While the JI-dominated Muslim United Front (MUF) secured 31.87% of the votes polled in the Valley (but achieving much less in the rest of the state) in the 1987 elections, the JI itself formed, in the same year, the Hizb-ul Mujahideen (HUM), or its military wing, which became the backbone of Pakistan’s support of militancy. Again in those years, the number of JI-run schools and the students enrolled increased in the Valley.

The Dera Ghazi Khan training centre also possesses an underground weapon and ammunition factory. Pakistan is believed to have raised three regular battalions of the Kashmir Light infantry comprising youth from Kashmir, Pakistan-held Kashmir and Afghanistan. Pakistan’s overall involvement increased when it chose to support the Sikh terrorists as well. Although the Pakistanis cared little for the Sikhs (and vice Versa), they created the K-2 organization under a certain Sajjad Ahmad Reza.

Pakistan’s support was obviously not “only moral and political”. It was a sponsorship in more ways than one. Pakistan initially backed the JKLF and a few other fundamentalist organizations. The fiction of a Kashmiri freedom struggle ended when the ISI began to support solely the pro-Pakistan groups. After the public refusal of the former to pursue a pro-Pakistan line, patronage was shifted to other outfits, mainly to HUM which recruited a few hundred foreign mercenaries, conveniently called the mechmaan-e Mujahideen (gust militants). Not being just “guests” or even foreigners, they actually helped to dangerously escalate the conflict. The latter included Pakistani nationals, Afghans, Sudanese, Bangladeshis, north African Arbas, Lebanese, Iranians, Tajiks, Chechens, plus a handful of people from the Fulg, Jordan, Myanmar, Nepal, Nigeria, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. At times, there were attempts to create united fronts and emphasize the pan-Islamic aspect of the movements.

The Afghan War saw the arrival of thousands of such “guests” in Pakistan, through the kafil (sponsor) system supported by wealthy Arab circles or individuals interested in a jehad. The end of the war again left thousands of them jobless. Some signed for another jehad in Kashmir. Not all were poor and semi-literate. Some were educated and willing to take up arms against the “infidels”. The “guests” enriched themselves while castrating, gouging out eyes, slitting throats, beheading, and peeling off skins.

The Taliban and Kashmir

Maulana Mohammad Farooq Kashmiri, Ameer (Commander) of the HUA stated that the “only solution” of the Kashmir issue lay in jehad, and that it was the duty of every Pakistani to take part in it.[6] The U.S. Secretary of State included this Pakistan-based Kashmiri activist group, along with Hamas, Hizbullah, the Japanese Red Army, the Kurdistn Workers Party (PKK), Tamil Tigers and othrs, among thirty major terrorist organizations.[7] Based in Muzaffarabad and with several thousand armed members in parts of Kashmir and Doda regions of India, the HUA specifically included Afghans and Arab members of the Afghan war. With the toppling of the Najibullah government (1992), and the end of the jehad in Afghanistan,[8] recent years witnessed a change of command from Kashmiris to foreign mercenaries in the main pro-Pakistan militant outfits.[9]

Evidence accumulated indicating that Afghan training camps produces insurgents who infiltrated into Kashmir.[10] While the HUA owes its considerable arsenal, in large measure, to the generosity of the Pakistani Government, especially its intelligence service ISI, other sources are wealthy individual donors in Pakistan and the Gulf countries. The Taliban[11] may be better known as an Afghani movement, but they have a strong Pakistani component in the form of madrassa students from all over that country. In fact, the Pakistani have been part of the Taliban ranks since this kind of student drive first appeared on the scene towards the end of 1994. Most youngsters in the madrassas receive some military training during stay in any one of the 4,500 or so seminary schools across Pakistan.[12] Naseerullah Babar, a former Interior Minister, admitted that under his guidance the Taliban were trained in 1994.

The madrassas are growing pools of juveniles recruited to extremist causes. In addition to the registered religious schools, there are also unregistered institutions turning out students who go on to join militant groups.  Babar, who was in charge of the national police as a former Interior Minister, views some of these schools as “hotbeds of terrorism”.[13] The Dar-ul Uloom Haqqania among them is described as “the alma mater of the Taliban movement” that rules Afghanistan.[14] This school hails Osama Bin Laden, suspected of being one of the key men behind terrorism in the name of Islam and the mastermind of the U.S. Embassy bombings in Nairobi (Kenya) and Dar-es Salaam (Tanzania), as a “true believer”. He was once the star recruiter by the CIA for the Afghan jehad. Ironically, the United States and Bin Laden had the common goals, about a decade or so ago, of the defeat of the Soviets and the demise of communalism. Now, he is the head of a new fundamentalist network. Some analysts are speculating whether he has acquired a suitcase nuclear bomb or chemical weapons from Russia.[15] Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia after the withdrawal (1988) of the Soviet forces. Three years later, he interpreted the arrival of the American troops in Saudi Arabia during the second Gulf War (1991) as occupation of Mecca and Madina, Islam’s two most sacred cities.[16] He vowed to fight them and the royal Saudi family, which forced him to flee. Known as multi-millionaire civil engineer stripped of his Saudi nationality, Bin Laden calls for attacks on American targets from his hideouts in Afghanistan, frequently changing his sanctuary from Jalalabad to Khandahar or from Khost to Nangarhar. Having generously distributed charities to Afghani orphans, refugees and widows, and having stood up against the world’s only superpower, he is a popular man in Afghanistan and even a hero to groups of Muslims elsewhere.

Thanks to the Taliban and the various factions who rallied under the banner of Osama Bin Laden, Afghanistan has become a vast training camp for militant groups from across the Muslim world engaged in assorted jehads.[17] Militant Muslim groups from Pakistan and several other states found moral and material help as well as sanctuary in war-torn Afghanistan. After Bin Laden came to head the Al-Qaida organization, the supreme body of different militant outfits active in the Arab states, and announced the formation of the International Islamic Front, he had the support of the two sons of Sheikh Moar Abd-ur Rahman (the blind Egyptian cleric who was jailed on account of the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York), Aiman Al-Zawahiri (the leader of the Egyptian Jammat-ul Jehad), Algerians representing the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), supporters of the Ittehad-e Islami of Somalia and the Philipines, Abu Sayyaf organization. Pakistanis and Kashmiris also went to Afghanistan to strengthen Taliban ranks and receive military training. Along with the Lashkar-e Taiba, the Harkat-ul Mujahideen, also a platform for anti-Shi’a elements on account of its Sunni base, is one of the two major Pakistani suppliers of manpower from both sides of the Line of Control for the battle in J&K. Most of them live and train in the khost camps, which were initially established with the help of American and Pakistani secret agencies in the 1980s but hit by dozens of U.S. missiles in 1998.

The Mujahideen commandos in the Khost camps had been trained by American and Pakistani instructors, who followed the training books of the U.S. Marines. The camps were visited by William Casey, then director of the CIA, and the late General Akhtar Abd-ur Rahman, then in charge of the ISI.[18] Afghani, Pakistani and Kashmiri teachers now also train the militants in guerilla warfare on light and heavy weapons. An average of 250 people at a time go through training in each camp, the duration ranging from 40 days to six months. The day reportedly starts with morning prayers followed by military lessons and practical training after which come the Dars-e Qur’an or lessons on the Holy Book. The camps, called Al-Badr-1, Al-Badr-2, Abu Jindal, Al-Farooq, Khalid bin Waleed and Salman Farsi, constitute a complex in the Gurbaz district of Khost Province in southern Afghanistan, handed over to the Harkat-ul Ansar, which sends volunteers to fight in Afghanistan, Kashmir or to other parts of the world, all under the supervision of the Taliban administration. Subsquently, Abu Jindal came to be known as the “Arab camp”, where the Saudi dissident, Osama Bin Laden, held his press conference in May 1998 to announce the launching the International Islamic Front for jehad against the United States and Israel.

Bin Laden’s network is also being tapped by a number of fundamentalist groups in West Bengal.[19] Besides, other terrorist groups whose playground is J&K set up operation posts in Calcutta from where they can move into Nepal wherefrom men, material and money come. Such border districts, easily identifiable along the frontiers of Pakistan, Kashmir, Bangladesh, and India’s North-East, virtually sit on a ticking bomb because of a combination of factors including the presence of terrorist groups and infiltration. The disciples of Bin Laden in Bangladesh have also planned to kill prominent intellectuals including writer Taslima Nasreen, “National Professor” Kabir Chowdory, and Islamic scholar Maulana Abd-ul Awal. They are believed to be responsible for an attempt on the life of the Bangladeshi poet Shams-ur Rahman in early 1999.[20]This senior poet is considered a symbol of Bangladesh’s secular nationhood. The Bin Laden-aided armed cadres seek to create a shari’a society by murdering progressive intellectuals and waging a war against other temporal authorities. Terrorists in some of the training centers in Chittagong Hill Tracts identify themselves as “Bangladeshi Talibans”, in whose activities the Pakistani ISI is believed to have a hand.

Bin Laden primarily and repeatedly called for attacks on the military and civilian American targets. The U.S. Government accused Harkat-ul Ansar and Bin Laden for planning the bombing (7 August 1998) of its embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es Salaam which killed 257 people, including 12 Americans. The American leadership further blamed his network for the details of Belgian, Pakistani and U.S. peacekeepers in Somalia, a plot to assassinate the Egyptian President, a bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, and the murders of German tourists in Egypt. Washington retaliated (20 August) by firing about 75 Tomahawak cruise missiles from ships close to Pakistani waters at the militant training camps in Afghanistan and chemical factory in Sudan alleged to be manufacturing a component of nerve gas, a charge categorically denied in Khartoum. Bin Laden and his top aides were not present in the camps during the night attack, but some Pakistani, Kashmiri and Arab nationals perished. The attack destroyed two mosques, hostels and civilian houses. Seven missiles hit a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum. The Taliban described the action as the terrorism of a superpower which let loose a reign of intimidation and destruction of Muslims all over the world. The next day, the Taliban held huge processions blocked roads, delivered fiery speeches, attempted to storm the American Center and the British Council, and shot two United Nations officials, one of whom died. The Taliban intensified its verbal attacks on the United States asserting that the missile strikes were not against a Saudi dissident but proof of “enmity against Islam”.[21]  Two Mew York newspapers (New York Post and New York Newsday) reported that Bin Laden had directed his followers to assassinate Bill Clinton on two occasions, when the U.S. President visited (1994) the Philippines and when he planned (1998), later cancelled, a visit to South Asia.

Islamic mercenaries, partly funded by the exiled Osama Bin Laden, cross from Pakistan or Afghanistan and establish bases in the Kashmir Valley. They bring the jehad of the Saudi millionaire to Indian-controlled Kashmir. Apart from the fact that the Taliban were assisted by Pakistan’s ISI partly to serve its purpose against India, some survivors of the U.S. missile attack admitted that they were trained in the use of weapons in Khost camps from where they expected to be sent to Kashmir.[22] The Afghan alliance opposed to the Taliban administration frequently reproved Pakistan for providing armed assistance to groups pledged to violence. The brute force greeted as the deeds of “holy warriors” in the eyes of many ordinary Pakistanis[23] id detested as disorder and savagery by the targeted or their parties.

It is not only that many Kashmiri Hindus abandoned their homes and land. Bloodshed, destruction, abduction,raped, extortions, robberies, and inter-group armed encounters disillusioned the majority of the Muslim Kashmiris as well. Innocent citizens, including the Valley’s large Hindu Brahman minority, are constantly under threat and attack. Especially the fear of rape, which the armed militants have used as weapon to punish, intimate, coerce, humiliate and degrade, was a factor in the flight of whole families, Hindu and Muslim.[24] The Kashmiris, on the whole, are exhausted and crave for a return to at least pre-1988 normality. Pakistan has not been able to wrest away the whole of J&K from India. But the Valley has become one of the most weaponized societies in that part of the world. While supporting violence there, Pakistan failed to control its spread into its own social fabric, and became more and more “Talibanized”, as a result of the destabilizing export of Afghan-style radical Islam.[25]

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