Howrah News Service -  Latest news and headlines on Howrah,West Bengal and World: New strategy to counter Hizb

New strategy to counter Hizb
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NewsByte on 22 May, 2008 06:27:53
 
By YUSUF JAMEEL
Srinagar, May 22: A new strategy devised by officials skilled in
counter-insurgency manoeuvres to rip up Kashmir’s most powerful indigenous
militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen, which is lately being pursued by the security
forces, is to take as prisoners only the ones who surrender and send the others
to the grave.
In April, the outfit was divested of several of its senior commanders and
strategists with the help of the innovative strategy, which is said to be the
brainchild of hawks within the establishment. Reliable sources said that those
who were taken prisoners are currently helping the authorities in establishing
contact with their comrades on the loose.
Some of them (militants on the run) have shown proclivity towards buying peace
with them; others averse to falling in line quickly changed their locations,
reports said. The security forces’ officials are now picking up the thread for
a probable faceoff with the militants. "The non-conformist will not be spared,"
said a senior security official on condition of anonymity.
The Hizb commanded sway and firepower during the heyday of militancy but its
misfortunes began with one of its senior leaders, Abdul Majeed Dar, announcing a
unilateral ceasefire in July 2001, the move that terminated into the outfit’s
riddling with infighting. The unilateral truce, which apparently had started
breaking the ice on the Kashmir imbroglio, did not last long. The failure cooked
goose of several key players in the move as many within and outside the Hizb saw
it a plot, though half-baked, by the Indian intelligence agencies.
The outfit withdrew the ceasefire after the Centre refused to involve Pakistan
in the peace talks with it, the condition slapped by the Hizb while discussions
between its select commanders and the home ministry officials had just begun in
Srinagar to work out the modalities for implementing the truce on ground. India
blamed Pakistan for the failure. It also charged that Islamabad had influenced
the Hizb leadership, including fugitive chief Syed Salahuddin, to turn its back
on the peace initiative.
Mr Dar had to pay with his life for defying his hard-nosed comrades. But
ironically most of Hizb commanders who took part in the preliminary round of
peace talks and about 40 other important cadres were slain by the security
forces in open and covert operations, some of them after they were captured by
the security forces, during the initial days of the PDP-led coalition rule in
Jammu and Kashmir. It is being alleged that the Hizb had following the two sides
held a series of "on the sly" discussions lent a hand to the Mufti Muhammad
Sayeed’s party in causing a humiliating defeat to the ruling National
Conference headed by his bête noire Farooq Abdullah, who was perhaps the
Kashmir politician most abhorred by the Hizb and its political benefactors in
Jamaat-e-Islami. Why then the Hizb lost its senior commanders in sequence after
the PDP-Congress combine came into power remains a mystery.