Africa

African Union pours cold water on India's campaign for U.N. seat (6 August 2005)
UN reform: G-4 remains focussed on the African Union (29 July 2005)
Asia, Africa should end energy dependence: Manmohan (24 April 2005)
Bandung: Stage set for Asian-African partnership (22 April 2005)
India, Brazil, S Africa bloc forges ahead (6 March 2004)
India Inc makes inroads in heart of Africa (1 March 2004)

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Dateline Kashmir: A mother appeals to Mother India for justice

21 August 2000
The Times of India

Dateline Kashmir
A mother appeals to Mother India for justice

By Siddharth Varadarajan
The Times of India News Service

ANANTNAG: Officially, Zahoor Dalal - a cloth merchant in this southern Valley town - is missing, one of an estimated 2,200 Kashmiris who have ``disappeared'' since 1989 after being arrested by some official agency or the other.

He vanished from outside his house around 7 pm on March 24 this year. Neighbours saw him being bundled into a red Maruti van. His uncle, Yusuf, ran desperately from one police station to another but no information was forthcoming.

According to district officials, the van had earlier been seized by the police. An officer surreptitiously commandeered it for the abduction but unknown to him, a vigilant constable noted his action in the station roznamcha.

Four other men disappeared from around Anantnag the same evening. Bashir Butt and Mohammed Malik from Halan village were in town collecting payments for sheepskins they had sold, when they vanished without a trace. In Brariangan, some 25 km away, uniformed men dragged away two villagers. They, too, could never be seen again.

The next morning, the Anantnag police' Special Operations Group and the Army's 7 Rashtriya Rifles made a sensational announcement. In a fierce encounter, they said, five foreign militants from Lashkar-e-Taiba were shot dead near Pathribal in the south of the district. The bodies of the five were burnt beyond recognition. The police claimed the slain men were wearing Army uniform and were the same militants responsible for the massacre of Sikhs at Chitisinghpora on March 20.

It took a few days for local people to link the encounter with the five missing men. They held daily protests demanding the militants' bodies be exhumed, something people in the Valley had never demanded before. One procession was fired upon at Brakpora, resulting in eight deaths. When the charred and decomposed bodies were finally disinterred, each family identified its missing man. Pathribal stood exposed as a monstrous fraud.

Though officially Pathribal was a joint police-Army operation, sources say the operation was essentially a Kashmir police one. Some officers from different elements of the security forces in the field like the Army, BSF and police said such incidents could affect relations between them. However, others contest this and insist the relationship among the security forces is very good at the functional level.

What seems to have happened is that the security forces, eager to ``solve'' Chitisinghpora, randomly abducted five men and killed them. Though the government handed back the bodies to the concerned families, it said murder charges would only be filed if DNA testing confirmed the victims' identity. The DNA results have been ready for the past three months but are not being released because, according to local officials, the government delayed the sanction of Rs 60,000 for lab fees.

However, Zahoor's mother, Raja Begum, doesn't need a lab report; she is convinced her son was shot, burnt and dumped by the police into a makeshift grave at Pathribal. Her brother, Yusuf, who brought up Zahoor after his father died in 1983, said if anyone could prove the young man had any connection with militancy, ``they can burn down my house and family''. Pointing to Raja Begum, he said: ``It is the duty of every Indian to ensure that she gets justice. The persons who did this to our boy did not even bother to hide their identity. They came on TV and said proudly, `We have killed five foreign militants'.''

According to the local administration, the Pathribal killings have done more to alienate the average Kashmiri than anything else the government has done in the past decade or so. They are confident that the Justice Pandian Commission - probing the Brakpora firings - will also expose the truth of Pathribal. ``If the guilty are punished, we will win the confidence of the people; if not, militancy will benefit,'' said one.

Just before leaving Zahoor's house, this correspondent asked Raja Begum, who had silently wept throughout the meeting, whether there was anything she wanted to tell the people of India. ``Zahoor can't come back but those who did this should be punished before my eyes,'' she replied. ``Why did they pick up an innocent man and murder him? If there is a government, if there is justice, the people who did this must be punished.''

(Fourth in a series)

Dateline Kashmir: Why the Hizb talked and why it'll talk again

19 August 2000
The Times of India

Dateline Kashmir
Why the Hizb talked and why it'll talk again

SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN
THE TIMES OF INDIA NEWS SERVICE

Srinagar: Intelligence and counter-insurgency officials are convinced that the Hizbul Mujahideen will come back to the negotiating table. They are also certain the militant outfit will not split. indeed, many officers told this correspondent that either as soldiers or negotiators they would rather deal with a united group, and that if anybody in New Delhi was trying to split the Hizbul Mujahideen, they should not do so.

``If the Hizbul Mujahideen splits, it may be a tactical victory for us. But we will lose the big prize,'' said one army officer. Contrary to popular belief, Hizb commander Abdul Majid Dar's offer was neither the result of subterfuge aimed at allowing the Hizbul Mujahideen to recuperate nor of an operation being run by an Indian intelligence agency. Though there are rumours of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) having facilitated Dar's movements in the days preceding his July 24 announcement of the ceasefire - the word is that its hush-hush Special Frontier Force (earlier known as 2-2) flew him in on a special plane from either Kathmandu or Dubai - intelligence officials in Kashmir say the Hizbul Mujahideen ceasefire offer was the product of Dar's own assessment of the ground situation.

They say he had been moving around between different locations in the valley for several weeks. During that period, in fact, the security forces - who thought initially that he was trying to rejuvenate the Hizb - were desperately trying to track him down. ``If an Indian agency was running Dar,'' said a source, ``they were taking a huge risk by letting him move around because every other agency here was trying to bump him off.''

According to a senior officer from one of the security forces, Dar's offer may have come as a surprise but there were plenty of indications that something was brewing. ``We had been picking up reports that the Hizb leadership in Pakistan was upset with the ISI,'' he said. Its Muzaffarabad-based chief, Syed Salahuddin, had been growing wary of Pakistan's support for Maulana Masood Azhar's Jaish-e-Mohammed. In June, Salahuddin had a meeting with the Pakistan army and ISI, where, according to Indian intelligence reports, heated exchanges took place. The Hizb chief complained that his organisation was being ignored. He said the ISI had placed enormous funds at the disposal of the JeM and charged that this meant Kashmiris were not being trusted.

According to sources, Salahuddin said the jehad is of Kashmiris ``and we had asked outsiders to help us. But the purpose of JeM is to sideline us and give control to outsiders''. Salahuddin also tried to mobilise support from the other Kashmiri militant groups in the United Jehad Council and even tried to float a `Kashmir Liberation Army'. According to one report that an Indian agency received: ``Salahuddin has strongly objected to the formation of Jaish-e-Mohammed outfit. He said the present Pakistani government has lost faith in us and for this reason it has brought outsiders (non-Kashmiris) to participate in tehrik-e-jehad of Kashmir. He has appealed to members of Jehad Council to remain vigilant in this regard otherwise present movement will slip out of their hands''.

Under ISI pressure, the KLA plan was dropped but Salahuddin sent Dar across to test the waters. In the valley, Dar found a demoralised cadre. The Hizbul Mujahideen had borne the brunt of counter-insurgency operations for the past two years. He also found its political wing, the Jamaat-e-Islami, and its ameer, Ghulam Mohammed Butt, stressing the necessity for dialogue. Indian security forces sources say Dar's ceasefire offer took Pakistan by surprise but eventually Islamabad was able to pressure Salahuddin into scuttling the dialogue.

Several officers were also critical of the way New Delhi handled the situation. ``I don't think the government showed the right kind of maturity or discipline,'' said a senior officer. ``We had an excellent opportunity to turn Hizbul Mujahideen around. And had we done that, the other outfits would have had a tough time since they rely on Hizb cadre to move around the valley.''

However, most officers are confident the Hizb will eventually come back to talk. ``Pakistan is going to be even more suspicious of them,'' said one. ``And people here want dialogue to continue. I think the combined pressure will do the trick.''

Dateline Kashmir: No hot pursuit, we'll wait in ambush: Army

18 August 2000
The Times of India

Dateline Kashmir
No hot pursuit, we'll wait in ambush: Army

By Siddharth Varadarajan
The Times of India News Service

KUPWARA: Stung by the resumption of militant violence in Kashmir,
politicians in New Delhi are advocating extreme methods like `hot
pursuit'. But here, those involved in fighting extremists say they're
simply not interested.

With two-and-a-half securitymen for every resident, Kupwara is
virtually frontline territory. Militants trudge across thick forests
and undergrowth for several days before emerging exhausted at safe
hideouts on the Indian side. ``The terrain near the LoC is such'', an
army officer said, ``that those who stay put are at an advantage. A
person moving through makes so much noise he becomes an easy target. So
we prefer to wait in ambush''. He said that if the army were to start
chasing militants through the jungles, or across the LoC, ``we could
easily walk into a trap''.

A senior officer involved in counter-insurgency operations in northern
Kashmir told this correspondent, ``It's all very well for somebody
sitting in Delhi to make ignorant statements about pursuing militants
across the LoC. We are doing exactly what is required. What we want is
for the administration to play its part in winning the confidence of
the people, which it is not doing''. Another officer said: ``Often we
don't know where the training camps are, or they are more than 50 km
away from the LoC. Such operations cannot be launched without
considerable military risk''.

More than anything else, army officers say they need unity of command
at the functional level. While Lt Gen JR Mukherjee, GOC-in-C of the 15
Corps, exercises control over all security forces deployed in the
valley, there can sometimes be considerable confusion on the ground.
``I cannot even coordinate plans with the CRPF chaps who guard the
approach to my headquarters'', said one army officer. ``The Pahalgam
tragedy is a perfect example of what can happen when you have mixed
forces and mixed command''.

``As for the BJP's call for giving us a free hand'', said an officer,
``we are already doing fine.'' He said that with even with local
militants caught in cordon-and-search opeartions, the security forces
are ruthless. ``Please don't quote me'', he said, ``but the unwritten
policy is that we avoid taking prisoners.''

Another officer said that when politicians wanted a free hand for the
army, ``what they really mean is we shouldn't care about civilians
here. But that would be disastrous''. ``After years of bad
experience'', he said, ``we know that the more people-friendly our
operations, the more successful our counter-insurgency will be.'' Apart
from humanitarian considerations, another officer added, ``this is a
question of military efficacy. We want to increase the number of
operations based on hard intelligence (Hard Int). For this, we need
people to provide information. If ordinary Kashmiris are victimised by
the security forces, they will never come forward''.

Having said that, officers acknowledge civilians are routinely put
through great inconvenience by the security forces and that sometimes
innocent lives are lost. ``An error of intention is never forgiven by
the army but an error of judgment might be'', a senior officer claimed.
``But I can't say the same about the other forces''.

Army officers have harsh words for the Kashmir police-run Special Task
Force, which consists mostly of surrendered militants. STF personnel
are paid Rs 1500 a month and earn cash rewards based on the number of
militants killed, arms recovered etc. ``This is an invitation for
corruption'', said one officer. ``We know they extort money under the
threat of implicating people. If Kashmiris are alienated, the STF is to
blame''.

Box: What the officers say

• If the army were to start chasing militants through the jungles, or
  across the LoC, it could easily walk into a trap
• We are doing exactly what is required. What we want is for the
  administration to play its part in winning the confidence of the
  people, which it is not doing
• The more people-friendly our operations, the more successful our
  counter-insurgency will be