Surviving The Storm.(Kashmir militant groups)(Brief Article)

Nazir Ahmad Khan's short life as a Kashmiri militant began one month ago in the ramshackle village of Sanoor-Kalipura. An 18-year-old handicrafts maker, Khan had previously shown little affinity for the Islamic guerrillas who often passed through his hamlet in search of food and shelter. But one night last December, Indian security forces entered his home on a routine search for rebels and severely beat both Khan and his father with rifle butts during an hourlong interrogation.

Shortly after the incident, Khan disappeared. Seven days later, on Jan. 5, his bullet-riddled corpse was dumped on the family's doorstep by the Jammu and Kashmir police, who told them that Khan had been killed along with two other insurgents from the Pakistan-backed Jaish-e-Mohammed group in a shootout with Indian soldiers. Family members believe Khan made contact with the rebels in the days after his beating and underwent a quick training course in the mountains. "Joining the militants is easy," says Khan's 16-year-old neighbor Altaf.

India insists Pakistan is to blame for the troubles in Kashmir. And to a large extent, India is right. Last week tensions between the two countries remained dangerously high, fueled by Pakistan's covert support for Islamic militants fighting to "liberate" Kashmir from Indian rule. India has reportedly deployed 33 of its 35 divisions along the 1,800-mile border, raising fears that a miscalculation by either side could lead to a nuclear conflagration. "I have not gone to do an exercise, I have gone to be ready for war," Indian Army Chief Gen. S. Padmanabhan told a news conference. On Saturday Gen. Pervez Musharraf tried to dampen tensions by banning several extremist groups, including Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which India blames for a Dec. 13 attack on the Parliament building in New Delhi. At the same time, he warned that Pakistani forces were "ready to face any challenge to the last drop of blood."

Yet the intense focus on Pakistan obscures the fact that resistance to Indian rule in Kashmir began in Kashmir--and survives in the kinds of animosities and deep resentments that drive young men like Khan to take up arms. An indigenous rebel movement exists alongside the more high- profile foreign jihadis. And by rejecting all attempts at international mediation of the 53-year-old Kashmir dispute, India virtually guarantees that its ranks will swell even if Islamabad cracks down on militants on its side of the border. "India regards the Kashmir struggle as a proxy war," says a Western diplomat. "They're convinced it will go away if Pakistan ends its support, so they see no reason to negotiate."

The withdrawal of Pakistani backing should be a crippling blow to the insurgency. Deprived of money, weapons, ammunition, recruiting offices and training camps, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed will likely be forced to disband or to establish vulnerable bases inside Indian- controlled Kashmir. Arabs, Chechens and Pakistanis--often the most highly trained fighters in Kashmir--should largely be prevented from participating in the insurgency. But foreign fighters have always been a minority in the Kashmiri struggle: just 2,300 of the 14,500 militants killed since 1990 were foreigners, according to Indian ...