How 9/11 changed India’s war against militancy in J&K

Security forces personnel in Kashmir in 2021. (Photo by Irfan Amin Malik)

Srinagar: After the attack on the World Trade Center in the United States on 11 September 2001 that left nearly 3,000 people dead, India’s war against militancy in Jammu and Kashmir too witnessed a paradigm shift.

While earlier India could not garner as much global attention over the presence of local and foreign militants in J&K, now it had an edge in the “war on terror” in the region.

Gowhar Geelani, journalist and author of Kashmir Rage and Reason, said, “Immediately after the devastating attack on the twin towers in September 2001, India's Parliament building in New Delhi was attacked in December. Policy makers in New Delhi linked the attack to Islamist violence and tried to put the armed militant rebellion in Kashmir in the framework of global terrorism. Paradoxically, though, the restive region also witnessed some of the biggest Kashmir-centric confidence-building measures (CBMs) around the same period as the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad and other trans-LoC routes were thrown open in April 2005.”

Another journalist working with an international news agency said that 9/11 gave India the opportunity to brand militants fighting in J&K as part of pan-Islamic Jihad. “The attack made things easy for India to connect Kashmir with the global Islamic struggle. Following 9/11, India on global forums tagged the militant outfits operating in J&K with al-Qaeda and other designated terror outfits. By doing this, India easily managed to crack the dissent on ground and due to which the human rights violation in the region was undermined by the world,” the 50-year-old journalist said.

Many in the Valley remembered how the US invasion of Afghanistan following 9/11 sparked student protests inside the Kashmir University. “The whole campus reverberated with anti-US protests to show solidarity with the people of Afghanistan. The students in the Valley were urging the international community to stop US troops from entering Kabul,” recalled an alumnus.

A south Kashmir-based political science lecturer who did not wish to be named said that 9/11 marks the day when the world changed and global security was prioritized both by states and international organizations.

“Certainly it demonstrated the fragility of borders... (Its) impact was felt more in places like J&K, where cultural, political and ideological spaces were incongruous to that of western democracies. Certainly, the territories where the movements based on political Islam were seen either as a threat to national security or the potential hotspots of militancy. This led to the enhanced role of the state in suppressing these ideological and militant movements at the expense of civil rights and liberties,” the lecturer said.

Just 20 days after 9/11, militants carried out a major attack on the J&K Assembly, leaving 38 dead. On October 1, 2001, the militants had entered the Assembly building, firing guns and lobbing hand grenades at security forces. The gunfight had raged for hours before the two militants were killed.

After he was released by India in 1999 Pakistan-based Muslim cleric Maulana Masood Azhar founded Jaish-e-Mohammad militant outfit and carried out many attacks in J&K including one on the assembly.

Following the assembly attack, JeM was finally declared a foreign Islamic jihadist organisation by the United Nations in October 2001 and by the US in December 2001.

Shortly after 9/11 on 25 September 2001 former U.S President George W. Bush announced a ban on Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), one of the oldest militant outfits active in the region with a connection to Osama bin Laden.

HuM was accused of conducting what Western powers described as the first act of terrorism in Kashmir in 1995, when the group - then known as Harkatul Ansar - kidnapped five western tourists.

Three months after 9/11, on 26 December 2001, United States Secretary of State Colin Powell designated Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant outfit a foreign terrorist organization. LeT has been active in J&K with both local and foreign militants joining the outfit.

The security agencies accused all three groups of having links with Pakistani, Afghani and Arab members who fought the 1980s Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

The American designation was seen a success for India at the diplomatic level, but security experts said the challenge of support for and activities of the militant groups inside Kashmir remains.

Even in June 2002 US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed that he had "seen indications" that al-Qaeda was operating in the Kashmir region.

Former J&K Director General of Police S.P. Vaid said that India was facing terrorism before 9/11 but the US attack helped India to get militant outfits operating in J&K designated as global terrorist outfits. “Before 9/11, the world was arrogantly ignoring the impact of militancy in India but after the famous attack countries like America joined India to fight against militants,” said Vaid, who was posted as DIG Jammu when 9/11 took place.

When asked why it took 16 years after 9/11 to declare Hizbul Mujahideen a global terrorist outfit, the former J&K police chief replied that Hizbul was only troubling India and not western world. “Therefore it took time for India to make the world understand the activities of Hizbul.”

After 9/11, India had argued that resistance in J&K is primarily an issue of terrorism and that Pakistan is sponsoring and supporting “cross-border terrorism” in the region. After 9/11, India urging the US to include Kashmir in its war on terror.

Meanwhile, the revitalized peace process between India and Pakistan also showed prospects of resolving the Kashmir conflict. A number of tangible developments had provided grounds for some optimism. After the Kargil War in 1999, India and Pakistan started sustained cooperation for the first time.

In 2003 a ceasefire was declared along the Line of Control (LoC),  cross-LoC  transport links were reopened, and the two countries moved further than ever toward ending their longstanding  and  costly  military  standoff  on  the Siachen glacier in Ladakh.

The most striking manifestation of this new cooperative spirit was the April 7, 2005, start of a regular bus service connecting Srinagar and Muzaffarabad.

Kashmiri leadership, both political and militant was affected by the turn of the trends after 9/11, and changing relations between India and Pakistan. For example, the chairman of the moderate faction of Hurriyat conference Mirwaiz Umer Farooq became more relevant to the political struggle and asked militants to leave guns and join dialogue.

However, the peaceful situation did not last for long. Kashmir simmered under the civil unrest during the summer of 2008. The region saw a transition from armed rebellion to street protests.

An environmental campaign against the transfer of land to the Amarnath shrine board snowballed into violence that left close to 46 dead and nearly 1,300 injured.

Two years later in 2010, a result of the death of 17-year-old Tufail Mattoo in police firing, left around 120 people dead and 4,288 others, including security forces injured.

In July 2016, civil unrest erupted after killing of Hizbul militant commander Burhan Wani. Ninety-three civilians lost lives in the five-month-long unrest and over 13,000 were injured, mostly with pellets.

On 5 August 2019, the BJP-led Central government revoked the special status of the region by abrogating Article 370. The clampdown and curfew continued in the region for five months with J&K Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) claiming that 33 civilians lost their lives during the year.

Since last month, when Taliban took over the Afghanistan, many including former police officers in J&K have expressed concern that the Taliban may now impact militancy in Kashmir.

On August 31, hours after the last of the US troops left Afghanistan, al-Qaeda hailed the Taliban for its victory in Kabul. In a statement, the militant group called for the "liberation" of Kashmir, Somalia, Yemen and other “Islamic lands".