Teachers' tales of militancy
Jupinderjit Singh
Tribune News Service
BASGRAH (Line of Control): October 6, 2003
Once gun-totting militants are working as teachers in some government schools in villages near the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir.
Hashim Ali Khan and Inayat Hussain are two such government teachers. Active militants till the last decade, they have seen life on both sides of the border. After spending years with the militants, they teamed up with security forces to hunt their former comrades in the valley and in Pakistan-sponsored camps.
Inayat Husain says that students often ask him the cause of Kashmir problem and why they were not allowed to go close to the ridge (LoC).
The children listen with great interest the stories he tells them about the life in PoK camps. “Life is bad in Pakistan.
Persons from here are treated badly and even tortured at the slightest suspicion”, he says.
“The black clouds will go away,” is what the teacher tells the scared children. Hashim Ali Khan, agrees with Inayat Hussain that a bilateral dialogue is the only way out of the vexed Kashmir problem.
“We have seen everything from close quarters. It is neither Jihad nor fight for freedom. It is just a personal vendetta of Pakistan,” say the two in chorus.
Then there is Sarfraz, who after spending years in camps in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir ( POK), is working hard in his orchards and fields in Sultan Dhakki. Similarly, Shaukat (name changed on request) is running a shop in one of the villages after having a bitter taste of life in PoK. Even a sarpanch of a prominent village near the LoC was a former militant.
These persons, listed as surrendered militants in police records, are reluctant to give details of their past for fear of backlash.
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