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Mujahedeen's holy cry: Take Kashmir from India

Mujahedeen's holy cry: Take Kashmir from India

Kathy Gannon
The Times of India
March 26, 2000
Title: Mujahedeen's holy cry: Take Kashmir from India
Author: Kathy Gannon
Publication: The Times of India
Date: March 26, 2000

RAWALPINDI: Tucked within a maze of narrow streets, guarded by a lone sentry huddled over a gas burner, is a whitewashed, two-room concrete building whose tenants the US sorely wants evicted. This is the headquarters of Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, a band of Muslim militants the US considers an international terrorist organization and repeatedly pressures Pakistan to expel from its territory.

``We are not terrorists. We are mujahedeen,'' or holy warriors, insists the group's leader, Fazal-ur Rehman Khalil. Wrapped in a brown shawl, sitting cross-legged on a carpeted floor and stroking his unkempt black beard, Khalil says his Pakistani warriors ``fight only in Kashmir. It is a great injustice to us that America has declared us a terrorist organization.''

``Terrorist acts against civilians is against Islam,'' he says. ``We don't believe in killing innocent civilians, in hijacking and explosions.''

The goal of Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, he says, is simple: To wrest from Hindu-majority India its part of Kashmir, which is dominated by Muslims, and merge it with Islamic Pakistan. If that takes a holy war with India, he says, so be it.

Last week, as US President Bill Clinton prepared for his weeklong visit to Soth Asia, senior Pakistani officials again rebuffed US appeals to crack down on militant Islamic groups.

Two months ago, US assistant secretary of state Karl Inderfurth pressed Pakistan's military leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to close Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen's headquarters. Musharraf refused to make promises. The US accuses the group and Al Qaida, the Afghanistan-based group of Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, of staging terrorist attacks against US interests.

Washington believes Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen had links to last December's hijacking of an India Airlines plane. Pakistan, in resisting US demands, maintains the Islamic militants are freedom fighters, not terrorists, and that as long as the Kashmir conflict festers, the groups will feel compelled to carry out a jihad, or religious war.

If Kashmir is ever united under Pakistani control, Khalil envisions the former princely state governed under a pure Islamic system similar to neighboring Afghanistan's. ``We have a desire that our religion should be implemented and enforced,'' Khalil says. ``And why shouldn't we?'' Khalil says his group and others like it, including Al Qaida, believe the US fears pure Islamic systems and has decided the groups and nations that espouse them are its enemies.

Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen once acknowledged that its holy warriors, all Pakistanis or Kashmiris, trained in Afghanistan but now says the only training given in Afghanistan is religious schooling. But at Rishkore, outside the Afghan capital of Kabul, reporters have seen scores of Pakistanis training with light weapons. A Taliban commander who declined to be identified says hundreds of Pakistanis get military training in eastern Afghanistan.

Pakistan maintains it now gives only moral and political support to the militants. Khalil angrily criticizes Pakistan for not giving financial and military help for the fighting in Indian-held Kashmir. ``Kashmir is a jihad,'' he says. ``It is every Muslim's duty to fight there and Pakistan should help us, but they don't.'' (AP)
 



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