Lahore, Feb 22: In his navy, pin-striped suit teamed with coordinated tie and cardigan, Amanullah Khan could pass quite easily for a retired professor. He speaks in the reasonable, persuasive tones of a man who has long learnt how to defend often indefensible positions to an often indifferent world.But every now and then, the soft tones of his speech collide with harshness of its content, disconcerting the listener somewhat. Like when he says, ``We believe that unless we shed blood - our own and that of the enemy - we won't get freedom.'' There is no unnecessary inflection, as he says this. He may just as well have been delineating on Einstein's famous equation, or Milton's `Paradise Lost'.Does he consider himself a terrorist? If Khan is provoked by the question, he doesn't show it. He asks a question in reply:``Do you think Subhas Chandra Bose was a terrorist? To my mind, he was not. He was a freedom fighter and is one of my heroes.''Khan stays in Rawalpindi, but has come down to Lahore todirect members of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), the party he helped to found 22 years ago, on how they should campaign during the Indian Prime Minister's visit. These days, the JKLF zonal office housed in the Dayal Singh Mansion on The Mall, is crowded with volunteers, most of them in their late teens or early 20s.``We welcome this initiative taken by the two Prime Ministers. Neighbouring nations must live in peace,'' says Khan. ``But it must lead to steps being taken to solve the Kashmir problem. Our bitter experience has been that such talks have always remained fruitless.''Somewhere, Khan doesn't quite trust this process - because he knows that if the Indian and Pakistan Governments agree on one thing it is that JKLF and its ideology should have no place in the general scheme of things.This is why Khan wants third party intervention in Kashmir. ``India has ruled out this approach. But what was Talbott doing there recently. Surely he wasn't talking about the weather?'' But hequickly adds: ``We don't want it limited to the US. We want the entire international community, including representatives from P-5, NAM and the Islamic Conference, to sit down and persuade India and Pakistan to agree to our formula of an independent Kashmir.''That the formula is an incredibly grandiose one, given the existing reality, doesn't seem to faze Khan. With a touch of imperiousness he states that only a totally independent Kashmir will work - a Kashmir conforming to its pre-1947 boundaries, which includes Ghizar and Gilgit in the north and Jammu and Kathua in the south, and which stretches all the way east to include both Ladakh and Aksai Chin.``In five phases stretching over 15 years, I want the process of independence to be completed. This new democratic, federal and secular nation will be completely independent from both India and Pakistan, but be friendly with them,'' says Khan in a manner reminiscent of Cervantes' Don.Khan's ambitions have got him into trouble with both the Indian andPakistan authorities. His close associate, Maqbool Butt, was hanged in February 1984 by the Indian Government on charges of masterminding the murder of Indian diplomat Ravindra Mhatre in London and Khan himself has been rendered persona non grata in international circles.Khan's is a long litany of grievances against the Indian Government: ``The irony is that Indians have been far more hostile to us than to Islamic fundamentalist groups. In 1985, they got me arrested in England on the fictitious allegation that I had plans to create trouble during Rajiv Gandhi's proposed visit to England. They got me deported from that country, they got my US visa cancelled and had the Interpol issue a warrant of arrest against me while attending a conference in Brussels in 1993. In March 1996, our entire militant hierarchy, including a top militant commander-in-chief was killed just inside Hazrat Bal and within a week of that our entire political hierarchy was killed and our office bombarded.''He claims that hehas been brutally manhandled by the Pakistani authorities as well, and lost his memory and vision temporarily at one stage because of torture he had to suffer. ``True I live in Pakistan, but the authorities hate me and try to black me out completely in the media.''So how does he operate? This question causes the first pause in the conversation. ``The borders are very long. People come and go. Where there's a will, there is a way,'' he says guardedly. Does he go to Kashmir? Again, a pause: ``No comments.''His last major public action at the border between PoK and Kashmir was to stage a march on February 1992, since then he has generally preferred to let his boys do the talking for him.His organisation, he boasts, has no dearth of arms: ``Pakistan is a good manufacturer of arms. If you have the money, you can buy anything you want.''So money is not a problem then? With pride he replies that it is not. ``We have members everywhere - some of them quite prosperous. Remember, Jeddah airport was builtentirely by Kashmiri labour - we have eight branches in Saudi Arabia alone. Many contributions come in.''The one piece of information he won't part with is the exact number of JKLF members. ``Our members live under great threat, none of them or their children will get service if I reveal too much. In the Valley, we are not working openly. Still, I'll say this, the majority of educated youth in Kashmir is with us.''While he would like to give the impression that the JKLF is growing from strength to strength, he perhaps realises that somewhere it could all be a giant fantasy. Time has gone on. Now 66, his hands shake when he reaches for a tea cup, and occasionally a phlegmatic cough breaks out. The general feels mortality catching up with him. ``I am happy. Quite happy. I have done what I could. Nobody can do more than what he can,'' he says, a certain fatalism lacing his words.
