Kashmir, where beheadings also
strike fear By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - On Friday, militants in Jammu &
Kashmir (J&K)killed an Indian engineer and his
brother by slitting their throats. The two had been
taken hostage two days earlier, along with two other
locals - both Muslims - who were subsequently freed. The
abductors had demanded a ransom of about US$10,000.
The bodies of Sudhir Kumar Pundir, a 28-year-old
employee of Indian Railways Construction (IRCON), and
his 18-year-old brother Sundeep were found half-buried
in a pit in a field in J&K's Pulwama district, south
of Srinagar. The two victims had been blindfolded, their
hands and legs tied with ropes.
The significance
of the attack on an IRCON employee is immense. IRCON is
engaged in the construction of the prestigious
120-kilometer Qazigund-Baramulla rail project. The
project will link by rail the people of Kashmir with the
rest of the country, and is seen as a big step towards
further integrating the state with the rest of India.
By targeting
an IRCON employee in such a gruesome manner,
militants are hoping to halt the construction of the
rail link. India has often referred to Kashmir as its crown,
and by slitting the throat of an Indian employee,
the militants have sent a powerful message. The
killing of Pundir and his brother has triggered panic
among IRCON employees working on the project. They fear
that it is only a matter of time before militants strike
again. Work has been called off on the project and
employees are unlikely to restart until they are sure
the government can guarantee their security.
Meanwhile, the foreign secretaries of India and
Pakistan concluded two days of peace talks in New Delhi
on Monday, with both sides agreeing to hold "a
sustained, serious and constructive dialogue" on J&K
(the mountainous region is claimed by both nations)
until the issue is finally resolved. Although neither
side floated any specific proposals for resolving the
Kashmir dispute, the talks marked the first direct
discussions on the contentious issue since leaders of
the two countries initiated a formal peace process in
January.
Indian officials said that much of the
discussion on J&K centered on possible short-term
measures to improve the lives of ordinary Kashmiris,
such as opening a bus route across the Line of Control
that separates Indian and Pakistani forces in the
province.
The beheading phenomenon The
murder of the Pundir brothers comes close on the heels
of a series of beheadings of hostages by militants in
Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Militants with links
to al-Qaeda beheaded a Korean hostage in Iraq last week,
two days after an American hostage in Saudi Arabia was
decapitated. A month ago, Nick Berg, another American
working in Iraq, was kidnapped and then beheaded. In
2002, Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter in
Pakistan, was taken hostage and then killed by having
his throat cut.
In the Middle East, where terror
tactics have included suicide bombings, hijackings and
shootings, hostages are usually shot dead. Decapitation
of hostages is a recent phenomenon.
But J&K,
the Philippines, Chechnya and Algeria have witnessed
scores of beheadings by militants. The first beheading
of a hostage by militants in J&K came to light in
1995. Six Western tourists trekking in the Himalayas
were kidnapped by a terrorist group, al-Faran (which
later changed its name to Harkat-ul Mujahideen). While
one hostage escaped, another, Hans Christian Ostro, a
Norwegian, was beheaded. "Al-Faran" was carved with a
knife on Ostro's torso.
While Ostro's beheading
by militants evoked outrage world-wide and captured
international attention, the beheading of hundreds of
ordinary Kashmiris and Indian soldiers by the militants
has gone almost unnoticed.
The adoption of
medieval practices such as beheading and chopping off
people's noses and ears since the mid-1990s in Jammu and
Kashmir has been attributed to the increasing
Talibanization of the militancy. In the early 1990s, the
militancy in Kashmir was dominated by Kashmiris, but by
1994-95 the foreign element in the militant groups
increased. Gradually the face of the militancy changed
with Pakistanis, Afghan and Chechen jihadis carrying out
the more gruesome attacks.
Indian army sources
in Rajouri and Poonch - the two districts in the Jammu
region of the state that have perhaps been the worst-hit
by terrorism in recent years - say that the number of
brutal killings is far higher in Jammu than in the
Kashmir Valley. Scores of victims here have been
beheaded. The noses or ears of suspected informers have
been chopped off. Bodies of victims have been found
sliced to bits.
During the India-Pakistan
conflict at Kargil in the summer of 1999, the severely
mutilated bodies of six Indian soldiers caused outrage
all over the country. The victims had been severely
tortured before being killed. The eyes of some victims
had been gouged out.
The extreme brutality of
militant attacks in Jammu has been attributed to the
fact that foreign militants and jihadis dominate the
militant groups active here. In the Valley, many local
boys joined the militant groups, although their numbers
have fallen in recent years. In Jammu, but for the
Gujjars (who graze sheep in the upper reaches of the
mountains and are familiar with the mountain tracks) who
have worked with the militants as porters and guides,
locals have largely stayed away from taking up arms.
A fate worse than death The use of
particularly brutal tactics creates far more terror than
the fear created by guns and grenades. Residents of
J&K point out that the sight of a decapitated body
or the thought of having to live with an acid-scarred
face or without ears or a nose for life paralyses them
with fear.
Several times over the past 15 years,
Islamic militants have imposed the burqa (an
all-enveloping cloak that covers a woman from head to
toe) on women, threatening them with acid and paint if
they dared to defy the diktat (order). Women admit that
they succumbed to the terror only because of the extreme
brutality and gruesomeness of the punishment. In 2000,
16-year-old Mewaiz was shot through the knees for
wearing trousers and leaving her head uncovered. There
have been several instances of girls becoming targets of
acid attacks by militants simply because they had left
their heads uncovered or were going to school.
The districts of Rajouri and Poonch witnessed a
sharp surge in particularly gruesome attacks in the
months of November-December 2002. A jihadi outfit had
imposed the wearing of the burqa in Rajouri a few
weeks earlier. They slit the throats of girls who defied
the diktat.
Both Hindus and Muslims have been
beheaded by the jihadis over the past 15 years. In 2001,
the beheading of two Hindu priests in Poonch triggered
immense rage in the district, prompting the security
forces to impose a curfew in the area. More Muslims
have, however, been beheaded or subjected to gory forms
of torture and killing. Muslims suspected of being
informers are seen as the worst "traitors" of the jihadi
cause.
There have been cases of children being
beheaded on the suspicion that their fathers were
informers and of women being injected with poison as
punishment for their fathers, brothers and husbands
working with the local police. In 2002, three teenage
girls were killed in Hasiyot in Rajouri district. Two of
them were beheaded, the third shot dead. Militants
accused them of being informers but the girls' families
believe that the girls were killed because they were
going to school. In March this year, five-year-old
Zahida and her four-year-old brother were executed by
the Lashkar-e-Toiba in Jammu's Doda district because her
parents refused to provide sanctuary to militants.
Meanwhile, several cases of beheading came to
light in the run-up to the recent general elections. The
Hindustan Times reported an incident where militants
chopped off the ears of two village elders they had
abducted in Jammu's Udhampur district. The victims had
been severely beaten before their ears were chopped off.
The militants then took the two victims back to the
village and showed the chopped ears to the terrified
villagers. This was followed by a warning to the
villagers not to vote in the general election.
The cases of beheading and chopping off of noses
and ears are far too numerous and horrific to be
recounted here. Suffice to say, the cases that appear in
the Indian media are but the tip of the iceberg.
What sets apart the beheadings in Kashmir from
the recent ones in Iraq and Saudi Arabia is that
militants here have not used the Internet or videos to
draw international attention to themselves. Their aims
are local. They want to intimidate and terrorize local
people into obeying their orders and falling in line
with their thinking. And they are succeeding.
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