VIRTUAL MILITARY RULE IN POK
by B.Raman
(To be read in continuation of the earlier article
titled "The Omens From Muzaffarabad" available at http://www.saag.org/papers/paper286.html
)
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With the election of Maj.Gen.Sardar Mohammad Anwar Khan,
former Vice-Chief of the General Staff, as the so-called President of
Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) on August 1,2001, POK has been brought
under virtual military rule, with Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan, the elected
Prime Minister, reduced to a figurehead. Maj.Gen. Anwar Khan had
earlier taken premature retirement from the Army on July 30,2001, to
enable him to contest the election.
As already reported, Maj.Gen.Anwar Khan, of the Sudhan
tribe, is believed to be related to Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz Khan, one of the
two Corps Commanders at Lahore, who is the clandestine Chief of Staff of
Pakistan's Army of Islam, consisting of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, the
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Jaish-e-Mohammad
(JEM) and the Al Badr, of the East Pakistan notoriety.
Maj.Gen.Anwar Khan has been operating more from the GHQ
in Rawalpindi than from Muzaffarabad, the capital of POK, and has already
started imposing his will on the POK administration. He rejected a
proposal from Sikandar Hayat Khan for the inclusion of Sardar Attique
Ahmed Khan, son of Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan of the Muslim Conference, in
his Cabinet.
Gen.Pervez Musharraf, the self-reinstated Chief of the
Army Staff, the self-styled Chief Executive and the self-promoted
President of Pakistan, has been unhappy over the statements issued by
Qayyum Khan last year welcoming the initiatives of Mr.A.B.Vajpayee, the
Indian Prime Minister, for peace in Jammu & Kashmir. He had earlier
ruled out the election of Qayyum Khan as the President of the POK and has
now made Maj.Gen.Anwar Khan disapprove the inclusion of his son as a
Minister.
The swearing-in of the new Cabinet was delayed by a
fortnight since Maj.Gen.Anwar Khan wanted the Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) and the General Officer Commanding (GOC) Muree, Major General Shahid
Aziz, to clear all the names before they were sworn in. Ultimately,
a Cabinet consisting of the following eight members was announced on the
night of August 13, 2001: Syed Mumtaz Ali Gilani and Mufti Mansoor from
Muzaffarabad, Sardar Ameer Akbar Khan from Bagh, Sardar Mohammad Yaqoob
Khan from Rawalakot, Raja Nisar Ahmad Khan from Kotli, Chaudhry Masood
Khalid from Mirpur, Shah Gulam Qadir and Hafiz Raza. The place of
origin of the last two Ministers is not known.
It is reported that while the pay and allowances of the
first six Ministers would be paid from the budget of the POK, which is
actually prepared by Abbas Sarfaraz Khan, Federal Minister for Kashmir and
Northern Areas Affairs, and got approved by the so-called Azad Jammu and
Kashmir Council presided over by Musharraf, those of the last two would be
met partly from the budget of the ISI-run Kashmir Liberation Cell and
partly from the zakat fund. The reasons for this difference are not
clear.
Maj.Gen.Anwar Khan, who has reportedly been entrusted
with the task of intensifying the terrorist activities of the jehadi
organisation in J & K, has already had separate meetings with the
United Jehad Council headed by Syed Salahuddin of the Hizbul Mujahideen
and the leaders of the constitutent units of the Army of Islam. Both
the meetings were reportedly held in the Kashmir House in Islamabad.
He is also reported to have already ordered a series of
measures to revamp the working of the Muzaffarabad-based Kashmir
Liberation Cell---such as stepping up its psywar activities through radio,
TV and Internet with greater focus on audio recordings and video clips
recording the intifada of the Palestinians against Israel in order to
motivate the Kashmiris to emulate the Palestinians, greater co-ordination
of the ground operations etc.
He has also taken up the priority task of pressurising
the local leadership, administration, non-governmental organisations and
public opinion to give up their opposition to the proposal initiated by
the Musharraf Government last year to increase the height of the Mangla
Dam in order to make more water and electricity available to the farmers
of Punjab.
There were widespread demonstrations against the
proposal all over the POK last year and the previous Government of the
Pakistan People's Party (PPP) headed by the then Prime Minister, Barrister
Sultan Mahmud Chaudhury, had also strongly opposed it.
There was a running dispute between the former POK
Government and the military junta in Islamabad over the following
questions:
* The Federal Government's failure to share with the POK
administration the profits from the Mangla Dam constructed in POK
territory for the benefit of the farmers and electricity consumers of
Punjab in the 1960s. A spokesman of the previous PPP Government in
Muzaffarabad said: "Mangla Dam, one of the major projects of the
country, is constructed within the territorial limits of AJ&K (Azad
Jammu & Kashmir) and the net profit earned by the authority (the
Water and Power Development Authority of Pakistan ) from the dam should
have been shared with the Government of AJK, but WAPDA did not do
so." He also said that the WAPDA had earned a net profit of
Rs 87,772,560 million from the Mangla Dam since its commissioning, but
it had not shared a single rupee out of this with the POK Government.
* Reimbursement to the POK Government of the
expenditure incurred by it on the construction of the power transmission
and distribution network inside the POK. According to the previous PPP
Government, "the agreement signed by the WAPDA and the AJK
government at the time of the dam's construction had provided that the
construction of the power supply infrastructure in AJK was the liability
of WAPDA, but WAPDA could not do so. Consequently, the AJ&K
government completed this job by incurring an amount of Rs 3500 million
from its own pocket and also maintained the same." The previous PPP
Government was demanding that this amount should have been reimbursed to
it by the Federal Government, which it has not done so.
* The refusal of the previous PPP Government to pay to
the WAPDA outstanding dues amounting to Rs 1,567 million for the period
ending March 2001. The WAPDA has been claiming this for the power
supplied by it to the consumers in the POK.
* The refusal of the previous PPP Government to pay
General Sales Tax on the power supplied by the WAPDA on the ground that
the WAPDA had no jurisdiction to levy GST in POK territory.
In a statement issued on August 6,2001, the
President of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation League (JKLL) and former Chief
Justice of the POK High Court, Abdul Majeed Malick, said there was no
justification for raising the level of the Mangla Dam. He
added:"The people of Mirpur should not be disturbed once again and if
there is a water crisis in Pakistan, then the Federal Government should
construct the Kalabagh Dam (outside the POK)."
He disputed the WAPDA's claim that only 40,000 people would be displaced
as a result of the extension and asserted that around 100,000 people would
be displaced and two tehsils of district Mirpur would be submerged.
He pointed out that the people of the POK, who were displaced by the
original construction of the dam in the 1960s, had not been provided with
any relief so far. According to him, they were promised alternate
land in Punjab, but this promise was never kept.
There has been considerable pressure on Musharraf from
the Punjabi farmers and from the Punjabi Generals, many of whom come from
rich Punjabi land-owning families, for the implementation of the project
for raising the height of the dam. Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan has
given indications that he might be inclined to go along with Islamabad on
this issue provided effective measures were taken for the relief of the
affected people.
In the meanwhile, there were three explosions in POK
organised by unidentified elements coinciding with the election of
Maj.Gen.Anwar Khan as the President. One Pakistani Army soldier was
killed and two others were injured when a bomb exploded in a bus in POK
near Forward Kahuta village on August 3, 2001. In another incident
the same day, three armymen were killed and four others injured when a
vehicle in which they were travelling from Muzaffarabad fell into the
Jhelum river near village Tandali after an explosion. The previous
evening, there was another explosion on the roof of a passenger bus,
killing a soldier and injuring another soldier and a passenger near
Tungeri village in Bagh district of POK. The bus was proceeding to
Rawalpindi.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For
Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: [email protected]
)
