Sopore: From loved Majid Dar to dreaded Abdullah Uni

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SOPORE, Sep 15: Many of Sopore’s stone pelters and militants of the day were not born when troops destroyed scores of residential houses and business establishments on January 6^th, 1993. Some of them would have been zero to four years old and thus learned only from their parents or elder siblings how BSF soldiers ran amok after a militant attack and massacred nearly 50 civilians in the famous apple town.

While we kept waiting for the VIPs from New Delhi---Ghulam Nabi Azad, Makhan Lal Fotedar and Ghulam Rasool Kar---and Governor’s Advisor incharge Home, Lt Gen Mehmood Ahmad Zaki on January 8th, one of the young officers of Army said candidly: “We’ll never regain Sopore as long as Majid Dar lives”. “Why?” asked we about the legendary guerrilla who operated as then formidable Hizbul Mujahideen’s “Military Advisor”. “He does not tolerate even a minor misbevaiour of his cadres with the masses”. The Major went on to elaborate that security forces used to get 80 percent of the information free often from those harmed, harassed or humiliated by militants. Less than 20 percent, he said, would flow from paid informants.

Very few, drawn from a couple of neighbourhoods in the curfewed town, confirmed what the officer said inside the office of the Principal of Government Degree College, Mohammad Abdullah Charoo. Charoo, a Baramulla resident, who was years later elevated to the position of Chairman of J&K State Board of School Education, confirmed every word of the Army officer.

Notwithstanding grapevine of his ultimately falling into the trap of the Indian intelligence, Dar commanded respect not only in hometown Sopore but also in his organisation headed by Syed Salah-ud-din in Pakistan. He was never arrested until he was gunned down, allegedly by Salahuddin loyalists, a day before he was to have left for Pakistan. Even his passion for looking young, and his controversial second marriage to a relative failed, to lower his prestige.

One of his Sudanese fighters, namely Ibni Masood, and the Afghan warlord Gulbadeen Hikmatyar’s bodyguard Akbar Bhai shot into prominence for high-precision rocket attacks on paramilitary camps in the “liberated town” but nobody shared Dar’s legend. Call it fear or irony, less than 800 people participated in his lackluster funeral in Noorbagh locality on March 21, 2003. Almost all of Dar’s loyalists in the Hizbul leadership, including Farooq Mirchal and Commander Masood Tantray, were later eliminated, or got eliminated, one by one. His widow, Dr Shameema Badroo, was left incapacitated in one attack. With media and politicians on its side, Hizb succeeded in silently making a many believe that Dar and his group had been assigned by New Delhi to take over the organisation. Still, Hizb seemed to have died its death in Sopore with Dar’s in 2003.

Eighteen years after the worst massacre in town, Sopore is yet again in news---this time for killing of another legendary militant, Abdullah Uni. This 27-year-old from Pakistani Punjab gained as much influence as Dar did but for completely converse reasons. People in Sopore knew Uni as chief of the dreaded Lashkar-e-Tayyiba in J&K, though there was nothing official from the outfit till he was given a clean chit in the assassination of cleric-politician Maulana Shaukat Shah last fortnight. Even the letter addressed to Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith chief investigation panel did not reveal Uni’s status in the organisation.

On account of his six-year-long operations, Uni too became a legend in Sopore. He was indisputably responsible for reorganizing LeT and reviving the insurgency that had been apparently decisively wiped out three times in the last 12 years. Uni survived dozens of spectacular operations conducted by two Kashmiri Muslim SPs in the last 5 years. Thirty-three militants got killed and over a hundred arrested during the period Imtiyaz Hussain Mir functioned as head of Sopore Police. His successor and 1999 KPS batch mate, Altaf Khan, got 37 killed and scores arrested. Escaping successfully from over a dozen cordon-and-search operations, killer of many soldiers, including a Major, Uni continued to expand his base in the apple-rich expanse.

Uni showed no mercy for his suspects. Believing him behind almost every single civilian killing in the last four to five years, victims of his terror privately referred to him as Abdullah Khuni. He escaped for many reasons. Even senior Police officials admit that Army was “excessively” scared of Uni as he had jumped out two or three times while firing indiscriminately in a daredevil fashion. Death of an officer in one of such encounters intensified fear among troops. Imtiyaz Mir, who has been brought back as SP of Sopore last month, revealed that he did not disclose Uni’s identification to Army till the state’s most wanted militant was killed in the gunbattle.

“We feared that it could have a psychological effect. We were well on his track for the last over one month. We had crystal clear information that Uni was present at the house of his wife, Tabbasum, but we held it strictly to our chest till he was fatally hit”, Mir narrated. He further revealed that Uni had also succeeded to hide as he communicated neither through phone nor radio. According to Engineer-turned-SP Imtiyaz Mir, Uni was in touch with his high command and associates only through Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) operated by a foreign company. He was last time publicly spotted while carrying a Lashkar-e-Tayyiba flag, alongwith his Pakistani associate Akash Badar, in the separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s rally on occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr on August 31^st.

[To be concluded]