Ghee-Loving Jehadi: True jehad is for Kashmir

[Guest guest]

The true jehad is for Kashmir

Yashwant Raj

(Sheberghan, April 1)

---

-"I will go home, rest a while, eat food cooked in ghee, recover

physically and head for Kashmir."

----------

 

If it weren't for Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, Mohammed Sayed

would have been in Kashmir fighting Indian soldiers. Instead, he was

sent to Afghanistan to kill Americans.

The 21-year-old Jaish-e-Mohammad activist from Muzaffarabad,

Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir, is now an inmate at a high-security

prison here, about 110 km from Mazar-i-Sharif. The prison holds 800

Pakistani jehadis who came to fight with the Taliban. If you want to

prove Pakistan backs cross-border terrorism, all you have to do is

visit Sheberghan.

 

Sayed says Kashmir is the "true jehad". Afghanistan is only a

training ground. Another prisoner says, "I will go home, rest a

while, eat food cooked in ghee, recover physically and head for

Kashmir."

 

But Pakistan's terror machine won't get back all these fighters.

Four painful months in jail have scared some of them off jehad. But

most of the 30 prisoners interviewed by the Hindustan Times said

they were prepared to wage jehad again, preferably in Kashmir.

 

But it takes a jehadi of some mettle to be selected by the ISI,

or "the Agency" as it is known among terrorists, for the greater

holy war for Kashmir. The terrain is more hostile and the Indian

Army seen as a formidable enemy.

 

Only the best products of the terror factory are "launched"

(euphemism for infiltrated) into Kashmir. Sayed was not considered

good enough. The JeM didn't decide that, the Agency did.

 

The ISI picks and chooses from volunteers in fundamentalist outfits.

In Pakistan, the daftars (offices) of jehadi groups are as

ubiquitous as pavement tea stalls. Until Pervez Musharraf cracked

down on them, JeM, Harkat ul Jihadi-I-Islami (HuJI) and Harkat ul

Mujahideen (HuM) could operate daftars, collecting money and

recruiting members, wherever they pleased.

 

Abid Ali, 22, of Sialkot joined HuJI simply by walking into a HuJI

daftar down the street. This was just before the US bombings. Ali

soon left for Afghanistan with seven others.

 

Muhammad Sarwar of the JeM, on the other hand, was an earlier

recruit who always wanted to fight in Kashmir.

 

He was among those who made it to the last stage, but "the launching

was cancelled," Sarwar said, "because of bad weather." That was in

1997. He and another activist were turned back. But 10 others were

kept at the border and infiltrated when weather improved.

 

Sarwar can only say the launch was somewhere in Poonch. "I was taken

there blindfolded." The prisoners say that whenever the Agency is

directly involved in transporting them, recruits are blindfolded.

 

Sarwar has been blindfolded before too. The first time was when the

Agency took him to Daria-i-Neelam, a dam in Muzaffarabad, for the

final stage of training -- swimming lessons.

 

He was then with the Hizbul Mujahideen. Disgusted with the

corruption in the Hizb, he switched loyalties to the JeM. This was

just after the aborted launch. Afterwards, he trained at a JeM camp

run at Masker, PoK.

 

Sarwar's training included mountain climbing, learning to crawl and

roll while under fire, dismantling and putting together

Kalashnikovs, G-3s and G-2s, .30 and .22 bore rifles.

 

Once the 30-day training period was over, he was sent for the "big

training". At this camp, also at Masker, the lessons lasted for

three-and-a-half months. They were about handling explosives and

learning Hindi.

 

According to Maqsood Khan, a jehadi who claimed to have come to

Afghanistan with some Pakistani journalists, "All the Pakistan camps

are run by the ISI." He says he has been to several in PoK.

 

Maqsood has been to Afghanistan several times. He trained at a camp

for foreign recruits in Rishkhor, 15 km south-west of Kabul. The

camp was run by HuM and bin Laden's men.

 

"In Pakistan, no one can start a training camp or a centre without

the help, or permission of the Agency," he says. The ISI ran the

Balakot camp where Sayed was trained, Maqsood says by way of

example.

 

"All the classes are taught by agency instructors," he says. "Do you

think these tanzeems (terror outfits) have the expertise to run

these places and teach such courses on their own?"