs) against efforts to infiltrate from across the border into the Kashmir Region. He also noted that most of the militants in central Kashmir were active in the peripheries of Budgam District, close to the Pir Panjal Range.

J&K has five mountain ranges – Himalaya, Karakoram, Ladakh, Hindu Kush and Pir Panjal. Of these, the Pir Panjal Range, which lies on the south of the Himalayas, is strategically the most important in terms of militancy in the State, as it separates the Jammu Region from the Kashmir Valley, and also abuts the Line of Control (LoC). The Range mainly constitutes the twin Districts of Poonch and Rajouri with fragmented offshoots in Udhampur and Doda. Any insurgent group seeking to move from the LoC into Rajouri and Poonch, or to Doda in the Jammu Region, must cross through the 4,200-metre Nikam Gali (alley or pass) in the Pir Panjal. The Range also provides a thoroughfare to insurgent units crossing from Doda into key South Kashmir regions such as Shopian and Kulgam.

Indeed, whoever controls the Pir Panjal dominates access to all of the Kashmir Valley. A concentration of insurgents along the range could, in theory, cut off communications along the Srinagar-Jammu National Highway, the sole road between the two key regions of the State. In addition, armed cadres could target walking routes from Poonch to Uri, Kulgam to Doda, and Rajouri to Shopian. Insurgents armed with mortars could bring Army positions in Kulgam under relentless fire, and any counter-offensive would certainly draw heavy casualties, given the terrain.

The formidable Pir Panjal Ranges and the forest covered ridgelines of the Districts of Poonch, Rajouri, Udhampur and Doda within and around the Valley have long been considered suitable for establishing militant bases. These terrorist bases, which are invariably well stocked with rations, arms, ammunition and subversive material, are shifted to the upper reaches during summers and come down below the snowline during winters.

According to the Institute for Conflict Management (ICM) database,a total of 3,841 persons, including 2,649 militants of various outfits, 671 civilians and 519 Security Force (SF) personnel, have been killed in 1,749 terrorist-related incidents in the region since March 11, 2000. In the latest of such incident, two Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militants were killed in an encounter with the SFs at Chamraid in the Bafliaz belt of Poonch District on June 23, 2011.

429 major incidents, involving the killing of three or more than three persons, have been recorded in the Pir Panjal since 2000, the most prominent of these including:

November 25, 2010: Army and Police killed three Pakistani militants of LeT at Marha in the upper reaches of Sailan in Surankote tehsil (revenue unit) of Poonch District. The slain militants included, Abu Ujefa, a ‘divisional commander’ of LeT and Abu Ali, the outfit’s in-charge for the twin border Districts of Poonch and Rajouri.

April 1, 2010: The SFs shot dead six top LeT militants, including five Pakistanis and a local, after an exchange of fire at Khabra forests near village Raa Bagla in the Taryath area of Rajouri District.

April 2, 2009: Five persons, including a woman and a female child, were killed and seven others were wounded in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) explosion under a vehicle at Sangla on the Surankote-Marha road in Poonch District.

June 3, 2008: SFs shot dead three top militants of the LeT at Peer Gali in the Rajouri District. The militants were heading towards Kashmir from the Pir Panjal Mountain when they were intercepted and killed by the SF personnel.

March 30, 2007: Militants struck at Panglar village under the jurisdiction of Dharamsala Police Station in Rajouri District killing five labourers.

October 10, 2005: 10 persons belonging to four families were killed by HM terrorists at Dhara and Gabbar in the Budhal area of Rajouri District.

June 26, 2004: 12 persons, including three children, were killed during a terrorist attack at village Teli Katha in the Surankote area of Poonch district.

May 26, 2003: A group of seven unidentified terrorists intrude into the house of a Village Defence Committee member and kill all five members of the family, including three children, at village Seri Khwas in the Koteranka area of Rajouri District.

August 23, 2001: Six terrorists attack the Poonch Police Station and kill seven personnel before escaping without any casualties.

March 2, 2001: 15 Police personnel and two civilians were killed in an ambush at Morha Chatru in Rajouri District.

Fatalities in Pir Panjal Range: 2000-2011

The LeT has lost 72 prominent militants, including three ‘Operational Commanders’. Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) Pir Panjal ‘regiment chief’, identified as Abu Bilal and ‘commander-in-chief’ of HM, Mohammad Din, were among 54 important HM militants killed in the area. Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) has lost 24 top militants, and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) has lost two top leaders, including its ‘chief operational commander’, identified as Ishfaq Ahmed Islamiya. 10 leaders of Al Badr have also been killed in the Pir Panjal during this period. Apart from these principal groups, other militant outfits, such as the Jammu and Kashmir Freedom Force, Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen, Harkat-e-Islami, Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen, Tehreek-ul-Jehad, Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami, have also lost important cadres here. Lesser known groups such as Al-Mansoorian, Lashkar-e-Islami, Al-Jehad, Jehad-e-Turq, Jammu and Kashmir National Liberation Army, among others, are also known to have been active in the region.

Terrorist operations in the Pir Panjal have included forced entry into civilian households and indiscriminate firing, beheading, abduction, use of poison, facial disfigurement, burning of houses, torture to death, hanging, and other atrocities against civilian populations. Abductions in the region have concentrated around a few specific motives – ransom, personal and political vendetta and forcible recruitment of cadres into terrorist training camps.

Patterns of recoveries, from the site of encounters, and from camps, include communication devices (satellite telephones, dictaphones, radio sets, remote controlled receivers, transistors, Indian and Pakistani SIM cards, wireless sets), medicines, food and provisions, maps and code sheets, and various Pakistani, Indian and terrorist organizational identity documents, along with explosive devices, detonators, arms and ammunition. Another important component of recoveries has been currency of India, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Terrorists infiltrating from across the border have evidently been logistically well equipped and have constituted a formidable challenge for the SFs.

At least 273 infiltration attempts have been recorded since 2000, though data on the number of militants who succeeded in infiltrating into the region is not available. On October 13, 2010, the General-Officer-Commanding the 16^th Corps and Security Advisor, Lieutenant General Rameshwar Rao, stated that, though infiltration attempts had increased in 2010, there was a sharp decline in the terrorist violence. ICM data indicates that there were at least 36 infiltration attempts in Pir Panjal in 2010, and 31 incidents of killing, with 67 fatalities, in the year 2010.

Number of Infiltration Attempts: 2000-2011

Indeed, the data for 2010 suggests infiltration attempts comparable to earlier peaks in insurgency in 2001-05, suggesting a focused attempt by Pakistan to revive the terrorism in the State last year.

The pivotal geo-strategic significance of the Pir Panjal has been exploited by various Pakistan backed terrorist groups for over two decades, to inflict violence on the people of J&K. Recent reports indicate that top militants of the LeT and HM have once again started moving towards the Pir Panjal Range, though there are indications that local populations are now refusing to provide shelter to them. These moves must be countered effectively by the SFs, before the terrorists are able to inflict violence on a population that has grown increasingly disillusioned with their excesses.

PAKISTAN

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Legitimizing Murder
Ambreen Agha
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

On June 10, 2011, the All Pakistan Students Khatm-e-Nubuwat (End of Prophethood) Federation issued pamphlets branding members of the Ahmadiyya community as “wajib-ul-qatl” (obligatory to be killed). The pamphlet, circulated in Faisalabad District of Punjab Province, read, “To shoot such people is an act of jihad and to kill such people is an act of sawab (blessing).”

On June 13, 2011, reports revealed that terrorists were chalking out a plan to attack prominent members of the Ahmadi community in the country, starting from Faisalabad. Sources in the local Law Enforcement Agencies also revealed that different terrorist outfits have joined together in this mission and had initiated the campaign with the distribution of pamphlets and organization of meetings in local seminaries against the Ahmadis, claiming that the Ahmadi citizens of the country were involved in conspiracies against Islam and Pakistan.

There is little that is new here. According to partial data in a report titled, The Persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan during the Year 2010, 203 Ahmadis have been killed since 1984, ninety-nine of these during 2010 alone. It was in 1984 that the then military ruler General Zia-ul-Haq promulgated the anti-Ahmadiyya Ordinance XX which added Sections 298-B and 298-C to the Pakistan Penal Code. Through this ordinance, the religious rights of Ahmadis were directly curtailed: Ahmadis could be imprisoned for three years and fined an arbitrary amount for ordinary expression of their faith. In addition to prohibiting them from proselytizing, the ordinance expressly forbade them from certain religious practices and usage of Islamic terminology. This ordinance effectively makes a criminal out of every Ahmadi by including the broad provision of “posing as a Muslim” a cognizable offence, giving the extremists a carte blanche to terrorize Ahmadis with the backing of the state apparatus.

Fatalities among Ahmadiyyas: 2001-2011

Since 1984, the number of attempts to murder Ahmadis stands at 234. 119 incidents of violence targeting Ahmadiyya Mosques were also reported over this period. 3,816 faith related Police cases have been registered against Ahmadis, including 434 cases for ‘posing’ as Muslims and 298 under the country’s extreme blasphemy law, which carries a mandatory death sentence.

In the most lethal attack targeting Ahmadiyyas, at least 86 worshippers of Ahmadiyya community were killed and 98 severely injured in a suicide attack at Darul Zikr and Baitul Noor mosques in Model Town and Garhi Shahu areas of Lahore District in Punjab Province on May 28, 2010. Later, claiming responsibility for the attack, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) congratulated Pakistanis for the attacks and called people of the Ahmadiyya and Shia communities “the enemies of Islam and common people” and urged Pakistanis to take the “initiative” and kill every such person in “rage”. An elderly (Ahmadi) doctor who witnessed the attacks said, “Prior to the event, we had written several letters to the Punjab Government regarding threats from TTP, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP). The Punjab Government’s reaction was to ignore this or do nothing at all.” Significantly, no more than two Policemen were stationed at the Model Town mosque and four at the Garhi Shahu mosque, despite clear and repeated warning from intelligence agencies that Ahmadis were now a priority target of terrorists.

The radicalized media in Pakistan openly provokes violence against the Ahmadis. On September 7, 2008, for instance, the host of the religious talk show Alim Online, Liaquat Hussain declared the murder of Ahmadis to be obligatory (wajib-ul-qatl) according to Islamic teachings. Hussain stressed this several times, urging fellow Muslims to “kill without fear.” Within next 24 hours, two persons belonging to the Ahmadiyya community were killed in Mirpurkhas District of Sindh Province. Unsurprisingly, no arrests were made and the Police registered the killers as ‘unknown’.

Describing 2010 as a particularly bad year for minorities, the Annual Report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) released on April 15, 2011, highlighted a growing spread of hate literature and noted that it had monitored mainstream Urdu newspapers. To identify 1,468 news articles and editorials promoting hate, intolerance and discrimination against Ahmadis in 2010. The monthly Persecution Report for March 2011 stated that the figure of hate literature increased from 1,033 news items in 2008, to 1,116 items in 2009. For instance, Ilyas Chinioti, a member of the mainstream political formation, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), who visited Bangladesh as a lecturer on the “End of Prophethood” in 2005, condemned the Ahmadiyyas as the deviant sect. On January 14, 2010, he was quoted by Daily Ausaf as stating, “Qadianis (Ahmadiyas) are rebels of the country and the millat (Islamic society).” On September 7, 2010, Daily Nawa-i-Waqt, a competitor of the Daily Ausaf in obscurantism, quoted Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, a maulvi in Faisalabad District, declaring, “The penalty of death for apostasy should be imposed (on the Ahmadiyyas).”

Historically, the Pakistani establishment has played a pivotal role in creating challenges for the country’s minorities. The militarization of Pakistan, the instrumentalisation of Islam for politics, and the radicalization of an already weak civil society has inflicted cumulative wrongs on minority communities. It is within this broad trend that the political history of Pakistan gives a startling account of the marginalization of the Ahmadiyya community who, on September 6, 1974, were declared a ‘non-Muslim minority’ by the Pakistan National Assembly. 

For more than five decades, Ahmadis, who differ with other Muslims over the finality of Prophet Muhammad as the last monotheist Prophet, have endured discrimination and violent persecution; their identity criminalized, mosques brought down to rubble and graves desecrated. The campaign started early after Independence, when the clerics wanted the regime to declare Ahmadis a non-Muslim minority and to remove Pakistan’s first Foreign Minister, the Ahmadi Muhammad Zafrullah Khan, from the cabinet for adopting Articles 18 and 19 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR, 1948), providing for the freedom of conscience and freedom to change one’s religion. Khan had then argued that these articles were compatible with and recognized under Islamic Law (Shari’ah), and declared the adoption of the provisions of the UDHR as an “epoch making event.” Article 18 of UDHR influenced Article 20 of the then Pakistan Constitution, which read:

Article 20 remained unpopular not only among the ulema but also among the politico-military leadership of Pakistan. The process to dilute its provisions was, in fact, initiated by an elected political leader, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, in 1974. Later, in an attempt to consolidate selective elements of the Shari’ah within Pakistan’s legal structure, President Zia-ul-Haq issued an ordinance to amend the Objectives Resolution of 1949, which placated the Muslim clerics and established the principal of religious conformity in Pakistan. Under this resolution Pakistan was to be modeled on the ideology and democratic faith of Islam and all rules and regulations were to be framed in consonance with Islam, allowing a greater role to the ulema, who felt emboldened by this recognition. Thereafter, five Criminal Ordinances explicitly or principally targeting religious minorities were passed by the Parliament in 1984. The five ordinances included a law against blasphemy; a law punishing the defiling of the Qur’an; a prohibition against insulting the wives, family or companions of the Prophet of Islam; and two laws specifically restricting the activities of Ahmadis.  General Zia-ul-Haq issued the last two laws as part of Martial Law Ordinance XX, on April 26, 1984, suppressing the activities of religious minorities, specifically Ahmadis, by prohibiting them from “directly or indirectly posing as a Muslims.”

The persecution of Ahmadiyyas was legalized and given further encouragement with the passage of the Criminal Law Act of 1986, later referred to as the ‘Blasphemy Law’, which impacted directly on the Ahmadi community because of their belief in the prophethood of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. The passing of several Amendments and Criminal Acts, both under Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s regime (1974 Ordinance) and General Zia-ul-Haq’s rule, have thus challenged and undermined Article 20, though this continues to exist nominally in the Constitution.             

Thus, Khan’s support for Article 20 made him unpopular among the upholders of fundamentalist Islam, who were not only against other non-Muslim minorities but also rose against other Muslim sects, including the Ahmadiyyas – also known as the members of a “fake Muslim community.”

By early May 1949, a radical Muslim movement, the Majlis-e-Ahrar-e-Islam (Ahrar), opposing the right to religious freedom, initiated an anti-Ahmadi agitation. Increasingly, Muslim fundamentalists became hostile to Ahmadiyyas and it was Maulana Abu Ala Maududi, the head of the revivalist Jama’at-e-Islami (JeI), who sought to unify Muslims in Pakistan under the common cause of excommunicating the Ahmadis. The then ruling Muslim League stood in opposition to Maududi’s idea of excommunicating the Ahmadis. The Government’s opposition led to a violent anti-Ahmadiyya movement, in 1953, resulting in the death of over 200 Ahmadis. It was after the 1953 riots that the religious fundamentalists used Ahrar propaganda as a basis to launch and sustain anti-Ahmadi campaigns. The next two decades led to the progressive reformation of Pakistani laws in accordance with selective elements of the Shari’ah, and the National Assembly approved a new Constitution in 1973, which was deeply influenced by the orthodox clergy. In 1974, a new wave of anti-Ahmadi disturbances spread across the country. It was at this juncture that the ulema pressurized the Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Government to declare Ahmadis as non-Muslims. Under Bhutto’s leadership, the Pakistan Parliament introduced Articles 260(3)(a) and (b) to the Constitution, which was later put into effect on September 6, 1974, explicitly depriving Ahmadis of their Islamic identity. The Amended Article 260 read:

The anti-Ahmadiyya movement during Pakistan’s formative years was enormously influential in shaping the growth of violent sectarianism in Pakistan. Conspicuously, there is either benign neglect by the State or, more often, active collusion, in incidents targeting the Ahmadis and other religious minorities.

The Ahmadis can only look to worse times ahead, with a proliferation of hate literature published by a multiplicity of extremist formations, and open incitement to greater violence against what are regarded by the extremists as ‘deviant sects’. A notice issued by Baruz Jama’at al-Mubarak after the May 28, 2010 bombing at Garhi Sahu, declared, Lahore ki zameen Ahmadiyyo ke khoon se nahayegi, Yeh khoon rang laayega aur babar ghubaar hoga (Lahore will witness the bloodshed of Ahmadis, this bloodbath will bring the community to dust). With a progressively radicalized and intolerant society, various extremist majoritarian religious formations contending to establish their ‘true’ Islamic credentials, discriminatory laws, and state agencies that throw their weight behind majoritarian extremism, there is little hope of any relief to the country’s beleaguered minorities.

Civilians

Security Force Personnel

Terrorists/Insurgents

Total

INDIA

Assam

Jammu & Kashmir

Left-wing Extremism

Bihar

Chhattisgarh

Jharkhand

Maharastra

Odisha

Total (INDIA)

PAKISTAN

Balochistan

FATA

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Punjab

Sindh

Total (PAKISTAN)