14 February, Tihar Jail, New Delhi
Dear Rawafiz,
You have been my commandant for decades. My refuge during distress. My guide to salvation.
My confidante.
Days here are bitter and the nights cold. The loneliness stings every minute as if an army of thousands of needles is piercing my eyes continuously. The floor is cold, the heat unbearable. The air is stale and the surrounding concrete conveys hopelessness. Not only do I endure physical confinement as now I have also been turned into an inmate of my own mind and soul.
Broken and engulfed by desperation.
Visits by family are rare and the questions by the authorities tiring. Sometimes I fear that my own loneliness will annihilate me.
I have thought for weeks what to write to you. A recent letter from a Kashmiri girl made me finally put pen to paper.
It has not been easy for me the past so many years in cell number 14 in Tihar jail.
Ironically, this number 14 has always dominated my life. Firstly, 14 August, the birth of my beloved Pakistan, The Fortress of Islam. You know that under your guidance and mentorship, I spent all my life trying to make Kashmir Pakistan. In total, I have spent around 14 years in jail now for these efforts.
And, today, when I am writing this letter, from cell number 14, it is 14 February – Valentine’s Day.
This day used to mark my supremacy in Kashmir when I, along with my army of the Daughters of the Faith, used to engage in moral policing on the streets of Srinagar through the promotion of your devised gendered narratives. My Burkha-clad sisters burned Valentine’s Day cards and posters, raided shops selling Valentine gifts, destroyed special seating arrangements for couples and beat up girls and boys whom we saw together on this western, unislamic festival.
We did everything to save Islam.
But dear Rawafiz, unfortunately things in Kashmir have changed.
Now, 14 August is marked as a Black Day, Valentine’s Day is celebrated with great fervor with young couples enjoying in the thousands of cafés, restaurants and hotels which have mushroomed over the last seven years. Cinemas are fully booked and Malls overcrowded. Every fourth home in Srinagar transforms into a guesthouse during the tourist season when Kafirs from India visit while traffic jams on Boulevard Road, around Tulip Garden, Makai Point and Dalgate have become a regular sight.
Rawafiz, our efforts of banning all forms of western and unislamic influences, or for that matter any form of entertainment, with no activities to remind Kashmiris of an ordinary life in the midst of the Jihad perpetrated by our Mujahideen in order to ensure that the youth of Kashmir would be more inclined to focus their efforts on activities that are in line with our agenda, like picking up arms against the infidels and stone-pelting, have all failed.
Where did I go wrong, Rawafiz?
Where did we fail, my lord?
Where did you lack, dear Rawafiz?
These questions haunt me.
There is no Hartal anymore. And therefore, no curfew. No huge burials for our Mujahideen and therefore no more bloodshed. No boycott of elections anymore and no demands for Pakistan or Azaadi.
There is no stone-pelting at encounters sites anymore. Nobody to save our Mujahideen.
No Calendars. No Lal Chowk Chalo, Jamia Masjid Chalo or UN Chalo anymore. Nobody has held one single demonstration for my or the other leaders’ release.
Not a placard.
Not even one slogan.
On your instructions, we started with the process of moral policing and thrived in vigorous campaigning for the implementation of the Burkha and a moral Islamic dress code for women. Your conceived binary framework of dividing the Kashmiris in us versus them, Good Muslims versus Not Good Muslims’ narrative was an overwhelming success.
Dear Rawafiz, we followed your Farman of aiding the Mujahideen of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Laskhar-e-Jabbar, Al-Mansoorian, Jamiat, Hizbul Mujahideen and others in letter and spirit. By maintaining an active presence on a societal level, we provided ideological and logistical support and acted as couriers of messages, funds, and weapons.
We used funerals of fallen Mujahideen to instill solidarity and encourage further support for them. We indoctrinated and mobilized Kashmiri women into accepting rigors of Jihad as a gift from Allah. We convinced the women of Kashmir that losing their husbands, brothers, fathers and sons was a blessing which made them shower almonds, walnuts, and sweets on their dead bodies.
As ordered by you, I publicly claimed to advocate for the welfare of women and their rights under Islam, while the real intention was to vehemently sabotage the true quest for attaining female emancipation. Our agenda of making women adopt traditional gender roles, thereby subscribing to what was preached by you and me was only designed to exacerbate the marginalization of Kashmiri women as in lieu of acquiring a voice in the influential public sphere, women would be reinstated into the realm of the private.
But that didn’t happen, Rawafiz.
We did not succeed.
You might, like others, say that I lacked as I might have diverted some of your hefty remittances to the wellbeing of my family. Indeed, my son captained the cricket team of his college while he studied in a well-developed Southeast Asian country and many of my relatives are based in the UK, Pakistan and Gulf countries, but what else was I supposed to do?
We together had decided that I would only raise Pakistan’s and Islam’s flag in Kashmir in return for considerable funds while I would keep my family safe from Jihad. You and I had agreed that I should extract sacrifices for Pakistan and Islam only from the neighbors’ son.
All the leaders of Hurriyat did the same. Everyone built palatial houses, sent their children to foreign countries for education and ensured that their relatives either had well-paying Indian government jobs or handsome businesses in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Dubai. The Chief of Hizbul Mujahideen has 5 sons, amongst one of them a Doctor, one an Engineer and none of his 5 sons is fulfilling the duty of Jihad.
I did nothing what others were not culpable of.
However, dear Rawafiz, with all due respect, didn’t you have any shortcomings?
When pressure was building on you, you flatly denied any link between Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawa on national television and famously said that, “No Lashkar-e-Taiba man is in Jamaat-ud-Dawa and I have never been a Chief of Lashkar-e-Taiba”. You lied when you openly said that you had nothing to do with the Mumbai Attacks of 2008.
Only to save yourself.
You kept telling us that democracy was incompatible with Islam, but then you, your son Talha and son-in-law Khaleed contested elections. To guard yourself and your family, you assisted the government of Pakistan by informing on your colleagues of Al-Qaeda and helped in capturing them and extraditing them to Zionist America. Perhaps that was the reason that you did not sign Al-Qaeda’s Fatwa of Jihad against the West in 1998.
Your manifesto, “Hum kyun Jihad kar rehen hain?”, literally states that, “As long as Islam is not supreme throughout the world and as long as the laws of Allah are not enforced, fighting Kufar is a duty…”.
In order to gain Western sympathy, you said that the demeanor of the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Mayor of London, “was truly Islamic and like following the Sunnah of the Holy Prophet”.
Astaghfirullah!
Drawing on the thoughts of Vazirabadi, Sayyid Ahmad and Shah Ismail, you professed that Muslims should join Jihad on an individual basis even if their governments are unwilling to support them. You claimed to prepare Mujahideen who would wage Jihad all over the world were Muslims were being oppressed, yet many Kashmiris now ask why you did not support Jihad to protect Muslims in Balochistan, Xinjiang, Europe or America.
You dodged your responsibilities, your role and your ideology to evade jail, while I am behind bars because I openly pleaded allegiance to you, Rawafiz.
Many others in Kashmir are behind bars because you showed them a mirage. Tens of thousands of youths are in graves because you promised them martyrdom and Paradise. Thousands of orphans and widows are in search of dignity because you assured them a life of honour.
I keep hearing from the few visitors that I receive that Kashmir has rejected all of us.
Kashmiris are fed up with violence. They comprehend now that your and my organization was never for them. They have understood that we did not only serve external goals vis-à-vis India, but also domestic goals of Pakistan.
Kashmiris have now realized that Kashmir was merely an excuse in this game.
Kashmiris grasp now that your and Lashkar’s actual mission has always been to actively challenge the Deobandi orthodoxy that has endangered Pakistan’s internal security while lucidly emphasizing the legitimate targets of Jihad and thereby only highlighting the utility of external Jihad.
Kashmiri youth have now understood that this is not Jihad. It is a pro-State agenda which helps in maintaining the integrity of Pakistan and manages its internal militant equilibrium.
By again changing names and creating The Resistance Front (TRF) and issuing death threats to Kashmiri intellectuals, Kashmiri Pandits and others, nothing is going to change.
The Kashmiris are determined to resist the Resistance Front. They have tasted peace and have decided that they are part of India with all its virtues, merits, flaws and shortcomings.
Dear Rawafiz, the letter I received last month was from the sister of one of the two Kashmiri women, who at the dawn of the millennium, were attacked with acid by Lashkar-e-Jabbar which was enabled by my army of the Daughters of the Faith.
It was a short letter. Just a few lines scribbled on a cheap piece of paper.
It said that my name, Aphasia, perfectly reflected me and explained that it meant the inability to understand because of a brain disease. She further wrote that your name, Rawafiz, was also apt; A deserter.
Her last lines were terrifying: She prayed that I would soon be released and that you extradited, as she was certain that Kashmiris would lynch us both on the streets for the terror we unleashed on them. She mentioned that before Allah, we should be held accountable to Kashmir and Kashmir.
Rawafiz, I wish to spend the rest of my life behind bars, and I hope that you succeed in winning the elections.
Her letter has compelled me to change my name. You should too.
Yours truly,
Anastasia Andrabi.
(Author is the Director of European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS) and can be reached at: [email protected])
