AJMAL KASAB’S JOURNEY

SUNNY THOMAS

The tragedy of Ajmal Kasab lay not in what he did but in what he believed. He was brainwashed into believing that by killing innocent people who have done him no harm, he could go to heaven! The greater tragedy is there are hundreds of Ajmal Kasabs willing to cross the border to go to heaven. The story of traumatized lives – traumatized for life – that cannot be told in words is only an episode of the tragic drama, plotted and scripted in Pakistan but enacted on our soil.  

At the moment, there are 40 to 50 terror training camps operating between Muzaffarabad and Lahore.  They are waiting for American troops to go so that another wave of terror can be enacted. Terror training is a three-tier operation: The recruitment camps indoctrinate for the first 30 days, then the arms training camp imparts perfect training not only in AK 47 but also in radio telephony and navigation, and finally the launching campus give them strategic lessons ready to use. 

The world is about to witness a cherubic army, who look like angels but are demons incarnate, raining terror on cities, strategic installations, and crowded public places. Al-Qaeda’s appetite for children is well documented. A recent video showing five-year-old children with assault rifles and handguns outraged the sensitivities of the civilized world. It was filmed at one of the terror training camps in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region by East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM).  

Most of the children are forcibly recruited – abducted from school, on streets, or at home – or are driven by crushing poverty. Orphans of jihadis come with a vengeance to avenge the spilling of their fathers’ blood. Death factories have trained over 5000 Pakistani children as suicide bombers, some of them as young as eight years.  

ETIM has been fighting to create an independent Islamic state in China’s northwest Xinjiang region. Already, they have committed over 200 acts of terrorism, only some of which have been reported in the media. And they have been sending jihadis to fight alongside al-Qaeda and Taliban. According to German intelligence, the five suspects charged with the bombing plot in Frankfurt are trained in Waziristan.   

The latest news of child combatants comes from Syria. In a horrific example of demonic cruelty, a 12-year-old boy in Yemen was asked to deliver a gift package to his father. When the father opened the door, the bomb inside the package exploded, killing the father who was an outspoken critic of terrorism and the boy. A child rights activist explains that children can be recruited at far lower costs and it is enough to tell them they will go to Paradise if they die!

      

The militants are better informed and strategically placed in the Afghan-Pakistan border that the Pakistani army is often helpless. Remember, the attack on Pakistan’s nuclear installations came when news reached Al- Qaeda that the army was preparing for a military operation in North Waziristan! 

The legend has it that when Raja Jamboo Lochan saw a tiger and a goat drinking water side by side in a pond, he decided to build a city, which was named after him but was corrupted and called Jammu instead of Jamboo. So it was where the strong and the weak lived peacefully for centuries. Mythologically speaking, Kashmir used to be a huge lake, which over centuries got drained into the ever deepening Baramulla-Khadiniyar gorge.

  

It would have been hard for anyone living in Kashmir just a couple of decades ago to imagine that their Paradise on earth, known for its unique culture and communal harmony, would be reduced to a theatre of operation for the militants! Conversely, it would be straining one’s imagination for anyone living in Kashmir today to be told there was once a Paradise called Kashmir!   

How did human civilization come to this sorry pass? When education that enlightens and technology that enriches remain the exclusive domain of the rich, and the poor are left high and dry – as nations and individuals – it is inevitable that `barbarians’ would destroy civilization. The Roman Empire was brought down by barbarians. The New Empire, too, could be brought down by `barbarians’, if sensible leaders do not come forward to reach out to the have-nots in their billions. It is possible that some lunatic could blow up the planet because he believed that by doing so he could go to heaven!