In terrorist country

An exclusive account of a trek to Wadwan, a "liberated zone" in the heights of Jammu and Kashmir.

Text & Pictures: PRAVEEN SWAMI

IT is possible, just possible, that the last tourists to have stayed at the Naribal Hotel, were the five Europeans and Americans who were kidnapped and then executed by the Harkat-ul-Ansar near Pahalgam in 1995. With a breathtaking view of the Wadwan valley, leading south to Marwah and north over the 4,410-metre-long pass to Pahalgam, the Naribal Hotel probably has one of the most fantastic locations on offer anywhere. That is, if it were actually a hotel, and not just a small cluster of ramshackle stone huts put up to shelter travellers against snowstorms.

One hundred men from the SOG along with 15 from the 10 Rashtriya Rifles and one journalist, have checked in for the night. The cuisine, for those still able to eat after the treacherous 35-km non-stop haul across the snowfields and glaciers along the 4,430-m Margan Pass, is spartan: There is pulao, chapatis, vegetable curry and tea heated up inside foil packets using pill-shaped chemical fuel cells. Religious Muslim members of the group observing the Ramzan fast do not even get lunch; they make do with a handful of figs at iftaar time and biscuits. Guests must sleep at least 20 to a room, huddled together against the -15n Celsius night. For entertainment, wireless sets can be tuned to the Jaish-e-Mohammadi communications frequencies.

What must be one of the most difficult, but most successful, anti-terrorist operations in Jammu and Kashmir began early this summer. Doda Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Ashkoor Wani, a veteran of urban counter-terrorist battles in the Kashmir Valley, had faced much the same problem as that of his predecessors. Terrorists operating in Doda and Anantnag hit targets in major villages and urban centres lower down the mountains, and then retreated into Wadwan.

The groups that executed the series of communal massacres in Doda since in 1996 as well as carried out attacks on Amarnath pilgrims since the summer of 2000 were all believed to have retreated into the safety of Wadwan. Successive Army, paramilitary and police efforts to flush them out had failed.

In 1998, one of Wani's predecessors and SOG founder Farooq Khan had suggested detailed plans for the use of irregular tactics to address the problems, but the strategy floundered because of the lack of personnel and resources.

Hidden away in Wadwan's forests and mountain caves, these terrorist groups seemed untouchable. For all practical purposes, the region had become a "liberated zone". The Army had put up a camp at the Wadwan village of Inshan, while the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) tried to block the route across the Pir Panjal with summer posts on the Margan Pass and the road head village of Mati Guran. Not a single terrorist was killed in the course of these efforts, just as past enterprises, since 1990, had failed to notch up a single success.

In winter, expensive helicopter-borne operations were even more dismal, resulting in the recovery of just one empty Kalashnikov magazine. Worse, in the summer of 2000, when the forces withdrew, their camps were set on fire by terrorists, sending a clear message to the region's residents.

This summer, Army and ITBP officials let it be known they had no intention of wasting personnel in Wadwan. Their decision paved the way for the use of the new tactics that Wani had been considering ever since he took control of the Doda police. Over 2,000 Special Police Officers (SPO), who were hired locally on salaries of just Rs.1,500 a month, had received training under regular SOG personnel over the past years. Acclimatised to the mountainous terrain and supremely fit, they were deployed along with regular police personnel. The 10 Rashtriya Rifles pitched in, making available troops skilled in the use of powerful rocket-propelled grenade launchers, essential for effective mountain warfare.

Both the SOG and the Rashtriya Rifles understood that this time failure was not an option. Through much of the mid-1990s, terrorists were allowed to operate unhindered in the mountain heights, since doctrine had it that no real tactical harm was done as long as they were kept off populated areas. Today, the Army and the Jammu and Kashmir police have been forced into a series of bloody engagements with large concentrations of terrorists, sometimes entrenched in concrete bunkers. On November 27, upwards of 10 soldiers are believed to have been killed in an assault on one such concentration in the Surankote area of Poonch. Even more dangerous was the failure to challenge high-altitude terrorist concentrations in areas such as Mahu-Mangat, which has resulted in National Highway 1A, the sole road link between the Kashmir Valley and the rest of India, coming under sustained assault.

On April 13, the SOG-Rashtriya Rifles team launched its first Wadwan operation and claimed five terrorists at the Wadwan village of Virwan. On the night of May 20, seven more terrorists were killed at Rikkenwas; followed by one more at the Pasar Nullah on June 11. During post-monsoon operations, two terrorists were killed at Inshan in October, and in November another three were killed at Mingli.

Some of these operations were launched from the pass leading to Seshnag, others were conducted through Kishtwar, and yet others over the Margan Pass.

Just one of the seven SOG groups sent into Wadwan this summer failed to claim success. Just three members were lost during these high-risk operations. One major reason for the success was that the SOG and the Rashtriya Rifles personnel were given strict orders to desist from resorting to abuse and assault, which had alienated villagers in the past. Equally important was the special knowledge of the SPOs that helped turn insurgent tactics against the insurgents themselves.

SPEED and surprise are the twin pillars of the last pre-winter operation. The climb from Mati Guran towards Margan begins just after noon. There is a half-hour break for tea at an abandoned stone shelter used by Gujjar herdsmen, which also means waiting for the sun to set. Then, the group makes its way across Margan by moonlight, clambering across slippery frost-covered rock and knee-deep fresh snow. No wireless communication is allowed to maintain contact with other units of the group, nor are torch-lights used to guide us through the darkness. No cigarettes may be smoked, for light travels a long distance in the mountains at night. By the time we reach the burnt-down ITBP post atop the Margan Pass, I am out of breath, the cold has cut through my feather-lined snow suit, and my feet have frozen despite being snuggled inside expensive leather trekking boots.

Assistant Sub-Inspector Surinder Singh and SPO Mohammad Iqbal do not seem to feel the same way as I do though their canvas shoes are sodden, their jackets do not look like they can even keep out a Mumbai monsoon shower, and they are weighed down by 15 kg of light machine-gun ammunition and rocket launcher shells. "Keep going", Surinder Singh tells me softly, every half-hour, "the Naribal Hotel is just another half-hour away."

There is just too much snow in Inshan each winter, the residents of the village say, to bury the dead. Bodies of those unfortunate ones who depart in winter are left out in the snow, to lie covered in ice until it again becomes warm enough to dig graves.

Ghaffar Lone seems surprisingly cheerful for a man who has just been woken up, at 4.00 a.m. by the armed SOG troopers who had surrounded his village an hour earlier. "The terrorists stopped spending nights in our villages after your last raid," he tells Sub-Inspector Zamir Husain. "Ever since you shot those three at Mingli, they just come for a couple of hours in the day for food. It's just too risky, they say, because you might raid the villages at any time. There were three Pakistanis here yesterday afternoon, but they must be up in the mountains by now. Would you like a cup of tea?"

The village mosque at Inshan maintains a diary that records births and deaths, disputes, and other events of note. Someone points out the entry dated February 27, 2001 - the only day since 1990 when no terrorist visited the village. No one, however, seems to have good words for the people who have, for all practical purposes, ruled their lives. Some of the reasons are obvious. "We have little enough as it is," says shopkeeper Bilal Ahmad, "but these people have broken our backs. They walk into my shop almost every day, take kilos of figs and biscuits and sweets, and fling a few rupees at me as if they are doing me a favour. We live on trumba (a local coarse cereal but have to feed them wheat rotis and chicken."

But the real reasons for anti-terrorist sentiments here run deeper. Only people in four of Wadwan's 14 villages - Inshan, Virwan, Afti and Mingli - manage to make some kind of living out of agriculture and trade. Homes with at least one person on government payrolls manage to get by; the rest depend on casual summer work of the kind that violence has hit hard. This April, for example, the Army stopped Wadwan horsemen from crossing the Pir Panjal to cater to pilgrims travelling to the Amarnath shrine. The decision was taken after terrorist attacks on pilgrims fuelled fears that the high passes might be used for further strikes.

Terrorist strikes in Chamba in 1999 put an end to another important source of income - winter jobs as porters and road workers across the border in Himachal Pradesh. "The people and police there look on us with suspicion, the atmosphere is not pleasant," says Lone. "Before these troubles began," says horseman Liaqat Ali, "I used to make at least Rs.15,000 a month in May and June, from foreigners who used to come here for treks. Now, I'm lucky if I can feed my family twice a day."

Terrorism had also put an end to work on the road that was being built from Kokernag to Wadwan in 1988. That means the poorest in the State have had to pay a further price for their poverty. Food and fuel must be ferried from Mati Guran to Wadwan on horseback, at great cost. In Inshan, kerosene sells at Rs.30 a litre and tea dust at Rs.200 a kg. The absurdly high price of fuel has generated a serious ecological problem, with villagers plundering forests for firewood. The Food Corporation of India stocks a shed in the village with winter grain supplies, but it does not seem to be enough to meet the Rs.325 a quintal payments that are due to horsemen. "They owe me over Rs.2 lakhs," says Abdul Aziz Sultan, "but I'm grateful for the bits I get once in a while. If we stop carrying the grain, we will all starve."

Sadly, terrorism seems to have become something of an excuse for the state not to discharge its obligations. There is no explanation, for example, on why the road could not be built even though roads have been built in other areas of the State that are just as hard-hit by violence. Says village headmaster Ghulam Mohiuddin Mehroh: "We have 90 children in our primary school, but just three teachers. The secondary school at Afti has 14 clerical employees, but just three teachers. That is better than the Health Centre there, which has no doctor. Or the Horticulture Department, which, as you can see, has a building but no staff. Or the Roads and Bridges Department, which has only a watchman to look after its building. We have only had one visit from a Block Development Officer in three years."

Inshan is not as badly affected as some other villages. Its fields can sustain a crop of rajma beans, which are sold in Mati Guran to offset the village's debts. The few walnut and fruit trees around the village offer some source of additional income. But the existence of its residents is as perilous as that of others in Wadwan. For example, serious sickness means almost certain death.

There seems to be little prospect of things getting better. Only the few relatively rich people in Wadwan can afford to pay for their children's higher education in Anantnag or Kishtwar, particularly when incomes have shrunk. In addition, there have been years of indignity when villagers complain, soldiers routinely resorted to collective beatings for failure to deliver information on terrorists. In the adjoining Marwah valley, things were even worse: 10 unarmed villagers where shot dead at Qadrana village by troops on Id day in 1998.

Perhaps the real question in Wadwan, then, is why so few young people have joined the terrorists. "Our Abdus Salaam, an orphan, was in the sixth standard when he joined the Hizbul Mujahideen in 1990," the village headmaster said. Once in a while he comes back to the village and tells the children not even to think of joining the terrorists. He is going to die, he tells them, for nothing.

IN May, the Jaish-e-Mohammadi and the Hizbul Mujahideen put up a memorial for the five cadre they had lost to the SOG at Virwan. A bright blue board records the names of the killed terrorists. They included a local school boy, Akhtar Husain, who had been press-ganged into cooking and cleaning dishes for the group. Sub-inspector Zamir and SPO Iqbal read through the list of the man they had shot dead. "Salim Khan," Iqbal turns and says, "he was from Kishtwar, just like me. Strange world."

Until the summer of 1996, Iqbal used to work as a carpenter in the small village of Dugli, near Kellar in Kishtwar. In a good month, he made between Rs.200 and Rs.300. During winter, along with other men from Dugli, he worked on construction projects lower down the mountains, or even in the plains. "The contractors at the Dul-Hasti dam in Kishtwar, used to take slips from us saying they had paid us Rs.70 for a day's work. In fact, we would only get Rs.40 or so. Still, it was better than nothing," Iqbal recalls. Then, in 1996, after a string of communal massacres across Doda, former SSP Farooq Khan announced that he would be recruiting SPOs. Iqbal, despite his family's fears, was among the first to join up.

Now merely a year after his formal induction into the Jammu and Kashmir police as a full-time constable, Iqbal is unromantic about the reasons for taking up the job. "Ever since 1990,' he says, "terrorists started visiting our village, insisting that young men join their ranks. At other times they would ask for labour to haul food and ammunition up the mountains. Those who refused were beaten. Then, the Army would show up and beat us again for helping the terrorists. Life became a nightmare. The only choices young men had were to join the terrorist groups, or to seek jobs in the Army or the police. There was no way of living quietly in the village. Becoming an SPO seemed better to me than becoming a terrorist, so I joined up."

Today, like the 2,000-odd SPOs deployed on operational duties along with the SOG in Doda, Iqbal receives Rs.1,500 a month for risking his life. Should he be killed in the course of an encounter - as many SPOs have been - his family will receive only Rs.1.5 lakhs as compensation, which the Jammu and Kashmir government hands out to all civilian victims of violence. He is not allowed medical allowances, housing benefits, uniforms, or even money to purchase food during his long operational tours. Interestingly, regular SOG troopers are not much better off either. Their risk allowances were withdrawn recently, and there is no provision for special high-altitude equipment like snowboots or warm uniforms. "Frankly," says Doda SSP Wani, "I don't know what keeps my men going. You can't simply put it down to the prospect of being permanent police constables. I suppose it is just a very tremendous commitment to rid their villages of violence."

After more than four days of marching through the snow - sometimes for up to 18 hours at a stretch - Wani's proposition begins to make sense. Much of the banter between the SPOs and the troopers of the SOG and the Rashtriya Rifles are on issues such as leave and pay. Rashtriya Rifles soldiers are given up to 10 days leave at the end of a successful high-altitude encounter - something neither the SOG nor the SPOs enjoy. The Army's warm winter gear and more important, hot food supplies, are another source of envy. In Jammu and Kashmir, inter-force rivalry has been a major source of trouble during counter-terrorist operations. Often, Army soldiers see the police as something approaching traitors, while police personnel often complain that their olive-green uniformed counterparts are communally prejudiced and heavy-handed. But among themselves, this joint unit has managed to build up remarkable camaraderie. The Rashtriya Rifles soldiers share their food supplies and additional blankets without having to be asked, while the SPOs often volunteer to help haul heavy rocket-propelled grenade shells. Remarkably, for a society fissured by caste and religion, pots, pans, glasses and even half-eaten meals are shared without murmur.

Given the conditions though, it is perhaps unsurprising that the SPO project has had its share of serious problems. Most of the more than 7,000 SPOs deployed in Doda are assigned not to operational duties, but to Village Defence Committees (VDC). The VDCs are armed volunteer groups, set up to help vulnerable communities in remote mountainous regions to defend themselves. But the salary of Rs.1,500, shared by several VDC members, hardly allows volunteers to make a living. Many of them migrate in search of seasonal work, leaving their weapons behind, and thus subverting the raison d'etre of the VDC. Significantly, hundreds of SPOs have been assigned the personal security of obscure politicians, mainly from the Bharatiya Janata Party. They end up running errands, doing the cooking - and, if critics are right, rigging elections in Muslim-dominated areas of Doda.

None of these problems, however, is a reason to end the SPO scheme: it just highlights the need for a proper regulatory framework. Ever since he took office, Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police A.K. Suri has been lobbying with the Union government to increase the remuneration to SPOs, and to introduce a wider induction framework. "Few people in the country," he says, "are aware just how much we owe these underpaid, overworked SPOs. For a start, I have asked the Union government to increase their salaries by just another Rs.1,000. But we need much more than that in the long run. We need to give them proper equipment, social security, and perhaps even in the long term think of creating dedicated regional anti-terrorist scout units, modelled on the lines of the Ladakh Scouts."

Wadwan illustrates how the problem confronting the Indian security establishment's high-altitude operations in Jammu and Kashmir can be addressed. Excellent cooperation between the police and the Army, the use of recruits who are familiar with the terrain, quality intelligence inputs, and above all the confidence of mountain communities: all these together give the Doda SOG the exceptional success that it has had in Wadwan. These successes could well be built on this winter. SOG officials have been lobbying for a winter helicopter-supplied station in Wadwan, which would then send out smaller patrols into each village. This, they point out, would ensure that terrorist are left with stark choices between armed engagement or death by starvation. So far no progress has taken place in this direction, but some enterprise is clearly needed if the gains of the summer are not to be frittered away.

Few people understand the real importance of the largely invisible battle on the Pir Panjal. If India fails to make gains on this grim terrain, terrorists will remain free to assault key roads, installations, and other high-profile strategic targets in the plains. Wadwan shows that the battle can be won. Whether planners in New Delhi are listening to the message is, of course, another question altogether.