Return of a Fire Breather
One of Pakistan’s deadliest militants resurfaces, threatening war against old enemy India
26 One of Pakistan’s deadliest militants resurfaces, threatening war against old enemy India.
Sahab,” the portly, bearded young cleric respectfully addressed his interrogators as he squatted on the grimy floor of a Srinagar police lock-up, “Aap mujhe zyada din nahin rakh sakte hain (you can’t keep me in for long).” That was Maulana Masood Azhar, then 26, arrested by the Indian Army in early 1994. His words echoed prophetically. In 1995, Al Faran, a Kashmiri militant group, abducted six Western tourists to demand Azhar’s release. The abduction failed. The hostages were murdered. In December 1999, Azhar was sensationally released by the Indian government in exchange for 177 passengers of Indian Airlines flight IC814, hijacked from Kathmandu to Kandahar, Afghanistan.
On January 26 this year, one of India’s most wanted terrorists resurfaced. Maulana Azhar addressed a crowd of over 10,000 supporters at Muzaffarabad’s University College Grounds framed by looming hills. “Let us aim guns at India first,” he said in Urdu over a telephone hooked to a public address system. “We will move to Israel and United States later,” the vitriolic Azhar’s voice reverberated over speakers placed around the venue, ringed by dozens of his Jaishe-Mohammed’s ( JeM) black-and-white flags and hundreds of his supporters, many sporting copycat versions of his distinctive black and white headscarf.
Indian home ministry officials believe Azhar’s recent appearance was not without the concurrence of the Pakistan army. “They are trying to test the waters to see our reaction,” says a senior Indian intelligence official. So far, the Government has not reacted to his speech. Talks with Pakistan remain suspended after the August 6 killing of five Indian soldiers on the Line of Control. Azhar’s appearance is linked to the possibility of increased violence in Jammu and Kashmir ( J&K) ahead of the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections later this year.
The venue of Azhar’s show of strength was the launch of Kashmiri militant Afzal Guru’s Urdu book Ahle Imaan Ke Naam Shaheed Mohammad Afzal Guru Ka Aakhri Paigam. Guru, hanged on February 9 last year for his role in the December 13, 2001 attack on Parliament, worked for JeM. His book, a compilation of his prison diary, preaches holy war and glorifies suicide bombers.
Azhar made most of the event that was also his show of strength. He called for raising an army of 500,000 mujahideen to wage war against India. Since his 1999 release in the swap, he has done just that. JeM’S attack on Parliament brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war. The group swiftly ascended the militancy ladder in J&K through a series of audacious suicide attacks, and vied with Lashkar-eToiba ( LeT) for power and influence. Yet, the Maulana, known for his fiery speeches calling for Holy War against India, was remarkably quiet for over a decade. His group was banned after militants close to it tried to assassinate President Pervez Musharraf in 2003. The militant leader was placed under house arrest. However at JeM’S headquarters in Bahawalpur, its ac-
tivities continued unchecked. The outfit masterminded a failed suicide attack on the disputed Ram Janmabhoomi shrine at Ayodhya in 2005. In 2007, three JeM militants were arrested in Uttar Pradesh as they plotted to kidnap Rahul Gandhi.
FORTRESS BAHAWALPUR
Azhar spoke from an undisclosed location that, sources say, was almost certainly Bahawalpur. Pakistani Punjab’s southernmost city is a garrison town with the second largest army presence after Rawalpindi. It has also been JeM’S base since its creation in 2000. Over the past few months, life has returned to the JeM headquarters in Bahawalpur’s upmarket Model Town. This is part of the quiet revival of the organisation within Pakistan since the 2008 ouster of President Musharraf and the return to power of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) ( PML-N). JeM has benefited from millions of rupees in donations from the Pakistani diaspora in the UK and USA.
A newly-built five-storey concrete building has over a hundred rooms, a telephone exchange and a huge basement. A newsroom with a dozen iMacs produces JeM’S mouthpieces: The weekly Al-Qalam in Urdu and English, Urdu monthly Ayeshatul Binat for women and the weekly Musalman Bachay. The building looks like any of the hundreds of seminaries in Pakistan, imparting modern and Islamic education, except for its 20-ft-high boundary walls topped with barbed wire. A small army of tall, turbaned, well-built, long-bearded men in shalwar-kameezes mill around the four approaches to the seminary. They conceal Kalashnikovs under their cloaks and keep a wary eye on strangers. Model Town residents are not concerned with what goes on behind those high walls. One local even felt secure in the presence of Azhar’s armed ‘mujahids’.
Azhar divides his time between North Waziristan and his Bahawalpur compound. He is also believed to be in touch with Syed Salahuddin, the
Hizbul Mujahideen commander and LeT’S Hafiz Muhammad Saeed. All of these militant groups are based out of Punjab. Chaudhary Jaffar Iqbal, senior leader of Nawaz Sharif’s PML(N) and a close associate of the prime minister, is quick to deny allegations that their resurgence has anything to do with the Sharifs. “No PML(N) member has ties with radical militant organisations. Maulana Masood Azhar’s emergence has nothing to do with PML(N) coming into power,” says Iqbal, who is also a member of Pakistan’s Upper House of Parliament.
MILITANTS OUT OFTHE CLOSET
For over a decade, Azhar has topped a list of 50 most wanted terrorists that includes Dawood Ibrahim and Salahuddin, which India has routinely sent to Pakistan. His deportation and trial has constantly figured in meetings with Pakistan, which has denied that he lives there. During the third meeting of the Indo-Pakistan joint anti-terror mechanism at Islamabad’s Foreign Commonwealth Office in June 2008, an Indian official waved a day-old Pakistani newspaper that reported his presence in Bahawalpur. He did this after Pakistani diplomats once again feigned ignorance.
Azhar was never physically tough. He dropped out of a militant training camp that he attended in the early 1990s as he could not take the rigours of military-style training. He cracked easily under interrogation in Kashmir. An Indian intelligence official, who has studied him, regards Azhar as a more effective motivator, organiser and rabble-rouser than even LeT’S Hafiz Saeed. Indian security officials now link Azhar to a Pakistan army plan to resurrect militant leaders to disrupt Lok Sabha elections in May and state Assembly polls in December. At least one other major militant group, Al-Badr, has stirred to life after several years of dormancy. Its militants tried to infiltrate into Kashmir through Keran last October.
“Recent arrests of militants in the Valley have revealed clear plans to disrupt the elections,” says Ashok Prasad, director general of police, J&K. JeM itself is in disarray. A concerted security drive has forced it to abandon its northern sanctuary in Kupwara district for Tral in southern Kashmir. Azhar’s speech indicates a desire to re-establish JeM’S presence in the Valley and to prevent it from being eclipsed by LeT. Addressing the rally, Azhar too vowed to avenge Guru’s execution. He called General Musharraf an agent of the West. He missed the irony. Musharraf is under arrest. Azhar roams freely. Follow the writers on Twitter @SandeepUnnithan and @KaswarKlasra