The new book by investigative journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, The Meadow: Kashmir 1995 — Where the Terror Began, has made a controversial claim about the Indian government’s hand in the killing of four Western tourists abducted by Al-Faran in Kashmir in July 1995.
Americans Don Hutchings and John Childs, Britons Keith Mangan and Paul Wells, German Dirk Hasert, and Norwegian Hans Christian Ostro were abducted by Al Faran, an offshoot of now defunct Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.
Only John Childs escaped his abductors and Ostro was beheaded, but the fate of four Western hostages is officially still unknown.
The book claims that a pro-government renegade, Alpha, or Azad Nabi, alias Ghulam Nabi Mir, had “bought” the four Western hostages from Al Faran and held them for months before shooting them and burying them in a remote village.
Author of the book Adrian Levy tells Sarju Kaul about the book, how he and his co-author Catherine Scott-Clark researched the book and how they arrived at controversial claim made in the book.
On what made them write a book on the incident
In 2005, when I was reporting on the earthquake in Kashmir, large number of areas started to open up, areas where we were never allowed to go in before, people began to talk and out of that emerged the story of the disappearances and the beginning of plotting of the incident. At the same time, the telling of that story by villagers, I think, was a catharsis. The fact that people could talk about terror and actually point to how and where they buried the dead — we are not even trying to say at this point who the dead are, but the fact that this has happened, that created a catharsis in Kashmir. It was reflected in a change of attitude amongst the establishment there and suddenly people began to talk about Al Faran incident because that was in many ways one of the most problematic missing cases. People began to come forward and talk about it — policemen, people, and intelligence agents. We thought that this episode is like a prism, if you look through it you can probably see a lot of the story of what happened in Kashmir. It struck me even then that many forces were applied, an act of Pakistan terrorism, a rebuttal by India and in the middle a lot of murky stuff from which we might be able to tell the story about Kashmir.
On the controversial claim made in the book about the fate of the hostages
I am actually staggered by the way in which the story was spun. I am staggered by the way the idea of the hostages being alive was sold for a long time. There have been eyewitnesses and sightings through 1997.
This is where the Army and the intelligence were forming these gobbets of information and spitting them out like bones at these desperate members of the hostages’ families when they knew the truth. They may not agree on how, but they know the date and the burial place, they know the village where they were buried.
The details of the village are in their own files, they just need to invite the foreign teams, get the ground-bearing radar, get the aerial team. Scientific equipment now exists that has been used very successfully in Cambodia, in Timor, in Argentina and Chile. If they are really serious, bring that equipment in, train the locals to use it so there is no sovereignty issue, and let’s see. I think the climate is right and I think they can find the bodies. I think that there is a catharsis taking place because of the unmarked graves issue coming to the fore.
In the village, if you talk to the villagers, they say the bottom half of the village was all controlled by the STF and the upper half by LeT and HM, so the people in the village were squeezed between the thugs at the bottom and the thugs at the top.
But in the other villages, there are people who know. And with the right equipment they will find the bodies.
On Al Faran kidnapping in 1995 vs. Indian Airlines hijack in 1999
In 1999, the political show was in charge and they had to keep in mind their constituency, which might reject them. However, when intelligence is in charge, there is no constituency. In 1995 there was governor’s rule in J&K and a weird thing that inspector-general Rajinder Tickoo points out is that in a democracy intelligence supplies a product and the elected politicians decide whether or not to act on the product. But in the governor’s rule, intelligence supplied the product and then decided the policy. You had this bizarre system that had no oversight.
The main differences are in 1999 there were crying relatives, mothers threatened to immolate, there was a people’s campaign outside the Prime Minister’s house. Not only that, look at who was on the plane — there were all sorts of people, RAW, IB, NSG and a lot of people who were coming home for the New Year. In 1995, there was no political price to pay.
A very senior retired RAW agent said to me in Delhi that intelligence agents are paid to think the impossible. That’s the point — they have to be free of the moral and commercial framework that surrounds politics. The result is that some of things they think are themselves objectionable. Normally, political judgment would immediately rein them in. For example, I know that RAW proposed sacrificing all the passengers in IC-814, they put a bulletin through and they said that this number of people die every month. If we do this, we will look hard as nails and will come out of it very well and on top of jihad. However, the politicians shot that idea down immediately.
Go back to 1995, someone proposed the same. It started slowly, I presumably, thinking give it another week and then a week more and then to be honest, I have walked the entire length of the Warwan Valley, it is a very difficult military theatre – say the mountains are high, the forest is deep, the river is swift, we can’t get our troops in there. Let that run, use the strategic argument, after 11 weeks, you can how these arguments go.
On an inquiry being instituted into the incident
There has been some predictable name calling. The smears have started on the Net and Cathy and I have been described as Maoists working for the ultra-leftist Guardian. But this kind of bullying will not work.
They have opened an inquiry, but they have called three people who know nothing. They have called P.S. Gill, who is responsible for one small episode.
He is linked to the mistake made with the wrong DNA sample as the hostages’ family sample sent for matching was produced as evidence of hostages’ bodies being found.
He will have to answer about that mix-up but that bears no relationship to the crime. He cannot reflect on the earlier period as he was never the part of investigations. And Wani is being called, who is now an SSP who is now banished to the dim and distant border.
He was the key in the rise of the special task force, the SOG (Special Operations Group) and was the key in creating the renegade force with P.S. Gill. The only questions you can ask these two are about the creation of the renegade force, but they know nothing about the 1995 incident. A proper inquiry, that the SHRC (State Human Rights Commission, Kashmir) could call, could even be held in camera.
If there is concern about national security issues, they could even close down parts of it. They should gather together the list of villagers; we could provide them with the names. The eyewitnesses are there, they should do it do it systematically.
My fear is that you cannot ask the police to account for the police. You need an independent body that is independent of them, whether that is the CBI or an independent body, which will come in an review and that really should be the judicial way.
I fear and my sources fear that the information that they have will not be treated seriously, and also their privacy will not be respected.
When you are dealing with intelligence matters, in particular, it may that a different forum has to be chosen. I don’t think the way it is going on at the moment, it will be successful.
My fear is that if the alienation in Kashmir gets worse, then we will see it cycling back to the old ways. Already, if you look closely there is a mood amongst the youth towards conservative and radical Islam, which are inorganic.
I am watching my contacts and friends and have noticed that they are dressing like the Deobandis, they are going to Salafist madrasas, and their influences are from Uttar Pradesh and over the LoC. My worry is that it is not going to be a repeat of the old configurations, but actually a whole generation is going to move towards new forms of Islam which have not been traditionally present in Kashmir.
I think finding truth and encouraging local bodies to take the lead in finding the truth that is the only way that alienation can be stopped.
On their next book
We are working on the Mumbai attacks for the next book. Masood also has links to Mumbai, with Jaish helping LeT.
Amjad Farooqi, who was Masood Azhar’s bodyguard, helped hijack IC-814 and who cut American journalist Daniel Pearl’s head, and Rashid Rauf, a relative of Masood by marriage, trained the 2005 London bombers.
There is a direct line — Jaish-e-Mohammed attacking the Indian Parliament, Masood’s men kidnapping Daniel Pearl, Masood’s bodyguard executing Pearl, Masood’s family and cohorts training the London bombers.
There is a very fluid and symbiotic relationship that grew between these groups. It’s not that we are saying that Al Qaeda was in the Valley.
It’s not that. These people’s world view on Islamism and terror grew in the Valley and then later they became more hybrid, more fluid.
Now there is no one clear group — LeT does this (Mumbai attacks), Sipaha-e-Sahaba offers men on the ground, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi offers a boy from Punjab. Next thing you know, you have got a witches’ brew of different factions that come together and that’s the new face of terror. Kashmir it turns out, as we later understand, was an interesting crucible because a lot of people became trained in that theatre.
The LeT’s plans are now very global; they even regard Pakistan a satellite operation.