In 1988–89, after the US-backed Islamist mujahideen drove out the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, some of their mercenaries and arms were sent to Kashmir to launch ‘jihad’ against India. The Sharia code and Islamist diktats — imposition of burqa (veil), shutting down of cinemas, prohibition of alcohol, banning of books and magazines, burning of schools, killing of minorities etc. — became a norm in Kashmir as they did in Afghanistan. While thousands of Afghans were fleeing from the wrath of the US-sponsored mujahideen, the ethnic Kashmiri Pandit/Hindu minority fled from Kashmir to escape the Pakistan-sponsored jihadi terrorists.
At the forefront of the Taliban-style theocratic tyranny in the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir, were the Muslim separatist groups, who in 1993 became a consortium called the All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC).
One of the key persons who brought Islamist separatist groups together in Kashmir to demand J&K’s separation from India was pro-Pakistan American diplomat Robin Raphael. Until 9/11, the American outlook on Indian Kashmir was in complete alignment with Pakistan. As a result, the Hurriyat Conference sponsored by Pakistan Army and ISI, acted as Islamabad’s proxy in Kashmir, with the blessings of the US.
Most of the members of the Hurriyat believed in establishing an Islamic state and the rule of Sharia, just as the Taliban does. Many of the constituents of this conglomerate of 26 groups including Jamaat-e-Islami, Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, Ittihad-ul-Muslimeen, People’s Conference and the Awami Action Committee headed by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, were either openly terror groups or created separate ‘armed’ (terror) wings to enforce their religious will and political agenda on the people of Kashmir. For example, JKLF, Jamaat-e-Islami’s terror arm Hizbul Mujahideen, Al Umar Mujahideen named after Mirwaiz Umar, Al-Barq linked to People’s Conference carried out the Taliban-style executions, torture and beheadings in Kashmir through the early 90s.
What’s despicable is that even as the Indian Army, paramilitary and Jammu & Kashmir police were fighting these terror groups, the intellectual class and the political leadership of the country legitimized them, almost like Pakistan recognizing Taliban in Afghanistan in 1996. Dozens of columns were written in Indian national newspapers in favour of releasing the Hurriyat leaders from jails and treating them as political prisoners.
As it is, the Indian state was forced to release dreaded Islamist terrorists from jails at least in two high-profile cases — the kidnapping of Rubiya Sayeed and the hijacking of IC814 — orchestrated by these terror groups. Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar (Latram), responsible for scores of civilian killings in Kashmir was one of the three terrorists released in December 1999, by India in exchange for the passengers of the hijacked aircraft at Kandahar in Afghanistan. These two incidents of India capitulating to the Islamist terrorists, led to further weakening of the state and emergence of other radical Islamist groups such SIMI and Indian Mujahideen.
One of the most ignominious events of post-Independence Indian history is perhaps the then deputy prime minister LK Advani sharing a platform with the leaders of the Hurriyat Conference. Later, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh shaking hands with the JKLF chief Yasin Malik, who self-admittedly murdered four Indian Air Force officials, became yet another symbol of disgrace for the Indian state. But in the last 30 years, this legitimization of secessionism and undermining of the writ of the state, involved more than shaking hands or holding talks with the leaders of the Hurriyat. Yasin Malik, Mirwaiz Umar, Syed Ali Shah Geelani were honored at various public platforms in New Delhi. The two factions of the Hurriyat Conference — one headed by the hardcore pro-Pakistan Islamist Syed Ali Shah Geelani and the other led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq whose own father was killed by Pakistan — extracted all the privileges and perks for themselves and their families from the Indian state while funding terror in Kashmir.
In 2019, finally, the Indian state recognized the failure of its policies in Kashmir. Ahead of the reorganization of the state of Jammu & Kashmir on August 5, 2019, it cracked down on terror networks in the valley. It banned JKLF and Jamaat-e-Islami but exempted the Hurriyat for inexplicable reasons. Logically, both factions of the Hurriyat should have been banned simultaneously given the track record of their involvement in terrorism. Had India not reorganized the state of Jammu & Kashmir, thereby nullifying Article 370, in 2019, the scenes of the human misery and suffering in Afghanistan due to the recent take-over by the Taliban, would have been emerging from Kashmir right now.
The Indian state did well by preemptively averting the disaster that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan after two decades, has brought upon the region. But to ensure that the Taliban sympathizers in Kashmir, do not find any opportunity to propagate the Talibani view of the world now or in the near future, it is necessary that the Centre cracks down on them. Hurriyat Conference, a proxy of the Pakistani state in Kashmir and fountainhead of the Talibani ideology, must be banned once and for all.
This article was originally published on the following link
https://medium.com/@aarti.tikoo/ban-hurriyat-kashmirs-taliban-3592bc8e9214
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