Anti-India guerrillas recruit 5000 fighters

July 27, 2003

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New Delhi: Several jehadi groups in Pakistan, including the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), have recruited more than 7,000 youth in the past few months to ''intensify their proxy war against India''.

Despite Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's ban on all terror outfits in 2002, there is evidence that more young men are enlisting with militant groups.

Pakistan's leading newspaper ''The Friday Times'', quoting jehadi publications like 'Ghazwa', 'Majalla', 'Zarb-e-Taiba', 'Shamsheer' and 'Zarb-e-Momin', said between January-June this year, the groups have recruited more than 7,000 men aged between 18-25 years (at least 60 per cent of them are school dropouts) from various parts of Pakistan.

Of these, the LeT and the JeM have recruited more than 3,350 and 2,235 men, respectively. This contradicts the claims by various jehadi groups that only Kashmiris were recruited for fighting the ''Indian security forces''.

''LeT website says that around 800 youngsters have been killed in Kashmir last year,'' the newspaper, quoting an unidentified interior ministry official, reported in its latest edition.

''The young jehadis come from poor and middle-class families.

When they fail to find any employment, they join the jehadi outfits that provide them food and shelter and promise them a passage to paradise through martyrdom,'' says Gulzar Ahmad, a peace activist.

Even unofficial profiles of jehadis prove that a vast majority of youth that join the radical Islamists consists of run-away boys and at least 60 per cent of them are school dropouts.

Naveed Ahmed, a school droup out who hailed from a poor family in north Punjab's Jhelum area, joined the banned Al-Badr Mujahideen.

He was trained in a camp and sent to Kashmir where he was killed in the very first encounter.

His body was handed over to his parents along with a video- interview he had recorded before his death.

''I ran away from home because I wanted to do something adventurous. I might have failed the matriculation examination, but I will pass the biggest exam, that of embracing shahadat.'' This was Naveed's message to his parents. He also advised his younger brother and friends to join the jehadi forces.

UNI