T H E I N F O R M A L WAR

in the Jammu province; Abdul Rahim and Jamal-ud-Din were to operate in

Poonch. Two cells were prepared for operations in the Valley, one made
up of Jehangir Khan, Akbar Mirpuri and Mohib Ullah Beg; the other under
the command of Aziz Parwana.89
Indian counter-intelligence investigation of these groups broadly tallied with
that of Major-General Khan in attributing responsibility for the new phase of
covert warfare to Pakistan s Intelligence Bureau, a police organization, rather
than to its military. Indian intelligence operatives description of the training
of these covert operatives is remarkably similar to those available of the milit
ary
training provided to terrorists trained in jihadi camps in the 1990s, a fact of
no
small importance. Instructors taught covert operatives the critical guerilla ski
ll
of operating in small groups of three or four individuals, a scheme remarkably
similar to what Major-General Khan had advocated. Apart from basic weapons
training, the course content included training in hand-to-hand combat, laying
ambushes, jungle warfare skills like the maintenance of hideouts and tactics for
assaults on defensive posts.90
Religion formed a major part of the curriculum, much as would decades later
among the jihadi groups that operated in Jammu and Kashmir in the 1990s:
During training hours early in the morning, all the companies were
required to get together in the parade ground for a short while. A Maulvi
(Muslim cleric) and one or two high army commanders spoke to them
on religious teachings and recited verses from [the] Quran Sharif. It
would be emphasized that warfare was recognised [as legitimate] in
[the] Quran and, as such, it was the duty of every person of the Mujahid
force to obey and die on the command of their officers and be loyal
to and fight for their country and defend its borders. Further it was
exhorted that they had to fight against India to liberate the Kashmiri
Muslims whose religious activities were curbed and who were not free
to offer their Nimaz [Namaz, sic] prayers or even call (give azan) the
faithful to prayer. It was further alleged that Islamic festivals, etc. were
not allowed to be celebrated in India.91
Later in this book, I shall return to a more detailed analysis of the question o
f
whether the growing influence of jihadi groups in the 1990s, as the eminent
scholar Yoginder Sikand has argued, in fact demonstrated a marked transformation
in the terms of discourse with which the Kashmiri liberation struggle has
sought to express itself .92 Worth noting, however, are the striking similarities
between what operatives were being told by their Pakistani official instructors
in
the 1950s and the indoctrination of jihadi cadre decades later. Sikand s account
of the Markaz Dawa wal Irshad, the parent political organization of the LashkareTaiba terrorist group, is illuminative:
The Markaz sees the conflict in Kashmir not as a territorial dispute
between India and Pakistan, nor even as a clash between cultures, but
36