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Jammu attack: India’s battle with the fidayeen won’t end soon
by Praveen Swami
He’d have risen early that morning, we know from the testimonies of those who chose to live, then bathed and prayed. Later, he’d have been shaved, from head to foot, in anticipation of reaching the gates of heaven. He’d have perfumed himself, and darkened his eyes with kohl, like a tradition bridegroom. Then, he’d have stepped into a car, and been driven to the place he would kill, and die.
Imran Majid Bhat’s mother wrote this in memory of her son:
Allah, a piece of my heart, my handsome youth, my martyr
He fell down, cut to pieces, but it was only for your sake.
His blood poured out, but only for your sake.
My motherhood was bloodied, but only for your sake.
I wait for the day, Lord, when you will call out:
“Who is the mother of this blood-drenched rose”?
Early this morning, India received evidence that the cult of blood which gave birth to those macabre words of love is still alive. Eyewitness accounts suggest the attack was put together at the last moment, with the fidayeen attackers crossing the border early in the morning and then searching for targets. The attack was, more likely than not, mounted after prime minister Manmohan Singh announced he would be meeting his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif— a demonstration intended to make clear who really holds the keys to Jammu and Kashmir’s future.
Irrespective of who turns out to have executed the attack, it’s lesson is simple: the fidayeen groups who targeted India to lethal effect on 26/11, and for years before it, are still intact. The question is: does the killing in Samba mark the resumption of their long war?
The Lashkar’s fidayeen war began in 1999, soon after the end of the Kargil war: a message to India that the fighting was not yet done, and to the jihadist movement that Pakistan’s military defeat was not a reason to lose heart. That July, a single Lashkar fidayeen entered the Border Security Force’s sector headquarters at Bandipora, holding off an assault involving élite National Security Guard commandos for three days. In November that year, just six months later, two Lashkar fidayeen stormed the 15 Corps’ headquarters in Srinagar’s Badami Bagh, killing eight soldiers.
“I announce the breakup of India, inshallah”, Lashkar chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed said soon afterwards, addressing an ecstatic crowd of over 250,000 people at the terrorist group’s annual congregation in Muridke. “We will not rest until the whole of India is dissolved into Pakistan”.
Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, the head of the Lashkar’s military command and the operational architect of 26/11, had direct command of the new fidayeen units. He is now in Adiala Jail, facing trial for his role in the Mumbai carnage, but is reported to regularly meet with Lashkar commanders. He has, mysteriously, even fathered a child while in prison. His key deputy Muzammil Bhat, is claimed by Pakistan to be a fugitive —but two Canadian journalists saw him running a jihad training camp in plain sight, just outside Muzaffarabad. Bhat’s conversations with Lashkar commanders in the field have repeatedly been picked up by both United States and Indian intelligence.
From the accounts of multiple arrested terrorists, we know the flower of the Lashkar’s cadre were hand-picked to become fidayeen. In Lashkar camps dotted around Muzaffarabad, retired Pakistan army special forces instructors provided by the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate picked taught volunteers the skills they needed: to fire their assault weapons with the utmost discipline, in bursts of two or three rounds at a time; to storm sentry posts swiftly, using grenades to stun guards; cutting through complex border defences, including wire, mines and electronic sensors.
In the camps, the fidayeen were taught to hate —and see themselves as agents of vengeance. “Today” Imran Butt wrote in a parting letter to his mother, “the Kafir tests our self-respect by humiliating us, by tearing down our mosques. The Kafir plays with the honour of our mothers and sisters while we silently watch. I find it intolerable. I want to cut open the Kafir’s jugular to quench my anger. I want to keep doing so until the day comes when my Master cools my breast and makes Islam victorious.”
CM Naim, in a superb essay on the Lashkar’s propaganda, noted that while atrocities were indeed part of Jammu and Kashmir’s reality, “the ****** concern with sexual exploitation of Muslim women by non-Muslims happens to have a history too. It is the obligatory motif in their literature in South Asia, invoked with reference to both Muhammad bin Qasim’s attack on Sindh (8th century) and the jihad of Syed Ahmad of Rae Bareli (19th century) against the Sikhs.”
It’s hard to say precisely what led so many young men to volunteer to die for the Lashkar’s cause. Few, we know, were ethnic Kashmiri; the bulk came from Pakistan’s Punjab. Their backgrounds were diverse: while 26/11 attacker Muhammad Ajmal Kasaab never went to secondary school, Imran Butt graduated from college in the city of Sialkot. In one of few empirically robust studies of the Lashkar’s cadre, experts concluded the average Lashkar operative was better educated and less steeped in conventional religious learning than the population as a whole.
The scholar Ayesha Siddiqa has suggested jihadism might be one of few means for young men in rural Pakistan to find agency and self-respect, however perverse, in otherwise-meaningless lives. “I met some young boys from my village near Bahawalpur who were preparing to go on jihad”, she wrote . “They smirked politely when I asked them to close their eyes and imagine their future: ‘we can tell you without closing our eyes that we don’t see anything’.”
From December, 2000, the tempo of the Lashkar’s fidayeen attacks escalated: that month, it stormed the Red Fort in New Delhi, symbolising Saeed’s promise to unfurl the flag of Islam over India. In 2001, videotape of the attack was played to large audiences who had gathered to hear Saeed deliver his customary Eid lecture at the Gaddafi stadium in Lahore. In February, the following year, it attacked Srinagar’s airport. In 2001, the Lashkar’s successes led it’s competitor for jihadist supporters, the Jaish-e-Muhammad, to stage even more spectacular operations against the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly building in Srinagar. and Parliament House in New Delhi.
There’ve been regular attacks ever since 2003, when a ceasefire went into place along the Line of Control–though their intensity has stilled. Earlier this year, Lashkar fidayeen targeted a Central Reserve Police Force camp in Srinagar’s Bemina, posing as cricket players; and past targets have included hotels, government facilities and even a media centre.
It’s likely the diminishing tempo of violence has something to do with the fact that the Lashkar was placed under intense pressure to scale back its operations in the wake of the 2001-2002 near-war with India. The leash was taken off by Pakistan’s army chief, General Parvez Ashfaq Kayani–leading to 26/11, the Lashkar’s largest fidayeen operation ever. The unexpected exposure of the perpetrators, though, meant the muzzle was clamped back again.
It’s important to note, though, that the fidayeen war wasn’t only about inflicting death: from 1999 to 2003, the most intense phase, claimed just under 200 of the 5,000-odd lives lost in those years. This tells us that getting killed — and not just killing — is the central part of the fidayeen cult. Late in the eleventh century, the mystic Hassan Ibn al-Sabbah set up the hashishin, a terrorist order so-called by their enemies to refer to their use of narcotics during preparations for their spectacular attacks. Al-Sabah’s assassins waged a ruthless covert war for the restoration of a Shi’a caliphate, using spectacular killings to disrupt the established political order. Their assassination of the Turkish monarch Nizam al-Mulk precipitated the disintegration of the Seljuk Empire.
For al-Sabah, the historian Amin Maalouf recorded in his masterwork, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, “murder was not merely a means to disposing of an enemy, but was intended primarily as a twofold lesson for the public: first, the punishment of the victim and, second, the heroic sacrifice of the executioner, who was called the fida’i [plural fida’in, or fidayeen], or ‘suicide commando,’ because he was almost always cut down on the spot”. The long, brutal unfolding of fidayeen operations–brought into our living rooms by television–is thus an integral part of their purpose. This is performance theatre, each act competing with the last to gain our attention through acts of ever-increasing terror.
Jammu attack: Why India's battle with the fidayeen won't end soon | Firstpost
by Praveen Swami
He’d have risen early that morning, we know from the testimonies of those who chose to live, then bathed and prayed. Later, he’d have been shaved, from head to foot, in anticipation of reaching the gates of heaven. He’d have perfumed himself, and darkened his eyes with kohl, like a tradition bridegroom. Then, he’d have stepped into a car, and been driven to the place he would kill, and die.
Imran Majid Bhat’s mother wrote this in memory of her son:
Allah, a piece of my heart, my handsome youth, my martyr
He fell down, cut to pieces, but it was only for your sake.
His blood poured out, but only for your sake.
My motherhood was bloodied, but only for your sake.
I wait for the day, Lord, when you will call out:
“Who is the mother of this blood-drenched rose”?
Early this morning, India received evidence that the cult of blood which gave birth to those macabre words of love is still alive. Eyewitness accounts suggest the attack was put together at the last moment, with the fidayeen attackers crossing the border early in the morning and then searching for targets. The attack was, more likely than not, mounted after prime minister Manmohan Singh announced he would be meeting his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif— a demonstration intended to make clear who really holds the keys to Jammu and Kashmir’s future.
Irrespective of who turns out to have executed the attack, it’s lesson is simple: the fidayeen groups who targeted India to lethal effect on 26/11, and for years before it, are still intact. The question is: does the killing in Samba mark the resumption of their long war?
The Lashkar’s fidayeen war began in 1999, soon after the end of the Kargil war: a message to India that the fighting was not yet done, and to the jihadist movement that Pakistan’s military defeat was not a reason to lose heart. That July, a single Lashkar fidayeen entered the Border Security Force’s sector headquarters at Bandipora, holding off an assault involving élite National Security Guard commandos for three days. In November that year, just six months later, two Lashkar fidayeen stormed the 15 Corps’ headquarters in Srinagar’s Badami Bagh, killing eight soldiers.
“I announce the breakup of India, inshallah”, Lashkar chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed said soon afterwards, addressing an ecstatic crowd of over 250,000 people at the terrorist group’s annual congregation in Muridke. “We will not rest until the whole of India is dissolved into Pakistan”.
Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, the head of the Lashkar’s military command and the operational architect of 26/11, had direct command of the new fidayeen units. He is now in Adiala Jail, facing trial for his role in the Mumbai carnage, but is reported to regularly meet with Lashkar commanders. He has, mysteriously, even fathered a child while in prison. His key deputy Muzammil Bhat, is claimed by Pakistan to be a fugitive —but two Canadian journalists saw him running a jihad training camp in plain sight, just outside Muzaffarabad. Bhat’s conversations with Lashkar commanders in the field have repeatedly been picked up by both United States and Indian intelligence.
From the accounts of multiple arrested terrorists, we know the flower of the Lashkar’s cadre were hand-picked to become fidayeen. In Lashkar camps dotted around Muzaffarabad, retired Pakistan army special forces instructors provided by the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate picked taught volunteers the skills they needed: to fire their assault weapons with the utmost discipline, in bursts of two or three rounds at a time; to storm sentry posts swiftly, using grenades to stun guards; cutting through complex border defences, including wire, mines and electronic sensors.
In the camps, the fidayeen were taught to hate —and see themselves as agents of vengeance. “Today” Imran Butt wrote in a parting letter to his mother, “the Kafir tests our self-respect by humiliating us, by tearing down our mosques. The Kafir plays with the honour of our mothers and sisters while we silently watch. I find it intolerable. I want to cut open the Kafir’s jugular to quench my anger. I want to keep doing so until the day comes when my Master cools my breast and makes Islam victorious.”
CM Naim, in a superb essay on the Lashkar’s propaganda, noted that while atrocities were indeed part of Jammu and Kashmir’s reality, “the ****** concern with sexual exploitation of Muslim women by non-Muslims happens to have a history too. It is the obligatory motif in their literature in South Asia, invoked with reference to both Muhammad bin Qasim’s attack on Sindh (8th century) and the jihad of Syed Ahmad of Rae Bareli (19th century) against the Sikhs.”
It’s hard to say precisely what led so many young men to volunteer to die for the Lashkar’s cause. Few, we know, were ethnic Kashmiri; the bulk came from Pakistan’s Punjab. Their backgrounds were diverse: while 26/11 attacker Muhammad Ajmal Kasaab never went to secondary school, Imran Butt graduated from college in the city of Sialkot. In one of few empirically robust studies of the Lashkar’s cadre, experts concluded the average Lashkar operative was better educated and less steeped in conventional religious learning than the population as a whole.
The scholar Ayesha Siddiqa has suggested jihadism might be one of few means for young men in rural Pakistan to find agency and self-respect, however perverse, in otherwise-meaningless lives. “I met some young boys from my village near Bahawalpur who were preparing to go on jihad”, she wrote . “They smirked politely when I asked them to close their eyes and imagine their future: ‘we can tell you without closing our eyes that we don’t see anything’.”
From December, 2000, the tempo of the Lashkar’s fidayeen attacks escalated: that month, it stormed the Red Fort in New Delhi, symbolising Saeed’s promise to unfurl the flag of Islam over India. In 2001, videotape of the attack was played to large audiences who had gathered to hear Saeed deliver his customary Eid lecture at the Gaddafi stadium in Lahore. In February, the following year, it attacked Srinagar’s airport. In 2001, the Lashkar’s successes led it’s competitor for jihadist supporters, the Jaish-e-Muhammad, to stage even more spectacular operations against the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly building in Srinagar. and Parliament House in New Delhi.
There’ve been regular attacks ever since 2003, when a ceasefire went into place along the Line of Control–though their intensity has stilled. Earlier this year, Lashkar fidayeen targeted a Central Reserve Police Force camp in Srinagar’s Bemina, posing as cricket players; and past targets have included hotels, government facilities and even a media centre.
It’s likely the diminishing tempo of violence has something to do with the fact that the Lashkar was placed under intense pressure to scale back its operations in the wake of the 2001-2002 near-war with India. The leash was taken off by Pakistan’s army chief, General Parvez Ashfaq Kayani–leading to 26/11, the Lashkar’s largest fidayeen operation ever. The unexpected exposure of the perpetrators, though, meant the muzzle was clamped back again.
It’s important to note, though, that the fidayeen war wasn’t only about inflicting death: from 1999 to 2003, the most intense phase, claimed just under 200 of the 5,000-odd lives lost in those years. This tells us that getting killed — and not just killing — is the central part of the fidayeen cult. Late in the eleventh century, the mystic Hassan Ibn al-Sabbah set up the hashishin, a terrorist order so-called by their enemies to refer to their use of narcotics during preparations for their spectacular attacks. Al-Sabah’s assassins waged a ruthless covert war for the restoration of a Shi’a caliphate, using spectacular killings to disrupt the established political order. Their assassination of the Turkish monarch Nizam al-Mulk precipitated the disintegration of the Seljuk Empire.
For al-Sabah, the historian Amin Maalouf recorded in his masterwork, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, “murder was not merely a means to disposing of an enemy, but was intended primarily as a twofold lesson for the public: first, the punishment of the victim and, second, the heroic sacrifice of the executioner, who was called the fida’i [plural fida’in, or fidayeen], or ‘suicide commando,’ because he was almost always cut down on the spot”. The long, brutal unfolding of fidayeen operations–brought into our living rooms by television–is thus an integral part of their purpose. This is performance theatre, each act competing with the last to gain our attention through acts of ever-increasing terror.
Jammu attack: Why India's battle with the fidayeen won't end soon | Firstpost
