The Hindu : Front Page : Lashkar had warned of Jammu attack

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Thursday, Aug 28, 2008
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Lashkar had warned of Jammu attack

Praveen Swami

The Islamist terror group hopes to capitalise on the ongoing violence in Kashmir

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq thanked Pakistanis for having supported the secessionist movement
Malik had shared a stage with Lashkar leaders in 2005 during a visit to Pakistan

NEW DELHI: Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders had repeatedly warned of their intention to carry out attacks in the days before Wednesday’s terror strike in Jammu.

In an August 25 telephone call to the Srinagar-based Rising Kashmir on Monday, a Lashkar spokesperson, using the alias Abdullah Ghaznavi, warned of retaliation for the ongoing crackdown on separatists in Kashmir as well as attacks on Muslims in Jammu.

He said that if “the atrocities against Kashmiris were not stopped immediately, the situation within India will deteriorate for which the Government of India would be solely responsible.”

Speaking behalf of Qari Abdul Wahid Kashmiri, who was appointed to head the Pakistan occupied Kashmir—based operations of the Lashkar after the terror group was proscribed elsewhere in Pakistan in 2002, ‘Abdullah Ghaznavi’ condemned the arrest of secessionist leaders Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik.

“These sacrifices would bear fruit and the day is not so far when the sun of freedom would rise over Kashmir,” ‘Ghaznavi’ quoted Kashmiri as saying.

Lashkar leaders have been making similar threats all through the ongoing shrine-land agitation. At an August 14 ‘Defence of Pakistan’ rally, held to mark that country’s independence day, the head of the Lashkar’s Lahore-based parent political organisation promised action to “bring down [the] ‘Brahmin Wall’ like the Berlin Wall.”

Hafiz Muhammad Saeed claimed—inaccurately—that half a million Kashmiris marched towards Muzaffarabad, thus demonstrating that “the Kashmir issue is not merely a nuisance raised by a few militants, but a heartfelt freedom movement of millions of Kashmiris”. He argued that Kashmiris were being “punished for being Muslims.”

Important Kashmiri secessionists endorsed Saeed’s words while addressing the internationally-proscribed terror group’s rally by satellite-phone hook-up.

All Parties Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq thanked Pakistanis for having supported the secessionist movement. His colleague, Shabbir Shah, also said Kashmiris were “indebted to Pakistan for its political and moral support.”

According to a Lashkar press release, Shah said that “the Hindus had cut off their food and essential supplies by blocking the supply routes to Occupied Kashmir.”

Pakistan occupied Kashmir All Parties Hurriyat Conference leader Ghulam Muhammad Safi, according to the Lashkar press release, “lamented the conduct of secular Pakistanis, who, he said, would probably dance and sing with the Indians at the Wagah border tonight, while Indian Muslims are mercilessly being slaughtered in Occupied Kashmir.”

Earlier, after an August 22 telephone discussion, Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front leader Yasin Malik and Saeed were reported to have agreed to cooperate on the Kashmir issue, despite their stated ideological differences.

Malik had shared a stage with Lashkar leaders in 2005 during a visit to Pakistan. He later claimed he agreed to meet Saeed in order to seek his support for the dialogue between the Government of India and the Hurriyat Conference that was then underway. Ironically, Malik held a secret meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh just a few weeks later.

Saeed was reported to have said that while Pakistan’s rulers had “their own limitations and constraints,” the Jamaat ud-Dawa had “no constraints whatsoever and would go to the last limits in helping our Muslim brothers.”

Islamists see the shrine board agitation as a war to protect Muslims from an Indian conspiracy to alter the region’s demographic character.

Tehreek-i-Hurriyat patriarch Syed Ali Shah Geelani—who has long enjoyed the support of the Lashkar—told the audience at an August 19 rally in Srinagar that the situation resembled that of the time of Partition “when five lakh Muslims had been slain in Jammu and ten lakh forced to migrate”. He sought deployment of an international peace-keeping force in the region.

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