Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years Part 3

'Hamid Sheikh is a patient of mine,' Dr Guru said. 'It's just a doctorpatient relationship. I'm not getting involved in any of this. Sorry. Can't help you.'

He said it straight, and his message was clear. I left, empty- handed.

(Incidentally, Dr Guru was murdered in 1993 by the pro- Pakistan Hizbul Mujahideen, which was on a mission to wipe out the pro-independence JKLF.) On the morning of 11 December 1989, Farooq arrived in Kashmir on his return from London. As I've said once, without Farooq Abdullah there was no National Conference and in fact while he was away, the cabinet was pretty much dead except for one meeting in which no one knew what to do or what to decide. On his return Farooq immediately called for a cabinet meeting and his senior ministers complained that they had no idea what was going on.

'Everything is being handled from the office of the IB,' one of them said. 'Even the chief secretary has stopped reporting to us; he only reports to the IB and spends all his time sitting in their office. We have not been kept in the loop at all.'

As usual, this was one of those things you could say was 'almost true'.

Farooq promptly summoned Moosa, who had been projecting himself as the interlocutor, and told him: 'You're no longer the interlocutor.'

The hapless Moosa wondered why, and Farooq said: 'How the h.e.l.l could you not report to the cabinet?'

'But there was no cabinet in your absence,' Moosa pointed out. 'I didn't know who to report to.'

The truth was that poor Moosa was reporting to the cabinet secretary in Delhi, a gentleman by the name of T.N. Seshan, who would go on to gain a reputation for being an a.s.sertive chief election commissioner and for clamping down on electoral malpractices. Moosa was flabbergasted by Farooq's rebuke, and he told Seshan that he might be removed as chief secretary. As a result I got a frantic call from Delhi saying that they had heard that Moosa was being removed. I told them, the chief minister's back and he's in a bit of a huff.

I went to Farooq and said, 'Sir, I'm told you're really angry with Moosa. It's not really his fault. Given the limitations in which we're working, he's doing his best.'

Farooq relented and said, 'Okay, we'll reinstate Moosa.' And then he said to me: 'What the h.e.l.l is going on?'

What was going on is that the gang in Delhi who kept repeating ad nauseam that Farooq was not serious were gunning for him and now they had a good excuse: he wasn't in J&K at a crucial time like this and it had taken him three days to come back. That he was no good. Farooq was no fool and he saw that two parallel games were playing out in Delhi: one was for the release of Mufti's daughter, and the other was the chance to get rid of the incompetent, no-good, holidaying-in-London Farooq Abdullah. And one thing influenced the other.

I have to say that from the 11th to the 13th, when Rubaiya was finally freed, Farooq cooperated totally with whatever Mufti and Delhi wantedexcept for the point about releasing five terrorists. M.L. Kaul was the one who went and met Farooq with Mufti's message that all five terrorists had to be released, and Farooq was furious.

'How has it gone from one to three to five?' he asked. 'Even if it were my own daughter I would not release them.'

Yet he did call up Mufti, in my presence, because there was a lot of talk going around that Farooq was just not bothered about the kidnapping because it was Mufti's daughter; the usual Delhi Darbar nonsense. Farooq called up one evening and said, 'Look, we are doing our best, I a.s.sure you we will not allow anything to go wrong. Mufti Saheb, I am doing as much for your daughter as I would have done for my own daughter.'

The end of the story is that on 13 December, two ministers arrived: Inder Gujral and Arif Mohammad Khan. We had been talking to Delhi with regard to the negotiations till about midnight. It was still a stalemate. Seshan, who was still the cabinet secretary, read the riot act to Moosa. 'Enough is enough,' he said. 'We will tell you what has to be done. Tell your chief minister to fall in line.'

After all this, around midnight, we each left the control room to go home. Soon after I reached, however, I received a call that the two ministers were arriving. In those five days I think I slept a total of eight hours, and now I was told that these two ministers would arrive at five in the morning by special plane. No chance of sleep, I told myself, so I shaved and then lay down for a 90-minute nap. At around four I got ready and then realised that I hadn't informed Farooq yet. Farooq did not like surprises.

I drove by Farooq's gate and said, 'Doctor Saheb so rahe honge?'

'CM Saheb utth gaye honge,' the guard said. 'Namaaz ka time ho raha hai.' It was 4:30 a.m.

I told him to get Farooq on the phone. He came on the line and asked: 'h.e.l.lo, what are you doing?'

I told him the two ministers were coming, so I guessed he knew. 'So what if they're arriving?' he said. 'Why do you need to go to the airport?'

'The DIB is also coming,' I said, as IB chief M.K. Narayanan was with the two ministers.

'Bring them straight here,' Farooq said.

It was dark when the plane landed and the ministers said they wanted to wash up at the guest house. I said the CM has called you straight home, he's waiting for you, so we went to Farooq's house, and he took us to the hamam downstairs. It was around 6 a.m., and just about daybreak. As soon as we all sat down, Farooq said, why don't you hear it from the IB chief here in Srinagar. So I briefed them and gave the whole spiel in a nutsh.e.l.l.

Frankly, I don't know if Gujral and Arif came to Srinagar to genuinely listen to Farooq, or if they were just playing good cop/bad cop. Whatever Farooq would say, they would say, 'We didn't know this!' Whatever Gujral didn't like he would pretend he had not heard and he would tap his hearing aid. Arif would say something and Gujral would say, 'Kya kaha aapne?' The whole thing was a charade.

This went on for two hours, we drank three cups of tea, and then the two ministers took Farooq outside and told him, 'This is what is to be done.'

He said, 'Okay, you want to go ahead and release them, do it. But I want to lodge my protest.'

Farooq was a sharp cookie, he sensed that once V.P. Singh and company came, his days were numbered. He was just playing along.

But he clearly told them that if the government held out, Rubaiya would be released unharmed and without having to free terrorists. If the government caved in, it would burst the dam, and there would be no looking back for terrorists in Kashmir. 'We will have to pay for it,' he told the two ministers.

He proved right.

I had gone to see the Delhi team off at the airport and on the way back found that it had become Diwali. The entire city of Srinagar was illuminated and there were lots of boys going around and collecting money on the roads, collecting funds for the movement. It was now under way in right earnest. The whole mood in Srinagar had changed. Azaadi was now around the corner.

So, on 30 December 1999, during the hijacking episode of IC-814, when I arrived in Jammu to advise Farooq, he took one look at me and said: 'You again.'

Most people would be wary of raising their voice with the R&AW chief, but the chief minister was in a fury and for three hours he shouted at me.

'You were there during Rubaiya's kidnapping,' he said. 'How could you come back again?'

'Sir, I was solidly with you that time, but this time I'm with the government of India,' I said. 'Then I was pleading along with you. This time I'm pleading with you.'

'I said then that whatever you are doing is wrong, and I'm saying it again,' Farooq shouted. 'I don't agree with it.'

He experienced waves of anger. He would calm down and then he would start all over again. Calm down and start again. Then he was at it: how weak Delhi is, how big a mistake this is, what a bunch of b.l.o.o.d.y idiots, buffoons. It just went on and on and on. Part of it was theatre; when Farooq gets into it, he likes to milk the drama for all he can.

'Sir, there is no other option, this has to be done,' I told him.

He called up Jaswant Singh and gave him an earful. 'Aap jo bhi kar rahe hain, galat kar rahe hain.' He called others up in Delhi. He kept banging the phone down.

Then at the end he said: 'Those two b.l.o.o.d.y Pakistanis or whatever they are, I don't give a d.a.m.n. Let them go to h.e.l.l.' He was referring to Masood Azhar and Omar Sheikh. 'But I will not let this Kashmiri fellow (Zargar) go, he's a killer. He will not be released.'

'Sir,' I said. 'It will not happen without Zargar.'

'I don't care if it happens or not.'

Finally he said: 'Okay, I'm going to the governor and giving my resignation.'

I had figured something like this might happen, so I said: 'Sir, if you're going to the governor, then at least take me along.'

He was agreeable, so at 10 p.m. we went to see Governor Girish Chandra 'Gary' Saxena. Gary Saxena was also prepared since Farooq had sent an advance message that he was coming over.

'These fellows want these terrorists released and I've told the R&AW chief I won't be a party to it,' Farooq told his governor. 'I would rather resign, and that's what I have come to do.'

Gary Saxena, incidentally, was a former R&AW chief. He dealt with the situation extremely well.

'Doctor Saheb, come-come, sit down, relax,' Gary said. 'You're a fighter, you don't give in so easily.'

Out came the bottle of Black Label. As he poured the Scotch, Gary said: 'Doctor Saheb, you can't throw in the towel so easily. Sit down, relax.'

Farooq listened to the governor. He always had regard for age and things like that.

'These b.l.o.o.d.y fellows don't know what they're doing,' Farooq ranted. 'They're making a huge mistake.'

'Maybe,' Gary said, pouring another. 'But at this point of time there is no other option. This must have been thought of and discussed in Delhi, and if they've decided that there's no other option, then we have to go along with it.'

I kept my trap shut. I had already got it for three long hours.

Farooq said his bit, the drama was over, we went back home.

The next morning I judged that before I went back to Delhi, I had better make use of the three hours of s.h.i.t I got from Farooq. So at breakfast I said, 'Sir, I need a few things done from the state government.' Farooq typically was all charm the next morning, and whatever I asked he said, 'Done.' Done, done, done. Just like that. Transfers and other favours for friends in Kashmir, matters that normally have to go through the grind of the state bureaucracy.

There were no calls from Delhi, as everyone a.s.sumed I would get Farooq to come around and release the two guys in J&K. Omar Sheikh was in Tihar Jail, but Masood Azhar was in Kot Bhalwal jail on the outskirts of Jammu, and Zargar was incarcerated in Srinagar. Both were brought over to the airport, all the legal formalities were sorted out with a magistrate, and they were put aboard my R&AW aircraft, a small Gulfstream jet.

Azhar and Zargar were not allowed to see me. They were blindfolded and put on board before I got on the aircraft. There was a curtain in the cabin, and they were made to sit in the back. I sat in the front. There was no question of my having a chat with these fellows, much as I prided myself on talking to anyone and everyone in Kashmir.

As we were taking off I was told to get down to Delhi as quickly as possible because Jaswant Singh was waiting to go to Kandahar. When we landed in Delhi, they were taken to Jaswant's aircraft, where Omar Sheikh was also waiting.

Jaswant Singh was a very lonely man. When twenty-seven pa.s.sengers, mostly women and children, and the dead Rupin Katyal were released in Dubai, the tourism minister, Sharad Yadav, raised his hand and said I want to be there. He quickly flew out to Dubai and took charge of the release and he waved his hand on TV. So when the time came for Kandahar, Jaswant Singh raised his hand and said: 'I'll go.'

n.o.body was helping us out. Relations with Pakistan were strained post-Kargil, and we were yet to come to terms with Musharraf. The Americans were out on their Christmas week, so no CIA to plead with; my meeting with George Tenet (CIA chief) was in the future. Jaswant kept calling the Taliban foreign minister, Abdul Muttawakil, but that fellow wouldn't take his call. When he showed up in Kandahar for the exchange, he was the one on whom everybody who had felt frustrated with the whole incident in India focused their frustration.

In any case, on 31 December 1999, it was all over. What some would have saidthat it was not a good year for Indian intelligencewas now finally past. After a week of drama and intense pressure, I got home in time to bring in the New Year with my wife, sipping cognac by the fireside.

As far as government policy goes, when the UPA government took power in 2004, the matter of IC-814 was raised and people felt that we ought to review our policy with regard to terrorism and hijacking; it was felt that the government's policy should be to never compromise with terrorism. Never give in. But I remember Jaswant Singh spoke upbravely, I thought and said these policies are good and fine, but at the time there was no other option; and that we might again be faced with a situation where we had no option but to negotiate.

The fact of the matter is everybody compromises. Even the Israelis compromise. You can act big and say we don't compromise with terrorists. But everyone does. I had seen it first-hand on two occasions. It may have been the end of the year, but it was not the end of the world. We would move forward in the next year, and that's what we did.

4.

KASHMIR'S MANDELA OR DELHI'S

AGENT: SHABIR SHAH.

In the year 2000 two terrorists returned to India. One of them, Hashim Qureshi, was among the first Kashmiri terrorists along with Mohammad Maqbool b.u.t.t; in 1971 Hashim had hijacked an Indian Airlines plane to Pakistan. The other, Abdul Majid Dar, headed the most lethal home-grown terrorist group, Hizbul Mujahideen, and by virtue of that was currently the leader of Pakistan-based militants. Each of their stories are apocryphal in the lessons they hold for Kashmiris as well as New Delhi: of how close to a breakthrough we've been, and how it always manages to slip away. That both returned, one from Amsterdam and one from Pakistan, could happen only because even though I was now the R&AW chiefsomeone that most militants would run a mile away fromtalking to Kashmiris had helped create a conducive atmosphere. During this time, several other separatists and militants began to harbour doubts about the direction in which their movement was headed, and whether the violence they had unleashed had gotten them anywhere. There are two stories in particular that ill.u.s.trate what went on: that of the man known as the Nelson Mandela of Kashmir, the eldest of the modern generation of separatists, Shabir Shah; and that of his commander-in-chief, one who had kidnapped the first foreigners in Kashmir, Babar Badra nom de guerre for one Firdous Syed.

How I got talking to Shabir and Firdous and many others is itself a story; because it nearly never happened. In 1990, when my tenure in Srinagar as head of the IB station came to an end, I should have moved on to other matters, as was the normal course in the Intelligence Bureau. Frankly I was glad that my tenure was over because the last few months in Srinagar, when militancy overwhelmed everything, were h.e.l.lish.

Srinagar in the winter of 1989-90 was an eerie ghost town witnessing the beginnings of a war dance. Rubaiya Sayeed's kidnapping opened the floodgates of insurgency. Killings were almost a daily occurrence. Bombs and firing occurred not far from the chief minister's residence in the most secure zone down our road. Gun-toting youth in trucks were seen close to the cantonment. Military parades by terrorists were held in downtown. Kashmiris believed that they were on the verge of liberation. Many even put their watches back half an hour to Pakistan time. It was prime time for Pakistani spies; not just militants but reputed businessmen, doctors, engineers and government officials were meeting their handlers in Delhi, Kathmandu, Lah.o.r.e and Rawalpindi. Everyone was suspected of being a Pakistani, no one trusted anyone else.

The state government was in Jammu; there were hardly any central government employees left in town except those from the agencies. Everyone who could was running away. There was negligible presence of the army and the CRPF in the city, no security paraphernalia or bulletproof cars either. The J&K police was under heavy attack from the militants; there were reports of sympathisers within the movement. One was left to one's own devices. Everything changed overnight.

My ultimate nightmare then was what would happen if the large crowds which had started gathering after Jagmohan arrived in Srinagar for his second tenure in January 1990 decided to march to the Raj Bhavan. There would have been no way to protect the governor or his residence; resistance would have led to large-scale bloodshed all over.

It started with the Rubaiya kidnapping, mentioned in the previous chapter, though it wasn't the first incident of terrorism; the blasts on 31 July 1988 at the Srinagar Club and outside the Central Telegraph Office marked the first incidents in this era. Yet, at the time, there was no panic. A year later people's uncertainty and caution grew but they had still not panicked.

For instance, in September 1989 the state government's advisor, O.P. Bhutani, one of my earlier mentors in Kashmir, was busy celebrating his son's marriage with lots of singing and dancing. My wife and I were at his place one night and attended the wedding at Centaur Hotel the following night. There was to be a general reception the next day at the Shalimar Bagh, the famed Mughal Garden in Srinagar. But that nighton 28 Septemberthe separatist Shabir Shah was arrested at Ramban in Jammu. His repeated incarcerations had helped build a myth around him and his popularity grew with young Kashmiris during the turbulent 1980s. News of his arrest led to riots in various places including his native Anantnag and in Srinagar; so Bhutani had to cancel the reception. We were cautious, but that was it.

The dam burst the night the JKLF boys were freed in exchange for Rubaiya's release. As Farooq had predicted, the government's caving in emboldened many Kashmiris into thinking that azaadi was possible. 'The price we will have to pay,' were Farooq's prophetic words.

Despite Rubaiya's kidnapping, till after Christmas I was still driving around Srinagar on my own. Most of the infrastructure that the IB has today grew during the prime ministership of Rajiv Gandhi for he took a keen interest in intelligence matters and it helped that he had a cerebral DIB like Narayanan. During my time in Srinagar the IB had a few Amba.s.sador cars plus that sw.a.n.kyactually a small, but nifty, hatchbacknew car, the Maruti 800. I loved driving the Maruti and whenever I wanted to leave the driver behind I would take it out and drive my wife into the city, buzzing from one place to another. This continued till 3 January 1990, when the first of my IB colleagues was shot dead by the JKLF boys.

The militants, who had come trained and armed from camps across the Line of Control (LoC), had been advised by the ISI to try and roll the State back in Kashmir. Those targeted included Kashmiri Pandits who worked in the government, like Neel Kanth Ganjoo, the judge who had sentenced Maqbool b.u.t.t to death, and La.s.sa Koul, the director of Doordarshan TV's Srinagar station; they included mainstream politicians from the National Conference, which was denounced by militants as pro-India; and the uniformed services, as part of which was the gunning down of a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) detail, or of four air force officers. And it included four IB officers in a span of around five weeks.

As mentioned earlier, the IB was most active, most feared and most denounced in Kashmir. The ISI, itself being an intelligence agency and emboldened at having recently defeated the mighty Soviet Union in Afghanistan, knew exactly how key the IB was to the central government's hold on Kashmir; it told the militants to target the IB. Most of our officers on the ground were Kashmiri Pandits, who lived among the ordinary Kashmiri folk, and they made for easy targets.

The first IB officer shot was a Bihari, though: R.N.P. Singh. He was killed in Anantnag, in broad daylight. In those days silencer pistols were used. Someone could just walk up to you and shoot you and no one would know. You would just drop dead. As the others were killedKishen Gopal in Badgam on 9 January, M.L. Bhan in Nowgam on 15 January, and T.K. Razdan in Srinagar on 12 Februarywe knew we were being targeted. It suddenly became scary. All of us were under threat.

The IB office on Gupkar Road has completely changed now, but in those days it had a steep staircase coming down, with a landing halfway down. I used to walk down from the top of those stairs to the bottom every day, and I began to think: if there's a guy sitting across the road with a sniper rifle then I'm a dead duck. Just the walk from the house to the front without even leaving the compound was a heart-stopping experience on a daily basis.

Although we got bulletproof vehicles, things that winter were so bad that every time you went out, you didn't know if you were going to come back or not.

One day, we were invited to lunch by Joginder 'Tiger' Singh, then the CRPF's IG (and later director of the Central Bureau of Investigation) and we drove there via the big Rajbagh bridge. We were on the bridge when a bomb went off.

A lot of woodwork flew over the car. The driver stopped the car and I shouted at him, 'What the h.e.l.l, get a move on.' We reached Tiger's, and it took a while to calm down. Finally, while I had my lunch the driver went and did a recce, checked up and returned. He said that there was a house at the edge of the bridge and the bomb had gone off in that house.

Jagmohan was appointed governor on 19 January and arrived in Jammu, where there were celebrations. To impress the new governor, Joginder Singh had about 300 youngsters rounded up in downtown Srinagar. The night of 20 January was one of the most infamous nights of Kashmir. All of Srinagar came out on the roads in protest and there was a lot of wailing and shrieking that rose and fell unnervingly.

On 21 January, I was summoned by the governor to meet him at 10.30 a.m. at Raj Bhavan. I was ushered in immediately on arrival into the governor's office overlooking the Dal Lake. Jagmohan was sitting at his desk wearing a grey suit. He was livid with Joginder Singh for rounding up the boys without his 'permission'. Joginder Singh was shaken but mostly kept quiet. I can't remember if we even exchanged a word, such was the tension in the room. I was embarra.s.sed. Jagmohan was to get considerable flak for what happened in those early days of his second term. The events of those two nights were to cast a shadow on what followed.

In the afternoon of 21 January, there was again a protest in the city and protestors, consisting mainly of youth, had to be fired upon, leading to a number of deaths at Gow Kadal in the old city. Such was the atmosphere that Jagmohan was to later claim in his memoir, My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir, that he stopped Kashmir from joining Pakistan on 26 January 1990.

The night of 20 January, I was at dinner at the residence of the resident R&AW officer, Duj Nath, and he lived in Barzalla, which is quite far from Gupkar Road. During dinner the loudspeaker of the mosque outside suddenly came on and started broadcasting wailing at high volume. A large crowd collected. Duj's house was at the rear of a large compound and at the gate was a lone sentry. There were six of us there and we watched the whole tamasha from the house. I was certain that were the crowd to break the gate and storm the house, the six of us would be lynched alive.

My a.s.sistant director back at Gupkar called and asked where I was. He told me not to return that night. 'It's not safe,' he said. 'Stay where you are.' As luck would have it, one of the dinner guests was the Kashmir Valley sub area commander, Brig. Madan Mohan Lakhera, and he called for an army column. So a long two hours later we were back home.

During that killing spree of IB officials there came a day when I was sort of gheraoed by my IB colleagues in my office. The staff came out, all twenty of them, and they told me they felt very insecure in Srinagar. What had happened was all the central government employees had run away from Kashmir that winter; they had all disappeared, leaving behind n.o.body. The only people left were the IB. The staff said, we're the only ones left and the place is not secure. In those days, there was no army, and minimal paramilitary presence. As far as safety went, we were left to our own devices.

'Secure or not secure, I'm not going anywhere,' I said, 'and neither are you guys.'

When Razdan was killed (the last of the winter, the next IB official would be killed in July 1990) he was shot with one of those silencer-equipped guns and we got a call from the police saying they had a body at their control room and that it might be one of our people. The police asked us to come and identify the victim, and I went. Razdan was one of our tech officers, a Kashmiri Pandit from Habba Kadal. I had one of the Pandit officers with me and I said, 'You would know his house, will you go and inform his parents of what's happened?'

The officer said he would but then I thought, no, I should do it myself.

The four of us went to Habba Kadal. It was lunch time. The door opened, and inside we saw an elderly couple about to sit down for their meal. The man had a bowl of rice in his hand, and one look at us and he understood what had happened. He bitterly said a few words in Kashmiri and flung his bowl against the wall.