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APHC: The Nexus with
Terror
Praveen Swami
It has been evident, for years,
that the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir is an instrument of Pakistan's state
policy. Just how well structured the links between the institutions of the
Pakistani state and terrorism in India are, however, is only just beginning to
become clear.
India's decision to expel Pakistan's Charge d'Affaires, Jalil Abbas Jilani has
widely been read as merely an unusually dramatic manifestation of the
historically bitter relationship between the two countries. Little attention,
sadly, has been paid to the insights the event offers into the funding and
organisation of terrorist activity in Jammu and Kashmir. Jilani was asked to
leave India on February 8, after the Delhi Police formally filed documents
charging him with passing on Rs. 370,000 to Anjum Zamruda Habib, a key member of
the far-right women's organisation, the Khawateen Markaz. The money, police
investigators say, was to be passed on to Abdul Gani Bhat, the head of the
principal anti-India political coalition in Kashmir, the All-Parties Hurriyat
Conference (APHC).
The APHC's representative in New Delhi, Sabir Ahmad Dar, was also arrested along
with Habib.
Pakistan, perhaps unsurprisingly, denies all the charges levelled against Jilani.
Since he enjoys diplomatic immunity, and since Indian intelligence is unlikely
to ever make public the material gathered during surveillance of the Pakistan
High Commission in New Delhi, the whole truth about the affair will possibly
never be known. The fact is, however, that there is a long history of direct
funding of the APHC by Pakistan's intelligence establishment, often funnelled
through the High Commission. As early as 1997, an investigation by Frontline
magazine found that top APHC leaders Abdul Gani Lone and Syed Ali Shah Geelani
had received funding to the tune of several million Indian Rupees a month from
Pakistan, often ostensibly gathered by shadowy charities, and then sent to India
through Hawala traders. In at least one case, detected by the Indian Army in May
1997, it emerged that Geelani had directly sent such funds to elements close to
the Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin (HM).
By 1998, Indian officials were becoming increasingly aware of the sheer scale of
such funds transfers - as well as of official Pakistani complicity in them. In
that year the Jammu and Kashmir Police discovered that the Pakistan Embassy in
Saudi Arabia had been passing money to the Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin through
Jamaat-e-Islami affiliated charities like the Kashmir Medicare Trust and the
Muslim Welfare Society. Mohammad Nazir, an ethnic Kashmiri employed in the
Pakistan Embassy in Jeddah moved the funds through a Dubai-based businessman of
Kashmiri origin, Mohammad Shafi Mir. The Hizb also regularly received funds
gathered in the United States and United Kingdom by activists like Ayub Thakur
and Ghulam Nabi Fai.
Understanding the impact of Pakistani, or Pakistani mediated, cash on violence
in Jammu and Kashmir is fairly simple. The estimated 2,500 to 3,500 terrorists
in Jammu and Kashmir require funds for their day to day survival, procurement of
safehouses and operational assets. Very conservatively, assuming the money
required to sustain each terrorist to be just Rs. 5,000 a month, the terrorist
cadre in Jammu and Kashmir would require a colossal Rs. 15,000,000 a month for
basic maintenance. This, of course, excludes regular payments to the families of
terrorists killed or arrested by Indian forces, as well as funds for anti-India
political activities. The APHC itself files no tax returns, but runs offices in
New Delhi and Srinagar, funds the domestic and international travel of its
leaders, and pays salaries to some 40 employees - a not inconsiderable expense.
Although terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir was in part financed through local
revenues, the inevitable alienation of potential supporters by forced levies has
led to a growing dependence on funds from Pakistan. Organisations like the
Jamaat-e-Islami, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT)
and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM)
raise substantial public funds in Pakistan.
It is unlikely, however, that donations would meet the enormous costs they incur
in Jammu in Kashmir, especially in a political terrain transfigured by the
events of September 11, 2001. Even though visible public fund raising has
stopped in Pakistan since those events, the funding of terrorism, quite
obviously, continues. Indian intelligence has identified at least fourteen major
funds transfers since December 2001 [Table
1]. The dependence of the APHC on Pakistani
cash helps explain the persistent unwillingness of key members to engage in any
kind of meaningful dialogue with India. Supposedly 'soft' constituents of the
APHC leadership are often punished by having their funds choked off, a strategy
that was instrumental in the displacement of the pro-Independence Jammu and
Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF)
by the pro-Pakistan Hizb-ul-Mujaheddin in the early 1990s.
Some APHC leaders, interestingly, seem to have personally benefited from these
transfers. Geelani, for example, faces income tax proceedings for having massive
undisclosed income. Although his sole legitimate source of revenue is a modest
pension - earned, ironically enough, for his tenure as an elected Member of the
Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly, which he entered after swearing
allegiance to the Constitution of India - the ailing politician has managed to
procure a lavish house, owns several vehicles, and runs his establishment with
the aid of several well-paid personal servants. Other APHC leaders and their
immediate relatives have benefited similarly [Table
2]. In the wake of the 1997 Frontline
exposé, former APHC member Shabbir Shah confessed to having parked funds
intended for armed activities in a series of property acquisitions, mainly in
southern Kashmir.
Why would Jilani have personally handed over funds to the APHC? Two explanations
are possible. First, a
series of arrests of Hawala traders and
funds recipients have made the business of transferring money increasingly
hazardous. Equally important, the Gulf Emirates are increasingly under pressure
to curb the informal movement of cash from their countries, destabilising the
trade as a whole. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, the Pakistan High
Commission may wish to maintain a direct presence as a sponsor and patron of
secessionist politics in Jammu and Kashmir - Jilani's cash was described as a
nazrana, or gift, to Bhat. Whatever the truth, the events of February are
just a very small part of a very large, and very sordid affair.
Courtesy:
South Asia Terrorism Portal
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