17-year-old Kaisar Ahmad Dar, who lived in a remote village in Pulwama district, wanted to be a Major in the Army. His mother wanted him to be a doctor. After scoring an impressive 88 percent in Class 12, Kaisar joined militancy. Celebrations at the family home turned into mourning. Kaisar’s father, a cop with JK Police, is frantically searching for his son. “They have taken him away,” Kaisar’s mother Naseema Begum kept crying, referring to the militants.
We have been witnessing this vicious cycle in Kashmir for years. One after the other, Kashmiri youngsters fall prey to indoctrination and take up arms against the state for establishing the Caliphate – a doctrine which did not find a place anywhere in any modern and flourishing Muslim society. In Kashmir, indoctrination and radicalization are so deep that a youth joining militancy does not make news for long. The Pulwama boy remained in the headlines for a longer time because his father is a policeman, and because he passed Class 12 with distinction. Reporting on the case for a prominent TV channel, a journalist said that youths in Kashmir are being pushed into a black hole. Why doesn’t the government expose the forces that are pushing the youth into the hole, he asked. Let us talk about the forces pushing the youths into the black hole. Among them are the manifold ISI operatives and their local collaborators who radicalize and indoctrinate the youth. Some of these forces masquerade as journalists. They hold the pen in their hands and take it upon themselves to show the path of death and destruction to the Kashmiri youth in the name of ‘freedom struggle’ or ‘Nizam e Mustafa’. If the government decides to initiate action against these spin doctors, they quickly spin yarns of “suppression and oppression” of the media in Kashmir. These forces take their children out from Kashmir to study and pursue flourishing careers. Back home, they radicalize the children of poor Kashmiris by romanticizing the death of militants. They shoot videos featuring the fathers of slain or surviving militants. They ask the family members to speak on camera about jihad and shahadat. The families speak about how proud they are about the shahadat of their militant son. The video makers now reach the militants and compel them to speak about shahadat. We watch their familiar script being played out time after time.
These are the forces that create doubts in the mind of people over the killing of a fellow journalist by the militants. They create a discourse blaming the state forces for the killing. These are the forces who never ever utter a word over the barbaric and inhuman atrocities perpetrated by the terrorists. Let these forces look within when they ask why doesn’t the government expose the forces that are pushing Kashmiri youth into a black hole.
