With terrorism raising its ugly head in J&K during the late eighties, Kashmir, which was considered to be “paradise on earth” for centuries, turned into a veritable Hell. What made this humongous collective human tragedy even more distressing is that even though sponsored by the Pakistan army to further its aim of “bleeding India through a thousand cuts,” this proxy war was facilitated and promoted by some unscrupulous Kashmiris working at the behest of Rawalpindi.

Impressed by the performance of the Pakistan army trained Taliban fighting America’s proxy war against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, President Zia ul Haq decided to replicate this model in J&K. Thanks to CIA’s casual approach as regards monitoring the utilisation of money, and weapons being provided to Pakistan army’s notorious spy agency Inter Services Intelligence [ISI] for training and equipping the Taliban, siphoning significant funds and weaponry for the proxy war in J&K was an easy task.

Manufacturing “Armed Struggle”

ISI did a good job by setting up camps in Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir [PoJK] to indoctrinate and provide military training to Kashmiri youth. Simultaneously, it created a core team of Kashmiris to head the proxy war in J&K and this led to the emergence of the HAJY group.

Deriving its name from the initial alphabet of its four members [Hamid Sheikh, Ashfaq Wani, Javed Mir and Yasin Malik] of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front [JKLF] this group brought the Kalashnikov into J&K. The HAJY group formally challenged the writ of the Indian state on July 31, 1988 by setting off bombs in Srinagar.

What followed thereafter was an unending spate of indiscriminate violence in Kashmir Valley unleashed by heavily armed JKLF cadres and instances of rampant killings, kidnappings as well as extortion became commonplace. Legitimising this wanton........

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