Page 1 of 2 BOOK
REVIEW The longest jihad India, Pakistan and the Secret
Jihad by Praveen
Swami
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
Non-specialist writings on modern jihad as
a form of organized political violence usually
commence with the Iranian revolution of 1979 and
the anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan in the
1980s. However, decades before those two events, a
secret jihad in the
Indian state of Jammu and
Kashmir (J&K) had been kick-started by
Pakistan that rages on to this day. For sheer
longevity, it is second to none in the
contemporary annals of Islamism.
In
India, Pakistan and the Secret Jihad, a revisionist history based on
classified Indian intelligence data, Praveen
Swami, senior journalist of Frontline magazine,
highlights the ignored narrative thread of covert
warfare in J&K. The author's
counterintuitive proposition
is that the sub-conventional war in J&K after
1989 was not the first but the fifth phase of a
jihad of attrition that began as soon as Pakistan
was created in 1947.
Phase 1: The
informal war At the dawn of independence,
despite its ostensible military superiority,
India's intelligence apparatus was in ruins.
Qurban Ali, the senior-most officer, chose
Pakistani citizenship and transferred every file
of importance to his new home. In 1948, Gul Hasan
Khan, the commander-in-chief of the Pakistani
armed forces, candidly admitted that an "elder
statesman" of his country arranged covert supplies
of weapons to Islamist gangs battling the
accession of Hyderabad to India.
In 1951,
the first major low-grade terrorist initiative by
Pakistan was calibrated destruction of telephone
lines, bridges and guesthouses in J&K. The
goal was to disrupt elections to the Constituent
Assembly that was steering the state toward
full-scale integration into India.
In the
late 1950s, Pakistan's police intelligence trained
covert operatives in guerrilla combat skills under
the banner of "Mujahid Force". There were striking
resemblances between the fundamentalist Islamist
beliefs of these pioneers and those of a successor
generation of jihadis. Besides sabotage, the early
brigades bombed temples and mosques in 1957 to
incite Hindu-Muslim violence in J&K.
Success was hard to come by and the
Pakistan Intelligence Bureau's essentialist myths
of Indian "submission and servility" were
mercilessly exposed. Indian authorities charged a
popular Kashmiri politician, Sheikh Abdullah, with
colluding with the covert Pakistani agenda in
1958, but the evidence was inconclusive in what
was known as the "Kashmir Conspiracy Case".
Phase 2: The master cell India's
humiliating defeat by China in 1962 opened the
door of opportunity for a new round of clandestine
war. Several in Pakistan's policy establishment
were convinced that conditions in J&K were
ripe for a mass uprising against India. Orders
went out to "intensify the firecracker type of
activity that was already current" and to "arm the
locals against the Indian army of occupation" (p
55).
A central organization named "Master
Cell" was set up in Srinagar to supervise several
subsidiary groups assigned to conduct strikes and
demonstrations in colleges, issue incendiary
posters, train cadres in the use of weapons, and
guide Pakistani irregular forces to government
depots during the 1965 war with India.
In
the event of Pakistan's defeat in the war, these
cells were to facilitate the work of "stay-back
agents" who would remain in J&K to carry out
missions. One key cell member, Fazl-ul Haq
Qureshi, stated that his group was "a nodal agency
for freedom fighters who had come from Pakistan"
(p 65).
Although India and Pakistan signed
a ceasefire in September 1965, the undercover war
went on. A terror campaign of lobbing grenades in
commercial hubs and burning prominent buildings in
Srinagar was kept up. Assassination threats were
issued to pro-India politicians and rumors were
spread about the presence an "execution list".
To whip up public emotions, religious
propaganda continued apace in important shrines
and mosques, and repeated allegations were made
that the police harassed members of Muslim
congregations. Swami notes that "the Master Cell
was mired in communal politics and a right-wing
vision of Islam" (p 71). Police raids eventually
broke the cell up, and many of its members went on
to reconcile with India, joining the government in
high-ranking posts.
Phase 3:
Al-Fatah In the late 1960s, Pakistan's
covert agencies turned to Algeria and Palestine
for inspiration. The growing interest of
Pakistan's officer corps in doctrines of
non-conventional war led a new bunch of jihadis to
derive tactical inspiration from left-wing
anti-imperialist
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counterintuitive proposition
is that the sub-conventional war in J&K after
1989 was not the first but the fifth phase of a
jihad of attrition that began as soon as Pakistan
was created in 1947. 
