Posted on 10/28/2003 7:58:25 AM PST by TexKat
SRINAGAR, India (AFP) - Seven people were killed and 45 others injured in Indian Kashmir in a bloody start to the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan which Islamic rebels have vowed will be soaked in violence.
Ramadan began in Kashmir on Tuesday with a warning from hardline Islamic militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba that it would increase attacks during the holy month.
"There will be an escalation in the activities of mujahedin (holy warriors) in the month of Ramadan," Abu Huzaifa, the spokesman for the Lashkar-e-Taiba group told the Greater Kashmir newspaper.
The newspaper said: "People should keep themselves away from the security installations as according to him (Huzaifa) they could become the unintended targets of such attacks."
A few hours after Muslims filled mosques for dawn prayers across the restive state, three soldiers were killed and seven injured when an army vehicle in a convoy ran over a landmine in the village of Khilani in the southern Doda district, a police spokesman said.
Two of the injured were in a critical condition.
The explosion was followed by gunfire from suspected rebels.
Police and army reinforcements then arrived and began searching for the rebels.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Doda is considered to be a stronghold of Kashmir's largest rebel group, Hizbul Mujahedin.
Earlier Tuesday, at least 38 civilians were injured in a grenade attack by suspected Islamic rebels on police manning Indian Kashmir's main telegraph office in the summer capital Srinagar.
The grenade missed its target and exploded near a billing counter, a police spokesman said.
"Some 38 civilians who had come to pay their telephone bills have been injured," the spokesman said.
The grenade exploded inside the telegraph office, which is adjacent to Kashmir valley's main telephone exchange, smashing window panes and sending people running for cover.
A little-known rebel group, the Kashmir Freedom Forum, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to local news agency Current News Service.
Indian troops shot dead two militants in two separate encounters in the northern Kupwara district overnight, the spokesman said.
"Both the militants were killed during two search operations," the spokesman said, adding arms and ammunition were recovered from the sites of the encounters.
Suspected rebels shot dead two Muslims in the southern Pulwama and northern Baramulla districts overnight and Tuesday, police said.
Muslim militants overnight attacked an army camp with rifle fire and grenades in Mamar village near Kangan township, 40 kilometres (25 miles) northeast of Srinagar, police said.
"The attack was repulsed by soldiers," the spokesman said.
Kashmir traditionally sees a rise in violence during Ramadan.
The fresh violence has also come a day after police killed the commander of Hizbul Mujahedin in Srinagar.
The 13-year insurgency has claimed more than 39,500 lives, according to Indian security forces. Separatists and Pakistan put the death toll between 80,000 and 100,000.
Why can't we have a real "soaker" in return...
Turnabout is "fair play."
SHHH!
An ongoing Maoist offensive in Nepal, India and Pakistan at it in Kashmir....an entire second front in the region perhaps, or just a few of the lads going overboard with their Ramadan celebration? I wonder which....
Anything been going on in Bhutan? I can't read their newspapers, but I can read a map....
-archy-/-
Concur. But whether serious foreign professionals or very well-trained local agents or proxies remains an interesting question.
Recalls in a way the Nazi Brandenburgers, who were so well trained that they sliipped right into Soviet convoys to move around the Russian rear.
By NEELESH MISRA, Associated Press Writer
NEW DELHI, India - A young man and his fiancee drove toward the Kashmir Valley, meandering up a mountain past grim-faced soldiers. At the hill resort of Kud, police searched the couple's car and found $100,000 — cash destined for Islamic militants, Indian investigators say.
The money came from the United States, according to a police report obtained by The Associated Press in a case highlighting a global funding trail that has sustained the 13-year-old insurgency in India's Jammu-Kashmir state with $2 million in foreign cash a year.
But such seizures are rare, and convictions rarer still.
In this case, Indian investigators allege the $100,000 belonged to one of Kashmir's most popular separatist politicians, a man who has had 45 criminal charges pending against him but has never been convicted of aiding militants or terrorists.
Yasin Malik, the 34-year-old separatist politician, denies the charges and denies knowing the couple carrying the cash, Mushtaq Ahmed Dar and Shaziya Begum, both also in their 30s. The couple have been charged and are in custody, but a trial could be years away.
As for Malik, he's been charged in the case under the anti-terrorism law and was briefly in custody, but is out on bail on health grounds, citing kidney and heart problems.
"India has always tried to portray our struggle as terrorism," Malik told AP. "They have never been able to prove that our struggle is funded by drug or smuggling money. This is absolute nonsense. This is a disinformation campaign to malign our legitimate freedom struggle."
In September, a judge dismissed a separate case against Malik stemming from the 1990s, throwing out a charge that he had received 3.25 million rupees — $70,000 at current rates — from agents for Pakistan's spy agency in the 1990s. The court noted Malik was in prison in connection with still another case when federal investigators claimed he received the money.
Indian authorities have long suspected Kashmir militants are backed by the Inter Services Intelligence, Pakistan's spy agency, which has been accused of aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Indian police and prosecutors also say that in tackling the militants fighting for Kashmir's independence or a merger into Pakistan they are dealing with groups linked to al-Qaida. But the terror network's involvement in Kashmir itself has not been established, Indian security officials say, and they are unable to present evidence that will win court convictions.
"After the fall of the Taliban, the jihadi infusion is coming from the al-Qaida, and the ISI backing has always been there," K.K. Srinivasan, deputy inspector-general of the paramilitary Border Security Force, told AP. "They are influenced by (al-Qaida), and we have found pictures of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) on the bodies of militants or his name being mentioned with reverence in their diaries."
Pakistan rejects the allegations of funding Kashmir guerillas as Indian propaganda, saying Islamabad provides only ideological backing for the insurgency that has cost 63,000 lives.
"This is not true," foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan said of funding allegations. "Pakistan gives moral, political and diplomatic support to the people of Kashmir."
The arrests in the Kud hill resort in the lower Himalayas in March of last year may not have occurred if the woman had not tipped off police, hoping for leniency.
The woman told police she felt cheated because her boyfriend had promised a vacation to New Delhi, and then the Nepalese capital of Katmandu. Instead, the Kashmiri couple went from their hometown of Srinagar, the state's summer capital, to Katmandu to bring the money by road through the porous India-Nepal border to avoid detection, police say.
The money's journey began in the weeks preceding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when Malik was in the United States for heart treatment, according to Inspector-General Pitambar Lal Gupta, police chief of the state's Jammu region where the couple was arrested.
"There he met Kashmiri sympathizers and collected money from them for different outfits. But due to the terrorist attack on (the World Trade Center in New York), Yasin could not bring the money with him," Gupta told AP, citing the police interrogation of the couple.
Gupta alleged the money was wired to Pakistan, where an official of Malik's Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front arranged to send it to Katmandu.
Indian police contend the money given to separatist politicians is funneled to militant wings of their parties, or other groups. But top politicians are often not arrested for fear it could lead to more unrest among Kashmiris, officers say.
Separatist politicians say they are not arrested or convicted due to a lack of evidence.
Leaders of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference — a grouping of separatist Kashmiri religious and political parties that operates legally — acknowledges it gets funding from overseas, but use the money for social development, legal aid and help for the victims of violence.
But Salim Hashmi, a spokesman for Hizbul Mujahedeen, the largest Pakistan-based militant group fighting in India's portion of Kashmir, denied receiving any foreign funding. He said all the resources for his group are donated by Kashmiris living on the Indian side of the frontier.
"Those who can give their children, who can give their own lives, they also provide finances," Hashmi told AP by telephone from Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.
Hashmi said his group has no bank accounts in Pakistan. He also said there was no system for sending money from overseas, and that Kashmiris living in the West only give moral and political support. "The Kashmiri struggle is not being run on anyone else's money," he said.
Money for militants is hard to track because it usually hops across continents through the ancient and invisible system of money transfer called "hawala."
The system is legal in many countries, used by expatriate workers to send millions of dollars to their homes and avoid regular banking channels. It is illegal in Pakistan — as well as India, where it originated — but is widely used in both countries, according to Interpol.
___
On the Net:
Interpol Web site: http://www.interpol.int
India's Home Ministry: http://www.usdoj.gov
U.S. Department of Justice (news - web sites): http://www.usdoj.gov
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