Jihadis in Jammu and Kashmir: A Portrait Gallery

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From the Jacket:

India's relpentless fight against cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir is well known. However, what is not so well known is the pattern of terrorist activity and the tactics of the different tanzeems or organizations, particularly during the troubled decades from 1980 to 2000.

This book is in two parts. Part One deals briefly with the origins of the Kashmir dispute and demystifies the pattern of terrorist incidents since 1989 up to the Assembly elections in 2002. It analysis arms supply, training, funding of selective militant tanzeems, and their 'outside' links.

Part Two is a handy reference with portraits of 31 tanzeems, their objectives, sponsors, organizational structure, leadership, areas of operation, major acts of terrorism, and fission, fusion and current status.

This timely and comprehensive book will be of great interest to both analysis and the general reader.

About the Author:

K. Santhanam is Director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi.

Sreedhar was a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi.

Sudhir Saxena is a Research Fellow of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi.

Manish is an Associate Fellow of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi.

The origins of this book can be traced to July 2001 when four of us at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) began a systematic study of tanzeems (organisations) in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) to demystify their origins and actions from their surface image of 'incoherent' proliferation. Our attempt was to understand and answer the questions: 'Who is doing what, to whom, and where? Why?' This Gang of Four was composed of Sreedhar, Sudhir Saxena, Manish and myself.

We created an active data base linked to a Geographical In- formation System (GIS) using open information on these tanzeems. We systematically trawled cyberspace. We used some in-house software tools which proved invaluable and we reaped a good harvest, sometimes to the surprise of professionals tracking the topic in conventional ways. Seek and thou shall find it in research-empowering cyberspace-more rather than less. In a sense, we look at this book as the first web-enabled product from the IDSA.

Thorough checking of the veracity of open information in the print domain and in cyberspace took time. And, understanding the hidden patterns beneath the surface of the tanzeems in India's own war against terrorism in J&K was a process which lasted about a year. It was necessary as part of the research effort. It involved crosschecks and detailed discussions with a large body of professionals, both serving and retired, from various ministries and the armed forces. We would like to sincerely thank them all.

The presentation is simple. The first part of the book begins with this Preface and an Introduction. A brief history to provide the setting is followed by a narrative on terrorist developments after 1989, and concludes, at the time of going to press, with our comments on the current situation in J&K with the armies of India and Pakistan deployed along the Line of Control (LoC).

The second part provides crisp summaries of the tanzeems in the form of tables with leading particulars along with textual portraits. We hope that the many custom-made graphics will be useful to students, scholars and 'security practitioners' alike in understanding the tangled web of J&K tanzeems.

We have covered 'conventional terrorism' in the book. But we do believe that there is a slim but finite probability that Pakistan would use the-Kashmir issue to resort to acts of 'nuclear terrorism'. This aspect deserves more national and international research and attention than has been visible so far.

Recall that the USA was concerned in October 2001 about 'loss of control' in Pakistan over its nuclear weapon cores and trigger sub-assembles after the 9/11 apocalyptic AI Qaida attacks and links of some senior Pakistani nuclear personnel with Kandahar. The fear was that these (or the sensitive technologies for making nuclear weapons) could end up in the hands of Pakistani jihadi outfits through raids on nuclear bases or be dished out through the collusion of sympathetic, Islamicised sections of the Pakistani Army.

There is some basis for this apprehension. Basheeruddin Mahmood (a very distinguished, retired nuclear engineer with fundamentalist views and the former boss of Dr A.Q. Khan) founded the NGO, Umma- Tameer-e-Nau (UTN), along with industrialist S.M. Tufail and another nuclear engineer Chowdhury Abdul Majeed. He had firm links with AI Qaida and Lt Gen. Hamid Gul, former Director General, ISI. Osama bin Laden's goals were as clear as Col Gaddafi who wanted to 'buy' two nuclear weapons from China in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Gaddafi did not succeed; but Osama was different due to his strong Taliban-Al Qaida links with Pakistan. Reports about the discovery of reactor-grade (not weapons-grade) uranium by US forces in an Afghan cave complex raises quite a few unanswered questions about this type of jihad connection.

Interestingly, in November 2001 Basheeruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majeed were 'detained' by the Pakistan Government and repeatedly quizzed by its officials and the US Administration. Both were later released despite' interesting' and 'accounted' increases in their bank accounts. The international community will have to live with the fact that the war against terrorism is Janus-faced.

The US Administration is now reported to be quite sanguine about the disposition and security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal as well as possible leakage of sensitive nuclear weapons knowhow (the 'intangibles') from Pakistan to the AI Qaida. How well founded is this US 'comfort' when viewed against its 'compulsions' to work with Pakistan in nabbing Osama and other AI Qaidis after 9/11? Revelations in 'respected' US newspapers (October 2002) about the quid pro quo struck between Pakistan and North Korea for a swap of missile technology (of North Korea) for nuclear weapons technology (of Pakistan) makes disconcerting reading.