By Hiranmay Karlekar appeared in "The Pioneer" on July 16, 1999

As Pakistan claims that its role in securing the withdrawal of the “mujahideen” from Kargil has staved off a wider conflict between it and India and calls for, as an unstated quid pro, international mediation in the Kashmir dispute, it will be wise to remember three things. First, those pulled out of Kargil were not “mujahideen” but regular Pakistan Army troops and irregulars of fundamentalist Islamic terrorist organisations who had been sent by Pakistan itself to occupy positions on the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC). It, therefore, only undid its own mischief which had threatened the subcontinent with a disastrous war. Nor did it do the world any great favour by doing that. India was in any case poised to throw the Pakistani intruders out. As for a wider war, Pakistan was in no position to wage it and would have been devastated if it had occurred.

Secondly, Kashmir is not the subject of a dispute but the venue of Pakistan’s savage and relentless proxy war against India. The latter is not being waged to secure self-determination for Kashmir. Pakistan’s refusal to vacate its aggression and withdraw from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) has destroyed the pre-condition on which the United Nation’s prescription for a plebiscite in Kashmir was based. Also, Pakistan is no longer the State it was when the UN adopted its resolution on Kashmir. It is now an Islamic state with strong fundamentalist overtones whose ethos is repugnant to the secular ethos of the Kashmir valley.

The conflict in Kashmir today is between Islamic fundamentalism - a perversion of the egalitarian, democratic and compassionate religion of Islam - and a plural, humanist and tolerant way of life. Actually waging the proxy war, organised and directed by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), are organisations like Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (erstwhile Harkat-ul- Ansar), Lashkar-e-Toiba, Hijb-ul-Mujahideen and Muslim Mujahideen. The ISI has sidelined the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), which wants a secular and independent Kashmir. Most of these organisations, particularly the Hijb-ul-Mujahideen and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, have close links with the Taliban.

Pakistan has become the home of perhaps the world’s largest collection of fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups. These draw their recruits from the proliferating madarsas whose numbers increased from 137 in 1947 to 671 in 1960 and 893 in 1972. Varying estimates of their current number ranges from 1,400 to 4,500. Their proliferation became rapid with the late President Zia-ul Haq’s Islamisation drive in 1977 which included the promulgation of Islamic laws and the establishment of Shariat courts. Particularly, the Zakat and Ushr Ordinances of 1979 made a major contribution to their growth. Maulvis who became members of Zakat committees, became responsible for distributing money to the poor. In the rural areas, the role of Maulvis as Ushr collectors greatly boosted their status and gave them social and political power. They got themselves elected to local bodies and legislatures and began influencing district administrations.

From the beginning every Islamic sect had its own madarsas through which they expanded their influence. Out of the 893 madrasas in 1972, 254 belonged to the Deobandi sect, 267 to the Bareilvi, 144 to the Ahle Hadith, 41 to the Shias and 105 to other sects. The sects in turn have proliferated because of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism caused by a number of factors. These included resentment against Israel and the West - particularly the United States - for supporting Israel, the hike in the prices of petroleum products in the 1970s which made the oil producing Islamic countries of West Asia flush with funds and filled the Islamic world as such with a feeling of power, and the success of the Iranian revolution of 1979 which reinforced the feeling and established an orthodox and restrictive Islamic order in that country.

In Pakistan, however, President Zia-ul Haq’s Islamisation drive gave the biggest boost to both Islamic fundamentalism and the sects. The latter initially caused increased political and religious activity by the Shias who set up the Tehrique-e-Nifaz-e-Fiqah Jafria (TNJP) in 1979. As it assumed and increasingly political role under the leadership of Allama Arif Ali Hussaini, the Sunnis launched Anjuman Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan under the leadership of Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi who received support from the Deobandi sect and moral and material help from Saudi Arabia. Even before the Afghan War had started, faction fighting between Shias and Sunnis had begun in Pakistan. It became worse during the war.

During the war, the madarsas, particularly those in Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), became important sources of recruits to the various Islamic religious organisations fighting the Soviet forces. The ISI, which organised, directed and armed these groups with the help of the US’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), also used the opportunity to try to settle scores with India. Ever since Pakistan’s military defeat at the hands of his country and the consequent liberation of Bangladesh in 1971, the ISI, which functions under the overall control of the Pakistani Army, had been working with the sole objective of avenging the defeat and balkanising India.

The first move was to sponsor terrorism in Punjab. The ISI provided the various Khalistani terrorist groups with sanctuary, arms, training, and global travel and communication facilities, and helped them to raise funds through narcotics smuggling. Secondly, it tried to annex the Kashmir valley. A plan called Operation Topac, involving the infiltration of trained terrorists into India, was implemented during July-August, 1988, shortly before President Zia-ul Haq’s death in a plane crash. It involved the infiltration of trained terrorists and the recruitment of disaffected Kashmiri youth as terrorists/insurgents, taking them to POK for training, and sending them back to India to unleash violence and terror. Again, as in the case of Operation Gibralter, which led to the 1965 India-Pakistan war, the plan was to create an insurgency situation in Kashmir to prepare the ground for large-scale military operations by Pakistan to annex the valley. The third move has been to try to assist every secessionist or separatist movement in India - for example, that of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) - to balkanise India and unleash terror and uncertainty throughout the country to weaken its resolve to maintain its position in Kashmir.

Terrorism was crushed in Punjab in 1992 after more than a decade of violence and trauma. Insurgency has tapered off in Kashmir where people are increasingly weary of it. The ISI’s support to secessionist, communal and separatist movements and its unleashing of terrorist violence in many parts of the country has only reinforced the nation’s resolve to foil Pakistan’s designs on Kashmir. And now it has got a bloody nose in Kargil where its intrusion marked a desperate attempt to internationalise the Kashmir dispute. Pakistan, however, is unlikely to keep quiet; Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will be under intense pressure from the Army and the fundamentalist Islamic terrorist organisations to show that he had not meekly surrendered to US pressure on Kargil. Logic suggests that his effort will be to intensify efforts to secure international intervention in the Kashmir dispute and step up terrorist violence throughout India.

India will have to cope with intensified terrorism. The world needs to realise that fundamentalist Islamic terrorism will receive a massive boost if Pakistan has its way in Kashmir. The US, already a victim of terrorist violence, will then have something serious to worry about; so will Britain where the security agencies are worried about the activities of organisations like the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen which operate openly. So will China, which has had a problem with Islamic fundamentalists secessionists in Xinjian, and Russia, which has to cope with trouble in Chechnya.