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"We were told to Kill Indians or Die"

"We were told to Kill Indians or Die"

Author: Sayantan Chakravarty in Srinagar
Publication: India Today
Date: December 8, 2003

Introduction: Mohammed Irfan and Khalil-ul-Rahman, two Pakistani youth recruited as members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba fidayeen squad and sent to Kashmir by the ISI to carry out suicide attacks, were captured recently by the Indian army. India Today was given exclusive access to the duo. the chilling account of their indoctrination and training by the ISI exposes pakistan's complicity in sponsoring terror groups.

As the words roll off of their tongues, the chill in the room where the two captured Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militants from Pakistan are kept in Srinagar's Badami Bagh Cantonment intensifies. These two young men were taken into custody by the army even as their fidayeen colleagues were shot dead days before the ceasefire across the Line of Control (LoC). Their exclusive accounts of the way they get absorbed into the cadres of terror groups, how they train and the conviction they acquire to carry out murderous attacks in India is significant. They portray how Pakistan's claims that it is doing its best to rein in the terrorist groups is nothing but bluster. It exposes their deep involvement in the training of terrorists and in pushing them across the LoC.

On the ground, there is no LeT up in infiltration of militants. Security forces estimate that today more than 3,000 militants straddle Jammu and Kashmir, an overwhelming majority of them "foreign nationals". In September and October alone, over 300 militants were killed and from the documents and weapons found on them it has been established, about 200 of them being Pakistanis. The security forces' success on the ground, due largely to sophisticated night-vision surveillance and better interception of wireless communication, is making terror outfits like the ISI and even the Pakistani establishment jittery. It reinforces India's claim that Pakistan is seldom able to match its promises on the ground and exposes its duplicity. These interviews bring home these points.

Mohammad Irfan, 23

He came here to break the back of the Indian Army. Instead, he saw six of his colleagues, all fidayeen, fall to army bullets in Poonch. Mohammad Irfan, 23, a Class VIII drop-out from Lahore who was mesmerised by the speeches of LeT brass, has now realised that what they told him in Pakistan was false and twisted. Irfan's own story:

Let me tell you that cricket is not the only activity that takes place at Lahore's Gaddafi Stadium. A Class VIII drop-out from a government school in Lahore, I had nothing to do. I spent my time attending LeT meetings. All were well attended and addressed by speakers whose sole claim to fame was their glib anti-India rhetoric.

People throng such meetings and the Pakistan military does not dare stop anyone from holding forth on India and on Kashmir. The speeches are less than charitable to the leaders of India, Pakistan and the US. Recently President Pervez Musharraf tried to ban such meetings, but he knows that the militants hate him for this, and they will never allow him any peace if he toes the American line on a ceasefire at the border.

Joining the LeT cadres wasn't a difficult task for me, even though it meant disappointing my family-my parents and my seven siblings. They told me that if I lived by the bullet I would one day die by it. But at that time all reason escaped me. I was driven by the cause. And when so many young men are driven by the same cause, you know anything is possible.

Exactly a year ago, at the age of 22, I became a LeT member, joining the ranks at its Mochi Darwaza office in Lahore. I grew up in that city in the Shera Kot area. I became an ardent fan of venom-spewers like Hafiz Saeed, the Lashkar chief, Makki and Hamza, all LeT leaders. I would hear tapes of Osama bin Laden. I vividly remember the celebrations at Lahore's Mall Road after the Indian Parliament was attacked. There were banners and posters of the Lashkar all across the city and everywhere the martyrs were being hailed as heroes.

I have been to the Lashkar's Muridke headquarters several times, it is a little over an hour's drive from Lahore. It has schools, classrooms and hostels. It has three large buildings and football fields where the physical exercises for the cadres are held. Many play football too. I have never seen any arms training taking place there, but the compound is heavily guarded by Lashkar cadres and fenced by barbed wires. I do not think it is fully shut down even now. It could be operating under a different name.
 

In June this year, after obtaining a duly stamped letter from the Mochi Darwaza office of the LeT, I went to attend a three-month training camp at Muzaffarabad. There were about 10 cottages, each housing 15 of us, besides the trainers. Sayeed Bhai, a 35-year-old man, was in charge of the camp. The first month went in lugging wood, getting ration from the stores and even breaking stones. Then we learnt to handle Kalashnikovs and the lethal IEDs. Twice a week they served us mutton and we looked forward to those meals. There were many who couldn't take the punishing regimen and dropped out. But there were others waiting in the wings.

In September, the Lashkar transported me and seven other trained fidayeen to the border, near Poonch. Here we had a very brief meeting with a man who came in a jeep and identified himself as Subedar Qasim. Each one of us was given an AK-47, two hand grenades and four magazines. The group leader got a sniper. I had heard about this, but now it was confirmed; the Lashkar was being actively supported, financed and armed by the ISI.

There was a sum of Rs 20,000 for each of us. Funnily, we were given this amount and then it was taken back. We were told that we were to carry no money and the group leader would pay for expenses on our behalf. At my training camp, I had been told that I would be given fake Indian currency that had been printed at the same press which produces Pakistani currency. I believe the notes I was shown at the border were fake.

A daunting trek over the Pir Panjals brought us to Harmian in September. We camped in the jungles. On September 20, we were ambushed by the Indian Army. They killed six of my colleagues. I was injured, tried to escape, but was caught.

Now that I am here, I see the falsehood of every thing that was uttered in the streets of Lahore. But they will keep sending more and more young men like me, and they too will chase a cause that might never be.

Khalil-ul-Rahman, 18

The guards tell you Khalil-ul-Rahman is dangerous and very sharp. That's why this LeT militant has become the most strictly guarded 18-year-old boy in the country today. The story of his life, in his own words:

At 15, most boys in Pakistan concentrate on their studies. But I dropped out of my school in Bahawalpur for a cause-to free the oppressed men and women of Kashmir from the clutches of the Indian Army. To free them from the pain that is inflicted every day by the rape of young girls in Kashmir villages, free them from the humiliation of being dragged out of homes and struck by military boots, end the decade-old reign of terror during which many a new born is often sent straight from the hospital cradle not to its home but into a clay oven. That was the cause they told me about in Pakistan, drilled into my soul a hundred times over at every meeting I attended.

They came to my school, the LeT did, and took me away. They promised me that if I died, my family would be rich. That death would make me a martyr, a hero. But I didn't have to die, I had to kill. Kill for the sake of the suffering thousands in Kashmir. I was a fidayeen and once I entered Indian territory, there would be no looking back. I would have to kill or simply die.

It was in early 2000, when I was 15, that I held a gun for the first time. It had a Lashkar sticker. I fell in love with its look. It seemed to me that not just bullets, but raw power flowed from its barrels. I knew I could do a lot with this weapon strapped to my shoulder, bring glory to Pakistan, be a hero some day.

The more time I spent at the LeT office at Wani Unit Chowk, the more fanatical I became. I met others even more fanatical than me and I knew this was going to be my life. I had no regrets. I attended dozens of meetings all across Pakistan. The speeches of Saeed always impressed me greatly. Thousands of young men would listen to him entranced, blocking the streets lined with banners even as the military and the police looked the other way. At the end of these public meetings, these men, most below 25 years in age, would go home fired up about the cause, like me.

I left my father and two siblings and ran away to the hills of PoK. My father Abdul Qadir, a labourer, didn't know why I left. I do not know whether he will ever know. I trained very hard for three months in the hills near Muzaffarabad. I learnt to use radio sets, use code language, trigger IEDs by remote. I was trained to handle AK- 47s, lob grenades and fire rocket launchers. We were briefed extensively on the deployment and movement of security forces in Jammu and Kashmir. They would regularly fill us in on the atrocities and the mayhem. That used to make our blood boil, we used to seethe with revenge.

It was in September 2000 that I entered India with a group of six. Each of us was given an AK-47 and two hand grenades. They even gave me a fried chicken because I was only 15. The others were older, mostly in their 20s. We made it through dense forests and high hills, through the Lipa Valley, then proceeded to Sopore via Rafiabad. In early 2002, I entered Baramullah town. We rode a white Sumo. The instructions from the group leader, Abu Hamza, was clear: we were not to stay in any house in town for more than 48 hours. We would barge into houses and the Kashmiris knew who we were. They had been sheltering militants in the past, so no questions were asked. We would target houses with more than one storey, so that we could occupy one of the floors.

I was waiting for an opportunity to strike. My chance had been long time coming. Several of my colleagues had been ambushed and killed. On June 22, 2002, at Noor Bagh in Baramullah, I was spotted by security men. At first, I tried to run and thought about lobbing a grenade, but I was too late. They caught me. My dreams were over, all the inspiration I had got at Wani Unit Chowk seemed over in a flash.

I must say this: all that I was taught in Pakistan and PoK, all the anti-India rhetoric is clearly out of place. The ISI feeds us a lot of lies, so that we can go there and kill. I think when you are young, you do not wish to reason.
 


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