Tucked at the far end of Sugan village in Kashmir Valley’s Shopian district, the double-storied home of Ghulam Hassan received a pleasant surprise on the morning of Friday, 11 January. Zeenat-ul-Islam, his son and chief of Al-Badr militant outfit, had come to meet the family, especially his four-year-old daughter.
“He met everyone and asked us to pray for him. Before leaving, he gave a Rs 500 note to his daughter and kissed her forehead. Little did we know that it was going to be their last meeting,” Ghulam Hassan, Zeenat’s father, said.
On Saturday morning, a unit of 34 Rashtriya Rifles from Bihibagh camp in the adjoining Kulgam district, was travelling in private vehicles when it spotted four militants criss-crossing through the dense orchards of Yaripora village.
“The militants had split themselves into two groups. Two were walking in front while the other two were following. When they saw Army soldiers, they fired. While one group, including Zeenat, engaged the forces, the other two climbed a hill and managed to escape,” a top police officer said.
“It (encounter) was all over in less than ten minutes. Zeenat and his associate Shakeel were pinned down in an open area. Although searches continued for whole day on Saturday but we couldn’t track the other two militants,” the officer added.
A Day of Many Firsts
As preparations got underway for last rites of the Al-Badr’s Kashmir chief, Sugan, his native place, and its adjoining villages like Heff, Chilipora, Shirmal and Turkwangom in the tense south Kashmir woke up to a strange sight on Sunday morning. For those who have been at the receiving end of forces’ highhandedness, it was nothing short of a miracle.
A young man, who claimed to have participated in nearly dozen funerals of militants, said,
“Normally, forces don’t allow mourners to attend such funerals and road blocks are set up, but it seemed the forces were asked to only remain on stand-by. Not even one person was stopped from going to the venue of funeral.”
“Interestingly, there was not a single protest or clash between forces and protesters. Even the angry mourners, most of whom were youngsters, made it to the venue without any fuss. It was only when the Army marched into Zeenat’s village that clashes broke out,” he added.
As the bullet-proof trucks of police and Army trudged into Sugan, agitated youngsters, shouting pro-freedom and anti-India slogans, attacked them with stones. The clashes reached a tipping point when protesters attempted to climb atop the trucks.
But witnesses said the Army handled the situation with composure.
Tawhid, a resident of Sugan, who gave only his first name, said,
“In the face of grave provocations, with protesters closing in around their vehicles, Army soldiers only fired aerial shots to push them back. It was only when police arrived in the area and the situation was threatening to turn uglier that they resorted to extreme measures.”
At least 16 protesters suffered pellet and bullet injuries during clashes on Sunday morning but all of them are reported to be stable.
Despite massive clashes, there was no civilian casualty.
Is the softening of counterinsurgency strategy a result of Governor Satya Pal Malik’s rebuke to forces after seven civilians were killed by security forces in Pulwama after an encounter last month? Will the “maximum restraint” policy become a norm instead of an aberration?
One Man, Many Faces
According to police, Zeenat joined Al-Badr outfit in 2006 and was arrested months later.
Sources said he operated in north Kashmir areas, particularly Lolab, since security forces, like today, had launched a massive crackdown on militancy in south Kashmir at that time.
After moving in and out of jails, Zeenat was finally released in 2011. About a year later, he got married and also finished his graduation from a government college. However, he was recycled into militancy in 2015 when Burhan Wani was still in the woods, and joined Lashkar-e-Taiba as Shopian district commander.
“Along with Hizb’s Saddam Padder, who was killed last year, Zeenat revived militancy in south Kashmir. At least dozen youth were motivated by him personally to join militancy. He was perhaps the only militant who could claim to have worked with three prominent militant outfits operating in Kashmir.”A senior police officer to The Quint
Last November, Zeenat announced his departure from Hizb to return to his parent group, Al-Badr, the armed wing of Jama’at-e-Islami in Pakistan, whose militants have fought in Afghan and Kargil wars.
“He was an IED expert and a master cordon breaker. In fact, he managed to break the cordon on nearly dozen occasions, including during Dragad encounter in which seven militants were gunned down,” sources said.
‘New-Age Militancy’ on Back Foot?
Zeenat’s killing has dealt a severe blow to militants’ plans of bringing more youths into their fold. Just one year ago, commanders of outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen were men with three, four or even more years of experience. Now, Kashmir’s ‘new-age’ militancy has been reduced to a juvenile force.
Lt Gen AK Bhatt, the chief of the Army’s strategic XV Corps based in Srinagar, said on Saturday in Gulmarg that the recruitment of new militants in Kashmir was showing a “declining trend” for the first time since the killing of Burhan Wani in 2016.
Back in Sugan, the mud-splashed roads are a testimony of the difficult journey thousands of mourners from adjoining villages embarked upon, wading through marshy paddy fields and snow-soaked orchards on Sunday morning, to reach the venue of the funeral of a man who survived in the battleground for nearly 15 years.
As mourners stomped the mud off their shoes on the road and walked on, an Army soldier announced, rather casually, “We are here to make peace. Police and paramilitary will take care of law and order problems. If people want to participate in funeral prayers, no one is going to stop them. But it (funeral) should remain peaceful.”
With just four commanders, including Riyaz Naikoo and Zakir Musa, surviving the ‘Operation All-Out’ so far out of dozens, it seems the coming summer may not be as hot as the last three summers. Peace, however, is a difficult proposition. Kashmir is sitting on powder keg. One spark is enough to put the whole region on fire. And where that spark emanates from is not so difficult to predict!
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