On the ground, there is no Let up in infiltration of militants. Security forces estimate that today more than 3,000 militants straddle Jammu and Kashmir, an overwhelming majority of them Pakistanis "foreign nationals". In September and October alone, over 300 militants were killed and from the documents and weapons found on them it has been established, about 200 of them being Pakistanis.
| I'm surprised there were that many locals... |
The security forces’ success on the ground, due largely to sophisticated night-vision surveillance and better interception of wireless communication, is making terror outfits like the ISI and even the Pakistani establishment jittery. It reinforces India’s claim that Pakistan is seldom able to match its promises on the ground and exposes its duplicity. These interviews bring home these points.
Mohammad Irfan, 23
He came here to break the back of the Indian Army. Instead, he saw six of his colleagues, all fidayeen, fall to army bullets in Poonch. Irfan’s own story:
I spent my time attending LeT meetings.
| ... instead of going to school or working... |
All were well attended and addressed by speakers whose sole claim to fame was their glib anti-India rhetoric. Joining the LeT cadres wasn’t a difficult task for me, even though it meant disappointing my family-my parents and my seven siblings. They told me that if I lived by the bullet I would one day die by it. I became an ardent fan of venom-spewers like Hafiz Saeed, the Lashkar chief, Makki and Hamza, all LeT leaders. I would hear tapes of Osama bin Laden.
| He's an inspiration to the young... |
I vividly remember the celebrations at Lahore’s Mall Road after the Indian Parliament was attacked. In June this year, after obtaining a duly stamped letter from the Mochi Darwaza office of the LeT, I went to attend a three-month training camp at Muzaffarabad. There were about 10 cottages, each housing 15 of us, besides the trainers. Sayeed Bhai, a 35-year-old man, was in charge of the camp. The first month went in lugging wood, getting ration from the stores and even breaking stones. Then we learnt to handle Kalashnikovs and the lethal IEDs. In September, the Lashkar transported me and seven other trained fidayeen to the border, near Poonch. Here we had a very brief meeting with a man who came in a jeep and identified himself as Subedar Qasim. Each one of us was given an AK-47, two hand grenades and four magazines. The group leader got a sniper. I had heard about this, but now it was confirmed; the Lashkar was being actively supported, financed and armed by the ISI. At my training camp, I had been told that I would be given fake Indian currency that had been printed at the same press which produces Pakistani currency. I believe the notes I was shown at the border were fake. On September 20, we were ambushed by the Indian Army.
| "We ran into real soldiers and it was all over but the shootin'..." |
They killed six of my colleagues. I was injured, tried to escape, but was caught. Now that I am here, I see the falsehood of every thing that was uttered in the streets of Lahore. But they will keep sending more and more young men like me, and they too will chase a cause that might never be.
Khalil-ul-Rahman, 18
At 15, most boys in Pakistan concentrate on their studies. But I dropped out of my school in Bahawalpur for a cause-to free the oppressed men and women of Kashmir from the clutches of the Indian Army. To free them from the pain that is inflicted every day by the rape of young girls in Kashmir villages, free them from the humiliation of being dragged out of homes and struck by military boots, end the decade-old reign of terror during which many a new born is often sent straight from the hospital cradle not to its home but into a clay oven.
| Pretty subtle propaganda, huh? And this boy, being really bright, with a keen analytical mind, picked right up on it... |
That was the cause they told me about in Pakistan, drilled into my soul a hundred times over at every meeting I attended. It was in early 2000, when I was 15, that I held a gun for the first time. It had a Lashkar sticker. I fell in love with its look. It seemed to me that not just bullets, but raw power flowed from its barrels.
| "This," I thought, "must be what it was like to have a doinker." |
I knew I could do a lot with this weapon strapped to my shoulder, bring glory to Pakistan, be a hero some day.
| "Then I got a turban, and I knew nothing could stop me! NOTHING!" |
The more time I spent at the LeT office at Wani Unit Chowk, the more fanatical I became. I met others even more fanatical than me and I knew this and disco was going to be my life. I had no regrets.
| "Hell, I didn't even have a thought process." |
The speeches of Saeed always impressed me greatly. Thousands of young men would listen to him entranced, blocking the streets lined with banners even as the military and the police looked the other way. At the end of these public meetings, these men, most below 25 years in age, would go home fired up about the cause, like me.
| "Hot damn! I wanna be cannon fodder for a fat mullah! I'm gonna get me some celestial virgins, if I'm not horribly mutilated instead..." |
I left my father and two siblings and ran away to the hills of PoK. My father Abdul Qadir, a labourer, didn’t know why I left. I do not know whether he will ever know. I trained very hard for three months in the hills near Muzaffarabad. We were briefed extensively on the deployment and movement of security forces in Jammu and Kashmir. They would regularly fill us in on the atrocities and the mayhem. That used to make our blood boil, we used to seethe with revenge.
| Seething is so Islamic... |
On June 22, 2002, at Noor Bagh in Baramullah, I was spotted by security men.
At first, I tried to run
| "Feet, don't fail me now!" |
and thought about lobbing a grenade, but there were no civilians close by I was too late. They caught me. My dreams were over, all the inspiration I had got at Wani Unit Chowk seemed over in a flash.
| "Uhhh... Those aren't... ummm... pliers, are they?" |
I must say this: all that I was taught in Pakistan and PoK, all the anti-India rhetoric is clearly out of place. The ISI feeds us a lot of lies, so that we can go there and kill. I think when you are young, you do not wish to reason.
| When you're young, you're easily led. When you're older, it's easier to tax you. |
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