TANZEEM Page 2

  It must also be noted that over the years the Pakistani people have had to put up with conflicting versions of the state policy put forth by the army, the government, the clergy, the press and various influential sections of society. Thus they are now no longer clear as to what constitutes a threat to their security and what is required to rebuild the nation. Anti-American sentiment, subtly fostered by the state and various Islamist groups, has further clouded their minds and made the situation favourable to Taliban and other fundamentalist elements.

  The Pakistani Taliban is far more ideologically radicalized than their Afghani counterpart. Fostered and funded by the all-powerful army-ISI nexus since the late eighties, they now number over 40,000 hardened fighters and have taken on the task of turning Pakistan into the cornerstone of their global jihad.

  To sum up, the situation is deteriorating rapidly. The fragmentation of Pakistan – with a population of 173 million, an army larger than America’s and about a hundred tactical nuclear weapons – into warlord-run fiefdoms that host Al-Qaeda and other major terror groups does not bode well for the security of India, the nearby oil-rich Persian Gulf and Central Asian countries, or for America and its allies. If the nuclear arsenal and bio-chem warfare facilities of Pakistan fall into the hands of Al-Qaeda, it will have cataclysmic consequences for the world.

  The current recurring terror attacks against India must be viewed in the light of Al-Qaeda’s attempts to provoke an Indo-Pak conflict which will compel Pakistan to divert forces to the Indian borders and thus reduce pressure on Al-Qaeda/Taliban in the west. The mere threat of a conflict between these two nuclear-armed countries will also detract international attention away from these terrorist organizations and provide them with the much needed breather required to regroup. The Mumbai Ghazwa (raid) of 26/11 is a prime example of this strategy, wherein the perpetrators left explicit clues to the involvement of several Pak agencies to fuel an armed Indian response.

  As directed by NIC, comprehensive attempts are underway to develop quantitatively and qualitatively better human assets across the border. However, pursuant to the 1996 PMO directive to dismantle all such intelligence apparatus, this process will take more time than seems to be available, considering the speed with which events are spiralling out of control in Pakistan. Confirming the identity of the Ameer-ul-Momineem and ascertaining his plans are being treated as a top priority task.

  The list of proposed actions, along with fiscal and political evaluations, is forwarded under sealed cover for perusal and approval.

  The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.

  Book of Ezekiel

  Walking out of the Khadki Military Hospital in Pune, the tall, athletic young man began to slice his way through the pedestrians on the street. It was a typical cantonment road: broad, tree-lined, with a clearly marked black and yellow median running down the centre, free of hawkers and vehicular traffic. The fragrance of bougainvillea hung in the air.

  Impervious to everything, his eyes barely noticing the flow of life around him, Iqbal walked purposefully, without stopping. No one would have guessed he had just left behind a dead wife and a newborn child at the hospital. Only an experienced eye would have identified the large uneven patches on his dark brown trousers and pullover as bloodstains. He was vaguely aware of his heart beating. It was a dull, sporadic beat. The expression on his face was as cold and still as the emptiness within.

  Iqbal was walking past a cart selling tea and samosas when a mongrel scavenging for leftovers looked up at him, smelling the blood. The dog’s tail stiffened, his ears pricked up and he growled. Iqbal turned and reflexively kicked the dog, the rage in his brain bubbling over. The dog scampered away with a yelp, his tail tucked firmly between his legs. The people around the food stall stared at Iqbal and then backed away. Most of them looked disgusted. For a moment, Iqbal felt a strand of remorse. But only for a brief moment. He continued along the crowded road.

  Briefly, Iqbal allowed himself to think of his infant son, whom he had left behind in the care of Colonel Anbu. It might seem to an outsider that he had deserted his child, but he knew he had done the right thing. Under the circumstances, Colonel Anbu was the best person to bring up the baby. Though Tanaz would have wanted him to raise their son himself, of that Iqbal was certain. The tiny bundle of life was all that remained of her now.

  No, Tanaz would have wanted their son to be kept as far from this madness as possible. He will be safe only so long as no one knows he is mine. Everyone who comes close to me dies. Iqbal’s mind spiralled into a bottomless, colourless kaleidoscope. Death was all that lay ahead now. He could feel it, hanging heavy all around him. He could smell it as strongly as he smelt the blood that stained his clothes. He could feel it as clearly as the cold sweat trickling down his face.

  When will this killing end? Memories of his dead mother, sister and wife broke through the stillness and assailed Iqbal’s mind. He staggered for a moment, before rallying again. He knew he needed to shut out all feeling if he was to survive, if he was to finish what he had set out to do.

  Iqbal had barely covered a mile when the shrill ring of a mobile phone broke into his thoughts. He reached for the phone cradled in his belt case and was surprised to find it silent, its screen blank. The ringing continued, unabated. There was another phone in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at the unfamiliar handset, bewildered. Then the memory returned, hurtling him back to the small apartment that Tanaz and he had occupied during the mission to penetrate the Indian Mujahideen, to the room where the final showdown had taken place not very long ago.

  In his mind’s eye, Iqbal saw the knife in his hand flail out and strike Asif, the terrorist who had taken his Tanaz away from him. As the knife snarled through the breastplate and penetrated Asif’s heart, he heard the man gasp and die. Tanaz lay bleeding on the floor, her tortured body struggling to keep the child in her womb safe. I must get help! Reaching for the mobile phone that Mujib, the second terrorist, had dropped when Tanaz shot him, Iqbal dialled Colonel Anbu’s number. He realized now that he must have put the phone in his pocket after calling the colonel.

  The phone went silent. Then it began to ring again. Iqbal recognized the number on the screen. He had been expecting this call. A wave of anger swept through him. It was because of this man’s failure that Tanaz was dead.

  ‘Sir.’ He uttered the word more out of habit than respect.

  ‘Where are you, Iqbal?’

  ‘Here… on the road… some distance from the hospital.’

  ‘Where are you going, son? I understand what you are going through, but you can’t just run away like this.’

  Do you? Do you understand what Tanaz meant to me? Other than my family, she was the only person who loved me, who gave meaning to my life. She gave me the only home I knew since the day they sent me to Pakistan to train with the Lashkar. Can you or anyone else understand what it means to lose one’s own heart, mind, body and soul?

  Iqbal was overwhelmed by a sudden urge to lash out, but he did not say a word.

  ‘Iqbal?’ Colonel Anbu’s voice was gentle. ‘I need to be alone for some time,’ he said curtly. You promised she would be safe, he thought bitterly.

  ‘Okay, Iqbal, if that’s what you want. But when you are done, you know where to find me.’

  The compassion in Anbu’s voice broke through the massive stone wall Iqbal had built around himself. He struggled to push it away, knowing it would make him feel again. And that would make him weak.

  ‘We’ll be waiting for you to return home,’ said Anbu.

  ‘I’ll be back. Just give me a little time.’

  ‘Whenever you are ready, son.’ Anbu could sense the growing distance between them, and it wasn’t only physical.

  There was a strange expression on the colonel’s face as he ended the call. It matched the bitter taste in his mouth. The taste of failure, and loss.

  Home. The word triggered memorie
s of a conversation he’d had with Tanaz when he was recovering at the at the Faisalabad terrorist compound from the gunshot wounds he had sustained during the cross-border strike to take down Murad Salim.

  He remembered telling Tanaz that they needed to get back to India as soon as possible, that they needed to go home.

  ‘Home?’ Tanaz had asked, her face shadowed with grief. ‘I have forgotten what a home even feels like.’

  ‘Don’t worry, my love,’ Iqbal had said, folding her in his arms. ‘Together we shall make our very own home. You, me and one day, Inshallah, our children.’

  Iqbal snapped back to reality. The woman who had set out to build and share that home with him was now dead and their child lay cradled in another man’s arms. There would never again be a place that he could call home. Life had turned full circle and he was back where he had been when he returned from Pakistan to find his mother and sister killed by bombs planted by his own lashkar at Delhi’s Sarojini Nagar market.

  Iqbal had been so happy as he had tried to convince Tanaz that Colonel Anbu and the others in Force 22 would be glad to have them back.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I know so,’ Iqbal had said.

  ‘How can you be so sure? They are professional soldiers. For them the mission is the only thing that matters.’

  ‘Maybe, but Colonel Anbu is special, he is different from the rest. So are Tiwathia, Sami… all of them. My heart tells me.’

  Are they really different? Iqbal wondered now. They had promised they would always watch our backs.

  Anbu’s warning, that Tanaz should not participate in the mission to infiltrate the Indian Mujahideen, echoed in his head. ‘You will have to do this one on your own, Iqbal. Tanaz is pregnant, I will not expose her to any danger.’

  Iqbal felt a deep stab of regret. He wished he had listened to Anbu. In his heart he knew that if there was anyone he could fall back on, it was the officers of Force 22. They were as close to a family as he would ever have, especially now, with Tanaz gone. His restless mind urged him to go back and bury his wife’s body, to see that she was laid to rest properly. But his heart told him it would bring him no peace, he would find closure only when those responsible for her death had paid the price. And for that he would need to find his strength again.

  It was a calm, spruced-up young man who arrived at the Force 22 base in Kasauli seventeen days later. Dressed in black cords, a full-sleeve white shirt and a navy blue jacket, Iqbal looked entirely in control as he presented himself at the gate and asked for Colonel Anbu.

  Colonel Rajan Anbu was the first Commanding Officer of Force 22. In the four-year span in which he had held command, Anbu had set a precedent that his successors would be hard-pressed to emulate. He was a prime example of that controlled aggression which makes the Special Forces man stand apart. Famous for leading from the front, Anbu never expected from the extraordinary men and women he commanded, anything that he was not willing to do himself. And this was no mean achievement, considering that his unit, Force 22, was one of the best Special Forces units on both sides of the Suez Canal, capable of taking on anything the world had to throw at it.

  The officers of Force 22 were hand-picked from the Indian Army, Navy, Air Force and Indian Intelligence. Each one was a commissioned officer not below the rank of captain, in superb physical condition, a high achiever amongst his/her peers, trained to fight over land, sea and air, skilled in most known methods of killing, and motivated to the highest possible levels.

  Like all international Special Operations units, Force 22 also had the pick of the best weapons and equipment available. Every officer was allowed to choose the weapon that best suited his or her temperament. The gadgetry they had access to enabled them to carry out previously unthinkable tasks, including the most sophisticated forms of spying, snooping, eavesdropping, detection-proof break and entry, and search-and-destroy missions. They were looped into the network of every intelligence agency in India.

  Born from the bloody crucible of the three-decade long low-intensity conflict that had been thrust upon India by the singularly focused Pakistani military and intelligence establishments, Force 22 was set up by the Indian government to provide a rapid, highly professional covert response to certain situations that could not – or should not – be dealt with by more conventional forces in a more conventional manner.

  This decision had been proved right and Force 22 had acquitted itself honourably when the Indian prime minister had tasked it to punish those guilty of the horrific terror bomb attacks in Delhi in October 2005. Living up to its motto of Stealth, Speed and Surprise, Force 22 commandos had struck deep at the heart of the Pakistani-run terror organizations.1 The raids had taken out several key terrorists and shaken the Pakistani jihadi factory to its core. For years the Indian government had been asking Pakistan to extradite these individuals since they were wanted for terrorist activities in India, but the Pakistan government had always denied any knowledge of their deeds.

  The next achievement for Force 22 had been the strike into Pakistan to cut down the terror maestro called Brigadier Murad Salim, an ISI agent who had planned and engineered a series of bold terror spectaculars in various key cities all over the globe.2 Iqbal was not officially a part of Force 22 but he had been sent with the strike team as he was one of the few people to have seen Salim. It was during this mission that Iqbal had met Tanaz, a RAW asset who had been the operational liaison in Pakistan.

  After this, the Force 22-engineered infiltration of the Youth for Purity in Society (YPS) and the subsequent destruction of the IM terror cell by Iqbal had been the third major victory for Colonel Anbu’s force. Not only had they managed to decimate the terror cell, they had also exterminated Mujib, the ISI agent provocateur who had set it up.3

  Five minutes later, Iqbal was in Anbu’s office. Clean and spartan, the room was furnished with a large, polished wooden table and black leather chairs, one for the colonel and three on the other side for visitors. A battery of phones and a digital radio set were placed on the left of the table. On the right stood a large Macbook hooked up to a projector that could display images on the white screen that occupied most of the wall facing Anbu’s chair. A fresh cool breeze, fragrant with the smell of pines, drifted in through the open windows facing the Himalayas.

  Anbu suppressed his shock when Iqbal entered. Though outwardly the same, there was no trace of the idealistic, patriotic young man who simply wanted love, and redemption. The set jaw and cold eyes revealed a barely suppressed violence that Anbu had seen in Iqbal only once before, at Delhi’s Tihar Jail.

  He remembered the expressionless eyes of the hardened inmate he had met; a man suspected of killing the two men who had bullied him when he first arrived in jail. Nothing had ever been proved but the prison grapevine knew what had happened. The men’s necks had been snapped like twigs, and there were no other marks on their bodies, confirming that both murders had been cold-blooded. After that, everyone in the jail left Iqbal alone.

  Yes, the man standing before Anbu was more like the killer he had first met. There was no doubt that this man could kill – and kill without remorse or pity, or even fear. Anbu felt a sadness sweep through him. This was not the path he would want a friend to tread. But he also knew that with Tanaz gone, there was no one who could rein in Iqbal.

  ‘I am very happy to have you back, son,’ he told Iqbal. ‘Come, sit down.’ Anbu gestured towards a chair. He was dressed in standard army issue combat fatigues, the norm for all Force 22 officers. He preferred it that way even when they weren’t in the middle of an operation; it kept them mentally prepared for combat.

  ‘How have you been?’ Anbu asked awkwardly. He wasn’t quite sure what to say to the aloof and seemingly controlled young man seated across the table from him. Pain is such a personal thing, after all: one can console the sufferer but one can never reduce the pain.

  ‘I am well,’ Iqbal replied curtly. ‘I came to tell you that I am ready to go back to Pakistan.’
r />   ‘Are you sure?’

  Iqbal nodded.

  ‘Well, I don’t agree. You know it’s not a good idea at all.’

  ‘Perhaps, sir, but someone has to do it, you know that. As long as men like the Ameer-ul-Momineem are at large, there is a grave threat to India – in fact, to the whole world. Just before Tanaz gunned down Mujib, he told us that the Ameer is planning something really big – something that will ensure Mughalstan becomes a reality. I need to find out what that is and stop him.’

  ‘We know about that, Iqbal. The ISI and, at their behest, their friends in the DGFI in Bangladesh will leave no stone unturned to try and create Mughalstan or what they refer to as Greater Pakistan. It is the final phase of their Operation Topac. We are already trying to identify the Ameer and find out what he is planning. So I am not sure what you will achieve by going back to Pakistan.’

  ‘I will stop him.’ Iqbal’s chin jutted forward resolutely.

  ‘How?’ Anbu’s voice radiated scepticism. ‘How do you plan to do that? You don’t have a clue as to who he is or where he can be found.’ Iqbal did not respond. ‘The Identikit picture that Tanaz helped us put together leads us to believe that the Ameer is most probably Jalaluddin Haq, one of the Waziristan-based Taliban commanders, but this has not been confirmed. Given the infighting amongst the various groups in Pakistan, there are presently many contenders for the title, especially after Mullah Omar went underground and American drones killed Beitullah Mehsud, the head of TTP. Jalaluddin may well be a red herring. The Pakis may be flagging him to hide the real Ameer. You won’t even know where to start looking for him.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll find him and I’ll recognize him when I see him.’

  ‘Okay, let’s assume you do find him,’ Anbu persisted. ‘Then what? How do you propose to find out what he is planning and then stop him? Do you realize that such a man is going to be heavily guarded all the time?’