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militant rehabilitation The J&K rehabilitation policy was meant to give wayward youths a chance to embrace the mainstream. But it is suffering because of lack of coordination among security agencies, confusion over the surrender mechanism and militants feeling the government is not keeping its end of the deal. By Ravi Krishnan Khajuria “The rehabilitation policy of the state government is nothing more than a cruel joke with people like me,” acerbically reacts 42-year-old Abdul Munaf Malik of Topa village from Rajouri district, once an AK-47 wielding divisional commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen who survived 26 encounters and escaped over 100 cordons.
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‘Feel cheated, regret giving up’
The price for peace in the Northeast
Cricket
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A policy surrendered to confusion The J&K rehabilitation policy was meant to give wayward youths a chance to embrace the mainstream. But it is suffering because of lack of coordination among security agencies, confusion over the surrender mechanism and militants feeling the government is not keeping its end of the deal. By Ravi Krishnan Khajuria
“The
rehabilitation policy of the state government is nothing more than a cruel joke with people like me,” acerbically reacts 42-year-old Abdul Munaf Malik of Topa village from Rajouri district, once an AK-47 wielding divisional commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen who survived 26 encounters and escaped over 100 cordons.
During his “prime”, the former insurgent had not only crossed over to the Pak-occupied Kashmir (POK) for arms training, but also had gone to Afghanistan, where he was “hardened” further in guerrilla warfare tactics by the Taliban. “A very large number of ‘people’ who return from the POK lead normal lives. Hardly 1 per cent get ‘recycled’ (into militancy),” says Ashok Prasad, DGP of the Jammu and Kashmir Police and former Additional Director of the Intelligence Bureau. But the two striking contrasts refuse to die down ever since successive regimes in the state started rolling out surrender and rehabilitation policies for Kashmiri militants. The recent arrest of suspected Hizb militant Liyaqat Ali Shah by the Delhi Police that prompted J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah to take up the matter with Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde on March 23 and the consequent probe by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has again brought the rehabilitation policy under the scanner of New Delhi.
Though reports originated from New Delhi that the Union Home Ministry is set to deploy the J&K Police along with the Sahastra Seema Bal (SSB) along the Indo-Nepal border to facilitate the movement of militants who want to return to India from the Nepal route for surrender, J&K Home Secretary Suresh Kumar informed no formal communiqué has come to him. “Some exercise must be going on because the Union Government is looking afresh into the policy, but so far we haven’t received any such communication,” Kumar told The Tribune. A top source in the J&K Police confided the Indo-Nepal border is under the consideration of the Union Government to be declared as a legal route for the return of Kashmiri militants from the POK. “It (Indo-Nepal route) is at an advanced stage. Since Pakistan did not cooperate with India on the rehabilitation policy for obvious reasons and the Kashmiri youths, who had crossed over to the POK, find it convenient to return via Nepal, the Government of India is giving Nepal route a serious thought,” he says. Under the policy announced in 2010, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had identified four routes for the return of “misguided” youths — Chakan-da-Bagh in Poonch district, Salamabad in Baramulla district, Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi and Wagah-Attari in Punjab. But following the arrest of suspected Hizb militant Liyaqat Ali Shah, who had entered India via the Nepal border, Omar had stated in the Lower House that the Nepal route had also been brought under the policy. Interestingly, the militancy-plagued state which introduced the surrender policy in 2004 and the rehabilitation policy in 2010, however, does not deem it fit to post them on its official websites. The official website of the state home department (jkhome.nic.in) and J&K Police (jkpolice.gov.in) do not mention even a single word about either of the two policies. In other words, New Delhi seems to be hesitant on Omar’s rehabilitation policy. “Perhaps, the Centre is not on the same page with the J&K Government vis-à-vis this policy for the simple fact that Pakistan is not on board and never will be for obvious reasons,” a top Army source says. “The policy certainly needs a re-look because the possibilities of Kashmiri militants returning via Nepal on fake passports and names cannot be ruled out,” he adds. “Since security agencies and ministries like defence, home affairs and external affairs are involved, there are some roadblocks. There is no clarity, the Law Minister had said. During the Chief Ministers’ conference on internal security in New Delhi last year, Omar had sought a proper mechanism for the surrender of militants. He had flagged that of late some youths were using the Nepal route to return. He had expressed fear they may again join militancy in the absence of any proper mechanism. He had also stated the policy “does not suit” Pakistan and it may sabotage it. Liyaqat’s arrest, which has triggered a spar between the J&K Government and the Delhi Police has prompted the Union Home Ministry to review the policy. “The file is with us”, says a top source in the ministry.
2010 surrender policy
Slow movement
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‘Feel cheated, regret giving up’
Despite
returning from the POK and surrendering before the security forces, the miseries of 42-year-old Munaf Malik, a former Hizb commander and divisional commander of the Tehreek-ul-Jehad for Rajouri, Poonch and Udhampur districts, have not ended. Worse, he claims he and his family have become sitting ducks for terrorists even as his children are traumatised by taunts. He says: “To date, I have not got even a single penny under the rehabilitation policy. I am working as a labourer to eke out a living for my family.” The 2010 rehabilitation policy does not endorse cash incentives to militants returning from the POK and Pakistan unlike a similar policy announced by Mufti Mohammed Sayeed in 2004 for local militants operating within the state. Several Kashmiri militants, who had eschewed the path of violence, are today left at the mercy of God as they fend for themselves under the open skies, a dejected Malik says. “After I gave up, I convinced 15 other men to shun gun and return to the national mainstream under Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s rehabilitation policy, but today I regret my decision,” he says. The reason: he claims the rehabilitation policy is only on papers and there is nothing on the ground for people like him. “The policy is nothing more than a fraud played on Kashmiri youth,” he says. “I live in the open with my family and without any protection. My children are called names in society. I did not get any assistance under the policy,” he says. Malik, who remained an active militant from 1994 to 1999, surrendered before the police and thereafter worked for nine years as a Special Police Officer, helping the security forces in over 40 counter-insurgency operations, but on September 17, 2008, his services were terminated. After his return to the mainstream, he had to bear the brunt of his former “colleagues” (militants) who tortured his younger brother Abdul Quaf Malik. Abdul is now confined to the crutches. They also burnt Malik’s three houses. On March 26 this year, Kashmiri militants, who recently returned from the POK along with their families, staged a protest in Srinagar, accusing Omar Abdullah of not keeping his rehabilitation promise to them.
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The price for peace in the Northeast Apart from J&K, the insurgency-hit Northeast and the Maoist-violence afflicted zone in central India have such policies, each tailored as per the situation and fine-tuned with the changing times. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), in tandem with state governments, cajoles gun-totting militants to rejoin society after surrendering weapons under a general amnesty scheme. Cash compensation and monthly stipends are offered to insurgents and terrorists for giving up arms and joining the mainstream of society. All policies are tweaked according to the ground swell in favour or against the insurgents. It is geared at ensuring that surrendered militants do not find “taking up the gun” as an easy livelihood option. “The surrender policy may look as if India is buying peace, but there is no other option to bring about normalcy. A surrendered man is better than the one holding a gun to earn a living,” says a senior government functionary. Messing it up The arrest of Syed Liyaqat Shah, belonging to J&K and a former militant returning from Pakistan through Nepal, has kindled a debate on such policies and the ham-handed manner in which this particular case was handled. It has now been decided to station a small contingent of the J&K Police along the Indo-Nepal border to assist the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) in facilitating the safe return of former militants from the POK. Already the MHA has “spotters” in place at entry points to prevent the route being misused by terrorists. The MHA now proposes to issue a “certificate” to those surrendering at the Nepal border. Clearly, this is a reaction to the arrest of Liyaqat Ali who was arrested by the Delhi Police for allegedly being a Hizbul Mujahideen operative. The Central agencies, in their advance information, had mentioned that Shah was crossing over to meet his family and nowhere did they warn of him being a terrorist misusing the amnesty route via Nepal. Some 250 J&K youths have used this route since 2010. The confusion has led to questions. What was the need for the Delhi Police to announce his arrest? Shah’s credentials could have been verified from the Central agencies and the J&K Police. Also, within the security circles it was known that Nepal was being used as a transit point and it was not some secret that the Delhi Police would be unaware of. Within the officialdom, it is believed that the flurry of activity has needlessly focused on the use of the Nepal route by J&K militants. Not only will it take some time to rebuild the confidence in youth wanting to return from the POK, but also it can choke the route. Faraway from J&K, the relative peace in the Northeast in the past decade has been largely credited to the surrender policy drafted by experienced personnel in the Central agencies and the Army which has been tasked to deal with insurgencies in the Northeast. Another factor that helps maintain peace is the repeated extension of ceasefire agreements between the Central Government and motley groups operating in that region. Special camps have been set up to house the rebels while interlocutors negotiate further terms for peace and autonomy for these regions with their leaders. In January 2012, a single surrender in the Northeast region led to 1,855 militants belonging to nine groups giving up guns at a function in Guwahati, where the then Union Home Minister P Chidambaram “received” them. Into the fold In October last year, the MHA, then under Sushilkumar Shinde, hiked the stipend for surrendered militants of Manipur to Rs 3,500 per month – up from Rs 2,500. This was slightly different from the MHA policy for the surrender-cum-rehabilitation of militants in the North east, which allows all surrendered militants lodged in government-run rehabilitation centres to get a stipend of Rs 2,000 per month apart from an incentive of Rs 2.5 lakh. In March this year, the MHA re-jigged its surrender policy for Maoists by substantially increasing the amount to be paid as incentive. Following a meeting of top officials of Maoist-affected states, it was decided to reimburse Rs 2.50 lakh for the surrender of each politburo member, central committee or area commander of the Maoists. Lower-level Maoists will get Rs 1.50 lakh. Each surrendered man will be entitled for a monthly stipend of Rs 3,000 for three years. The new compensation will come into force from April 1.
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Cricket
Mahendra
Singh Dhoni surveyed his hotel room with alarm — it was a wreck. The night after India crushed Australia in the third Test in Mohali, Chandigarh was the epicentre of the biggest party in India. It was a wild party. Dhoni was left surveying the debris strewn around his room — it was a bittersweet feeling, for the wreck reminded him of the state of the Australian team.
The party was orches- This was certainly the weakest Australian team to visit India, and it did enough to earn incontestable rights to that tag. It also was a divided team, rife with indiscipline serious enough to cause four players to be banned. Their thinking was muddled, their strategy in complete divorce with reality. They overestimated their hand, expected too much of their pace bowling. They wanted to win with pace bowling, but did not have the personnel or the firepower to accomplish the task. The ban on four players left them only 12 players to select their XI from in the Mohali Test. Through the series, they had only one competent spinner, Nathan Lyon, who too was often made to look ordinary by the Indian batsmen. On pitches designed to spin early and often, their spin was starkly inadequate. Yet, it was a good win, worthy of the celebrations it caused. India lost the toss in all four matches, handing Australia the advantage of batting first when the conditions were best to bat on. Then, the triumph was not owed to only a few individuals — almost the whole team played a part. Dhoni, Murali, Cheteshwar Pujara, Shikhar Dhawan, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Virat Kohli played significant roles; Sachin Tendulkar played a vital innings in the first Test; Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ishant Sharma and Pragyan Ojha accounted for 20 wickets. There were only three men who did not shine: Virender Sehwag and Harbhajan Singh who played only two Tests each; Ajinkya Rahane was the debutant in the fourth and final Test. Dhoni’s leadership
Having presided over the stunning defeat to England in November-December, Dhoni did not have long to turn things around. Fortunately, Australia did not present that sort of challenge. Over the last two years, Dhoni’s world has rocked and quaked. On the night of April 2, 2011, he was the king of Indian cricket, finishing off Sri Lanka in the World Cup final with an incredible innings, ending it with a six. Then followed the crushing defeats in England and Australia; and the 2-1 defeat to England in India. The horror era that had been long predicted — India without Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Anil Kumble, and the declining Harbhajan Singh, Virender Sehwag and Zaheer Khan — seemed to have arrived. When Kumble, Dravid and Laxman were around, Dhoni was a less hands-on captain. “My job is easy, I just take the pressure and hand it over to the players,” Dhoni told this writer after he became captain. But now Kumble, Dravid and Laxman are gone; and Zaheer, Sehwag, Gambhir and Harbhajan are out of the picture. For the initial part of his captainship, Dhoni had led a team of proven performers. Now is the time for him to emerge as a leader of men and forge his own team. He is trying to do that, picking his men, trying to be more assertive. “I had to change a bit. The batting line-up has changed a lot, almost completely,” Dhoni conceded. “That means you have to tell youngsters what needs to be done, what went wrong.” With experienced players, Dhoni said, he did not have to be vocal. “But with the new side you often have to talk to them, keep telling them what needs to be done, what are the faults,” he said. It helped that Dhoni played a match-winning in Chennai, the 224 that set the series up, and possibly crushed the spirit of the Australians. He turned the match around with a partnership of 128 with Kohli, and won it with a partnership of 140 for the ninth wicket with Bhuvneshwar. After the loss to England, with recriminations and blame flying around, a 4-0 win over even a weakened Australia deserves credit. Selection
The selectors and the captain took some important calls. The most difficult one was to drop Gautam Gambhir. He had averaged 43.57 against England recently, the third best in the team. Only two men had made more runs than his 251. Yet, he was sacked. The man who replaced him for the first two Tests, Murali Vijay, had not had a great first class season. He had got into the India XI on the back of the 116 in the Irani Trophy in January, after a horror Ranji season, in which he made 138 runs in eight innings. He failed in the first Test, but then effected a startling turnaround. Five Indian batsmen scored centuries in the series, but Vijay was the only one to hit two of them, and was the highest scorer among both teams with 430 runs. He was involved with two partnerships that crushed Australia — 370 with Pujara in Hyderabad and 289 with Dhawan in Mohali. Vijay had played Tests before, Dhawan had not. It did not seem so when he made a stunning debut in Mohali after Sehwag was dropped. Dhawan made it count, scoring runs with batsmanship of rare ease. The 187 runs he made were scored with Sehwagian speed, but his knock had beauty quite different from Sehwag’s brutal splendour. Jadeja had played one Test against England in Nagpur, and was the subject of ridicule — his monster scores in Ranji Trophy make him primarily a batsman, but he had to be shielded in Test cricket by Dhoni. His bowling was thought to be competent without being menacing. But on tracks that helped him, Jadeja was India’s surprise weapon, answer to Dhoni’s desire of an allrounder who added depth to the side. He was the team’s fifth bowling option but punched above his weight, finishing with 24 wickets at 17.45. He also got Australia’s best batsman, Michael Clarke, out five times in the six innings the Australian captain batted. He also managed to score a few runs — first during the nervy chase in Mohali and then in India’s first innings in Delhi when the team was in trouble. Bhuvneshwar, another debutant, bowled well, making the ball dart sharply off the pitch. In Mohali, his three early wickets were crucial. He proved to be a useful No. 9 batsman. Dropping Sehwag and Gambhir — the second and third highest scorers for India against England — was a brave decision. On home turf, it worked. “The guys who won the games for India were youngsters. All in their 20s with almost eight-10 years to go,” Sunil Gavaskar said. “I think they are ready to take on the tough world of Test cricket. Certainly what has happened is the development of a lot of players.” The four pitches used in the Test series helped spinners. With the exception of the Mohali track, the wickets helped spinners from day one. Even before they were used, they seemed like they had been played on — it looked like they had been used for three days in the case of Chennai, four days in the case of Delhi, according to experts. Australia’s inexperienced batting line-up was clueless. Their first instinct is to attack, but they do not have the ability to do that now. An Australian batsman (Clarke) scored a century on the first day of the series. They did get 12 half-centuries, which meant the starts they got were not capitalised upon. The batsmen averaged just 25.89 against India’s 43.80. Their top seven batsmen averaged 27.40. Australia’s openers put up 438 runs at an average of 27.37; India’s openers racked up an unbelievable 806 runs at 62. Australia had only three 100-plus partnerships against India’s six. India’s spinners were unplayable for Australia for most of the series, taking 65 out of the 78 wickets to fall to bowlers. More embarrassing was their failure to tackle the seam movement extracted by Bhuvneshwar, especially in Mohali. Should India have provided tracks that were deteriorated, rather than the ones which deteriorate through the match? That is open to debate, but there is no doubt it was through design rather than by accident. The curator of the pitch for the first Test, K Parthasarathy, said: “We started by making the entire pitch firm. We watered it selectively. The areas on either side of the stumps were kept dry, and so turned out to be loose. The line of the stumps was watered and rolled. It stayed firm,” he said. It is no secret Dhoni has demanded turning wickets in India, and it is no secret either that he is not a man to be opposed. It is probable the pitches were made to help home spinners because India had lost 0-8 to England and Australia in 2011-12. Australia’s spinners took 27 off the 49 Indian wickets, or 55 per cent; the Indian spinners (with 65 out of 78 wickets) accounted for 83.33 per cent of Australia’s batsmen. That is a massive difference — clearly, even on very helpful tracks, Australia’s spinners were unable to make a difference. The Australians were hobbled by the lack of a good spinner. England had no such weakness and won because they had two very good spinners, Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar. England’s spinners had taken 39 of the 55 Indians wickets, nearly 70 per cent. That was a gamble India and Dhoni had taken in the eight Tests of the home season. The gamble failed horribly against England; against the weaker Australians, it came off. Weak Australia
This proved to be the weakest team to visit India and endured the worst result by any nation in 70 Test series in India. Australia also suffered their worst series defeat since losing 1-5 to England in 1978-79. Michael Clarke’s team was disjointed. Clarke is a tough leader who does not brook opposition, insiders say. But the action against four players suggested things had been allowed to drift for long. If the remedial action was a ban on four players — for a series of minor transgressions culminating in their not submitting their homework on how to play better — it says as much about the four as about the leadership of the squad. Clearly, there was deficit of efficient leadership, resulting in the need for harsh action. It speaks of poor player management. The Australian pace bowling attack had only one real threat, James Pattinson. Their spin bowling attack had only one minor threat, Nathan Lyon. They failed to trouble Indian batsmen, even though the Indians were at a disadvantage of never having the first use of the wicket. “It would have been closer if Australia had been able to bat better,” says Rahul Dravid, former Indian captain. “Their inexperience, their inability to construct any big score on wickets like these let them down very badly.”
The road ahead India proved tigers at home, but the road ahead is rocky. They next play a Test at home only in October 2014. India are scheduled to tour South Africa late this year, followed by tours of New Zealand and England next year, for a total of 11 Test matches. It might be useful to play the cynic and relook the negatives of the current win — India won on very helpful tracks against a very weak Australian side. If we have to do well in the three series abroad, we need to be realistic. The pitches in South Africa will be hard and bouncy. The pitches in New Zealand and England will help swing and seam bowling. “We are not going to win in South Africa with the bowling attack that played here,” says Rahul Dravid. “Three spinners won’t work. I don’t think the wickets there are going to support any spin. We need four or five fast bowlers. Identify them, make sure they are fit.” “The first thing the selectors, Dhoni and coach Duncan Fletcher have to do is identify the players who are going to be on that trip,” he says. “Ensure they are prepared. Communicate to them the challenges they are going to face and how they can practice. Ensure they have enough practice,” he says.
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Mahendra
He candidly admitted that youths returning from Nepal were booked under the Egress and Internal Movement Control Act (EIMCA) and bailed out by courts.
The official website of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs — mha.nic.in, which was modified on March 4 this year — reflects the surrender policy of 2004 which was formulated via a Cabinet decision of January 31, 2004.
