Islam, Ethnicity, and Nationalism: Terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir

Praveen Swami reviewed the origins of the ongoing covert war and the evolution of jihadist groups in Kashmir since 1947. He situated the emergence of the conflict in the context of Britain's regional power play in the Great Game and Pakistan's attempt to settle the issue of Kashmir by force. In response, the Kashmiri maharaja requested Indian military assistance, which was granted in return for his accession to Indian rule. The 1947-48 war in Kashmir ended with the UN-brokered ceasefire.

Swami argued that the covert war in Kashmir has had five distinct phases. In the first, from 1948-1963, Pakistani officials attempted to use covert resources to "block the political integration of Indian-held Kashmir with the rest of the Union," while keeping the activity at levels below what might provoke a response by Indian forces. As elections approached in 1950-51, the informal war grew hotter. Increasingly frequent acts of low-grade terrorism in the valley were matched by instability at the ceasefire line. Indian intelligence suspicions that the popular local politician, Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, was encouraging Pakistani covert warfare led to the Kashmir Conspiracy Case being instituted against him. Though the prosecution was eventually dropped, suspicions between New Delhi and Srinagar remained high. The relationship between Kashmir and India remained fragile.

During the second covert war, from 1963 leading up to the second India-Pakistan war in 1965, a complex web of Pakistan-backed operatives--consisting of a central unit and its subsidiaries known collectively as the Master Cell--ramped up its operations in Kashmir. While the Pakistan Army trained irregulars to execute the covert war, Swami argued, the Master Cell was to create conditions in which such a war could be conducted. In August 1965, Pakistani troops and irregulars launched Operation Gibraltar, an assault in which several columns were to occupy key heights around the valley and encourage a general revolt, which would be followed by direct combat by Pakistani troops. However, Gibraltar failed due to early betrayals and the lack of support for such a revolt.

In an effort to avoid repetition of the "over-optimistic assessments which had led to the failure of Operation Gibraltar," the Pakistani army took over the task of training covert operatives. Swami contended that during the next period in the covert war, from 1966 to 1972, there was a distinct shift in the terms of the jihadist discourse. By 1969, a sophisticated network known as al-Fatah was running smoothly. Though al-Fatah attempted to avoid large-scale operations that might give India an excuse to intervene in the rising tensions between East and West Pakistan, a hijacking executed by the National Liberation Front (NLF) provided precisely such an opportunity, and India responded by restricting fly-over rights to Pakistan and thus retarding communications between the east and west. Indian covert operations during the Bangladesh resistance, Swami argued, were supremely successful, and assisted in the rapid destruction of Pakistani forces in the East once India finally officially intervened.

During the fourth period of covert war, from 1972 to 1988, the NLF continued its activities despite receiving surprisingly little support from Pakistan. However, the military coup that brought General Zia-ul-Huq into power and the subsequent Soviet campaign in Afghanistan significantly changed the dynamics in the region for several reasons. Most importantly, Washington's support for Pakistan left Zia free to pursue sub-conventional warfare against India, and "the jihad factory the United States had set up in Pakistan provided unprecedented resources for Islamist groups in Kashmir."

By the late 1980s, Zia's war against India was in high gear. The province of Punjab, where right-wing Sikh groups were fighting for a theocratic state of Khalistan, served Pakistani ambitions. According to Swami, Sikh terrorists regularly received training, funds, arms and ammunition from Pakistan. When the Punjab campaign died down in the early 1990s, however, violence in Kashmir was on the rise. The NLF and Pakistan's covert services had been planning for the war in Kashmir since 1986. After 1987, when the right-wing Muslim United Front claimed that rigged elections deprived them from coming into power, a wave of jihadi recruits arrived in Pakistan. By 1990, the fifth period of covert war had begun in Kashmir.

Swami's research has shown that violence in Kashmir peaked in 1996 and has been tapering off since 2001. However, the death toll even then continued at over 1500 per year. Swami pointed out that the majority of civilian victims have been Muslim. Violence in Kashmir continued until the terrorist attack at the Indian Parliament in New Delhi led to a face-off between the two nations. Since then, levels of violence have been falling steadily.

In conclusion, Swami offers a number of observations. First, the alternating phases of revival and decline in violence in Kashmir leave no particular reason to believe that the current decline is part of an irreversible trend. Second, none of the involved parties have been able to define what a mutually acceptable vision of Kashmir's future might look like. Third, six continuous decades of violence in Kashmir have brought gains to neither India nor Pakistan. Finally, "it is far from clear that an end to war in Kashmir will mean an abiding India-Pakistan peace."

Swami put forth a few thoughts emerging from his research beyond the immediate issue of the Kashmir conflict. First, a better understanding of violence around the world might be achieved from further exploration of the relationships between the ideologues of Islamist mobilizations in South Asia and their counterparts in west Asia or elsewhere, a topic on which there is very little available scholarship. Moreover, he argued, there are gaping holes in scholarly knowledge about armed Islamist groups around the world and the nuances in ideology, class, and history. This last area is in urgent need of further exploration, he concluded, particularly given the current context of international conflict.

Praveen Swami is deputy editor with the New Delhi bureau of Frontline, one of India's top news and policy publications. He reported on Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, and security issues for much of the 1990s before becoming Mumbai bureau chief in 1998. His work on the Indian Army's counterterrorist operations won him the Prem Bhatia Memorial Award for Political Journalism in 2003, one of India's most important print journalism awards.