Ghulam Nabi Fai, the Indian Kashmiri who became an American citizen and ran a covert propaganda ring for Pakistan’s ISI out of Washington before his arrest by America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation four days ago, was a man of some standing in Jamaat-e-Islami circles in Kashmir, although he successfully concealed this in the United States.
He was an organiser and a participant at a “secret” meeting in Kathmandu on January 14, 1990 called to decide a crucial question — the relationship of the Jamaat-e-Islami, which propagates rule according to the Shariat, with the recently formed Hizb-e-Islami, which would soon establish itself as Kashmir’s most feared terrorist group that turned its guns as easily on fellow Kashmiris of other groups as on India’s security forces.
A remarkable aspect of this meeting was that it was attended by Hakeem Ghulam Nabi, Abdur Rashid Turabi, and Prof. Khursheed Ahmed, leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami from Kashmir, PoK and Pakistan respectively. The political conjuncture was grim.
Pakistan’s President, General Zia-ul-Haq, was dead, killed in an air crash about a year and a half before. He had done everything to bring the Jamaat of Pakistan and PoK in a close embrace with the Pakistan Army and the ISI. All three had been tasked to bring on board the Jamaat-e-Islami of Kashmir to send its boys to PoK and Pakistan for military training. Gen. Zia was using the Afghan jihad as a “smoke screen” to commence the Kashmir “jihad” and supplying the latter with funds and weapons provided by America and Saudi Arabia.
But the Jamaat in Kashmir feared becoming a target of the Indian authorities, and was reluctant to be drawn into an armed struggle against India. However, for the ISI, time was running out, suggests Arif Jamal, a well known Pakistani journalist, in his recent book Shadow War: The Untold Story of Jihad in Kashmir.
In Kashmir, militancy had come under the leadership of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), a secular outfit unlike the Jamaat or the HM. The ISI was desperate to reverse the course and had tried hard to persuade Kashmir’s Jamaat to change its stance on fostering young militants.
Finally, it was left to Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai and Dr Ayub Thakur (now deceased), who had been associated with the Islami Jamiat Tulaba, Jamaat’s student body that had wreaked enough murder and violence in the time before full-blown militancy erupted in Kashmir (1989-90).
These two were crucially involved with arranging the secret Kathmandu conclave of the three Jamaat organisations of Kashmir, PoK and Pakistan.
A well-known Kashmiri militant of the time, who subsequently resiled from the idea of armed struggle, in a telephone conversation on Saturday recounted meeting Dr Fai in Muzaffarabad (PoK) shortly before the latter was to leave for the Kathmandu conference. The source was aware of the general context and significance of the proposed Kathmandu meet but did not have a clear idea of the proceedings.
According to the writer Jamal, in Kathmandu Kashmir’s Jamaat-e-Islami continued to maintain its reservations on subscribing to an armed struggle, although “the pro-jihad participants made clear their fears about the growing influence of the JKLF”.
At this point Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who at 82 is still Kashmir’s most influential pro-Pakistan politician, made a dramatic entry and gave an “impassioned speech” in favour of armed jihad. In Kashmir’s Jamaat circles, of which he was a leading figure, he was known to be personally sympathetic to waging of an armed fight in Kashmir.
That’s why, probably unknown to others, he had been kept in readiness as a trump card by Dr Fai and Dr Thakur. Mr Geelani had also been persuaded to show up by his son-in-law, Altaf Ahmed Shah. The ISI’s agenda had prevailed. Work then commenced to bring the newly-minted Hizbul Mujahideen — whose fighters were anyway inclined toward jihadism — under the organisational influence of the Jamaat-e-Islami.