The Meadow: India’s own little dirty war
Adrian Levy and Cathy
Scott-Clark, The Meadow, Penguin
Books India, Delhi, 2012, pp xxvi + 510; Rs 499, ISBN 978-0-143-41875-7.
At several junctures of this profusely documented and
rapidly moving narrative, the reader would worry about getting lost in a welter
of detail. This story about the abduction of six western tourists in Kashmir in
1995 has for long been waiting to be told, since it is one where closure has not
been achieved despite all these years. One among the six escaped to safety
within days of being taken captive, recklessly plunging out into a
directionless void. He was spotted by a helicopter patrol of the Indian
security forces and could easily have been picked out by a marksman on board as
a terrorist intruder. But something that day worked for him and he was rescued
in a state of near mental and physical collapse. Another among the six, picked
up by the kidnap team in the frustration occasioned by this escape, was after
over a month in captivity, killed in a manner reminiscent of a medieval rite of
vengeance. The other four dropped soon afterwards into a limbo of public
inattention, as fatigue seemingly overwhelmed the search and more urgent
security imperatives cropped up.
This book, named after the picturesque spot in the Kashmir
valley where the first abductions took place, features a complex cast of
characters, variously motivated. Many of them, though sworn to mutual enmity, are
compelled to talk terms for the immediate objective of securing the freedom of
four men caught in a conflict not of their making. There are others who remain in
the shadowy fringes, and appear in the story through proxies serving a variety
of covert agendas. Once that purpose was served, the four hostages became
literally, the men who knew too much. Letting them live would have been a
potential risk to the secret identities of the off-stage players. Like
thousands of “disappeared” Kashmiris, Don Hutchings, Paul Wells, Keith Mangan
and Dirk Hasert will probably enter the history books as “collateral damage” in
the contest of wills between two neighbouring states with a history of
implacable hostility, where inflicting pain upon the other was an end that
justified itself.
Though it begins with the promise of unravelling the event
that “changed the face of modern terrorism”, this book settles quickly into an
unhurried account of three couples from different parts of the world -- Don and
Jane, Keith and Julie, and Paul and Cath -- preparing for their separate
journeys to Kashmir. At roughly the same time, John Childs, a design engineer
for a weapons manufacturer in the U.S. was setting out on a business trip to
eastern India. Being a sworn adherent of the philosophy that every expense an
employer is willing to incur should be utilised for maximum benefit, he hatched
the plan of staying on a few days more for trekking in the Kashmir Himalayas.
Javid Ahmad Bhat, from Dabran village in Anantnag district
of Kashmir, was marked out as a young man with a future by early academic
achievement and the qualities of leadership displayed on the cricket field.
Radicalised by the farcical elections to the Jammu and Kashmir state assembly
in 1987, Bhat decided when full fledged insurrection broke out in 1990, that
the Kashmiri had to deepen his commitment to his faith and meet force with
force. He crossed over to Pakistan soon afterwards and went on to Afghanistan
for specialised arms training. By 1992, he was back in Kashmir with the nom de guerre Sikander, as the commander
in Anantnag district of a militant cell answering directly to handlers across
the border.
The following year, he was told as the militancy seemed to be
splintering, that he would have to integrate his operations with another unit that
handlers across the border had named the Harkat ul-Ansar or “Movement of the
Victorious”. Sajjad Shahid Khan or the Afghani, a senior guerrilla leader from
Pakistan’s Pashtun belt, arrived in Kashmir early in 1994, trekking up into the
forests east of Anantnag, seeding cells along the way while exploring the
terrain as an operational base. He had been assigned to take over as military
chief in the Anantnag sector, and despite early reservations, Sikander gladly
subsumed his unit under the Afghani’s command. They had an old mutual
associate, in Nasrullah Mansoor Langrial, a guerrilla from Pakistan’s Punjab
province, who had trained alongside Sikander in Afghanistan before crossing
over to Kashmir along with him in 1992.
Langrial had plunged headlong into a series of militant actions
on arrival in Kashmir. But virtually coinciding with the Afghani’s arrival in
the valley, he was captured in an Indian army operation. His release was the
first major cause around which the Afghani and Sikander tested their newly
forged military partnership. A pitched engagement with security forces in a
neighbourhood of Srinagar was staged from which the two barely managed to
extract themselves alive. Following this, an Indian army officer, Major
Bhupinder Singh, was abducted and held hostage for Langrial’s release and
executed when the “enemy” refused to negotiate.
As their protégés embarked on this sequence of futile and strategically
reckless actions, the mood among the Kashmir jihad’s handlers across the border began distinctly to darken.
Principal among the strategists was “Brigadier Badam” of Pakistan’s Directorate
of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), identified throughout the book only by the
nickname he picked up with his fondness for gulping almond-flavoured milk as a substitute
for the alcohol he had given up during the Afghan jihad. Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil, the senior Islamic cleric and
mentor of the Movement based in Karachi, was summoned and asked urgently to
send an envoy into Kashmir to whip the militants back in line.
Masood Azhar was the person chosen for this mission. Operationally
inept , Masood had picked up a lasting physical disability from a friendly fire
incident at the Afghan training camp he attended, after stepping out to relieve
himself on a dark night and failing to speak out the password for re-entry. Azhar
though, had a way with words. Born into a family of relative wealth, he was
known, like the father who mentored him into his lifelong commitment, as a “no
doubter”, who allowed not the faintest glimmer of scepticism into the aura of
his fundamentalist faith. Azhar entered India on a false passport in January
1995 and after about a fortnight spent in idle wandering around the streets of
Delhi and a visit to the Deoband Islamic seminary, arrived in Kashmir early in
February. He addressed a council of the holy warriors in Anantnag, but then the
Afghani -- seemingly carried away by his eloquence – persuaded him to address
the Friday prayer in Anantnag’s principal mosque.
Azhar was reluctant at assuming a major public profile but
gave in to the Afghani’s suggestion. They were spotted on the way and chased
down by an Indian military patrol. A third member of the group fled to safety
in the thick woods around, but Afghani remained with Azhar, knowing that his
high value visitor from Pakistan could not manage the same fleetness of foot.
They were both taken in by Indian troops amidst joyous scenes of celebration.
Furious at the turn of events, Brigadier Badam quickly sent word to Sikander,
who was by now consumed with guilt that a motorcycle mishap had
prevented him being part of Azhar’s journey to Anantnag. Badam outlined a very
straightforward operation titled “Ghar” or “home”. It involved a certain number
of high value individuals being seized as hostages to ensure the safe release
of Azhar, the Afghani and Langrial. Sikander was assigned two operatives to
work alongside him, one of whom, Abdul Hamid al-Turki, or the Turk, he had
special reason to worry about. Though a warrior with undoubted jehadi pedigree,
having fought in theatres as far afield as Somalia, Sudan and Afghanistan, the
Turk was known to be impetuous and rather reckless, prone to acts of brutality
that could alienate the silent support guerrilla operations depended on. But Sikander
was not given much time to voice his own tactical preferences or pick the
personnel involved. By February 1995, the kidnap team had already been briefed
by ISI handlers and sent across the border. The initial directive was to pick
up personnel from western companies engaged in engineering projects in Kashmir,
notably in the hydroelectricity sector. Later, the mandate was altered to just
snatching whoever came to hand.
From here on, there is a complex sequence of events that
leads to the kidnap party, which had taken on the identity of Al Faran,
arriving at the meadow where three western couples and the solitude-loving John
Childs were camped early in July 1995. The moment the four men were seized, was
one of incomprehension and some puzzlement, not terror. Their captors conveyed
little sense of threat, merely explaining that they needed to take away the men
for questioning regarding possible involvement in Israeli espionage. But then,
the supposed interrogation just did not seem to end, and the three women who
hung about waiting for their companions to return had to make the agonising
decision of leaving the scene of the abductions and trudging down to Pahalgam town,
where they made a complaint at the nearest police station.
The local police
though had their hands full with
managing another possible flashpoint for violence. The Amarnath yatra, had been
till the eruption of militancy in Kashmir, a low-key annual voyage of piety
undertaken by a few thousands. But since then, it had been transformed into an
annual contest of wills between the Indian security agencies and the more
extreme militant units. The time of the abduction was especially bad, since
militant groups had just set off bombs at Pahalgam, where the pilgrims began to
gather prior to their trek up to a cave temple, and a Hindu vigilante group that
had arrived in force to impose its will on the locals, had set off a
retaliatory rampage against all Kashmiris they could lay hands on. With a
potential security meltdown on his hands, the local police superintendent
urgently messaged superiors in Srinagar, recommending that the trekking routes
beyond Pahalgam be cleared of all western tourists and fresh arrivals be
dissuaded.
His plea was ignored and this is the first of the mysteries
of the official Indian response that calls for fresh scrutiny. On July 5, the
German student Dirk Hasert and his friend Anne Hennig arrived in Srinagar and
were told by all the officials they consulted that aside from the downtown area
of the city, every other part of Kashmir was safe for the “holiday of a
lifetime”. The Norwegian Hans Christian
Ostro, who emerges in these pages as an engaging and zestful personality,
needed no such positive reassurance. Indeed, when following five months in
Kerala steeped in learning kathakali,
was warned that Kashmir was dangerous
territory, he had admonished his dance teachers for being “narrow-minded”.
On July 8, when John Childs fled his captivity, feigning the
desperate need for a nocturnal trip to the toilet, the leader of the kidnap
ring had sent his men in frantic search. At some point, the directive was
changed: any number of substitutes could be picked up. Hasert was the first to
be snatched from the tent that he was camped in. A few hours later, Ostro was
taken from a tea stall near Pahalgam. Unlike the others, Ostro was taken by
force rather than subterfuge. He put up a fight but was overwhelmed by sheer
numbers.
Immediately after his rescue, John Childs was debriefed by
local security and intelligence agencies and put on a plane back home with
almost unseemly haste. Here is another of the mysteries of the official
security response. In recounting events from the time, Childs confesses himself
still perplexed by that decision since he expected quite reasonably, to be
asked to help in the aerial survey of the abductors’ territory to pinpoint
their location.
First word from the kidnappers came as a telephone call to
Yusuf Jameel, a senior journalist based
Srinagar’s press enclave. The price demanded was simple: the release of twenty-one
prisoners held in India, with Azhar, the Afghani and Langrial at the top of the
list. D.D. Saklani, a retired lieutenant-general of the Indian army who was
then the top security advisor to the state administration, had personally been
on the helicopter patrol that rescued Childs. When a direct line of
communication opened up with the kidnappers, he chose to entrust the
negotiations to Rajinder Tikoo, Inspector-General of Police for the Kashmir
range. Tikoo was hesitant, but could not turn down an order from the man at the
top of the security hierarchy. Saklani gave nothing away and allowed Tikoo
little leeway: “You’re a good conversationalist. You go your own way, and try
to drag it out as long as possible”.
To begin with, there seemed little scope to drag things out.
Tikoo’s first conversation with the terror ring’s representative was surly and
ill-tempered. The clock was ticking and the first executions of the hostages,
he was told, would take place within hours. Tikoo adopted a tone of bluff good
humour: this was not a marketplace bargain over the price of vegetables, it
involved complex government decisions, he pleaded. He seemed with his tone, to
have won at least some measure of trust from his interlocutor. The kidnappers
were evidently nervous and unsure about when they should raise the stakes.
Parcels meanwhile kept getting passed through intermediaries, mostly located in
Srinagar’s press enclave: a hazy black and white photograph first and then five
days later, an audio recording of the five hostages appealing for their
release.
Over the following days, Tikoo took his conversations with
the kidnappers into the realm of theology and spirituality, repeatedly
underlining the virtue of compassion. The intermediary he was addressing seemed
indulgent. But just over a fortnight into the abduction, he was startled to
receive an unscheduled call, with the familiar voice of his interlocutor
sputtering in rage: “You have violated your word and you will be blamed for the
consequences. You want their deaths on your hands? How stupid do you think we
are?” Tikoo was alarmed but was told nothing about the cause of the anger,
except that there had been an Indian army raid.
Rushing over to Saklani’s office, Tikoo was told to calm
down while he determined what exactly had happened. The explanation offered
after about an hour was that the army had conducted a raid as part of normal
operations and discovered a suspected terrorist safe-house. It had been
evacuated by the time the raid party arrived, though it was later discovered to
have been the site from where the first telephone call to Tikoo was placed.
There was no ill intent there, just a failure of coordination.
Tikoo was unconvinced. A few days later, Al Faran released a
photograph which purported to show two of the hostages, Don and Keith, injured
in the army raid. Anxiety levels spiked but Tikoo found the
photographs unconvincing and read them as a means of warning off any further
rescue bids and building pressure for an early resolution. Tikoo was a patient
man who worked in considerable uncertainty. He could give nothing away and
could never be sure when the kidnappers would just determine that further
conversations would be futile. But he moved on. At one point, he managed to
extract a commitment from the kidnappers that they were willing to bring down
their prisoner release list to four. This was conveyed in strictest confidence
to Saklani, but carried almost in a triumphal tone as top news story in the
following day’s newspapers. The kidnap party was furious and Tikoo once again
thrown into turmoil over unseen hands controlling the pace of events. But
through the first half of September, Tikoo continued his delicate conversations
over telephone, dealing with frequent rages and accusations of bad faith. There
was hope in the intermediary’s seeming willingness to stick with an agreed
schedule for each of their conversations, by now conducted over radio rather
than telephone.
Tikoo was by now beginning to see signs of fatigue in the
adversary and had turned the conversation around to a possible ransom. By
September 17, he had a figure: the kidnappers were willing to settle for a
crore (ten million) of rupees.
He had
little time to bask in the glow of this triumph. Early the following day, as
newspapers in the national capital were being dropped off, he had a call from a
colleague in Delhi, informing him that the city’s largest newspaper had a
frontpage report on the ransom deal. Tikoo rushed to Saklani’s office to demand
the source of the leak, which he knew would be a deal breaker. Saklani promised
to find out but discovered little. In a state of nervous exhaustion by now,
Tikoo asked to be taken off the case.
A detective squad in the Crime Branch of the police force –
all native Kashmiris – had meanwhile launched its own operation, hitting hard
at possible informants on occasion, going undercover and teasing out clues on
others. With sustained inquiries, the squad managed to unravel the kidnap
party’s first moves. Contrary to initial belief, the group had not gone up into
the higher mountain reaches, but down into Pahalgam town, where it had
sheltered in a well-known tourist resort for a while. Bit by bit, the squad
then reconstructed the entire course of the party’s movements. By mid-July, the
squad had begun to focus its search on the Warwan valley, about fifty
kilometres south-east of Anantnag, a harsh wind-swept basin that is
inaccessible for eight months of the year. With only one approach from the
Kashmir valley which requires a trek up to an altitude of fourteen thousand
feet, the Warwan had become a favoured transit point and shelter for foreign
militants of various stripes. And there was one particular village there,
Sukhnoi, which had been used by an earlier kidnap team. By the first week of
August, the squad had figured out the rough coordinates of the hostages from
the testimony of the villagers and itinerant cattle herders. It also had
information of regular army patrols moving around the Warwan valley and
wondered if a rescue attempt was feasible.
The reply from the security forces was simply that the
village was impregnable and the hostages could be killed or caught in the
crossfire if a rescue operation were mounted. By this time, the army too had
possibly established the location of the hostages. Villagers informed the squad
of frequent helicopter surveys over the Warwan and one occasion when the
Norwegian Ostro had run out to shout and wave to the aerial patrol. Ostro
seemingly had made three clear escape attempts and had since late-July been
challenging his kidnappers, provoking them and undermining them at every
possible opportunity. By early-August, he had worn his captors’ nerves thin. He
was separated from the rest of the party and taken away by the Turk, seemingly
with the intent to set him free at some point. On August 13, his decapitated
body was found in a pine forest adjoining the road to Pahalgam.
Counter-intelligence was by now proceeding with full vigour.
And the instruments of the Indian army’s operations were the “renegades”, or
one-time militants who had broken with their outfits to form vigilante groups available
for any cause. The Indian army had worked on the rivalry between the Movement
and the principal Pakistan-backed militant outfit, the Hizbul Mujahedin, using the
conduit of a renegade outfit led by Azad Nabi, or “Alpha”, a past associate of
Sikander’s. As the harsh winter set in and the kidnap party was forced to
abandon its relatively safe hideout in the Warwan, it was by all accounts,
reaching the end of its tether. From the intelligence pieced together by the
Kashmir police squad, Alpha seems then to have contacted Sikander to suggest a
hostage handover to another renegade element, Abdul Rashid, or the Clerk,
following which he could “take a break” and “regroup”. In the third or fourth
week of November, the hostages were handed over for a sum of four lakh rupees.
Days afterwards, Alpha managed to lure the Turk to a spot near Sikander’s home
village, ostensibly for a conclave of militant commanders, where an army ambush
lay in wait.
The elimination of the Turk and the army’s triumphal claims
that Al Faran had been dismantled, fuelled renewed anxiety – and speculation -- about the status of the
hostages. But the army was not ready yet, to tell the full story, retracting
spectacularly within days of this announcement, with the clarification that the
Turk and his associates had been eliminated not in a hostage rescue operation,
but in the course of a regular cordon-and-search. Contrary again to earlier
claims, it said, Al Faran was still active, and had indeed added hundreds of
fighters to its ranks to guard the hostages.
The Kashmir police squad believed differently. It was abundantly
clear by now that the renegade strategy of turning the loyalties of key
militant figures had fetched the army the prized trophy of the Turk. But the
strategy had to retain its efficacy and its key executors protected for future deployment.
As a witness to the renegade pact with the militants, Sikander’s elimination,
the squad estimated, was just a matter of time. And that left only four
remaining witnesses who would have reason to tell the story: Don, Keith, Paul
and Dirk.
On December 24, 1995, according to an eyewitness the squad
traced down, Alpha’s men led the four hostages into a thickly wooded area near
the village where they were last held. They were shot and buried there. On
February 17, 1996, Sikander was killed, ostensibly when a bomb he was
assembling at a house owned by a militant colleague went off.
In a newspaper article written shortly after their book
appeared to much critical acclaim, Levy and Scott-Clark speak of a radical
change of mood on Kashmir, apparent on both sides of the Line of Control. Where
at one time, the compulsion was to win at all costs, today there is a
willingness to recognise the need for truth-telling, if Kashmir is to “move
on”. For the wider public, memories of the early years of Kashmir’s insurgency
have faded in this time and there has indeed been a mutation of the narrative,
with the media now blazoning a story of a people willing to shut out the trauma
of those years and move on to a future of promise. This book, which relies in
ways both acknowledged and otherwise, on the revelations of the police
officials who investigated the abductions, should serve as corrective for this
dangerous delusion.
India’s motivation then was to portray Pakistan as the
cradle of terrorism and global problem state number one. That narrative failed
to win much credibility till after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S. But
now, with more countries and individuals willing to partake of the narrative,
Pakistan’s future as a nation-state appears to be at stake. A catastrophic
state meltdown in its immediate neighbourhood is clearly an outcome that the
architects of India’s strategic response to the Kashmir militancy failed to
anticipate. And a sober contemplation of the consequences should be sufficient
reason to press ahead with the truth-telling process that this book
inaugurates.
