Key Personalities of Kashmir

INDIAN KASHMIR

Mufti Mohd Sayeed

Mufti Mohd Sayeed is the chief minister of Indian Kashmir, following the strong election performance of the People's Democratic Party in 2002 state assembly elections.  A former congress politician and union home minister, he is keen to assert good governance in the state.  However, he is in a weak coalition with the Congress Party, which raises long-term questions about his government.

Official Jammu & Kashmir State Government Biography

INDIAN KASHMIR

Farooq Abdullah

The pro-Indian, but pro-autonomy for Kashmir, former chief minister of the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir.

A one-time doctor in England, Farooq is married to Molly, an English nurse. Farooq Abdullah has been a leading figure in Kashmiri politics since the early 1980s. He is son and heir to Sheikh Abdullah, the nationalist Kashmiri leader who did so much to end feudalist Dogra rule in Kashmir during the 1930s and 40s. Farooq Abdullah has a different reputation to his father. There have been allegations of corruption, and during the 1980s and 90s he had something of a playboy image. He was chief minister between 1982 and 1984, when he was controversially dismissed by Governor Jagmohan, only to return in 1986 as part of an intricate deal that saw an alliance between Congress (I) and his National Conference party.

Farooq won state assembly elections in 1987, but the results were contested by the Muslim United Front, a separatist alliance that claimed it had been cheated of many seats through rigging. The Valley soon slid into violence from 1988, and in January 1990 Farooq Abdullah resigned when New Delhi appointed Jagmohan as Governor once again. He spent much of the intervening time back in London. In September 1996 Farooq returned to power when new state assembly elections were held, and he has led the Indian state government ever since. Today he is widely reckoned to be seeking a role in national Indian politics, perhaps as Vice-President.

The Jammu & Kashmir police answer to him – but not the Army. He is a superb orator.

Read more about Abdullah:

Recommended – Aditya Sinha, Farooq Abdullah – A Biography (New Delhi, UBSPD) This biography of Farooq paints him in a sympathetic light, but still covers many of the criticisms that have been levelled at him.

Profile - The Good Doctor (Outlook, October 2000)

Lecture by Farooq Abdullah – Stimson Centre (April 1999)

Short Biography from the Stimson Centre

Profile – The Survivor, Jang (August 2000)

Question Marks over Kashmir - Business Line (June 2000)

INDIAN KASHMIR

Umar Abdullah

Like father, like son.  Umar Abdullah is the son of Farooq Abdullah, grandson of Sheikh Abdullah.  As with all South Asian dynasties, power cascades down the generations.   Since the National Conference defeat in 2002, he has taken over the reins of the party in Kashmir.

A leading figure in the relatively new People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Mufti is unusual figure in Kashmir – a female politician. While she has (previously) met with little political success, perhaps due to her father's (Mufti Mohd Sayeed) unfortunate legacy as Indian Home Minister in 1989, she has just made a strong showing in the 2002 Kashmir state assembly elections - and the PDP has become the main party in the Kashmir Valley.

INDIAN KASHMIR (SEPARATISTS)

Umar Farooq

Read more about Geelani:

Rediff Interview, April 8, 2000

Interview with Geelani, Praveen Swami (Frontline, August 27 - September 5, 1997)

Interview in The Week (August 8, 1999)

Jamaat-i-Islami, Jama'at-e-Islami Jammu & Kashmir at a Glance (Srinagar, JI, c. 1993)

Jamaat-i-Islami, The most Misunderstood and ill-oppressed organisation (Srinagar, Political Bureau, JI, c.1995)

Shabir Shah

Shabir Shah is one of the highest profile campaigners for Kashmiri independence.    As a a leader of the Jammu Kashmir People's League, he campaigner for self-determination in Kashmir from the late 1960s.  Having spent much of his life in Indian jails, and - in the 1990s - gained international coverage as an Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience, Shah remains an important figures in Kashmiri politics.  But he is also controversial.  Despite 20 years in Indian prisons, and a raptorous popular welcome in Kashmir when he was released in October 1994, his political activities since have antagonised both India and fellow Kashmiri opposition leaders.  He declined to join the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) because it would not adopt his more liberal agenda, and chose instead to start a new political party called the Jammu Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party (JKDFP).

Unusual among Kashmiri opposition leaders, Shah has been outspoken about minorities in Kashmir and has reached out to them.  But critics claim he is more popular overseas, in particular in the USA, than he is in Kashmir.

Read more about Shabir Shah:

JKDFP Web-site

jammukashmir.com Interview with Shabir Shah (April 18, 1999)

Rediff Interview (July 23, 1998)

The people of Kashmir cannot be wished away (Shabir Shah)

Shabir Shah floats new party (Rediff, May 25, 1998)

Shabir fleeced Rs 500m, claims aide (Rediff, April 1998)

Shabir Shah, Voice of Conscience (Shabir Shah's Fan Club, Rawalpindi c.1998)

Altaf Hussain, Shabir Shah: A Living Legend in Kashmir History (Srinagar: Noble Publishing House, c.1998)  This is a somewhat doting hagiography of Shah.

Lt Gen Patankar, who was commissioned into the regiment of artillery in June 1965, is a qualified paratrooper and helicopter pilot who participated in the 1971 war as an Air Observation Post Pilot. He undertook training at many military institutions in India and abroad including Joint Services Staff College at Canberra, Australia, higher command course at College of Combat, Mhow and United States Army War College course in Pennsylvania, USA.

Border Security Force Inspector General, G.S.Gill

G.S.Gill is a police officer transferred into the paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF), where he commands BSF forces in Kashmir. These armed units are responsible for internal security and counter-militancy operations. Gill is a quiet-spoken Sikh officer who previously served in the Punjab, and who reports to the Unified Military Command in Kashmir. He has been in Kashmir for several years, but had previously served in the state in the mid-1990s.

Syed Salahuddin

" Until 1987 he was a little known pro-Pakistan ideologue-political activist who swore by the Indian Constitution, not once but thrice. He unsuccessfully contested Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections as a Jammat-e-Islami candidate. Then he was known as Yousaf Shah. Today, this failed Kashmiri politician holds all the guns and aces for peace in Kashmir as Syed Salahuddin, Supreme Commander of Hizb-ul Mujahideen, a dreaded militant outfit that evokes both fear and sympathy among the violence-weary people of Kashmir. Enigmatic but forthright, 55-year-old Salahuddin is now a father figure, reverentially called Peer Sahib (a religious title), among the militants fighting a decade-long
tenacious and bloody secessionist insurgency in the Valley." (taken from Vinayak profile below)

Read more about Salahuddin:

Interview with Ramesh Vinayak (News Today, September 7, 2000)

Will there still be a way with Hizbul Chief?  (Free Press Journal, August 23, 2000)    Good analysis of where Salahuddin stands with India, Pakistan - and Majid Dar.

Formerly Hizbul Mujahadeen (HM) operational commander in Jammu & Kashmir (until October 2001), Dar gained a name for himself with the cease-fire announcement by HM in August 2000. While the cease-fire soon fell through, Dar was seen as an important militant leader by both the Indians and Pakistanis. He comes from the Islamist town of Sopore, in the north of the Kashmir Valley, and ran a dry cleaning store before joining the militancy. As a Valley commander, born and bred, Dar is perhaps more in touch with what the militant cadre and civilian population think about the changing situation on the ground. Dar did want Kashmir to be a part of Pakistan.   Dar was viewed as an intelligent moderate with a strong base in the south of the Kashmir Valley.

HM has about 1,000 to 1,800 militants. Many are Kashmiri from the Kashmir Valley. HM enjoys a wider support network in the Kashmir Valley than many other militant groups because of its traditional links with Jamaat-i-Islami, the Islamist party. Jamaat supporters form a natural support base for HM, and it is changing thinking in Jamaat along with the changing nature of militancy that is encouraging Dar to consider different forms of resistance to India. It is difficult to estimate how much support Dar enjoys from HM commanders, but sources in the Valley argue it has declined steeply as he appears to be living under Indian protection.  In May 2002 Dar was expelled from the HM by Salahuddin.  However, there have been rumblings from HM commanders in the Kashmir Valley, some of whom continue to support his position.  He was killed by unidentified gunmen in 2003.

Read more about Dar:

Abdul Majid Dar: more a politician than a militant

 Born in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh in 1926, India’s first Hindu Nationalist Prime Minister continues to be an unknown quantity. While cautious and pragmatic, his political roots lie with the extremist Hindu RSS, and BJP fortunes depend on RSS canvassing at elections. Foreign Minister in the 1970s, Prime Minister (briefly) in 1996, and then Prime Minister at the head of a BJP-led coalition from 1998, Vajpayee is committed to making India a great state. To this end, he ordered nuclear tests in 1998. But he has also made strides for peace – travelling on the first bus to the Pakistani city of Lahore in 1999. In office, he has watered down previous BJP commitments to build a temple at Ayodha, end Kashmiri autonomy and scrap the separate civil code for Indian Muslims. At the same time, he escalated the Indo-Pak crisis in December 2001 and his government has been accused of not doing enough to prevent the communal riots in Gujarat that killed hundreds in late February 2002. Vajpayee is a published poet – and his poetry even sells well in Kashmir. He is also a bachelor who enjoys cooking. However, at 77 – and plagued by alleged health problems – the question of succession looms large.

INDIA

Foreign Minister Yaswant Sinha

Born in 1937, Yaswant Sinha was a member of India’s elite Indian Administrative Service before entering politics in the 1980s.   He was elected to the Upper House (Rajya Sabha) of Indian Parliament in 1988, representing the Janata party. Subsequently, he became the Finance Minister of India from November, 1990 to June, 1991. He was elected to the Lower House (Lok Sabha) of Indian Parliament in 1998.  He was Finance Minister again in March, 1998 and again after the elections of 1999.  On July 1, 2002, he became Foreign Minister.

 George Fernandes is a 72-year old Christian, and former socialist, who has turned more and more hawkish in recent years. First elected to the Lok Sabha in 1947, he founded his own party, the Samata party, in 1994. When then Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi imposed a state of emergency in 1975, he went underground to fight it and her. In the early 1990s, Fernandes was considered a moderate who understood issues like Kashmir well. In 1998, he was appointed defence minister in the BJP-led coalition. Sacked in March 2001 following a corruption scandal, he was soon reappointed on October 15, 2001.

He is known for his erratic statements, including on-record comments like ‘China is our public enemy number one.’ During the December 2001 crisis he also implied that India was setting deadlines on Pakistan – according to his critics, potentially destabilising a difficult situation. He remains popular, however, particularly with the Army.

He was appointed Home Minister in 1998.

Appointed on December 13, 2000, Vikram Sood is chief of India’s powerful foreign intelligence service, the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW). He has direct access to the Indian Prime Minister, and a global network of stations. RAW station chiefs also provide political analysis, thereby contributing to foreign policy formation. RAW is answerable to the Indian Prime Minister, and does not engage in independent actions. Sood is a career intelligence officer, joining RAW in 1966. There was criticism of RAW following the 1999 Kargil Crisis, which was portrayed by many as an intelligence failure. It is assumed that RAW coverage of Pakistan is patchy, with little real-time strategic intelligence at Corps Commander level.

Born in Delhi in 1943, General Pervez Musharraf was part of the Urdu-speaking Muslim population of Pakistan that moved from India during partition. He joined the Army as an artillery officer in 1964, and saw action in the 1965 Indo-Pak war. A commando in the Special Services Group (SSG) for seven years, he also saw action in the 1971 war. He made Major General in 1991, Lt. General in 1995 (with a strike corps to command). He spent a year training at the Royal College of Defence Studies, in London, and is considered a secular, Western-minded General.

In 1998 he took over as Chief of Army Staff following the resignation of General Jehangir Karamat. He was widely considered responsible for the military incursion in Kargil in the early Summer of 1999, which precipitated a major Indo-Pak crisis. Following an attempt by the Pakistani Prime Minister to sack him, he seized power in Pakistan on October 12, 1999.

In July 2001, he travelled to India to meet Prime Minister Vajpayee at the Agra Summit. And following the September 11 attacks, he immediately pledged support for the United States. His power-base in Pakistan appears strong, with a major rival – General Mohd Aziz – sidelined – and backing from the Army for his announcement of sweeping changes to Pakistan in January 2002. However, his regime is a collegiate military dictatorship – with consensus decisions from the corps commanders ruling the sway.

Lt.General Aziz Khan is presently chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff committee in the Pakistani armed forces. This role, while it has him alongside senior Generals, lacks teeth, as he does not directly command a key corps. He is notionally number three in the military heirarchy, after Musharraf and Vice Chief of Army General Muhammad Yousuf.

He played a critical role in the 1999 coup that brought Musharraf to power – then as Chief of the General Staff. As a leading hawk, he firmly backed Kashmiri militant groups in their fight against India, often visiting Pakistani Kashmir to lend visible support to the cause. On September 1, 2000, he was posted to the critical post of Lahore Corps Commander. On October 7, 2001, Aziz Khan was effectively neutralised as a coup risk by being appointed to his new job.

General Aziz Khan is a burly officer, much loved by Kashmiri militant groups. He is said to say little in the leadership meetings.

General Ehsan ul-Haq is a trusted friend of Musharraf – and the man Musharraf has chosen to bring the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) into line with Pakistan’s new policy position on militant groups. He was appointed shortly after the September 11 attacks. The ISI is a powerful organisation (perhaps 10,000 strong), staffed by military officers at the higher levels, which provides both domestic and foreign intelligence for Pakistan. The ISI has stations worldwide, and a separate reporting structure back to Pakistan. Regionally, the ISI played a leading role in developing both the 1980s Afghan resistance and the 1990s Taliban. It also supported Kashmiri militant groups with a covert stream of funding, weapons and communications equipment. Today Ehsan ul-Haq is pledged to reform it further – and has already supposedly closed its Kashmir directorate in January 2002.

Khan was an important JKLF leader in the 1970s and 1980s, and has spent much of his life in exile. A strong advocate of independence, he has advocated violent insurrection against Indian rule for many years, and continues to agitate against Pakistani rule over Azad Kashmir as well. He comes from the Northern areas of Kashmir, so does not have the same connections to the Valley as many Kashmiris do. In 1994 the JKLF split for the third time, when Yasin Malik called a JKLF cease-fire. Khan disowned his Valley commander, accusing him of treachery, and since has been reduced to leading a rump JKLF faction largely based in Pakistan. Khan is based in Rawalpindi.

Born in 1938 in Ghana, and educated at MIT, Kofi Annan was appointed UN Secretary General in January 1997. He had worked with the UN since 1962, and while the first black African Secretary General, he was also considered an inside candidate – with US approval. He was elected for a second term in 2001. The same year he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (with the UN). A former head of UN peacekeeping, Annan is self-confident and candid – but has no illusions about the Kashmir dispute, one of the world conflicts that the UN has failed to make any headway on. Annan is on frosty terms with the head of UNMOGIP, the UN mission in Kashmir, following a diplomatic incident in October 2001. Annan has also played a minimal role in the Winter 2001 Indo-Pak crisis. It is difficult for him to intervene given India’s determination to keep the UN out of Kashmir.

General Hermann Loidolt (an Austrian Army officer seconded to the UN) got into serious trouble over comments he made in October 2001, calling for US intervention in the Kashmir dispute. The Indian government complained to the UN about this – a serious excess of his role. On November 1 he was reprimanded ("reminded of the limits of his responsibilities") and journalists were told by UN HQ that his views "did not reflect the views of the Secretary-General."

After serving in the Texas National Guard George W. Bush worked in the oil and gas industries until 1986, when he got involved in his father's successful 1988 presidential campaign. He returned to Texas and was elected governor there in 1994 and again in 1998. Bush won the Republican nomination for president in August of 2000, and won the presidential race later that year (after a small dispute over ballots in Florida). He knows relatively little about foreign affairs, but appears to be learning fast. In December 2001 he intervened by telephone to encourage India and Pakistan to settle their differences; in January 2002 he welcomed Pakistan’s commitment to ban certain militant groups.

His presidency has so far been defined by the events of September 11 and thereafter, and he enjoys high approval ratings.

After a poor upbringing in the American South, Colin Powell joined the army. He completed two tours in Vietnam, winning two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, a Soldier’s Medal, and the Legion of Merit. He became the first black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993, and made his name as America’s military commander during the Gulf War. In 2001, President Bush appointed him Secretary of State – where he appears to tread, as a bipartisan figure, a more moderate path than some.

Donald Rumsfeld is a hawk who previously served as Secretary of State for Defence in the mid-1970s. Before that, he was a congressman in Illinois for eight years. He was a Cold War warrior, and is a firm supporter of National Missile Defence. He is responsible for the military campaign against terrorism. President Bush appointed him Defence Secretary in 2001.

Provost of Stanford University (1993-1999), previously senior fellow with the Hoover Foundation. She has moved in and out of think-tanks and government work. She was a College Professor at the age of 26, and is considered hawkish and very bright. Rice is a Council of Foreign Relations member, a National Endowment for the Humanities trustee, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Appointed CIA chief in 1997, Tenet was formerly deputy chief (1995-1997). Prior to that, he worked on a number of staff posts in and around the House and Senate. He was educated at Georgetown.

The US has good intelligence coverage of South Asia from satellite imagery and electronic intercepts. While criticised for not predicting the 1998 nuclear tests, the CIA can play a useful role in defusing regional tension by providing information to the President and Department of State.

Tony Blair was born in 1953 in Scotland, and after qualifying as a lawyer became MP for Sedgefield in 1983. In 1994, he became the youngest ever leader of the Labour Party – and won a decisive victory in the 1997 general election (a feat he repeated in 2001). A leading player on the world stage, he has been at the forefront of the diplomatic campaign to bolster support for the US-led war on terrorism post September 11. In January 2002, he travelled to India and Pakistan in an attempt to reduce tension (though cynics gently noted that he was also trying to held BAE sell Hawk Trainer jets to India).

Fai is President of the Kashmiri American Council (KAC), a leading diaspora lobby group campaigning for Kashmiri self-determination. A Kashmiri from the Valley, Fai lobbies US politicians and officials on Kashmir based from an office in Washington DC. It has been alleged that Fai receives Pakistani funds – which he denies. He is also an important figure in continuing informal moves between India, Pakistan and the United States on Kashmir.

KASHMIR LOBBYISTS OVERSEAS

Ayub Thakur

From Kashmir, Thakur is one of the diaspora Kashmiri activists on behalf of Kashmiri opposition. Based in London, he is President of the World Kashmir Freedom Movement (WKFM) which campaigns for Kashmiri self-determination. Some Kashmir watchers feel that Thakur, while a crucial figure in the early 1990s, is more detached from the Kashmir issue now so much activity takes place from Washington DC.