Laden plans major offensive in J&K

LONDON, Oct 4 (PTI) — Osama bin Laden, one of the world’s most wanted Islamic terror mastermind has asked his Afghan and Arab terrorists to gather in Kashmir for a major terrorist offensive in the valley and beyond, Sunday Times reported.

As part of the terror offensive, "hundreds of Afghan battle-hardened elite Islamic mercenaries have crossed the Pir Panjal mountains from Pakistan into Kashmir with clear orders to bring terror in Kashmir and beyond in India", the paper reported.

Laden is running the new mercenary campaign in Kashmir through Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin, which changed its label recently from Harkat-ul-Ansar, after coming in the American list of banned terrorist organisations, the paper said.

Other British media reports said, acutely embarrassed by recent "near international exposure" of its running terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan the Pakistan Army high command, through its run and controlled Taliban militia, had directed Laden to divert himself from threats to America and moderate Arab government to concentrate his private Islamic army in Kashmir for a "decisive summer terror campaign and its rapid spread beyond into other regions in India."

The reports of Pakistani Army intelligence orders to Laden assume significance in the wake of recent western reports of foreign Islamic mercenaries having taken control of militancy in Kashmir, with most of the Kashmiri groups giving up the path of violence.

"Bin Laden has set his sights on Kashmir and has sent die hard fundamentalists, armed and trained suicide squads, who want to take on India and the west," the paper reported, adding that the Indian security forces had recently recovered solar powered rockets and a haul of explosives fitted with detonators that can be programmed up to 194 days in advance.

Western encounter insurgency experts were quoted as saying that Laden, who had won over Afghan Mujaheddins in early 1980s by constructing secret ammunition depots in mountainsides in Khost in the Pakhtiar region, on instructions from ISI had asked his mercenaries to adopt similar methods in Kashmir.

They said this appeared to be logic of Pakistani mercenaries prolonged stay in remote hilly areas of Doda, Kishtawar, Bhaderwah, Lolab valley and recently in Poonch and Rajauri districts.

"These depots double up as training camps and camps for holding hostages as appears to have been the case with four foreign hostages including two British, Paul Wells and Keith Mangan, abducted and later, reportedly killed by Harkat-ul-Ansar", experts told PTI.

Times said that out of every group of militants in Kashmir, half had been trained in Laden’s camp in Afghanistan, which were hit by recent U.S. cruise missile attack. It quoted Ghulam, an Afghan national saying how he underwent 90-day arms training in Khawar Zilli camp in Khost and then was introduced to a 10-man squad to guide them to India.

Ghulam, told Times that he received payment of £ 700 (about Rs 50,000) in Afghanistan and was made to sign two-year contract along with two other mercenaries to fight the Indian security forces in Kashmir for the payment of £ 5,600.

"We were told to leave the Al Badr camps before the American attack and were given instructions whom to contact to cross from Pakistan into Kashmir."

Ghulam described Osama bin Laden as "our father, who has sent his brothers from Afghanistan to wage jehad in Kashmir." He said, on arrival in Kashmir, they had been asked to keep Kashmir on the boil by selecting soft targets such as civilians and few foreign tourists who still visited the valley.

Times said bonus payments were promised to mercenaries, who generate international headlines with an abduction or by killing top politicians or senior Indian Army officer. It said Laden’s men had also been instructed to establish contacts with other Islamic cells established in states throughout India in preparation for a terror campaign.