Chapter Two
GOING SOLO
Indian-held Kashmir
A flock of birds circled above like paper butterflies. The smell of the place was a combination of wood, apples, and morning rain. The young woman I called Sadia led the protest with one arm swinging through the air, her voice loud and brassy like the sound of a solo trumpet. “We want freedom!” she shouted. The women looked like an undefeated army; their chants filled the tepid air. In sharp tones, they chanted: “What do we want? Azaadi! What do we need? Azaadi! What are we fighting for? We want freedom! Kashmir belongs to us!”
I closed my eyes and felt their thundering voices. Their desire for freedom was reasonable. The women needed to be heard by the battalion of Indian police waving their batons. In their togetherness, the women displayed a solidarity that was intuitively felt: They had been destined for one another. With each street protest, they closely held on to a feeling of necessity and the uniqueness of their actions. When I opened my eyes, I locked gazes with Sadia, whose eyes squinted as though she was smiling at me from behind the cloth that covered her face. Something about her made me want to comfort her, offer her reassurance, a hand to hold—to say, “You are free. No one can take away your conscience.”
I leaned to the side of a brick wall in a short teal shirt and matching scarf falling loosely over my head. Under a saffron sun, I watched an elderly woman in a white dress squat on the ground. Her face looked worn. She held a large white poster lettered in red: “United Nations, where are you?” It was an indication of the betrayal by the international community, like a lover who had proved unfaithful. Kashmiris expected India and Pakistan to hold the plebiscite they had agreed to in 1948 at the United Nations. They expected to decide their political future. But the vote never transpired.
The women’s discordant voices and jarring movements felt familiar. These women could have been in any part of the Muslim world. This could have been Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, or any number of Western countries where women used the streets to grab the world’s attention. One salient feature about Muslim women today is that they are increasingly active in political and violent movements. Like their men, they demand the right to be heard.
“Protests are the only way out for people to vent their anger,” one Kashmiri woman said.
In Kashmir, women protest when their children disappear or die from torture. Like their men, they rebel against what they call an Indian occupation. They use the streets to share their stories of the defeated. The women of Kashmir march to send a broader social message. “Women defend women,” one activist said. In 2004, on International Human Rights Day, the women of Srinagar swarmed the streets to oppose the rape of Shabnam Bano, a twelve-year-old girl, by an Indian Army major in Handwara. The women wailed as they held up a photograph of the girl. On the front page of a local newspaper, an Indian female police officer is shown tearing the girl’s picture. That clipping forced me to imagine what I might have done if I had been raised in that culture. Would I join the women screaming rage and resentment toward the army? Or would I shoulder a heavy silence and live in a globe of darkness, ignoring the traumas and threats around me? It’s difficult for an outside observer to accept that in a protracted conflict, women and girls have limited opportunities—their lives are continually interrupted by gunfire, shelling, curfews, shutdowns, and protests. And so it is understandable that with few or no options to express themselves, women and girls find the streets to be an ideal setting for their sailing voices.
The female protesters fearlessly moved forward. I followed them, observing them from a distance. I was a witness to an event that happened over and over across the valley. The women exclaimed in Urdu, a language that the Indian security forces understood. The leader of the procession held a small sports-type megaphone. I heard her thundering voice.
Kashmir is a valley with nearly eighty-six thousand square miles set between blue-white mountains, rolling forested hills, shimmering lakes, and endless farms. A fraction of the world’s population lives in Kashmir. More than ten million in Jammu and Kashmir reside in India, which is two million more than the number of people in Virginia, where I live. Nearly six million Kashmiris live in the autonomous territory of Pakistan. The Chinese regions of Aksai Chin and Trans-Karakoram Tract account for 19 percent of Kashmir, an area the size of Maryland, disputed by India. Its highest peak is the Siachen Glacier, where Indian and Pakistani troops engage in tit-for-tat border clashes like schoolyard bullies. Kashmir is the world’s highest battlefield; India and Pakistan have waged war over Kashmir.
In the backdrop of Kashmir are almost a million soldiers, rifles at their shoulders, without a trace of bravura in their eyes. In winter, royal-blue snowflakes fall like ice jewels. In summer, Indian-held Kashmir is a green candy bowl bursting with color. The smell of wood and clay hangs in the air. When I first arrived, Srinagar felt like an amusement park. Tourists glided along Dal Lake in shikaras, weaving their way through a floating vegetable garden and a patch of pale-pink water lilies. Children ran up and down the majestic stairs to the entrance of the Mughal garden lined with plum-purple peonies and wild roses. Local boys swam in the lake with the sun on their backs.
That summer day, I listened to the words reverberating through the air like an ancient song. Sadia spoke, and her followers repeated her words, their raucous voices louder than microphones could project. Alongside her was Yasmine Raja, the head of Muslim Khawateen Markaz (Muslim Women’s Organization), or MKM, who was once beaten so badly in jail that she limps on one leg. Being part of the MKM gave young women like Sadia a sense of purpose and belonging. I suspected that the women’s group gave her the cover she needed. Men found her do-or-die attitude endearing, and they saw her as graceful and genuine. But to an outsider like myself, Sadia was dangerously spirited and self-serving.
The women moved together at a snail’s pace. Their voices were too loud, too shrill. They wanted to reach Lal Chowk, the center of the city. “They will never make it,” a male activist said. He stood near me for my protection. “They will be arrested right here.” Under the 1958 Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), anyone in Kashmir can be detained for any reason. Under the terms of the law, Indian authorities have unrestricted powers. Kashmiri novelist Mirza Waheed elaborated on India’s catch-and-kill policy: “My friends, all my friends, went away too, and God only knows if they will ever come back. Not many do, you see, and those who do, don’t live very long here. Because the army has decided there is only one way of dealing with the boys: catch and kill. Catch and kill.”1
Police jeeps blocked the road. They were surrounded by a swarm of journalists and photographers. They snapped and clicked. Guards posed for pictures. It was an all-too-familiar scene for the authorities. No one was worried. Female guards pushed the protesters back with batons the size of a baseball bat. The women stopped. They continued shouting. They were unafraid of jail. I had learned that authorities used temporary arrest to break the momentum, but the women I knew in Kashmir were unmoved.
Standing next to me, former militant leader Farooq Ahmed Dar boasted, “Our women are strong. The Indians think they can humiliate them by throwing them in jail. But when they are released, they will protest again,” he said. Dar believed that Kashmiri women could tolerate extreme hardship. These women had an instinct for survival. Dar, who towered over me, stood near me like a bodyguard. He was in his forties, broad-shouldered with smashing brown eyes, a Roman nose, and dark hair brushed aside. Dar and I observed the protesters from the sidelines, standing against a brick wall of an old, empty building, watching the women move slowly toward the police. Someone yelled “Allahu Akbar!” (“God is great!”) into the microphone, followed by one long cheer. Cameras zoomed.
“Our women are no different than men,” Dar told me.
We moved closer to the brick wall. Shabir, an ex-militant and a member of Dar’s organization, said to me, “These women share our goals. They have our aspirations. They are fighters like us. They are ready to die for a cause.” The belief in a better life after death is a central tenet of the Islamic faith, which explains why protesters are unafraid. Men admire women for being tireless champions of the independence movement.
At a comfortable distance, I watched female police officers shove Sadia and Yasmine Raja into the back of a jeep. Journalists poked their cameras into their faces. Click! Click! Click! The men watched their women being taken away. It was a chilling sight.
“This is another day in Kashmir,” Dar said.
I assumed that the women would be released in days. That someone would take them home, perhaps a family friend or relative. As protesters, they hadn’t committed a crime. They didn’t present a security threat. They hadn’t used violence, carried weapons, issued threats, or used abusive language. Before I could ask, Dar gave me an answer. “The police will release them the next day. They know they can’t keep these women. They just spend a night or two in jail. It’s nothing to worry about,” he said, half-smiling.
On the dusty road, women began to disperse. Slowly, they put down their signs and moved in different directions, their faces like wounded instruments. “They will try again,” someone said. “Our women never stop trying.”
Even as the crowd dispersed, a middle-aged woman stood facing the warm glow of the sun and chanted softly, her body swaying. “What do we want? What do we need? Azaadi!” The sun beat brightly on her black robe. “We will return,” she said in an ethereal voice.
However, being a protester was not enough for Sadia. “If I cannot live, then I want to die,” she told me before her arrest. She believed in martyrdom and everything it stood for. To die in a suicide mission would give her the chance to live again. She wanted to go to a better place and live in the other world.
There was nothing unusual about Sadia, except for her beautiful pearl-gray eyes and milky skin. Like other Kashmiri girls I met, she was committed to change the conflict and unmistakably made the wrong choice when she desired death. Her decision to die violently was a choice that most Kashmiri women do not make. Violence blurs time, present and future, I thought. Violence will not change the conflict.
For a brief period, she was my young guide. One July morning, as flies buzzed lazily and soldiers gawked when we walked by, Sadia shared her well-kept secret.
“I volunteered for a suicide mission,” she said casually. “The men turned me away. They said, ‘We don’t need women.’ But they are wrong. They need me.”
It was the most unforgettable walk I had taken with anyone. For a moment, I could not see her strapped to a bomb, ready to pull the trigger to end her life. But I knew, from speaking to other women in other places, that the wish of the martyr is profound: she wanted to fly to Heaven.
Doesn’t Islam forbid this? I wanted to shake Sadia. I knew Islam better than this young woman raised in a conservative Muslim culture.
I tried to understand what could cause an attractive, intelligent young woman like Sadia to choose death over life. She didn’t look like a hardened criminal or terrorist. At first glance, she didn’t appear emotionally unstable or mentally ill. But I knew that violent women don’t fit any profile. A female bomber can be young or old, single or married, widowed, a mother. With more than a decade of research, the academic and intelligence communities have yet to agree on whether psychological profiles of extremist women are a useful way to understand their drive to commit violent acts. What we do know is that common themes exist, largely reflected by personal grievances, which include perceived injustice and the indiscriminate use of violence by authorities on distressed Muslim communities and individuals.
What all these women have in common is their commitment to a cause. For Sadia, the freedom of Kashmir from Indian occupation was the only reason that mattered, that was worth dying for. But luckily for her, the Pakistan-based extremist group she wanted to join, Lashkar-e-Taiba, or LeT, wanted nothing to do with her—at least not at that time.
Still, I wondered. Was I overlooking something? What explained Sadia’s motives? Was she abused as a child? Did someone hurt her? Did she lose someone in her family? Did she witness unthinkable acts of aggression? Did she want to prove to men that she was capable? What did her family say about all this? Did they know? There were too many unanswered questions. The only answer I did have was that Sadia had the common emotions of a would-be martyr: she was determined, distressed, angry, and likely wounded by what she had witnessed growing up in conflict.
As a result of the ongoing crisis, countless women I have interviewed in the valley have exhibited signs of anxiety, depression, and trauma. They don’t sleep. Some have nightmares. They can’t eat. One woman lost her voice when she found out that her youngest son had been thrown in jail for a crime she says he didn’t commit. Many women take drugs, antidepressants to cope with conflict. Others, like Sadia, seek comfort and strength in a movement. They are part of something larger than themselves and wish to forget their individual grievances. Being part of a movement creates a sense of belonging and offers women a wider community, other than their immediate family members.
As noon approached, the breeze stopped. I followed Sadia to a shady spot. We stood near each other, leaning against a brick wall. In that moment, I cried in silence. I tried to avoid her luminous eyes and imagined myself climbing mountains, if only to forget this girl with an idealized vision of herself as a suicide bomber.
“The men didn’t have to refuse me,” she said.
You have so much to live for. You can continue studying. Stay single or get married. Have children if you wish. You do not know what you are saying. Why is death the solution to your problems? Do you really think you will find Paradise after you detonate? What could you possibly gain by wishing for martyrdom? These thoughts filled me with contempt when I should have shown sympathy. As an American Muslim woman, no matter how grave the situation, I could not forget or forgive a suicide bomber. Even though I believed in the power of mercy and the triumph of love and hope, I could see that Sadia had failed, or someone failed her during childhood or in her young adult life. Somewhere in her background, the details of which were hidden from me, there was cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, stupidity, and a void that comes from an unsatisfied existence.
“I quit the organization.”
Sadia was referring to the LeT. In November 2008, the group perpetrated one of the deadliest terror attacks ever, across India’s financial hub, Mumbai. The reign of terror killed more than 150 Indians. Founded by Hafiz Saeed, for whose capture there is a $10 million reward in the United States, the LeT is arguably Pakistan’s prized weapon against the mighty Indian Army. Pakistan continues to publicly deny ideological, logistical, and financial support for LeT, a point still debated. Thankfully, India restrained itself and did not go to war with Pakistan but agreed to a joint investigation. The Kashmir peace process perished. In 2013, clashes along the guarded border further disrupted any effort to press for a political solution in Kashmir.
“I had no choice,” Sadia said, her eyes on the black gate ahead of us. “I joined a women’s organization. Women do two things: they stay at home or protest. But we need something more.”
She leaned toward me. “I have to find a way to convince other girls like me that jihad is the only way,” she whispered. Suddenly, I witnessed an innocent-looking girl turn to violence for a false sense of security. Sadia forced me to imagine looking through her eyes. What can I do to prove that there is an alternative to violence? I thought. Is it possible for me to simply say that “life is beautiful” when her life is marked by anger and rage—the by-products of trauma—and brutal, shocking acts committed by both the military and militants?
The would-be bomb girl helped me accept that her world was turned upside-down. In a way, Sadia was not wrong to want to do something meaningful with her life and awaken the world community to the never-ending war in Kashmir. She was not wrong to seek happiness and imagine her prized home lifted from occupation. Her greatest weakness was in believing that violence was the answer. There was something of a paradox in my brief relationship with Sadia: I could understand how she might choose violence, though I find it difficult to empathize with anyone, regardless of faith, who destroys human life.
By now, I had grown tired of Kashmir’s secrets. In a conflict like this, almost everyone sheltered a secret from the authorities. A mother would protect her son from arrest and lie about where he was hiding. A wife would pretend that she didn’t know her husband was a militant. A daughter could forgive her mother for deciding to lead a movement, therefore making less time for her, and never fully understand it.
On the dusty road, it was impossible to know if Sadia could be callous, careless, or crazy. She had known me for a few hours and somehow believed she could trust me. I suspect that she wanted someone from the outside to listen and understand her. Sometimes, all a person needs is a stranger to show sympathy.
I watched Indian guards pace up and down the street, twirling thick wooden sticks, their primary weapon.
Sadia stopped and raised her head to the sky. Falcons circled above the trees. We heard their cries.
She continued, “When I was eighteen years old, I was a member of Lashkar. I was convinced that I could be successful. We were planning a major attack. But the operation was put on hold. I don’t know what happened next. The brothers told me that there were enough men; they didn’t need a woman to attack India. I did not expect this.
“The men were foolish,” she said in a passionate display of defiance. “I have a responsibility to my people. Do you understand?”
I nodded in disbelief. And who would be responsible for your actions? Sadia may have sounded determined, but she was confused. Her abstract picture of a holy war that would alter the political landscape of Kashmir was a fantasia. I assumed that she experienced flashes of glory, moments when she could imagine herself a martyr.
“The men don’t see my power. They don’t think I can do it.”
Strap on the bomb? She made it sound like putting on a lace dress. Her unbridled spirit was enviable and dangerous.
As we kept walking, the sun’s warm gold light danced on the rooftops of houses we passed. In a small garden nearby, flowers resembled luxurious wrapping paper.
“The world will know what is going on here if I do this. No one sees Kashmir.”
“That’s not true.”
“It’s the only way.”
“They do see you. I talk about Kashmir all the time. I teach. I write. Some Americans do care,” I protested. I thought of lectures I had given and articles I had written on Kashmir, starting with one in the Summer 2008 issue of Ms. magazine titled “Kashmiri Women Speak Out,” with Sarah Wachter. Stories of Kashmir appeared infrequently in the Western press, which is why Kashmir, to most Westerners, is an invisible conflict.
“I want to be a martyr,” Sadia said again.
This can’t be the way to Paradise, I thought. Martyrdom means “to bear witness” and to sacrifice in God’s name. Only self-defense is allowed in Islam. Never violence for the sake of violence. I remembered an oral tradition by the Prophet of Islam that rejected suicide: “The gates of Heaven will be closed forever to anyone who takes his [or her] own life.” Maybe Sadia didn’t want to accept the tradition, or she had mental health problems I was unaware of. There was so much about her that I didn’t know.
Luckily, Kashmir did not have a history of female suicide bombers. There was only one report. In October 2005, a twenty-two-year-old Kashmiri woman named Hafsa blew herself up minutes before an Indian Army convoy passed along a highway in Awantipora, a town twenty miles south of Srinagar.2 Very little was known about her. According to Kashmiri journalist Basharat Peer, his investigation claimed that she had had an affair with a militant and ran home to join him. His study suggested that “there are social taboos against girls willingly marrying Pakistani militants, and if they do, they are no longer acceptable to the conservative Kashmiri society.”3 The female bomber was a member of the Daughters of Ayesha, a women’s wing of Jaish-e-Muhammad, another radical group based in Pakistan.
Sadia and I walked toward the chinar tree. The mountains in the distance curved down like galaxies over green rolling hills. I stole glances at the would-be martyr. I wanted to know why she was different. During my trips to the valley, no girl or woman I had met had aspirations to be a suicide bomber, so why now? Had this young woman chosen violence, or had violence chosen her?
Trying to understand motivations of a would-be suicide bomber is almost impossible. Most terrorism scholars make calculated guesses based on too few factors. In Women, Gender, and Terrorism, I tried to offer an explanation: “The reasons why women participate in violence will vary, even where common grievances are present, but what motivates women to engage in suicide terrorism is bound to be different for each individual woman.”4 I still believe the study of gender-specific terrorism is limiting and based on too many generalizations to draw conclusions. If I wanted to stop Sadia, I had to get to know her.
At the time, all I could see was a beautiful young woman with a desire to act. She wanted something more than a college education and a married life. She wanted to change the conflict in Kashmir.
“You are a student,” I said to her. “Your education will prove useful one day.”
“I wish it were enough.”
“God helps those in need.”
“You can say this from America,” she said with a hint of anger.
Sadia was right. I couldn’t promise her a peaceful future when the Indian Army patrolled the streets and tracked everyone’s movements like an intelligence agency. We were never alone.
I imagined Sadia to be the perfect recruit. Cloaked in a heavy black dress, she was unassuming and undetectable. She was less likely to be suspected and searched in a conservative outfit. In many Muslim cultures, women were prizes of men. Untouchables. Bloom argued that women with the will and capability to detonate “are the new stealth bomb.”5 Theirs is an unholy war.
When Sadia mentioned the word jihad, I began to think of what it meant in Islam. In an earlier essay, I had described jihad as an act of worship. It is a living, breathing concept.6 Jihad originated in Arabic from the root words ja ha da, meaning to strive, to struggle, to seek goodness over evil. My father instilled in me his liberal, secular values, among them the belief that jihad is something private, not public, and the struggle for goodness is personal, not packaged with emotional responses to death.
Terrorists are clever to manipulate the meaning of jihad and avoid using the word suicide. They believe martyrdom operations to be legitimate, legal, and laudable. They have distorted the meaning of war and opt for suicide, their sacred act. It is the ultimate sacrifice, for which they expect a heavenly reward. Perhaps Sadia believed she could gain quick entry into Paradise with an explosives belt. She would not feel the pain of death. Her body would smell of musk. The only thing she couldn’t do was wish for seventy-two male virgins. The concept of male and female virgin martyrs in Heaven is one of the most outlandish myths that extremists use for recruitment. The number seventy-two is not mentioned in the Quran, and the Arabic word houri is often mistaken for “virgin.”
Sadia’s drive to kill may have been personal. A respected friend, Dr. Jessica Stern of Harvard University, wrote that personal grievances “give rise to holy war.”7 Her list, which includes alienation, humiliation, and history, applies to protesters and political activists fighting the armed struggle in Kashmir.
Unfortunately, Sadia confused fighting for freedom with suicide operations. As an American Muslim woman, I had a responsibility to correct her. I needed to teach her “true” Islam.
“Suicide is forbidden. Besides, you’re too young to die.”
“Nothing happens when we protest. No one notices,” Sadia said.
“You are doing something useful. You are a political activist. Violence isn’t the solution in Kashmir. If you stay focused, one day Kashmir will be free. You have to trust God to guide you.”
“I need help from the men. Talk to them. They like you,” she told me.
Are you listening to me? Why are you blinded by false notions of jihad? Don’t you know that most Kashmiris are nonviolent? So why are you trying to be a rebel? Going solo is absurd.
“How old are you?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Twenty-one.”
“You can do so much.” Youth is a gift, I thought.
“If you could see what I see, you would understand.”
As we approached a black gate, she pleaded, “Talk to the men. They can help me.”
The men she referred to were male political activists. At one time, they were gun-toting militants with anger toward their oppressors. Today, the same men are politicians, protesters, and participants in the conflict, a nonviolent resistance. They have reassured me that they can never return to terrorism. “We lost too many of our young men. They were arrested. Some disappeared. Some died fighting. Most died of torture,” a senior ex-militant told me. He made it easy to understand why militants opted for a Gandhi-like approach. “Violence hurt us,” he confirmed, referring to a long list of friends who died in the early 1990s.
Sadia and I pushed through the gate. A row of unassuming brown houses faced us; from one window, a group of women looked down at us. Sadia led me inside the house to meet the female activists.
“Please don’t tell them,” Sadia said. “They know nothing about this.”
What would I say to them? The bomb girl is waiting for an order? Looking back, I have often wondered why Sadia chose to speak candidly to me. Maybe it’s true that talking to a stranger can be less intimidating. Maybe Sadia believed that I had influence over the men. She knew they protected me. But I would say nothing to the men because I believed the call to martyrdom was a false promise—no freedom or justice would be served by Sadia’s selfish surrender to suicide. Kashmir would remain as it had always been: forests untouched, inviting, dense, and green; a history of personal tragedies; and love and death passing as fragments of everyday life in a landscape of ruination.
A year later, I received a call from a senior leader. “She got married,” he said. “Sadia moved to Mauritius with her husband.”