Masood Azhar was given to Pak on platter
Arun Joshi
tribune news service
India is paying a price for its own compulsive magnanimity towards Pakistani terror minds. The September 18 Uri attack by the Jaish-e-Mohammad that triggered retaliatory surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir are just glimpses, and the cost that the country paid in the past for its strategic failures.
And, the classic example of that is Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar, who was released by the Indian authorities from Kot Bhalwal Jail, Jammu, in December 1999. He was among the three terrorists who were released. Mushtaq Zargar of militant outfit Al-Umar-Mujahideen and Omar Saeed Sheikh, who later beheaded Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Pearl in captivity in Pakistan, were the other two.
Masood was released in exchange of passengers and crew of the hijacked Indian airliner IC 814, which was parked in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan’s capital Kandahar.
At the time of his release from the jail, apprehensions were voiced that his release would unleash a new wave of terrorism not only in Jammu and Kashmir, but also the rest of the country.
Then Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah had warned then Home Minister LK Advani of the “serious consequences” of releasing Masood, who could summon hundreds to his rallies and indoctrinate them for “jihad” to “liberate Kashmir”. But Farooq’s warnings went unheeded.
Farooq had told this reporter that “he was made to issue the release order against his wishes”. This, he had made clear also to then RAW chief AS Dulat, who had flown in to Jammu to convince the Chief Minister about the release of the terrorists that the hijackers had asked for. “It was a shame,” Farooq had told this reporter that time.
Today, Masood, who has been behind a series of terror attacks, the latest being the Uri attack in which 19 soldiers lost their lives and provoked India to launch surgical strikes at terrorist hubs across the Line of Control that divide Jammu and Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
Pakistan has refused to act against Masood, leave alone bring him to justice for his role in the Pathankot air base attack in January this year and assault on the Indian Parliament in December 2001. Its all-weather friend China has vetoed his being designated as terrorist on the United Nations list of terrorists, though the US government has already announced a bounty of $10 million on his head.
The Army caught Masood accidentally during a routine checking near Anantnag in early 1994. He was working with the Harkat-ul-Ansar and had come to Kashmir to recruit cadres for the outfit as locals were distancing themselves from armed militancy. He had travelled to India on a Portuguese passport in which his occupation was shown as “journalist”.
It was learnt later that he was the main actor of the Pakistan’s ISI and engaged in spreading pan-Islamic militancy. Two British were kidnapped by the Harkat-ul-Ansar group in June 1994 from the heights of Pahalgam, the same spot from where a year later five foreigners were abducted, for his release. After these kidnappings failed to yield his release, the IC 814 plane was hijacked midair between Kathmandu and Delhi.
Security experts believe that had the government expedited his trial and punished him in time, such a situation would not have arisen. After his release, he found his way to Karachi from Afghanistan and launched in February 2000 the Jaish-e-Mohammad, which is now acknowledged as a terrorist group, except in the eyes of its patron Pakistan and its all-time friend China.
