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Why target the Sikhs?

B. Raman

THE massacre of 36 Sikhs in a village near Srinagar by terrorists on the night of March 20 was carried out by those belonging to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (Army of the Pure) and the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), according to the Centre.

Since 1996, practically all acts of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir have been carried out by the Lashkar, the militant wing of the Markaz Dawa al Irshad, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) _ previously known as Harkat-ul-Ansar _ which has been declared by the US as an international terrorist organisation since October 1997; the HM, which is the militant wing of the Jammat-e-Islami of Kashmir; and the Al Badr, a splinter group of the HM.

The Lashkar and the HUM consist almost entirely of Pakistani and Afghan nationals, with many of the Afghans coming from the Nuristan area of eastern Afghanistan. They also have a small number of Arab mercenaries of Afghan war vintage.

The HM has a large percentage of Kashmiris recruited on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC) and the Al Badr is essentially an organisation of Pakistani nationals, most of them Pakhtuns from the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). The Al Badr, create d by the ISI in the then East Pakistan in 1971, massacred over 10,000 Bengali intellectuals. It disappeared from the scene after 1971 and re-appeared in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and then in Kashmir as an integral part of the HM, from which it split and started operating separately.

The Deobandi-Wahabi extremist influence is the strongest on the Lashkar and the HUM, moderate on the HM and weak on the Al Badr. The Lashkar and the HUM, almost entirely, and the HM, partly, recruit their volunteers from the religious madrasas of Pakista n through the Tablighi Jamaat, headed by Lt. Gen. (Retd) Javed Nasir, former ISI Director-General, who was removed in 1993 by Mr. Nawaz Sharif, during his first tenure as Prime Minister, under US pressure due to Lt. Gen. Nasir's involvement with terroris t organisations in a number of countries and for other reasons.

The Al Badr recruits its cadres largely from the non-religious educational institutions. It has the largest number of educated cadres _ many of them engineers, doctors, software experts and other professionals. One of its cadres killed during the Kargil conflict last year was a commercial pilot.

The Lashkar, the HUM and the Al Badr are members of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front for Jihad against the US and Israel, whereas the HM is not. While the Lashkar and the HUM have close relations with the Taliban, which has allowed them to r un their training camps in its territory, those of the HM have been strained because of its continuing support to Gulbuddin Heckmatyar of the Hizbe Islami. As a result, it does not have any training camps in the Afghan territory. After breaking with the HM, the Al Badr has been trying to mend fences with the Taliban.

Despite these differences, these organisations co-operate at the ground level in Kashmir, and Syed Salahuddin, the Amir of the HM, is the head of the 14-member United Jehad Council, based in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK).

Before the coup on October 12 last year, Mr. Nawaz Sharif, partly under US pressure and partly due to his own concern over their activities, had ordered the ISI to round up the cadres of these organisations and there were indications that he was planning to ban the Lashkar and the HUM.

After the coup, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, chief executive, released all the arrested cadres and resisted the US pressure to ban them. Further, he allowed them to hold public rallies against India all over Pakistan, without the display of arms, whereas under Mr. Sharif and Mrs. Benazir Bhutto, they were allowed to hold rallies only in their headquarters.

Even in the past, the Lashkar and the HUM were describing their ultimate objective as the liberation of the Muslims of the rest of India, after having liberated those in Kashmir. Now, the entire United Jehad Council is projecting its mission as ``Jehad-e -Hind'' (``Jehad for the liberation of India'') as against their past mission of Jehad-e-Kashmir.

Gen. Musharraf has also been pressuring these organisations to dissolve their individual identities and form a United Kashmir Liberation Organisation, on the lines of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

The Pakistan Muslim League (PML) and Mr. Abdul Qayyum Khan, of the POK Muslim Conference and former Prime Minister of the POK, have strongly advised Gen. Musharraf against his policies which, they fear, might prove suicidal, as Mr. Qayyum Khan has put it .

All these organisations as well as the Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan, the political mentor of its counterpart by the same name in Kashmir, have been calling for the expulsion of the Hindus and the Buddhists from Kashmir, but they had never in the past crit icised the Sikhs.

However, there have been indications of tension in the relations between these organisations and the Sikh community abroad, including in Pakistan, following the appointment by Mr. Sharif of Lt. Gen. Nasir, who had re-joined his administration in 1998 as his Intelligence Adviser, as the Chairman of the Evacuee Trust Property Board and concurrently President of the Pakistan Gurudwara Prabandak Committee (PGPC), which is responsible for the management of all gurdwaras in Pakistan, including the Nankana Sah ib of Lahore, one of the holiest of the holy shrines of the Sikhs outside India and reputedly one of the richest gurdwaras outside India.

All but one of the Sikh members of the PGPC Managing Committee resigned in protest against the appointment of a Muslim to this post. Since then, there has been a slanging match between the Sikh leaders of Pakistan and other countries on the one side and Lt. Gen. Nasir on the other.

Lt. Gen. Nasir has alleged that since 1947 over Rs. 100 crores of the Pakistan-based gurdwaras has been siphoned off to India and asserted that he would ensure that the collections from foreign Sikh pilgrims were used only for the maintenance of these gu rdwaras in future.

There have also been allegations that the appointment of Lt. Gen. Nasir was meant to facilitate the diversion of the funds of these gurdwaras to the Tablighi Jamaat and other Islamic extremist organisations with which he is associated.

After Lt. Gen. Nasir's criticism of Mr. Sharif's Washington agreement with the US President, Mr. Bill Clinton, on the withdrawal of Pakistani troops from the Kargil area, the latter sacked him as his Intelligence Adviser and as the Chairman of the Evacue e Trust Property Board, but did not disturb him from his post as the President of the PGPC. Gen. Musharraf has also retained him in this post.

There is no evidence yet that these differences might have led to a change in the attitude of the ISI and the extremist organisations controlled by it towards the Sikhs in Kashmir.

The massacre of the Sikhs, whatever be the reason, could prove counter-productive to Pakistan and would only strengthen the perception of Pakistan as a state whose actions are governed more by irrationality than by reason and logic.

(The author is former Additional Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India.)