The Meadow

by Adrian Levy

  They would leave at first light, the fighter announced, heading south for Anantnag. The leaders of the three militant groups that had merged to form the Movement would be waiting for them in the forest near the isolated village of Matigund, a difficult journey east of Anantnag along unmetalled mountain roads, a four-hour drive from here, possibly six, depending on the snow and the Indian security presence. ‘Before we left, one of the local Kashmiri mujahids gave me his pheran [Kashmiri cloak] to wear,’ Masood wrote later. ‘The Afghani also got two hens, which he kept in the boot of the car.’ Since they were going into the hills, the Afghani explained, they might have to fend for themselves. Only then did it occur to Masood that he ‘might have to fight’.

  At Matigund, Masood, by now exhausted, was greeted with salt tea and unleavened lavash by ‘Brother Raees’, a Kashmiri militant who explained that he was right-hand man to Sikander, the Movement’s local District Commander. Sikander had proved himself a trustworthy lieutenant to the Afghani, but he was not present: ‘He had skidded on the ice on a mountain road and crashed his motorbike.’ He would attempt to reach them some time the next day.

  Fifteen mujahids were waiting in the village house that had been commandeered for the majlis. Bearded and wearing an assortment of khaki uniforms and tribal dress, they were led by Abu Ghazi, a veteran tactician and weapons expert who had previously been based at Camp Yawar in Khost. He was now chief trainer at the Movement’s main camp in Kashmir, concealed a stiff one-and-a-half-hour walk east, far beyond the point where the electricity pylons and telephone lines ended. Sixty recruits were currently there, Ghazi said as he gratefully accepted a wad of cash that Masood had brought from his ISI benefactors. ‘We saluted them warm-heartedly and soon a majlis-i-jihad [jihad council] was in full swing,’ Masood wrote.

  The men, who had been fighting for their survival in the pine forests, were greedy for news, and they pressed forward as Masood began to speak. ‘What an exhilarating scene it was!’ he noted. ‘In front of me and around, were faces shining with the spirit of jihad. Decorating the chests of these young men were magazines and grenades, and within them burned high the flame of courage and bravery. They cradled their Kalashnikovs in their laps like babies. Some of them had rocket launchers as well as carbines that they had seized from the Indian Army.’

  Mesmerised by the surrounding weaponry and the proximity of men at his beck and call, Masood spoke uninterrupted for several hours, explaining why they needed to come together while all around him held a respectful silence. Out in the surrounding forest, he was informed, militants acting as lookouts also listened in via their radio sets. ‘Their presence was vital where they were, and so they had to content themselves by listening to us over the airwaves.’ At 2 a.m. Masood was politely interrupted. The brothers had not eaten all day. ‘Our historic meeting ended when one of our companions informed us that the dinner is served (one of the two hens).’ Dishes of gravy and chicken were set down beside a pile of cold girda, a striated Kashmiri flat bread. Afterwards, as the fighting men stretched out, Masood got up. ‘I quietly took up one of the Kalashnikovs and started downstairs, to join the mujahideen on guard. Halfway down, in the darkness, I felt the weapon in my hands … It was cocked, and the bullet was in the chamber. A feeling of ecstasy descended upon me. My joy knew no bounds as I held the loaded gun in my hands.’ There were no older siblings to make fun of the ‘little fatty’ now.

  Outside, the night sky seemed overburdened with stars. You rarely saw them in polluted Karachi. ‘It was the wee hours, a cool breeze was blowing,’ wrote Masood, imagining himself as a fighter. ‘Praise be to God who granted me an opportunity to perform guard-duty on the front of Kashmir.’ Here, on the front line of a holy jihad in Kashmir, he could finally expunge those stinging memories of his embarrassing departure from the battlefield at Khost.

  At daybreak, the Afghani sprang a radical plan. Since there was still no sign of Commander Sikander, Masood should deliver the Friday sermon at the Jamia mosque in Anantnag. This was a unique opportunity, and it would be a defiant act, demonstrating to the Indians, who would hear about it later, that the Movement was capable of bringing its General Secretary to the heart of south Kashmir under their noses. Masood was unsure, but the Afghani reassured him, saying the town’s people had risked much by supporting the Movement, and he needed to give something back.

  Reluctantly, Masood agreed. Leaving the guards behind, he, the Afghani and Sikander’s deputy Raees walked down to the car. But half an hour into the journey the vehicle spluttered and died. Masood panicked. Miles from anywhere, they set off on foot until they spied a village, where they commandeered an auto-rickshaw. ‘Raees got seated with the driver while I and the Afghani settled in the back,’ Masood wrote. Just before they reached Anantnag, the rickshaw driver noticed a BSF truck driving at speed behind them. ‘Army!’ he yelled. But it was too late. They were totally encircled.

  Raees was ordered to run for it, his weapon clanking beneath his pheran. ‘As the soldier tried to search him he threw one man down, let off a grenade and made it to the woods,’ recalled Masood, who remained frozen to the spot, aghast at the sight of the Indian paramilitaries running towards him, firing off their weapons in all directions. For a few moments the Afghani sat calmly, holding Masood’s hand, until they were hauled into the snow, chained and thrown into separate trucks. ‘The Indian soldiers were beside themselves with joy,’ Masood wrote. ‘We were blindfolded, our hands tied behind our backs. A crowd soon gathered there, and I could hear them cheering “Jai Hind! Bharat mata ki jai! [Hail India! Victory to Mother India!]” We had no choice but to pray.’

  Khundroo Army Camp, protected by 2nd Rashtriya Rifles and located close to the headquarters of the Indian Army’s 21 Field Commandos, was a twenty-minute drive south of Anantnag. The signboard by the gate proclaimed ‘If Paradise is on Earth it is here, it is here’, but those who lived nearby thought of it differently. Like every other army, paramilitary and police camp in the valley, Khundroo had its interrogation centre, that consumed the daily intake of the detained, holding them for weeks or months without reference to the courts. Far away from the prying eyes of international human rights delegations, the Geneva Convention did not apply here, and the Afghani knew many comrades who had emerged from here and camps like it lame, broken and shamed. Masood had written countless column inches about prisoners who had been tortured or killed in detention centres, hung upside down, whipped, burned with blowtorches, electrocuted, near-drowned, their wounds rubbed with chilli, many of them vanishing altogether. He had never expected to find himself inside such a place, and he was terrified.

  When an officer accompanied by plain-clothed agent arrived to begin their questioning, Masood shrank back and let the Afghani take the lead. ‘It was indeed a spectacular scene,’ Masood recalled later, emboldened by the passage of time. ‘His eyes were sparkling dangerously.’ The Afghani announced that he had a confession to make, but only in front of a senior officer. Someone found ‘an old Colonel with the red dot on his forehead, which the filthy Hindus consider to be blessed’.

  ‘Congratulations!’ announced the Afghani without fear. ‘Today you have gained great success. I am the commander of the Movement.’ The Indian soldiers exchanged glances. ‘But this scholar accompanying me has nothing whatsoever to do with the mujahideen. He is a visitor to this country. I kidnapped him. In all likelihood his prayers were answered when you arrested me, otherwise I would have held him until I got a ransom.’

  According to his own later account, Masood swivelled to look at the Afghani before the penny dropped: ‘In every era there have lived pious slaves of Allah who have chosen to drink the cup of death in order to save their fellow brothers.’ For the next two days the Afghani was ‘tortured horribly’, but revealed nothing. Yet somehow ‘the Indian Army discovered a hole in the story’.

  In fact, according to the Indian interrogation transcripts, when Masood’s turn came he broke down within thirty minutes and blurted out the truth:
he had not been kidnapped at all. The Afghani was furious, and this time could not bring himself to forgive Masood. Now, after twelve days in Khundroo, both of them would face long prison sentences. Many months later, when Masood and the Afghani were reunited in Ward One of Tihar jail in New Delhi, where India housed the men it regarded as its most feared terrorists, the commander refused even to acknowledge his General Secretary. ‘Here, for the first time we developed differences,’ Masood later wrote circumspectly. ‘After four months the situation changed; he came to me and asked me to forget everything, as it was harming the freedom movement.’ The Afghani kept silent about their time together in Kashmir, even after Masood began telling other prisoners his life story, concocting a new explanation for his pronounced limp, which he now said was the work of Indian interrogators.

  It was quiet in Kausar Colony, Bahawalpur. Two of Masood’s brothers were away in Afghanistan, fighting alongside the emerging Taliban. A sister, Rabiya Bibi, would soon join them, doing welfare work for this force of dour students led by Mullah Omar that would soon capture Afghanistan, while another brother was running the Movement’s Bahawalpur recruiting office.

  Master Alvi should have been happy. Most of his family were doing holy work. Apart from Masood. He was desperate to secure the release of his golden child. He travelled to Karachi to see Maulana Khalil, and together they had gone to pay their respects to Brigadier Badam of the ISI. ‘Do what the Afghani did when Langrial was taken,’ the Brigadier told them. ‘Kidnap someone important, preferably foreign. Make it an embarrassment for India. It’s the only sure way to get him back.’ Master Alvi was unsure. What did he know about kidnapping, let alone foreigners? But he was certain of one thing. The Movement owed his son.

  THREE

  The Meadow

  ‘Paradise on Earth’, declared the sign beside the old Jammu and Kashmir tourist reception centre on Residency Road, a short rickshaw ride from Lal Chowk, Srinagar’s main shopping bazaar, with its cake shops and dressmakers, kurta-sellers and papier-mâché emporiums, behind which sprawled alleyways and lanes faced on either side by rickety wooden and stone structures. Plastic-chair depots blended into office supplies, and then came an entire street selling computers shorn of their inner workings, before you reached car parts, bath taps and telephones. Here was a Sikh gurdwara and an Islamic welfare association, hotels selling hot buttered toast, seekh kebabs and Lipton’s tea, while in the lanes below suited businessmen and Kashmiri housewives picked their way around overloaded handcarts.

  But it was the large signboard that attracted Jane and Don’s attention that morning. It might have convinced the increasing number of Indian tourists coming from the cow belt that all was peaceful here, the dark-skinned holidaymakers from the south who were all keen to do their bit to reinforce the government’s writ in Kashmir. But it struck Don and Jane as odd, given what they had seen so far: the occupation of everything by the security forces, including this tourist centre, which was surrounded by razor wire, sentries and bunkers.

  Inside, there were no tourists. The deserted corridors smelled of bleach and someone else’s lunch. Asking for information on trekking routes at reception, Jane and Don were half-heartedly directed to a room where they found two Kashmiri officials sipping tea beneath a whirring fan that agitated the curling edges of posters depicting Kashmir’s many beauty spots. The men seemed delighted and surprised to have visitors. One jumped up, proffered a hand and introduced himself as Naseer Ahmed Jan, ‘of the J&K tourist police’. Immediately he launched into a speech about the dangers of travelling alone in the mountains. It was the first voice of caution Jane and Don had heard since arriving in India, and it immediately grabbed their attention. There was a possibility of thieves, he said, sizing up their reactions, and a real chance of getting lost. They should be clear that the weather up in the mountains was unpredictable. For these reasons – and to ensure that they found the best routes and the right campsite – it was imperative that they take along a recommended guide.

  Jane knew a sales pitch when she heard it. She was not surprised when Mr Jan introduced the colleague sitting by his side as being able to arrange a taxi to Pahalgam, as well as find ponies. ‘He tried to give us many reasons why we shouldn’t go on our own, why we should hire someone to go with us. It was inappropriate,’ said Jane. She and Don got up to leave. Looking perturbed to have lost out on an opportunity, Mr Jan handed them his card. ‘Call me,’ he said weakly as the other man followed them out, still talking silkily: ‘You choose the price. Only pay me what you feel I deserve. The decision is yours …’ Out in the street, Jane and Don concluded wearily that they would only have to go through the same performance with someone else at the trekking station. Why not get it over with? ‘We were persuaded,’ Jane said. ‘The guide then said he would hire the pony-men.’ Without really thinking it through, they had been hustled into committing to the Pahalgam option.

  Seven days earlier, just before midnight on 21 June, Julie and Keith Mangan had lugged their belongings to the Inter State bus stand in New Delhi, where they were to board a coach to Kashmir. After three months in Sri Lanka, the British couple were bronzed, and they had become deaf to the mayhem of the subcontinent, feeling like old Asia hands. As they were settling into their seats on the Srinagar-bound bus Julie spotted two other Westerners, who with their blue-white skin and hassled expressions seemed to be fresh off the plane. Pushing their way through the crowds, with bags and tickets tumbling around them, the young couple were being trailed by a crowd of coolies, children and chai-wallahs who had sniffed out an opportunity. It was Paul Wells and Catherine Moseley, who had survived the experience of staying in the backpacker district of Paharganj and were now heading for Ladakh, having decided to take the cheapest route, by road via Srinagar, after the owner of their guesthouse arranged the tickets for them, taking a healthy commission. ‘Do you need help?’ Julie shouted over the hubbub. The young woman surrounded by beggars whipped around at hearing the English voice, and seeing Julie standing on the steps of the bus waving, burst out laughing. Cath was finding the whole India thing mind-boggling.

  Once they were safely aboard, Julie introduced herself and Keith, and made a gentle jibe about Cath and Paul’s lack of experience. More than twenty-four hours on an Indian bus would see to that, she joked. Had they come prepared, Keith asked, listing the necessary provisions for the trip: toilet roll, Imodium, real mineral water. ‘Test the seals before you buy, or face a lifetime on the shitter’ was the mantra of the travelling Westerner in those days, since so many water bottles were actually filled from the nearest unfiltered tap. Cath told them she and Paul had signed up to another forty-eight hours of travelling beyond Srinagar. As the bus roared out of New Delhi, passing pavements where homeless children slept beneath the fierce glow of halogen lights, Cath and Paul began to relax.

  Despite the age difference, the Mangans chatted easily with the young backpackers. Keith, Julie and Paul discovered that they were all from the north of England, and they swapped stories from home and away. Having been in South Asia for so many weeks, Julie and Keith were familiar with the road trick of building casual relationships with other travellers. Leaving the hot colours of the Indian plains behind, the bus, keeling ominously, headed into the Pir Panjal, a mountain range in the lower Himalayas that separated the Kashmir Valley from the rest of India. By that afternoon, 22 June, they were in the foothills and the two couples knew pretty much everything there was to know about each other.

  That night, as the last light faded, they headed through the dank Banihal Tunnel, the only road route connecting Kashmir to the rest of India. At times of heightened tension this road would be blocked by the army, sealing Kashmiris in, but just now it was open, although at its end an army checkpoint loomed like a giant mousetrap. Welcome to Paradise, the couples thought to themselves as the waiting Indian soldiers waved flashlights in the gloom. The bus came to a halt, and all the passengers were ordered off and made to stand in line with their passports and identity
documents to hand. As the only Westerners on board, Keith, Julie, Paul and Cath were taken over to a small cabin that served as the local office of the J&K tourist police. There they were asked seemingly endless questions, their details noted down in longhand in lined ledgers, the pages bookmarked with elastic bands. Keith wondered if anyone ever read them afterwards.

  Most of the other passengers on the bus were Kashmiri, born broke and destined to spend their lives trapped in the valley; or if they could get the papers, compelled to be permanently in transit, travelling the vast subcontinent the cheapest way possible, carrying plastic suitcases full of shawls, business cards and trinkets. It was thirty-four hours to Calcutta from here, and forty-two to Goa. More than two thousand miles lay between Kashmir and Pondicherry, in India’s deep south-east. They were willing to ply even these far corners of the subcontinent, eking out every opportunity to make a small profit. Behind the hut where Paul, Cath, Keith and Julie were being questioned, they glimpsed Indian soldiers trampling on the Kashmiris’ possessions. They were probably checking for contraband, weapons or explosives, someone murmured. After all, a nation had every right to protect itself.