Kashmir’s glocal militancy

Two years after the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani triggered an extended revolt in the Kashmir Valley, leading to the killing of nearly 100 youth and the blinding of several hundred, militancy in the region appears nowhere near being reined in. Instead, it is getting stronger and messier by the day. And what is more, it is changing form, acquiring more troubling dimensions.

In the past week, two civilians were killed by suspected militants in Hajin, a small township in north Kashmir that was once a counter-insurgency hotbed. One of the dead, Manzoor Ahmad, was beheaded, making it the second such instance in the area in the past six months. Earlier in August, another youth, Muzzafar Ahmad Parray, was decapitated under similar circumstances. His body was recovered from the Jhelum river nearby.

Furthermore, in recent times there have been more claims related to the presence of ISIS and Al Qaeda in the Valley. In February, when militants shot dead a policeman, Farooq Ahmad, who was guarding the house of the senior separatist leader Fazal Haque Qureshi, they fled with his Insas rifle. A’maq, the publicity wing of the Islamic State, claimed the killing on its Twitter account and posted a picture of the slain cop and his rifle, along with a chilling message: “The war has just begun”.

Later, when the militant commander Eisa Fazili, whom security forces blamed for Ahmad’s killing, was killed in an encounter, his funeral in Srinagar’s Soura locality became the site of a bitter contest between the Valley’s various militant doctrines — the pro-Pakistan outlook espoused by outfits like Hizbul Mujahideen, Lashkar-i-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and the new creeds ushered in by the ISIS and Al Qaeda. There were competing slogans and flags too.

Earlier in November, ISIS had claimed an attack on police on the outskirts of Srinagar, in which a sub-inspector lost his life. One militant, Mugees Ahmad Mir, was killed in retaliatory action. His body was later wrapped in the ISIS flag and the scene at his funeral echoed that of Fazili’s.

Al Qaeda announced its presence in the Valley last July in the form of Ansar Gazwat-ul-Hind, an affiliate headed by a Kashmiri, Zakir Musa. Though missing in action for a while now, Musa has contested the pro-Pakistan drift of Kashmir militancy and made a philosophical case for an Islamic Caliphate through his elaborate audio messages. Jihad, according to him, can be waged only for the establishment of Sharia and Caliphate, and not for a nation state — whether an independent Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan.

The Centre, however, has denied the presence of ISIS or Qaeda in Kashmir. In late-February, minutes after the J&K director general of police SP Vaid stated that the ISIS had killed the cop Ahmad and termed it “indeed a worrying sign”, the central government denied that global jihadi outfits had any “physical infrastructure and manpower” in the Valley. Soon after, Vaid retracted his statement.

Kashmir observers see the government’s denials as deliberate, as any acceptance of ISIS or Al Qaeda presence in Kashmir will have the unintended consequence of bailing out Pakistan, which is blamed for terrorism in Kashmir. “Pakistan itself is fighting ISIS and Al Qaeda, and once you accept their existence in Kashmir, no one will buy the argument that they are a creation of Pakistan,” said a political analyst who declined to be identified.

Meanwhile, on April 1, the ISIS and Al Qaeda claimed the killing of yet another cop, Mohammad Ashraf Mir, at Maspuna village in Pulwama.

And even as these global terror groups vie to make their presence felt in the Valley, the challenge from long-entrenched local groups such as Lashkar, Hizbul and Jaish has only grown stronger. The resurgence of separatist jihadi ideology in south Kashmir after the killing of Wani shows no sign of abating anytime soon.

Despite the increasing number of killings in recent times, any depletion in the militant numbers is quickly made up through fresh recruitments locally, as well as infiltration from across the border.

According to the official estimate, security forces killed 218 militants last year; by January the number of active militants was 229. Since January 2018, an estimated 27 local youth have taken up arms.

“It is always possible to maintain a certain fixed number of militants to keep the war of attrition going on,” says columnist Naseer Ahmad, a Kashmir expert. “So, in a sense, there is no military solution. The only solution is a long-term serious political engagement to address the factors sustaining the alienation, anger and conflict.”

Riyaz Wani is a journalist based in Srinagar

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