The Meadow

by Adrian Levy

  By now there was a multitude of Indian security forces operating in the Kashmir Valley, ranging from regular army to newly created reserve forces, paramilitary police as well as regular police, Special Branch, CID and a range of armed units attached to the intelligence agencies RAW and the Intelligence Branch (IB). The Handwara incident was blamed on the Border Security Force (BSF), a paramilitary outfit raised after the war between India and Pakistan in 1965. By 1990 more than a third of its 240,000 strength was deployed in Kashmir on counter-insurgency operations.

  It was not just the paramilitaries who were excessive. ‘Are they animals?’ Masood demanded in February 1991, after reporting on events in Kunan Poshpora, a village close to the LoC where at least twenty-three women were raped, an attack blamed on the 4th Rajputana Rifles, an army unit that had the distinction of winning two Victoria Crosses during the Second World War. It wasn’t as if these incidents were few and far between, Masood reported. Two months after Kunan Poshpora he wrote up ‘a Kashmir family story’ from Malangam. It told how seven members of one Kashmiri family were shot dead, before their corpses were tied to military vehicles and towed down from the mountains by the BSF (116th Battalion). When their remains were later handed to police, the deaths were recorded as due to their having been ‘caught in the crossfire’, although the only shots fired had been Indian. Masood wrote about the ‘crossfire’ excuse again in June 1991, after Indian security forces killed seventeen unarmed civilians, all of whom supposedly died inadvertently, during a gun battle in Srinagar’s Chotta Bazaar.

  Blood and more blood. With Maulana Khalil’s recruits striking indiscriminately across the valley, the indigenous militants fighting too, and a reeling India responding chaotically, Masood revelled in the region’s descent into savage war, with his focus firmly fixed on atrocities committed by the Indian side. In January 1993, soldiers gunned down more than fifty unarmed civilians in Sopore, a rebellious town surrounded by apple orchards in north Kashmir, where insurgents had killed two Indian paramilitaries. Afterwards Sopore was set on fire, with most of its wooden buildings being destroyed and an unknown number of residents burned to death. Amnesty International sent a delegation to Kashmir. In Pakistan, Masood drew his readers’ attention to a subsequent report that documented ‘706 cases of custodial killings’ by Indian forces. ‘Disappearances, routine torture of detainees so brutal that it frequently results in death, rape of women during search operations, and extrajudicial executions of unarmed civilians, often falsely labelled as having been the result of “encounters” or as having occurred in “cross-fire”’ was how Amnesty expressed it. A few days after the delegation departed, Hriday Wanchoo, a vocal Kashmiri human rights campaigner, was abducted and shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Srinagar.

  As far as Brigadier Badam and the ISI were concerned, their proxy war in Kashmir was going better than expected. India was on the back foot, and unrest was spreading daily through the valley. But according to Masood’s account, seized by Pakistan federal investigators, the Brigadier was concerned about the burgeoning number of militant groups operating in the Kashmiri theatre over which the Pakistanis had no control.

  In a dizzying process of jihadi mitosis, there were now more than a hundred Islamic front organisations – the Prophet’s This and the Army of That, the Fight-for-Something-or-Other and the Battle-of-Some-Such, nominal names for notional outfits whose members on average had a battlefield life expectancy of less than six months. India did not bother to detail each of these groups’ inconsequential allegiances, since to them the only good jihadi was a dead one. But Brigadier Badam could see that a large number of the smaller outfits were home-grown Kashmiri groups, which felt no allegiance to the ISI, while even Pakistan’s purpose-made militias were increasingly difficult to control from afar. He was also aware that a significant amount of the Holy Warriors’ monthly Kashmir stipend was now unaccounted for. Worse still, some of the pro-independence Kashmiri groups were gaining the upper hand around the valley, going against the ISI’s plan to turn the Kashmiri freedom struggle into a campaign for Kashmir to become part of Pakistan.

  In early 1993, Brigadier Badam returned to the Binori Town mosque to meet Maulana Khalil again. According to two others who were present, and also to Masood’s impounded journal, the Brigadier said he wanted to consolidate the military campaign. He came with both a stick and a carrot, producing evidence that the Holy Warriors had stolen ISI cash, but adding that he was prepared to overlook this misdemeanour, and even to ‘expand the monthly stipend to $60,000’, in exchange for a radical restructuring. To streamline matters and push India over the edge, the ISI wanted to construct one overarching jihadi outfit from its three largest existing fronts. The Holy Warriors would be central, and Masood, still only twenty-five, would leapfrog the established order by being made – to the consternation of many in the room – General Secretary of the new-look group that was optimistically named Harkat ul-Ansar, the Movement of the Victorious.

  The military success of this unified front would rest on the shoulders of one man, Sajjad Khan, who had been chosen to be the Movement’s chief of military operations. A hoary military tactician from the Afghan–Pakistan border who had made his name battling the Soviets, he was better known by his nom de guerre, ‘the Afghani’. He was such an important ISI asset that rather than risk infiltrating him over the heavily patrolled LoC, Brigadier Badam suggested he cross into India through the porous border with Bangladesh. After losing its precious eastern territory in 1971, Pakistan’s security agencies had forged strong links with Bangladeshi jihadi groups that now promised to oversee all arrangements for the Afghani’s safe passage. General Secretary Masood Azhar was tasked with accompanying the Afghani, giving him a personal send-off.

  They flew together to Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, in December 1993. It was an embarrassing reunion for Masood, since the Afghani had seen him at his lowest, having arranged for him to be evacuated from Camp Yawar back in 1988 after the notorious friendly-fire incident. He knew the truth behind Masood’s ‘battlefield limp’. But, ever dutiful, the Afghani said nothing of this during the journey to Bangladesh, and Masood reflected in his journal that after handing his charge over to another Binori Town old boy in Dhaka, he returned to Karachi ‘filled with enthusiasm for the new Kashmir operation’.

  The Afghani reached the Kashmir Valley in the first week of 1994, after travelling west through Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal before crossing India’s northern plains towards the western Himalayas. Now he headed for Anantnag, the largest town in south Kashmir, a militant stronghold where India’s writ was as worn as an old ten-rupee note. He recovered from his epic journey in a safe house that the Movement of the Victorious had established in Chhatargul, an isolated village of stone cottages and cedars tucked into the dark green folds of the Pir Panjal mountains, one hour’s journey east of Anantnag, a windswept landscape of pines and glacial debris populated mostly by gujjar herders, Pakistani and Kashmiri militants. At night this eyrie was engulfed in blackness, bar the occasional flare of a kerosene lamp. Here, life had barely changed in hundreds of years. And despite the spread of Islam, the inhabitants of these outlying areas remained wary of the mystical spirits said to roam the forests at night. The stillness was punctuated only by the sound of wild animals, black bears and deer, rustling through the undergrowth, or the mournful tolling of goat bells.

  From here, using his contacts in the established ISI-backed militant groups and local herders as guides, the Afghani pressed on further east into no man’s land, where the snow lay thick on the ground. Travelling mostly at night to avoid attention, heavily armed and wreathed in multiple layers of scarves, he familiarised himself with the landscape, the language and the local customs, seeking out recruits, friendly hamlets and safe locations for munitions drops. Over cups of sweet black tea sipped beside smoky hearths, nervous villagers whispered how hard life was under Indian occupation, the men sitting cross-legged around the Afghani while their wives and child
ren watched from behind a kitchen curtain, holding their headscarves tight, one end clenched between their teeth. The Afghani learned that these days the Indian security forces largely policed these upper reaches of Kashmir from the air, and that the poverty-stricken inhabitants, who survived on government rations in winter and on pulses and whatever vegetables they could coax into life from the thin mountain soil in summer, could easily be persuaded to side with the insurgency.

  Soon he reached Lovloo village, high up beyond the Daksum road. This hamlet was a wild frontier, whose inhabitants reeked of wood smoke in winter and whose palms were stained with walnut juice from harvesting in the late summer. They rarely left the safety of their stone villages and farms. From here it was more than two hours’ walk to a doctor, an hour to the nearest school. There was no electricity and no proper road, but this route was the back door into the Warwan, a remote stretch on the other side of the Pir Panjal range whose name means ‘green valley’, a place so remote that no one held control. In the summer the Warwan lived up to its name, a lush, perfectly formed thirty-mile-long glacial valley, with tiny settlements huddled along its flanks. But the Warwan was a soulless place in winter, most passes in and out being blocked by snow, its steep slopes trapping its few intrepid inhabitants for up to six months of the year. It was the perfect location for Pakistani and Kashmiri militants to lie low, and in recent times it had seen a steady increase in the numbers of foreign militants too.

  Slowly, the Afghani seeded cells along the route to the Warwan, trudging through the snow for hours at a time to reach the remotest settlements, knocking on ancient wooden doors to find frightened families huddled around meagre fires. He made his way as far as Pahalgam, the famed trekking station, favoured by Western trekkers, sealing allegiances as he went with promises of weapons and money from Pakistan, deals that were settled over huge mounds of steaming rice and pickled vegetables, laid out on cloths rolled out over the floor, all the time gathering together a ragtag army to join the Movement’s ranks. Some were veteran Kashmiri fighters who had been exchanging fire with the Indians long before 1989, and had a wealth of knowledge about their opponents’ tactics and firepower. Others were Pashtun mujahids, recently arrived from over the LoC, trigger-happy and pumped up, their wild, unwashed hair and beards swathed under dun-coloured scarves. Then there were the boys and men from Punjab and Karachi, Master Alvi and Maulana Khalil’s madrassa protégés, religiously conservative, militarily inexperienced but immersed in this new jihad, their uniforms, new tan-and-blue kurta pyjamas that the Kashmiris called ‘khan dress’, making them stand out from the locals, who back then preferred jeans and trainers. Finally, to get them through the mountains safely and to ensure there was sufficient food and a refuge at the end of the day, the Afghani recruited a network of helpers from Kashmir’s tough mountain tribes, the gujjars, dards and bakarwals. These herders and hunters had no interest in jihad, although many had grown to despise Indian brutality, but they knew these mountains better than anyone. Universally feared by suspicious villagers, it was said their rejection by the mainstream meant they would do anything for money.

  However, one crucial brother was missing. Key to the Afghani’s military plan had been his chosen deputy, a Pakistani field commander called Nasrullah Mansoor Langrial, a gutsy fighter who had been running rings around the Indians in Kashmir for the past year, setting bombs and booby traps, mounting hit-and-run operations on Indian bases and patrols. Nasrullah and the Afghani were men of the same breed, the former being a farmer’s son from the Punjabi village of Langrial, a community of impoverished and religious jati tribesmen. Like many Pakistani families, Nasrullah’s parents made so little from the fields they rented from the local zamindar landlord that they had sent their son to a nearby Deobandi madrassa, where he was educated for free and inculcated with the merits of jihad. He had proven an eager pupil, and after graduating he had headed for Camp Yawar. There, in the deserts of Khost, the gangly youth Nasrullah had been transformed into the mujahid Langrial. With his lion’s beard, smiling face and tall, lean frame, he led from the front, eschewing marriage and home comforts for a life of jihad. It had been the same story with the Afghani, and the two men had fought together on many occasions, Langrial attaining the name in jihadi circles of ‘Darwesh’, the smiling and happy narrator of a hadith. But now, in January 1994, a courier came to the Afghani with news. Langrial had been caught in an ambush in Kashmir, and was being held by the Indian security forces.

  The Afghani reeled. He told his comrades that they must risk everything to free his brother in jihad. He immediately diverged from the ISI plan and entered Srinagar, where he launched a reckless and savage frontal attack on security forces in the Elahi Bagh quarter of the city, the firefight (on 16 January 1994) lasting thirty hours. The Afghani had hoped to take prisoners to trade for Langrial, but he was lucky to escape with his own life. Three days later he tried again, this time kidnapping an Indian major, Bhupinder Singh, but the authorities refused to negotiate. In his fury, the Afghani executed the Indian officer and then went into hiding, leaving the Movement’s embryonic cells to melt into the dense pine forests.

  When Brigadier Badam heard the news from Indian Kashmir, he was furious, Masood would later write. He immediately sent for Maulana Khalil in Karachi, and warned him that this was not the streamlined operation the ISI had paid for. ‘A number of messages were sent to the chief commanders in Kashmir to join hands. We did not, however, receive any confirmation of our orders,’ wrote Masood. Someone senior from the Movement would have to travel to Kashmir to get the Afghani back on course. The obvious choice was General Secretary Masood Azhar, who in recent times had been travelling widely, acting as Maulana Khalil’s roving ambassador and chief fund-raiser abroad, armed with a range of doctored passports provided by the ISI. Whatever his private thoughts about going to India, Masood hid them, writing vaingloriously in his journal: ‘It was my duty in the organisation to maintain unity among the mujahideen, and it was felt necessary that I needed to be there to fulfill this job. Heads had to be brought together, prayers must be said.’

  But although Masood’s message rang clear in the ears of fighting men like the Afghani, the editor of the Voice of the Mujahid was not a fighting man. Once before he had demonstrated his lack of judgement in a live-fire situation, and this would be his first foray back onto the battlefield.

  In late January 1994, as Masood said his farewells, his father, Master Alvi, worried that his son was not ready to grab jihad by the throat. ‘Was he not better leading from Karachi?’ Master Alvi wrote in a desperate letter to one of Masood’s brothers, later seized by Pakistani investigators. The ISI was too busy concocting a cover story to listen. Masood was now Wali Adam Issa, a Portuguese businessman. The Movement’s contacts in Britain had obtained a stolen Portuguese passport through the maulvi of a mosque in east London, and the ISI had had it stamped with Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi visas. Everyone was convinced that this mission was well within Masood’s capabilities, as he had already travelled widely around Europe and the Horn of Africa, even assisting another merging jihad general in Sudan, Osama bin Laden, the son of a Saudi construction tycoon, who had fled there from Afghanistan.

  Masood Azhar arrived in New Delhi on 29 January, via Dhaka, on a Biman Bangladesh fight, in a newly tailored Western suit, his beard trimmed, he would write, ‘to resemble those worn by captains of industry’ he had seen in the pages of Time. He had clipped his fingernails and remembered to shower and use anti-perspirant, but the Indian immigration official still stared him down. Within minutes, his new nylon shirt was soaked with sweat. He didn’t look Portuguese, the officer observed. Masood would later write that he had wondered if the man ‘could smell Bahawalpur’ on him. Luckily, he had practised his response. He was originally from Gujrat, in Pakistan’s Punjab, but had left for Portugal some years before. The officer looked down at his screen. He scrutinised the passport again, and waved Masood through.

  Masood headed for the five-star Ash
oka Hotel in Chanakyapuri, the kind of hushed, moneyed place that asked no questions as long as the bills were paid. Delighted, he unpacked his bag and called his contact, a Kashmiri carpet exporter. This man was an old hand. He brought Masood some hot bread and nihari, made that morning at Karim’s in Old New Delhi. ‘Eat,’ he told him, according to Masood’s written recollections. ‘Relax. No need to hurry. The Kashmir plan is running a little late.’

  Masood the tourist. His first stop was naturally the town of Deoband, a three-hour journey east in Uttar Pradesh state. Afterwards, he browsed Old New Delhi’s Islamist bookshops and visited roadside shrines to long-dead maulanas. He went shopping in New Delhi’s Connaught Place, buying boiled sweets, woollen socks, a bottle of talcum and a small brass bell that he thought would be useful when he came to convene his first majlis, or council meeting, with the mujahids of Kashmir. What did you buy for fighting men, he wondered. He found a place selling compasses, and bought a dozen as presents for the field commanders.

  Finally, on 9 February, after twelve days of shopping, eating and waiting, they were ready for him. Wearing his comfortable kurta pyjama suit and skullcap as if he were a returning haji, Masood flew to Srinagar. As soon as he arrived he was thrown into a panic by the lines of khaki-clad security men, and he began shaking as a Kashmiri policeman with a clipboard approached him, having spotted the Portuguese passenger on the flight manifest. ‘Foreigner registration,’ the officer demanded, taking down Masood’s details. He felt horribly exposed, but emerged from the airport unscathed.

  During the taxi ride into the city the sheer scale of the Indian military presence became clear to Masood for the first time. The sight of Kashmiris with their pony carts cowering beside the road as vast army convoys thundered past made him shake with fear. Thinking back over all those speeches and newspaper articles he had written, it dawned on him that the reality was far worse than he had imagined: he had ‘never seen more miserable-looking people anywhere in the world’. Srinagar in February was dark, dank and freezing, the dirty brown ice sludge on the roads splattering the people on the pavements. Locals hung around braziers filled with burning rubbish while Indian soldiers looked on enviously, shivering at their positions, dressed in balaclavas, winter-issue coats and oversized galoshes. Most shops had their shutters rolled down, and parts of Dal Lake were frozen over. There was not a tourist to be seen. Shuddering, as he wrote later, Masood searched for the Qasmia madrassa in downtown Srinagar, following the instructions he had memorised. That evening, safely indoors, as he sat beneath a quilt warming his hands on a Kashmiri kangri or charcoal burner, the Afghani slipped in.