Pakistan's Role in the Kashmir Insurgency
By Peter Chalk
This opinion article appeared in Jane's Intelligence Review on September 1, 2001
and is reproduced with permission from Jane's Information Group.
Peter Chalk investigates the extent of Pakistan's support for groups in Kashmir and
how this assistance has impacted on the course and development of the conflict.
Over the past two years, increased attention has focused on Pakistan as a
significant force behind the growth of Islamic radicalism and extremism in Kashmir.
The US State Department's most recent report on Patterns of Global Terrorism,
released in April 2001, specifically identifies Islamabad as the chief sponsor of
militant groups fighting in the disputed Indo-Pakistani region. The same conclusion
was reached in an earlier report by the National Commission on Terrorism and
reflects current thinking in most US and Western policy-making and intelligence
circles.
Reasons for Pakistani backing
There are currently five main groups fighting in Kashmir, all of which benefit from
Pakistani support:
- Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM);
- Laskhar-e-Tayyiba (LeT);
- al Badr;
- Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM); and
- Harakat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM).
Islamabad's backing for these groups revolves around the perennial conflict with
India - a militarily, economically and demographically superior state viewed as
posing a fundamental threat to Pakistan's long-term viability and integrity.
Sponsoring militancy in Kashmir is regarded as a relatively cheap and effective way
of offsetting existing power symmetries (essentially through the philosophy of a
'war of a thousand cuts') while simultaneously creating a bulwark of instability
along the country's vulnerable southern flank. Both are considered vital to ensuring
that Pakistan has sufficient strategic depth to undertake a protracted
conventional war on the sub-continent, should this ever become necessary.
Religious imperatives also come into play, particularly on the part of the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate, which enjoys a high degree of
autonomy and executive space within Pakistan. The agency has specifically sought
to replicate and transplant the success of the anti-Soviet Afghan campaign in
Kashmir, exhorting foreign militants to participate in the conflict as part of the
wider moral duty owed to the jihad. The medium to long-term aim, according to
intelligence sources in New Delhi and Srinagar, is to trigger a generalised Islamic
revolution across the northeast and eventually India as a whole.
The nature of the support
Pakistani assistance to Kashmiri insurgents covers the ambit of training, logistical,
financial and doctrinal support.
At least 91 insurgent training camps have been identified in Pakistan-Occupied
Kashmir (POK), the bulk of which lie contiguous to the Indian districts of Kupwara,
Baramulla, Poonch, Rajauri and Jammu. Basic courses run for between three and
four months, focusing on weapons handling, demolitions and urban sabotage.
Training for the more able recruits lasts somewhat longer and typically emphasises
additional, specialised skills in areas such as heavy arms, reconnaissance and
sniper assaults.
Responsibility for managing these courses falls to the ISI's Operations Branch and
tends to be conducted through two sub-divisions: Joint Intelligence Miscellaneous
(JIM) and Joint Intelligence North (JIN). Islamist-oriented military officers are also
believed to periodically 'moonlight' from their regular duties to supplement ISI
instructors and help provide critical training in the fundamentals of guerrilla/jungle
warfare and escape and evasion techniques.
Most of the camps are located near major military establishments (within 1-15km),
which Indian intelligence maintains provide the bulk of military-related resources,
including light weapons (assault rifles, carbines, pistols, machine guns,
rocket-propelled grenades/boosters), ammunition, explosives, binoculars and night
vision devices, communications equipment and uniforms.
Financing the militants
Apart from military backing, Pakistan plays an important role in financing Kashmiri
insurgents. According to India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), annual ISI
expenditure to the main militant organisations runs to between US$125 and $250
million a year. These funds are used to cover salaries for fighters (which run from
5,000 to 10,000 rupees a month), support to next of kin, cash incentives for
high-risk operations and retainers for guides, porters and informers.
In addition, the ISI helps to fund militant proxies through the circulation of
counterfeit currency and by laundering profits derived from the heroin trade. The
agency also handles foreign contributions and donations (most of which come from
Saudi Arabia), funnelling these to Pakistani bank accounts that are opened under
the auspices of insurgent political, religious or charitable fronts. Many of these
payments are co-ordinated through Rahimyar Khan, a small town in the deserts of
southern Punjab where every year thousands of wealthy Arabs come to hunt the
region's wildlife.
Ideological indoctrination
Besides acting as a major source of military and financial assistance, Pakistan
remains a pivotal centre of ideological indoctrination for the Kashmiri conflict, much
of which is co-ordinated through the country's burgeoning network of theological
madrasahs. Many of these schools equate the concept of the jihad - which most
Islamic scholars interpret as 'striving for justice' - with guerrilla warfare and
explicitly exhort their students to fulfil their 'spiritual obligations' by fighting in the
name of the pan-Islamic cause.
The total number of existing madrasahs including satellite institutions in Pakistan is
estimated at between 40,000 and 50,000. Of these, only about 4,350 are currently
registered with the government. The most prominent extremist-oriented schools
include the Dar-ul-Uloom Haqani at Akora Khattak; the
Markaz-ad-Da'awa-wal-Irshad at Murdike; the Dar-ul-Loom at Pashtoonabad; the
Dar ul-Iftah-ul-Irshad at Nazimabad; and the Ahle-Sunnat-wal Jammat at
Rawalpindi.
All of these madrasahs are associated with the most extreme sections of the
Pakistani politico-religious lobby, such as the Jamiat e Ulema Islam (JUI), and retain
close links with openly terroristic organisations. The Markaz-ad-Da'awa-wal-Irshad
madrasah, for instance, constitutes the main recruiting base for the LeT, one of
the most violent and feared groups presently fighting in Kashmir.
Pakistan's impact
Pakistan has fundamentally altered the dimensions of the conflict in Kashmir. On
one level, the provision of arms, training and finance has dramatically heightened
the firepower and overall proficiency of the militants on the ground. This has been
reflected by:
- the range and type of operations now carried out which include everything from
improvised explosive attacks to suicide car bombings and full frontal assaults;
- the quantity of military hardware available to the insurgents; in 2000 alone Indian
authorities recovered 482 AK47 assault rifles, 53 rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs),
16 sniper rifles, 59 rocket launchers, 4,807 hand grenades, 292 anti-personnel
mines, 555 rockets, 1,508kg of RDX explosive, 460 wireless sets and 20
night-vision binoculars; and
- the number of militant-inflicted casualties, which increased from an annual
average of 608 deaths during the first five years of the insurgency to over 760
fatalities a year between 1996 and 2000.
More intrinsically, the nature of the Kashmir conflict has been transformed from
what was originally a secular, locally- based struggle (conducted via the Jammu
Kashmir Liberation Front - JKLF) to one that is now largely carried out by foreign
militants and rationalised in pan-Islamic religious terms.
With the exception of HM, all of the main organisations currently active in Kashmir
are non-indigenous, composed mostly of Punjabi mercenaries from Pakistan.
Indicative of this were the 1,102 foreign insurgents killed in Kashmir between 1998
and the end of January 2001 - 63% more than those slain in the eight years from
1990 to 1997. Most of those who come to fight define their objectives in both local
and global terms, with the rhetorical enemy specified as any state perceived to be
anti-Islamic.
A case in point is the LeT, whose annual diary specifically asserts its intention to
bring the jihad to the USA, Israel, Russia, the UK and France, announcing plans to
'plant Islamic flags in Delhi, Tel Aviv, Washington, Paris and London'.
Risks for Pakistan
While Islamabad may view involvement in Kashmir as a viable way of provoking
unrest in India, the policy carries definite risks. In fact, it is no longer apparent
that the army or ISI exercise complete control over the proxies they have helped
to create, some of which are now openly talking about fomenting a fundamentalist
revolution in Pakistan itself.
Should the insurgency in Kashmir end, there is a perceptible risk that groups such
as al Badr, LeT and JeM will re-direct their energies and attention to the pursuit of
this very objective. Indeed this may now be the main reason why Islamabad
continues to infiltrate militants across the disputed line of control: to keep them
busy and, therefore, out of Pakistan.
Peter Chalk is an expert on transnational crime and terrorism at the RAND
Corporation, Washington, USA.