Part II: Chapter 7

AFGHANS AGAIN INVITED - PARADOXICAL

They say that public memory is short-lived, but there are stupendous disasters which cannot be easily forgotten. As per the consensual estimate of historians, the Afghan tenure of rule in Kashmir was a total disaster and all hues of people especially the Muslim majority rued the day when two Muslim leaders had invited the Afghans to annex Kashmir to Kabul. They are said to have groaned and smarted under the barbarous rule of Afghans and yearned for the times when they would be redempted from their oppression and ferocity. Despite the experience being bitter and awesome, the Muslims by and large bloomed with elation when a new nexus with the Afghans though for a different ball game was forged by the Muslim outfits operating under dubious nomenclatures with open-ended patronage from ISI of Pakistan that has been feeding and funding terrorism in Punjab and Kashmir. It is after due deliberations that the strategists across the borders inducted and are inducting the Afghans said to be war-hardened into the secessionist ranks. The twin motives behind this move are to add more teeth to the on-going terrorism and assure the Kashmiri Muslims that they are not alone in the crusade against India and Kashmiri Pandits. The nexus though evolved in stealth is an open secret known to all levels and shades of Muslim opinion.

If history is a guide, there should have been a strong resistance to the move, but there was no protest, loud or subdued, not even a murmur of resentment. Instead all cells of Muslim intellectuals operating in every house and office, factory and field, hospital and school endorsed the correctness of the measure as it was deemed to quicken the processes of redemption from the Indian hegemony. What is surprising that the historical wrongs and indignities that the Afghans had perpetrated on 'the garden of eternal beauty' and the populace inhabiting it were conveniently bypassed and forgotten. That they had reduced them to dismal poverty and abysmal illiteracy and had launched wanton assaults on their moral fibre were not considered for due thought and deliberations. What cements their bonds with the Afghans is the war that they have launched against Pandits as the branded enemies of Islam and political linkages with India though voluntarily forged.

The change in perception was brought about by the protracted war that the Afghans fought against Soviet Russia which was maligned for spearheading the godless philosophy of communism. The war that had all the ingredients of crusade was blatantly fuelled and fed by the lethal weapons and bags of money funnelled by America through Pakistan. The final discomfiture and fall of Soviet structure was hailed and celebrated as an enormous victory for Islam. The Khomeini brand of revolution plus the Soviet collapse inflamed the fundamentalist Muslims and their crowds of supporters with pride and passion. The Islamic organisations that have proliferated and mush-roomed like vicious weeds with lavish patronage through tonnes of money from a number of Muslim countries have widely set afloat and disseminated the thesis of restoration of caliphate (though consigned to the dustbin of history) from Kashmir and central Asia to the shores of ATLANTIC OCEAN. The thesis as such dyed in deep green appeared mesmerising, viable and within the realms of possibility with the sudden, cracking and crumbling of political and administrative edifice in Kashmir and hounding our of the entire native tribe of Kashmiri Pandits deemed as a vital support -plank for the Indian presence in Kashmir.

The Afghans have been perceived through the prism of the same thesis of re-emergence and re-vitalisation of Islam regaining its old glory. For the Muslim masses with few exceptions who do not make a summer, they have ceased to be the hated people tagged as butchers, kakad khans-foolish and low in understanding, sodomites and rapists and in actual estimation their stock has incredibly notched up. They are now warmly and Jubilantly hailed as the soldiers of Islam, Mujjahids and Ghazis fighting and battling for the holy cause of Islamic religion and extirpating infidelity and as operatives on Kashmir soil working to the end of redempting and freeing Muslim millions frown the imaginary tyrannies of infidels and heathens and materialising the dream of independence, annexation to Pakistan and Nizam-e-Mustafa. A real big task in the service of Islam by all standards.

With this remarkable change in perception the Afghans have been harboured and welcomed with open arms. They are free to intrude upon the privacy of men and women. They are fed on beef and other protein rich foods. The Kashmiris present on the scene are said to have added startling records to the domain of hospitality by not closing their doors at the fall of dark nights. The houses as fortresses with doors and windows shut and barred is a bygone tale. The Afghan Mujjahids are accompanied by other brands of Mujjahids hailing from Yemen, Saudi Arbia, Sudan, Libya and Algeria. Poems of praise and appreciation have been sung and woven around them. Akbar Bhai, Jamal Bhai and Bomber Khan et alhave resorted to large scale letchery (please consult their rape records) and are objects of extreme veneration as they arc deemed to liberate Kashmir from the clutches of Indian security forces and ushering in a new era for Islam and if and when killed in encounters or hide-outs, their burials are largely attended. People opine that it could be out of moral obligation. But it could not be for guys who have cruelly flouted and trampled upon common place text-book morals and other acceptable canons allied to them. For the votaries of Kashmiriat, all brands of Muslims with whatever credentials, stock and hue even though they vitiate the very spirit of it are acceptable no matter what the price be. After all it has the sanction of the mullah and the mosque.

The Afghans and other Muslim mercenaries drawn from various Muslim countries where they are considered as sources of great nuisance and trouble and are outcasts have been invited and inducted into Kashmir and to everybody's sorrow and dismay have found their unstinted and volatile supporters, who have succeeded in creating a climate of opinion m their favour by extolling their virtues as soldiers of Islam and their unmitigated devotion to the cause of Jehad. What is missed that they only camouflage as crusaders, but actually are in hot pursuit of letchery, sodomy and rape.

There is the standing testimony of a surrendered hardcore terrorist Tariq Hussain alias Turkey who has unambiguously revealed that the most alluring factor for the Afghan and Pakistani militants to sneak into Kashmir was the lust for beautiful girls. He named a Pakistani terrorist who violated the chastity of 19-year old Zarina and made off with her to Pakistan as a prime catch. He disclosed that dishonouring of Kashmiri women was the essential cause for the local terrorists to drift away from foreign militants.

But Turkey who had pawned his soul to the demon of Muslim bigotry has concealed the abominable treatment meted out to Kashmiri Pandit women by the terrorists of local variety. Girija, a poor lab-assistant in a school, was gang-raped and chopped into two halves on a sawing-machine, a barbarity that can cause a shiver to class savages. In reality, the terrorists of local brand and of Afghan and Pakistani make are on the same wavelength and own descent to the same tradition and inheritance of acquired barbarity They have out-heroded one another in the perpetration of brutalities and cruelties on the innocent victims harbouring a diverse faith and in the process have notched up amazing records. Every time when crusade with its bag full of cruelties and atrocities is launched against the Kashmiri Pandits, the likes of Turkey are in the lead role. In 1931, the crusades against the Maharaja ended in the blatant loot and murder of Pandits and 1931 had its own quota of Turkeys. The crusade of 1947 was lost in the pools and puddles of loot, murder, arson and rape and the local Turkeys did not lag behind. The crusade of 1989 variety unleashed with the hurricane fury in the name of Independence and annexation to Pakistan with Nizam-e-Mustafa as its lone-star was led by Turkeys who have put up a sign inscribed with loot, murder, arson and rape of Kashmiri Hindus mesmerising all to rally and to the knowledge of all, all have rallied for the unholy-holy task.

Extremely tired of militancy, yet persevering, in his heart of hearts convinced of its futility, yet duplicitous, a JKLF activist, said to be an ideologue, camouflaging his identity under a thickly grown beard, sat quietly sipping a drink in the company of his comrades at a bar in Jammu. Suddenly leaving his seat with the brimming glass in his hand, he stridently headed towards a Kashmiri Pandit, perhaps his old acquaintance, also busily boozing and insisted on him to join him at the table. The Pandit grew suspicious and equivocated for a while, but somehow out of courtesy, a hall-mark of a Pandit, accompanied him to the table. Quite knowledgeable about Kashmir affairs, the Pandit broke the ice by asking him the latest about Kashmir and its future. The activist resorting to fanfaronade, a trait Muslims have honed into a skill with the on-set of terrorism, shot straight that Kashmir is lost to Pandits and India.

Despite being in exile for 7 years, it was hard for the Pandit to swallow it. Fiddling with his glass, he first asked as to how it was lost when the gun-wielding Mujahids have not captured an inch of Kashmir soil for 'Independent-Kashmir'. With four larges in his tummy, the activist fully pepped up informed the Pandit in all exuberance that the Afghans have taken over the crusade against India and he should know that they put up a valiant battle against Soviet Russia and forced its withdrawal from the Muslim soil of Afghanistan and India by all standards a weak, poor and internally riven state is unable to withstand the thrust and fury of Afghan onslaught.

The activist did not stop there. Forgetting that he was carousing in a bar, he flusteringly stood up and painted an Afghan as a war-steeled soldier with Allah on his lips, two deadly Klashnikovs in his two hands, and a brick in his bag dangling from his shoulder.

What is this brick in his bag for? Asked the Pandit in absolute astonishment.

The JKLF activist now lost as he was gulping at a furious rate explained to the Pandit, "With the brick under his head, he sleeps in the open."

The Pandit felt his condition and satisfied the Afghan in the activist by telling him that war is won and liberation is achieved.