Authors: Adrian Levy
After some time he struggled out again. ‘I ran up a ridge as fast as I could, until just before the sun came up. From my eyrie up there, I now had a view back down the way I had come.’ He decided to stop. By his reckoning, two hours had passed since he had left the
dhoka
beside the Amarnath route. He guessed that he had to be well above fifteen thousand feet. To the east, he could see the seven magnificent peaks of Sheshnag. He could also see that the horizon was beginning to bleed red. In less than an hour, sunlight would hit this spot where he crouched. ‘I decided to stay here until the end of the day, then after dark I would work my way back down.’
However, a disturbing thought crept over him as he sat up there, struggling with his bearings and the wind-chill. He tried to envisage the map. ‘Take in your general position from the dawn,’ he murmured, willing himself to remain conscious. Later, he reassured himself, he would be able to check his direction by looking at how the moss grew on the trees, since it disliked direct sunlight and thrived on the northern sides of trunks. But, dehydrated, hypothermic and disoriented by his quick ascent, he came to the conclusion that he was no longer in India at all, and had strayed into Pakistan: ‘This was as bad as things could get.’ The more he thought about it, the more certain he became. After all, it was not as if there was a wall dividing the two nations at this elevation. All of his effort, and he had simply run into the arms of his enemies, the land of fundamentalism and betrayal. His mind was racing.
A noise from below rose towards him. It sounded like a scratch or a rasp. Maybe he was imagining it, but in an organic landscape of wood and stone, he thought he had recognised the sound of gunmetal on rock. Someone was out there, looking for him. They were armed, and not far away. ‘Come on, John,’ he said to himself, summoning his last molecules of strength. ‘Make a move.’ He inched further along the ridge, his more badly injured right foot dragging behind, crawled, wriggled, and then clambered to his knees. Then pushed his bruised and tender frame upright, hand over hand, and dug in behind a larger rock to shelter from the spanking wind. The only sound he could hear was the shrill descending whistle of the bearded vultures circling above.
Back in the
gujjar
hut, Don, Paul and Keith were under armed guard. A sentry had raised the alarm at around 3 a.m., twenty minutes after John had failed to return from his nocturnal toilet trip. When they had discovered the white trekking jacket hanging limply from a bush, the whole hut had been turned over as the militants searched frantically for him, ripping at clothes, hunting for concealed weapons and ammunition, looking for any clues as to his plans. Having screamed himself hoarse and sent his bloodhounds off down the mountain in search of the American, al Faran’s leader made a call on the radio.
Sikander, waiting at a secret location down in the valley, had taken it. The Indian government had not yet made contact, and there was much debate going on across the border in Pakistan about how long they should wait before ramping up the pressure. Sikander now found himself listening in disbelief as the Turk told him that the worst had happened. One of the Americans had run off, and a desperate hunt was under way, the Turk’s men heading towards Chandanwari, sure that the hostage would have headed straight back down the mountain towards the nearest village. Sikander didn’t need to point out that an American hostage was worth twice as much as a European, and now, just four days in, they were down to one of them.
Sikander blamed himself for putting the Turk in charge. After the siege and the inferno at Charar-e-Sharief there had been no time to
find another commander to lead Operation Ghar. From the start Sikander had been worried about this decision, concerned that the
mujahid
’s explosive temper, fanaticism and lack of discretion made him a liability. Now here he was, listening to a man he had never trusted, a fighter supposedly renowned for his cunning and strength, explaining how his well-trained team had been outwitted by an American civilian, a stranger to these parts, even before the hostage drama had picked up pace. Sikander would relate this night’s events over and over to two close comrades, citing it as the point at which events tilted against them, and repeating what he had told the Turk over the radio that night: ‘Make up for it. Make it right.’
Sixty miles from where Sikander sat, wrestling with how to get Operation Ghar back on track, a military chopper lifted off the tarmac at an air force base near Srinagar, carrying the Governor of Kashmir’s Security Advisor, Lt. Gen. D.D. Saklani, a regal and highly decorated retired military officer. Dismissing the ground crew with a practised flick of the wrist, Saklani smoothed back his silver hair as he silently counted the multiple crises that preoccupied him that morning, 8 July. Four Western hostages were being held by Pakistani militants somewhere up in the mountains, and there were now an estimated 150,000
yatra
pilgrims ascending to Amarnath, seemingly undeterred by the deadly bomb attack in Pahalgam three days before. In response to that incident, the vigilantes of the Hindu RSS were still charging around the trekking town, showing Kashmiri civilians their cudgels. And that, Saklani thought, was before he even got to grips with what he wearily described to close friends as ‘the everyday hatch, match and dispatch’ of life in this wartorn valley, in which he seemed cursed to have served most of his professional life.
If he was to prioritise, the
yatris
presented the biggest headache. New Delhi had made it crystal clear to him that this year’s pilgrimage had to go off without a hitch, as much for political reasons as humanitarian. For Saklani that meant making sure all elements of the security protocol were in place and working, and he had sweated blood to ensure this. Truces had been hammered out with virtually all of the
militant outfits in the valley, in return for taking down some prominent Indian security-force bunkers and pickets in Srinagar. Only the Movement – which he already regarded as one of the most troublesome ISI-sponsored Pakistani outfits – had defied him, angry that despite its repeated demands, security barriers still surrounded Hazratbal, a lakeside mosque in Srinagar, one of the state’s holiest. It had been subjected to an extended siege in October 1993, since when the security forces had guarded it. Saklani recalled thinking that he ‘half expected them to throw a spanner in the works’.
And now a group of foreigners had been kidnapped in the mountains above Pahalgam by an unknown outfit that Saklani suspected was an offshoot of the Movement. This suggested that his security measures were not working. Was the bombing at the bus station down to them too, he now wondered. ‘Damn them,’ he cursed under his breath as the helicopter lurched upwards, following the silvery rope of the Lidder River towards Pahalgam. A militant column was within striking distance of the pilgrims. What had happened to the army operation to pacify the area? There was no point passing the buck.
Looking down at the wild terrain, the endless gullies, the high-altitude meadows and jagged peaks, most of them obscured by shadow and dense forest, Saklani told himself that the task he had been given was an unrealistic one. Not even an army of the size that India had mobilised in Kashmir over the past six years could police this inaccessible landscape. This situation was never going to be resolved by a military operation. Whatever happened in these mountains would be determined by politics. He shuddered at the thought, before glancing down at the papers in his lap. According to police records, there were still thirty-five foreign backpackers out here somewhere, who would have no idea about the kidnappings. How would he find them? As Security Advisor to the Governor of Kashmir, he would feel the heat if any more went missing, especially from New Delhi, where Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao’s fragile Congress Party minority government was already on the ropes, with national elections due next year and the rising tide of violence in Kashmir weakening his authority by the day.
Prime Minister Rao had come to power in 1991, promising to expose and combat Pakistan’s sponsorship of terrorist atrocities on Indian soil. For four years he had stood his ground, but increasingly Pakistan-backed terrorists in Kashmir had been pushing him onto the back foot, as was being noisily trumpeted by the right-wing Hindu nationalists of the Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s largest opposition group. The BJP cited the failure of Indian security forces to protect the Amarnath
yatra
for four years running as evidence that New Delhi was barely in control of the valley, so a successful
yatra
and a firm hold over events in Kashmir over the next weeks and months would determine Rao’s fate in the elections that were due in April 1996. Saklani quietly cursed the police and tourism officials who had allowed trekkers to go into the hills in the first place. There was a war going on, and he was constantly mopping up after abductions, bombings, skirmishes. What had they been thinking of? Were they engulfed in some kind of collective act of wish-fulfilment, hoping that by allowing holidaymakers to head off into the mountains the war would vanish?
Saklani knew better. He had served in Kashmir in 1961, 1962 and 1965. By the early 1980s he had risen to the rank of brigadier, and served in the Military Operations Directive at Army Headquarters. Promoted in 1985 to major general, he had spent another two years in Kashmir, keeping an eye on Chinese troops massing on its border. From 1987 to 1992, as Major General (Operations), he had been placed in the army’s Northern Command (in charge of Jammu and Kashmir state), and acted as Chief of Staff to the Lieutenant General, where he once again focused on Kashmir.
Saklani had fought against Pakistan in 1947, 1965 and 1971, accruing an impressive collection of medals, and considered he knew his neighbour’s feints and wiles well. Having chalked up more than forty years of service, he had retired in 1992 with a plan to spend his remaining years at Mhow, a garrison town created by the British that had become home to the Indian Army Signals Corps, the Combat School and the Infantry Training School. Mhow was less a city than an idea, a nerve centre whose name was actually an old British-era
acronym for ‘Military Headquarters of War’. What better place could there be for a man of war to slow down, living monastically in a simple apartment above a carport, spending his last years teaching, mingling with a new generation of warriors in the pleasant climate of India’s central plains?
But in January 1993 he had got a call from South Block, the Raj-era Secretariat Building in Lutyens’ New Delhi that housed the Indian Ministry of Defence. ‘Sir, we’ve got a job for you,’ Saklani recalled an ingratiating voice saying. Didn’t these defence
babus
read the bulletins, Saklani had thought. He had retired. ‘It’s a prestigious posting, sir.’ He was out of it, he replied, finished with service. Down went the phone, but South Block had called again: ‘Come up to New Delhi.’ Saklani was done with the ministry, he said as forcefully as he could. He was committed to Mhow. Down went the phone. ‘The third time South Block rang, it was an order.’ A man of service, he packed a small bag, leaving behind his batman and his Spartan quarters, arranged even in retirement with simplicity and order: toothbrush, comb, shaving kit, soap. Cup, saucer and tea caddy, maps, magazines and an ashtray. A lifetime at war meant he had few possessions to take with him.
He was to assume the position of Security Advisor to the Governor of Kashmir. Back in a place he swore he had finished with, he had arrived in Srinagar to find a dinner invitation from Governor Girish Saxena, an old and much-admired friend. The one reason Saklani had finally accepted this job, which he had never sought and did not relish, was Saxena. Working for him would be an honour. India’s most accomplished spy chief, Saxena had run the country’s foreign intelligence service, and had not only advised prime ministers but been widely credited in military circles for hardening up the country’s defence posture, as well as dealing with India’s internal uprisings, with bloody gusto. ‘It was after dinner,’ Saklani recalled, ‘after I had agreed to stay, that Saxena let it drop. He was leaving Kashmir right away.’ Saklani tried to conceal his feeling that he had been ‘stitched up’.
There was no going back. There would also be no new governor for six weeks. Saklani had spent that time ‘on a recce’, touring the
fractious state, becoming ‘more and more incredulous at just how appalling things were’. Despite the sheer number of soldiers, paramilitaries, police and intelligence agents, India’s tactics in Kashmir were piecemeal and confused: ‘So many different outfits were operating in the valley and following their own agendas that it was almost impossible to coordinate them.’ Caught off-balance by the flood of Kashmiris taking up arms from 1989 onwards, and the enthusiasm with which Pakistan had come to their assistance, India had thrown all it could at the militancy, without much forward planning. Now, in their attempts to control territory and win over sources, the military, police and intelligence services were tripping over each other. The only messages being received by the international community were of Indian aggression and human rights abuses. Such stories were being energetically promulgated by Pakistan, with several articulate young
maulanas
, including Masood Azhar of the Movement, detailing incidents with unnerving accuracy and dedication. Yet as far as Saklani was concerned, the situation in Kashmir was a simple matter of terrorism stoked by Pakistan. The devastating truth was that twelve thousand innocent people had been killed in the five years since Pakistan had started meddling, and that these days there were nine times more terrorism-related incidents in J&K than anywhere else in the world, most of it, in Saklani’s eyes, engineered by the ISI.
‘If I was going to make any impact,’ Saklani said, ‘I would have to make significant improvements in the way the security forces worked together and the way we told the Kashmir story.’ He went to work at it in the early spring of 1993, establishing a five-storey home-cum-office off Church Lane, at the heart of a heavily fortified government compound squeezed between the parched Sher-i-Kashmir cricket stadium and the Radio Kashmir complex. He quickly became accustomed to being woken by the plock and phut of live rounds breaking his windowpanes, fired by militants from across the Jhelum River. But having lived his whole life under arms, a few wake-up calls did not bother him, and he soon established a routine. Between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. every day he saw members of the public, as he believed in keeping one door open, even as through the other the security forces
rumbled with catch-and-kill instructions. At 10 a.m. he instigated a Unified Command, a daily meeting attended by all sections of the security services, from the police Crime Branch, Special Branch and CID to the uniformed departments, the army, paramilitary police and domestic and foreign intelligence. After four years on a war footing, it was the first time many of these agencies had even sat down face to face.