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Ansar Ghazwatul Hind’s multi-colour banners have appeared in Kashmir for the first time near the residence of militant Mugees Ahmad Mir of Parimpora, in Srinagar, a couple of days after his death in an accidental encounter with the Jammu and Kashmir Police in Zakura neighbourhood on 17 November.
On 18 November, Mir’s body, draped in the typical al-Qaeda and ISIS black flags and carried by a procession of over 5,000 people, was interred in a local burial ground away from the Valley’s largest martyrs graveyard of Eidgah.
This happened in less than four months of The Guardian reporting on 27 July 2017 that al-Qaeda’s official media arm, Global Islamic Media Front, had announced establishment of the pan-Islamist group’s Kashmir branch under the banner of Ansar Ghazwatul Hind (AGH).
Hizbul Mujahideen’s Kashmir commander Zakir Rashid Bhat alias Zakir Musa of Noorpora, Tral, who had been dismissed and replaced by Sabzar Ahmad Bhat by his organisation on account of his naked threat to the Hurriyat leaders on 13 May 2017, was declared as AGH’s founder-chief in Kashmir.
Echoing his predecessor Burhan Wani’s August 2015 video message, Zakir in May 2017 had expressed his unequivocal commitment to the establishment of the caliphate. He went to the extent of alleging that the separatist leaders were behaving like an impediment to the militants’ goal of creating an Islamic state.
Valley’s separatist leadership, as also the media, had played down Burhan’s pro-caliphate assertion.
Announcing his disassociation from the Hizbul Mujahideen, Zakir issued a veiled challenge:
Zakir did not name Hizb chief Salahuddin but repeatedly targeted “the men in Pakistan sitting in luxurious sofas.”
The AGH’s announcement met a bitterly negative reaction from Salahuddin in Pakistan to the Joint Resistance Leadership – Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik – in the Valley.
Thereafter, Zakir went into hibernation, though “Musa Musa Zakir Musa” emerged the defiant youths’ most popular slogan. It was heard even at the most unexpected places – at the lynching of Deputy Superintendent of Police Mohammad Ayub Pandit at the Jamia Masjid in Srinagar on 22 June 2017, and Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s visit to the seminary of the revered saint and preacher of 14th century, Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani, on 15 November.
Earlier on 13 July 2017, Hizbul Mujahideen militant Sajjad Gilkar’s body was also covered under the al-Qaeda flag in Malaratta, Nowhatta, in downtown Srinagar, but it was not a massive funeral procession.
Significantly, on the funerals and remembrance ceremonies of both Sajjad Gilkar and Mugees Mir, representative of the Hurriyat were kept away and not allowed to turn it into a traditional event of Kashmiris seeking “freedom” with their slogans of “aazadi” and “jeevay jeevay Pakistan”.
According to the statements of Mugees Mir’s family members and relatives, carried in local newspapers, he was deeply impressed with the al-Qaeda’s pro-caliphate ideology, and had his study packed with their literature. He had expressed that his body should be draped in that black flag.
That is exactly what the people in Parimpora did, even as Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police Shesh Paul Vaid, and Kashmir Inspector General of Police Munir Khan claimed that there were “no traces” of al-Qaeda, ISIS, and AGH in the state.
“Mugees bhai ka ek paigam: Kashmir banega daarul Islam” – this is Mugees’ message that Kashmir will become an Islamic state – is the slogan written boldly on the AGH banner at the slain militant’s house. Remarkably, it carries al-Qaeda insignia and images of Osama bin Laden and separately Mugees with a gun in his hand and his month-old son on his lap.
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And significantly again, it was for the first time that the ISIS media outlet ‘Aamaq’ purportedly claimed through Twitter responsibility of “our first attack” in Kashmir in which Mugees got killed and a Sub Inspector of Special Operations Group of Srinagar District Police, Imran Tak, lost his life.
However, the Aamaq’s claim in Arabi calls Tak a “Pakistani police officer.” Without insisting that it was real, a police officer said that “such geographical errors” do exist in the group’s statement issued from distant Iraq and Syria. “For them, both are enemies. An Indian and Pakistani officer are one and the same thing for them,” he asserted.
Notably, all the FIRs registered against him are in South Kashmir where he is claimed to have been active.
Some media reports insist that he was among the five masked gunmen who, on 7 April 2017, warned the residents of Kareemabad Pulwama against chanting pro-Pakistan slogans and waving Pakistani national flags at the slain militants’ funeral, calling it all “un-Islamic.”
With nobody confirming the veracity of claims by Aamaq and Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen, there is nevertheless consensus across the board that the Islamist radicalism and popularity of the ideology professed by al-Qaeda and ISIS is increasing at an alarming pace and it has already startled everyone – from Hurriyat to the local media – who have suddenly stopped dismissing the ISIS flag-wavers as “fringe.”
“I am not confused between al-Qaeda, ISIS, AGH and TUM. Their origin and ideology is one – that of caliphate or Islamic State,” said a conflict analyst on condition of anonymity. He pointed out that ISIS had similarly taken root and expanded in Syria.
“Also remember, for months in 1988 and 1989, we in Kashmir used to insist that the firing and blasts were being done by CRPF to create confusion,” he added.
“Denial is here like the dust in the air. People do deny things according to their convenience and expediency. It shouldn’t mislead the professionals and analysts,” said a professor of sociology at the University of Kashmir.
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Another Kashmir University professor at the Department of Political Science accepted some sort of “controlled expansion” of the al-Qaeda and ISIS in Kashmir:
Inspector General of Kashmir Munir Khan, however, has a different perspective. Asking how the government was in perpetual denial mode and why the police were ignoring tell-tale signs of an ideological transformation, Khan said:
Khan further said that Mugees Mir’s neighbour, Tauseef, who was arrested during the encounter at Zakura, had disclosed that Mugees and Adil (another neighbour who escaped with the militant’s AK-47 rifle) were cadres of the TUM.
He categorically ruled out that ISIS terrorists fleeing Syria are shifting base to Kashmir.
(The writer is a Srinagar-based journalist. He can be reached @ahmedalifayyaz. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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