Jehangir Ali JEHANGIR ALI @Gaamuk (link is external) In 2006, a journalist from Delhi interviewed an insurgent in Kashmir who had climbed the ladder in his 13-year activist career to become the Hizbul Mujahideen outfits deputy district commander of Anantnag. On being asked why he choose to surrender to Syed Ashiq Bukhari, Bilal Ahmad Parray, of Dialgam, plainly replied: All the groups that are operating here fear him. It felt safer surrendering to an officer like Bukhari Saheb. On Wednesday, Bukhari joined politics, choosing Peoples Democratic Party which was long rumoured to be his retirement home and which now looks set to form the next government in Kashmir. Interestingly, contrary to the habit of the partys media cell, there was no elaborate statement to welcome his entry. The formal announcement of his entry into the PDP was sounded at the partys public rally in Handwara region Wednesday which was led by party patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed himself. One of the most known faces of counter-insurgency grid in the region, under Bukharis tenure, more than 300 insurgents are reported to have been killed and many more neutralized. His policy was simple; he didnt believe in catch. He almost always preferred to kill. Bukhari was posted as SSP, Anantnag in 2004 when Hizbul Mujahideen was very much active in Dachnipora belt of Bijbehara and Pahalgam. He remained posted as SSP for two years and during his tenure, most of the top rank Hizb militants including its top commander, Shabir Budroo, were eliminated. It was Bilal Wahab, the insurgent interviewed by the Delhi-based journalist who took over the job of Budroo and later surrendered to Bukhari with three more men following him in coming days. People in Anantnag will still tell you that Bilal was working for police and he was planted to bring down curtains on the organizations active human resource in southern side of Kashmir Valley. Known for his murky counter-insurgency games, Bukharis name cropped up in Indian media during the investigation of 26/11 Mumbai attacks when he arrested four policemen, one of them an undercover agent, who had infiltrated into Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba and provided them SIM cards which were used by the 26/11 attackers. At the peak of his career, many surrendered militants were hired by police to act as informers. Bukhari managed to infiltrate his own men into the militant ranks to break their network and neutralized some of the top insurgents of Hizb. There are allegations that many stage-managed encounters were carried by police and Army during his tenure. In 2004 when a SAFMA delegation visited Kashmir by bus through Aman Setu, the also visited Anantnag where Bukhari was posted as SSP. He is reported to have boasted to a visiting journalist, Mariana Babar, of The News, that he singlehandedly killed many, many militants in the state. What are you doing here then? Babbar told Bukhari, Musharraf needs you in Wana, evoking laughter from the visitors. The Battle of Wana was a counter-insurgency operation launched by Pakistan Army at Azam Warsak, near the South Waziristan town of Wana where over 500 Al Qaeda insurgents were believed to be trapped, reportedly including Osamas deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri Over the years, his actions have earned him many enemies, so much so that a Hizb militant was assigned to bump off Bukhari but he managed to get to the killer before he got him. In fact, many people believe that Bukhari was appointed by PDP to wipe out the Hizb commanders with whom the party had a tactic understanding before 2002 assembly elections. In a detailed and excellent piece on the nuances of elections in Kashmir in The Caravan magazine, Sanjay Kak reported an eyewitness, a young police officer at the time, telling him that even the Army was reluctant to patrol some areas in Anantnag after dusk where PDP president Mehbooba Mufti used to campaign before 2002 assembly elections. But she would usually wear a green headscar
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 15:21:03 +0000
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