At the age of 7, Shahbaz learnt that walnuts were best crushed by a grenade. Today, 32-year-old Shahbaz worries about the Kashmir his five-year-old daughter will grow up in.
Nusrat Khan sat in the living room, waiting. It had taken two months to get the family to talk, but when Nusrat did agree, she was in no hurry to finish her story.
Shahbaz draws the grenade the way he remembers it
When the tall man knocked
She began her story from the March of 1989—six years since she had married Ahmad Khan. Shahbaz was young and her second son was yet to be born. The year had just broken into spring and Kashmir was the paradise it today tries to be.
“He couldn’t sit still, my son was extremely naughty,” said Nusrat.
One day, worried that Shahbaz would not focus on his studies and, unable to tutor him, Ahmad brought Yaquob home.
Yaquob was assigned to tutor Shahbaz in school work as well as teach him to read the Quran. “What a beautiful man he was. Tall, polite, long beard, always smiling…except he never came to teach on Sundays,” she said. When she enquired, Yaquob said he imparted ‘spiritual knowledge’ to other boys on Sundays and even encouraged Nusrat to send her brothers to him. “I was smitten by him, I used to force my brothers to go. Fortunately for them, they didn’t,” said Nusrat and paused: “That was the beginning. Something had started brewing in Kashmir.”
By October, Nusrat decided to move to her maternal house where she gave birth to her second son. She took Shahbaz along. Yaquob refused to go there and Nusrat refused to let anyone else tutor him. She came back to her house two months later, a mother of two now. Yaquob did not show up.
“I don’t know which month it was, but I remember it was very cold. It was a Sunday, my newborn was in my arms, Shahbaz was irritating me, I was tired and all of a sudden, the turmoil started. There was a lot of firing,” said Nusrat.
Everything changed overnight. The mosques got louder, nights tenser, roads quieter, words hasher and anger mightier. The call for Aazadi—freedom from the Indian state—reverberated on the streets of Kashmir. “We changed the time on our watch to match Lahore time. We would joke with each other that we would have our next meal in Lahore. We thought we’d get our Aazadi by the time we’re done with our day’s work,” said Ahmad who had been quietly listening to Nusrat.
One day, a man knocked on their door. He was tall, wore an oversized pheran and big shoes. It was Yaquob again. “We went over and hugged him. I asked him where he had been for the last 5 months,” said Nusrat. That day, Yaquob made Nusrat and Ahmad sit down and said: “Please listen to me, I am not alone. I have boys with me.” While her husband kept quiet, Nusrat said she broke into uncontrollable laughter and said: “You have become a Mujahideen, haven’t you? So that’s what you were doing coming here and teaching my son—finding yourself a hideout?” Yaquob smiled. Ahmad rose to give him a congratulatory hug and thus began a precarious relationship that lasted a few winters.
In the 1990s, Kashmir observed strict curfews almost every day, schools and businesses would shut spontaneously for days together. Thousands of young boys who had decided to take matters into their own hands had joined the armed rebellion, crossed the border into Pakistan for arms training and returned, determined to claim their Aazadi in Kashmir. Many young boys from Pakistan were also crossing the border to fight.
“Pakistan was waging a proxy war, the locals were joining the uprising and we weren’t prepared for what was about to happen,” says Retired Major General Harsha Kakar, who briefly served in Rajouri during the ’90s.
As per the data provided on the South Asian Terrorism Portal (SAPT), between 1997 and 1999, a total of 5,255 men infiltrated into Kashmir to join militancy. Of that number, 2,162 were local Kashmiri men who were returning after their arms training, while 3,093 were foreign militants. According to General Kakar, the border was not as secure as it is today and, hence, such mass infiltration.
“The youth of the 90s were inspired by the revolutions happening in Palestine and Iran,” Navnita Behera, professor of Political Science at Delhi University and author of State, Identity and Violence: Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh, says. “Influenced by the idea of the intifada, they thought they would bring a revolution in Kashmir. The sentiment was shared by the people of Kashmir who believed that Aazadi was just around the corner.”
When the stove burned for Aazadi
Soon, every other day, Nusrat found herself by the stove cooking for 10-15 hungry boys who hung out in her living room, their guns all over her floor. They really liked Shahbaz and Shahbaz liked their guns. “If you made an AK-47 stand next to Shahbaz, the gun would be taller,” she said, chuckling.
Yaquob had joined the Hizbul Mujahideen, an up-and-coming, aggressive and rapidly expanding militant outfit of the 90s. After Yaquob’s visit that day, he and his boys would often stay at Nusrat’s house. Every time they came, they stayed over for one night. They came in their big pherans, their Kalashnikov rifle hanging across their shoulders, and carrying a little kit of dry fruits and medicines. Most of them had a pocket-sized Quran with them, says Nusrat. “I don’t know where they got all that dal, potatoes and chicken that they brought home during that time. It was a curfew and all shops were shut. But they brought so many ingredients and I would spend hours cooking meals for them. I was so happy, so energetic. I was by the stove, cooking my way to our Aazadi,” said Nusrat.
One day Yaquob told Ahmad that he would be bringing with him 15 more boys. So, Ahmad spoke to Nusrat’s brother who readily agreed to host half of them in his house. “You should have seen our neighbours peeping out of their windows when the boys shuttled between our houses. They were so happy that the boys had chosen our locality but jealous that we were the chosen ones and not them,” said Ahmad.
When fear walked in
In the midst of the violent conflict, Nusrat’s house was a place of love, laughter, and guns. But not for long. One night, a neighbour came running to her house, saying the Army had received input of militants hiding in their house and were going to cordon off the area for a search operation.
The boys in Nusrat’s house picked their guns and ran out. “They ran with their guns but left all their shoes in my living room. I panicked and started throwing the shoes over our compound, into a neighbour’s garden. They got angry with me. That’s when, for the first time, I saw the fear in the eyes of my fellow Kashmiris. That’s when I realised things weren’t going to be that simple anymore,” said Nusrat. It was a false alarm but it rang in an important truth. “Those shoes would have seen the death of me,” she said.
For Nusrat, the days had started to turn darker and the nights more haunting. “My son did not learn rhymes. He learnt, ‘Hum kya chaahte – Aazadi’, ‘Indian dogs go back!’, ‘Hindustan murdabad’. I would be uneasy whenever I found my son playing in the room humming these tunes. Whenever Shahbaz would see Army boots, he was conditioned to sing these phrases,” she said. “So, when the Army started to raid our house, I used to cover his mouth tightly.”
One night, when Nusrat and Ahmad were asleep, they heard someone banging on their bedroom door. They woke up to find their house dotted with men in camouflage uniforms. While the family had been fast asleep, the Army had entered their house and positioned themselves everywhere. “They took my husband and asked him to show where the boys were. There were no militants in our house that day so we escaped but they searched every vessel, every book, every pipe. They pushed my sleeping babies with the butts of their guns to see if we were hiding anything under them,” said Nusrat. While the men searched her house, Nusrat saw a local boy wearing a face mask giving all the information to the Army men.
“They had bred their informants amongst us. They made us turn against each other. We had to be extra careful. We were no longer the heroes we thought we were,” said Ahmad.
In the ’90s, the Indian Army set up a pro-government militia called the Ikhwan force, says General Kakar. The Ikhwans were locals who were paid to work for the Army. “That was our local counter-terrorism force. The Ikhwans consisted mostly of surrendered militants,” he said. Apart from the Ikhwans, there were many local informants. According to General Kakar, it is almost impossible to assess how many informants were bred by the Indian Army as it has not been documented anywhere.
Reports suggest that the Ikhwans were ruthless in their actions. “Even though the strategy worked well for the Indian Army in the initial stages, the Ikhwans proved to be extremely rogue. They began taking matters into their own hands, dishing out justice in their own ways—killing, looting and raping women. In 1996, they even contested elections. They started creating internal fissures between the locals and security forces,” said General Kakar.
Ahmad sitting in his home
When rice and coal were mixed
Since the night of the first Army raid, the militants visited Nusrat’s house less frequently. It was no longer safe for either of them. It was the beginning of 1993, and crackdowns had become a regular matter.
During a crackdown, there would be an early morning call from the mosque. The men had to step out of their houses, hold their ID cards in their palms and walk with their hands up to a playground where Army personnel would wait for them. They would gather the local men and suspects would be taken for interrogation or tortured right there. The women and children would remain at home. Simultaneously, Army men would raid each house in the locality, searching for militants, weapons or any other suspicious material.
While the Army personnel raided the house, the officer-in-charge would sometimes wait in the garden. One day, an officer placed his machine gun in Nusrat’s garden while his boys searched the house. Seeing this, eight-year-old Shahbaz ran in, brought out his toy AK-47 and placed it right next to the officer’s gun, folded his arms across his chest and looked up at the officer. The officer was furious and asked Nusrat if this is what she was teaching her son. “What are you teaching my son, sir? What is he seeing? He sees it in your hand, and everyone’s hands and asks for it. Can’t you see the size of my son? Can’t you see his reality?” asked Nusrat to the officer. “He couldn’t,” she said.
That day the officer got so angry that he mixed all the coal they had in the house with the rice before leaving, said Nusrat. The rice and coal had been saved for winter.
Nusrat added that she would always stand in the verandah with her babies when the Army personnel came for raids. “I had heard enough stories of them raping our women. They used to steal a lot of things as well. I was scared,” Nusrat said.
General Kakar agrees that the Army was rough. “These are men who came from the plains. Most of them had served in very tough insurgencies in the Northeast. There was no concept of winning hearts and minds or human rights. So yes, there was enough roughness, domination, and pressure from all sides. There wasn’t much restriction on picking up and banging people,” he said. Nevertheless, he also added that even though the Army was considerably rough, some of the stories narrated by women or locals were not true. “Accusations fly thick and fast,” he said.
Navnita Behera said during her research in Kashmir she realised that it was true that some women were extremely well trained by militants to sell a particular narrative that served the local political cause. Nevertheless, she adds, that doesn’t mean the women were not violated. “We cannot forget Kunan Poshpora, can we? While we cannot dismiss violations against women, it is also true that the Indian Army does not use rape as a systematic weapon of war. It is difficult to assess these situations hoping to find one single truth because there isn’t one. And that is precisely the problem with reportage on Kashmir. The nuance is missing,” she says.
When Nisa walked out with an AK-47 under her pheran
Meanwhile, in Nusrat’s brother’s house 20-year-old Nisa had spent her time religiously, cooking, ironing, washing clothes of the militants whenever they had stayed in her house. “She made such good food for them, she gave them so much of attention that most of the boys who came to my house would want to go stay there instead,” said Nusrat. Young and angry Nisa wanted to fight, to shoot and kill. Whenever the militants stayed in her house, they put the gun in her hand, took her to their garden and trained her to shoot. “They did this with many women, I hear. They wanted each one of us to be prepared,” said Nusrat.
Every time the militants left Nisa’s house, she dreamt of walking away with them, holding her own Kalashnikov. “Eventually she realised they were never going to take a woman with them. They told her to start a ‘tuition centre’ and teach children the true purpose of their existence. So, she did that. She started teaching the Quran and gave lectures to children in the neighbourhood, for free. Meanwhile, she remained in touch with the militants for a long time, giving them information and passing on things to them,” said Nusrat.
One time, when militants were staying at Nisa’s house, they heard that the Army was coming to lay a cordon. The militants fled. This time they left behind two AK-47s. Nisa and her father quietly flung the guns across their chests, threw on their pherans and walked out of the house, onto the streets, right in the midst of the Army. “I wouldn’t have been able to do that. Nisa had a different energy,” said Nusrat.
Nisa refused to talk. Today, she is married and at home. When asked if Nisa ever fell in love with any militant, Nusrat said: “No, not that I know of. She was too much in rage to be in love I think.”
When Aazadi started to taste a little stale
By the start of 2000, Nusrat was tired. Kashmir was ravaged. “The militancy was no longer pure, militants realised they could make money, kidnap women, rape, become informants. We had our rotten apples,” said Ahmad.
A few years ago, a knock would make the hair on Nusrat’s body stand up. But, by 2000, a knock meant nothing to her. That’s when, after 8 long years, Yaquob returned.
“He looked different, his eyes were shifty. He wore a lovely overcoat, the kind that the Yaquob I knew would never have indulged in. He came with his father,” said Nusrat who had invited them inside for tea.
As they had their tea, Nusrat learnt that Yaquob had surrendered, gone to jail, been tortured and eventually was bailed out by his father. After his release, Yaquob said he had started working in a medical shop. Nusrat didn’t talk to Yaquob like she used to. Noticing the change, he asked her why. She replied: “Because of you, so many boys are in jail or are dead.” To that Yaquob reassured her that his ‘goal’ was still the same but “things had changed”. In response, Nusrat told him, “What goal? Those poor boys are in jail, in graveyards, or frozen along the glaciers but you’re here, married, working and in my house having chai. Things changed but you also changed.” According to her, he didn’t seem remorseful at all. After that, Nusrat said she never saw him again.
By then, Aazadi had started to taste a little stale in everyone’s mouth.
Nusrat at her home
Suddenly Nusrat snapped out of her story to say: “There was a time in Kashmir when we used to walk around in our party clothes and jewellery at 1 in the night. I never wore the burkha until the militancy started and they threatened to throw acid on women who didn’t wear it.”
Nevertheless, Nusrat said she wasn’t angry when asked to wear the burkha. “I simply told myself that I was adhering to my culture and there is nothing wrong with that. But some girls don’t like it. And that is also not wrong. I don’t think it should be forced,” she said.
Ahmad who was quietly listening to the conversation placed his radio by his feet and said: “Today, I’m scared of hosting militants in my house. If the security forces catch us, they won’t leave without burning the entire house down. I’ve done so much for this Aazadi, but today I’m scared.”
The rise of the new intifada
According to a report by WION, the data released by security agencies show that from 2010 to 2013, 111 boys are said to have joined the militancy. The number rose to 207 between 2014 and 2016. In July 2016, the killing of Burhan Wani sparked a fresh uprising in Kashmir, which led to the longest-ever total shutdown of five months. After the uprising, the number of boys joining militancy was 117 in just one year.
The New Indian Express reported the police claiming that “at least one person is joining militant ranks every day”. Within the first three months of 2018, police statistics revealed that at least 27 youths had joined militancy in the first three months of 2018.
“This time the call for Aazadi will be raised by these boys with a lot more vengeance. These are children who were born into the conflict, like my son. Their eyes are used to blood. They will be much more dangerous,” says Ahmad.
General Kakar does not call it a “rise” and neither does he agree that the boys are being “suddenly” radicalised. “Kashmir was always radicalised. It is the glorification of these militants, the mass funerals, that make the younger generation want to join militancy,” he says.
According to General Kakar, the demographic dividend of Kashmir states that 65 per cent of the population is under 35. This means that they are children of the conflict, born in the 90s. “They’ve only heard calls for Aazadi all their lives. They are already radicalised, but post-Burhan Wani, there was the glorification of militancy. That’s what changed everything,” he said.
He says Pakistan’s proxy war in Kashmir is ending and turning into an insurgency. Despite this, he added that Kashmir is “reasonably under control”. “About 200-300 active militants is a reasonable figure. Today’s boys are not trained. They pick up a gun, pose for a photo and die in an encounter,” he said.
These young boys are also traced faster because of information received from locals, said the General. “The people are tired. They don’t want their houses destroyed. Moreover, if a house has been destroyed by an encounter and even if it is reconstructed, the family will always be under watch. Nobody wants that anymore.”
Navnita Behera does not believe things are ‘under control’. According to her, the Central government is “messing up” and, instead of the healing touch, Kashmir is only getting the danda treatment, which is proving to be counterproductive. She believes that the young boys joining militancy are much more educated and have a more informed level of commitment. Today, the average lifespan of a militant runs into mere weeks. They are not trained to fight an Army, they don’t even know how to use a weapon, they’re not going to cross the border. “They know very well that they won’t last, yet they’re committed to it,” she said.
“There was a time in the ’90s when it was Aazadi or nothing, there was no fear. Then fear crept in, people got a little wary, but today there’s a five-year-old on the street asking the Army to bling him with their pellets. Today, the Kashmir conflict is coming full circle,” the professor said.
Another difference between the militants of the ’90s and that of today is that the boys now are “inward-looking” unlike the revolution-craving boys of the past. “While the ’90s boys were moved by what was happening across the world; did the Arab spring have an influence on the new Kashmiri militants? No. Today’s boys do not have a larger worldview. They grew up in the heat of the conflict and cannot see beyond their immediate political issues,” she said.
Nevertheless, she does believe that there is a sense of fatigue that has crept into the society. She calls it a “generational fatigue” where one generation is no longer willing to sacrifice another generation for Aazadi.
She reiterates that the discourse on Kashmir itself can be full of conflict and needs to be read between the lines. While people may personally be tired of fighting for Aazadi, collectively the society is unwilling to let go of it.
Nusrat was done talking to me. She got up and said: “Personally, I want nothing out of this Aazadi. India is only concerned about the land of Kashmir, not its people. Maybe they should just bomb us and then be free to do whatever they want here. Why go through this everyday war?”
Taking the teacup from my hand, she said: “Death is our only Aazadi now.”
*All names have been changed to maintain confidentiality.
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