Meetings between All Parties Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muzaffarabad-based terrorists have fuelled speculation of a looming Pakistan Army-sponsored split between pro-and anti-dialogue jihad commanders. Speaking to a national newspaper on Thursday, AAC spokesperson Aftab Ahmad Shah — who uses the code-name Shahid-ul-Islam — said the Mirwaiz "met senior militant commanders and they exchanged ideas on Kashmir." According to the newspaper, these included the "top leadership" of the Lashkar-e-Taiba. AAC officials have declined to name the Lashkar and Jaish leaders who held talks with the Mirwaiz, but both organisations have been critical of the peace process led by the APHC chairman and Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf. Mohammad Yusuf Shah, the Pakistan-based chief of the Hizb ul-Mujahideen, even rebuffed efforts by the APHC chairman to secure a meeting during his ongoing visit to Pakistan.
Mirwaiz Farooq, however, secured an extended meeting with Mushtaq Zargar, one of the three terrorists released during the 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814. Mr. Zargar's al-Umar, which drew much of its cadre from Mirwaiz Farooq's strongholds in old-city Srinagar, was once the sword-arm of the AAC. However, under attack from both Indian forces and rival jihadi groups like the Hizb, it was decimated by 1993.
A Pakistan-based source close to the APHC told The Hindu that Mr. Zargar had persuaded three mid-level Lashkar and Jaish commanders to accompany him to visit Mirwaiz, most likely with the endorsement of Pakistan's covert service, the Inter-Services Intelligence. "The ISI is signalling to the Hizb and Lashkar that it must fall in line," the source said, "or face the consequences."
General Musharraf, Mirwaiz Farooq's meetings in Muzaffarabad suggest, may be tiring of strident criticism of his Jammu and Kashmir policy by Islamist terror groups once sponsored by the Pakistan Army. For example, the January, 2007 issue of the Lashkar house magazine `Voice of Islam' characterises the Pakistani President's four-point peace plan as "a stab in the back, a betrayal."
"As the unfinished business of Partition," the magazine asserts, echoing the long-standing Lashkar position, "Kashmir can only be achieved [sic., resolved] according to the principles on which the Partition was carried out — the will of the citizens of the State and the religion of the majority population. Musharraf's formula is blind to these principles. It will never deliver."
Lashkar leaders have also become increasingly critical of General Musharraf's overall agenda. Earlier this month, the Lashkar's parent political organisation, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, organised a conference to critique a new Women's Protection Act promoted by the General. According to the Jamaat, the "floodgates of vulgarity and licentiousness opened by the Act would drown the womenfolk, sisters and daughters of the faithful."
Mirwaiz Farooq, for his part, has long sought to demonstrate that he has some leverage with terrorist groups — but with little success. On June 7, 2005, the Mirwaiz met to secure his support for the APHC's ongoing dialogue with the Government of India. Mr. Shah, however, said he would not accept any process that did not include hardline Islamist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
Syed Salim Geelani, who heads the moderate APHC-aligned National Peoples Party, met with Mr. Shah early this month to lay the ground for a second round of dialogue with Mirwaiz Farooq. However, the APHC chairman's recent assertion that the armed struggle "had not achieved anything other than creating more graveyards" incenced the Hizb and other terrorist groups fighting in Jammu and Kashmir.
Angered by the remark, Mr. Shah called off the proposed meeting. A spokesperson for the United Jihad Council, which is chaired by Mr. Shah, subsequently warned the Mirwaiz "not teach the lesson of cowardice and hopelessness to our caravan of freedom seekers." For its part, the Lashkar-linked Save Kashmir Movement published direct threats to the Mirwaiz's life, charging the cleric with having become a "renegade."