Republishing an old interview/profile of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat founder
Asiya Anrabi
Dukhtaran-e-Millat
At the beginning, the group of Dukhtaran-e-Millat was founded as a social organization. They wanted to provide education to girls and assure equal rights to women in the frame of observant Islam. They fought also for seemingly insignificant things, such as the right to have public transport seats reserved for women, but also led crusades as important as that against the institution of the dowry. The transition to militancy itself has been gradual, but in a sense, obliged. Again, it had, at least for Aasya, an emotional and familiar origin: “Since my brothers were already into separatist politics, my initiation into the anti-India sentiment happened automatically while I was still in school. I was used to Police raids much before I jumped full-time into the freedom movement. I was fascinated by the heroic deeds of the mujahideen and yearned to join the jihad. For me, jihad is not just a means to an end: it is a lifelong mission. Allah says in the Quran that jihad is the only way to uproot evil from this world”. So, the Dukhtaran-e-Millat began organizing demonstrations and strikes in support of fighting organizations and in time they got more and more closely involved with them. Until now the group can be categorized as a soft-terrorist outfit in the sense that it uses extra-legal means including threats to impose its doctrines but officially has not taken to arms so far. The outfit, formed in 1987 has claimed that the Kashmir issue is primarily a religious issue and jihad is mandatory. It also supports the accession of the Kashmir valley with Pakistan. Again, for Aasya it doesn’t seem to be a political issue, but a religious and emotional one. She declares each single time she is asked: “I don’t believe in Kashmiriyat, I don’t believe in nationalism. I believe that there are just two nations, Muslims and non-Muslims. I am a Muslim. When India has been divided, has been divided on a religious base, it is undeniable. And Kashmir has been annexed to India against the will of his people. I believe in Islamic nationalism, in the Ummah, I want the whole universe to be governed by the laws of Allah the Almighty. Kashmir should be part of Pakistan because this is where it belongs”. The DeM primarily operates in the Kashmir valley and its present strength is reported to be approximately of 450 members. The outfit has sought to work in tandem with the insurgency which broke out in 1989. During the 1990's, the outfit was active in organizing protests against Kashmiri women who did not adhere to the burqa system. In May 1993, the DeM issued warnings to the women in Srinagar not to venture outside their houses without wearing the veil. It also organizes protests against the alleged display of pornographic literature in Jammu and Kashmir. Another issue that the outfit periodically raises is the excess of security forces conducting counter-insurgency operations in the Srinagar valley. At a point, Aasya invited all the women of the Valley to carry a knife or another kind of weapon to protect themselves against the Indian Army. The DeM has regularly co-operated with the All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) ruled by Syed Gilani in organizing protest demonstrations on this issue. In June 2000, the DeM called for a strike against alleged custodial killings by the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir. Security forces are yet to report any instances of terrorist strikes conducted by the DeM though they suspect that activists of the outfit act as couriers of arms and funds for various terrorist outfits operating in the State. The U.S State Department Report of 1995, held a Dukhtaran-e-Millat activist responsible for a parcel bomb blast at the BBC office in Srinagar in which one person was killed and another two injured. Aasya Andrabi and her group have been also strongly supporting a terrorist outfit named Lashkar-e-Jabbar (LeJ). This outfit has come into the news after its activists reportedly threw acid on two women in Srinagar on August 7 2001 on the grounds that they were not dressed in 'Islamic' style. The Lashkar-e-Jabbar had announced that it would begin to use violence against Kashmir Muslims who were not dressed in their version of 'Islamic Dress Codes' and Aasya said that the campaign was the "beginning of a comprehensive social reform movement based on true Islamic thought", and asked also women in Kashmir to stay away from government jobs and non-Muslim women of the valley to wear identifying marks such as ‘bindis’ on their foreheads or saffron dupattas or to dress in yellow clothes. The impact of the orders were effective with newspapers reporting a major scramble among Muslim women to get burqas stitched as also brisk sales of black fabric. A news report also claimed that about 30 per cent of working women in the State’s major towns were seen using burqas as compared to an estimated five per cent who used these before the announcement. On that occasion, Aasya has been accused of having far less noble motives of those she professed. The ultimatum imposed to the women of Kashmir had been skyrocketing the sales of traditional Islamic clothes: trade in which, someone says, the president of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat has a lot of profit-sharing . Because of her battles, many girls have been scarred with acid and three women have been slaughtered. But she denies any responsibility, even moral, in the happenings: "I and my companions have never done anything like that, hurt or offend women is against Islam. We must persuade, not force". She has been accused also to allegedly receiving money from the ISI through hawala channels and for later distributing the same to different terrorist groups, including the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, a terrorist group financed, trained and baked by Pakistani Isi. After the Sept. 11, the battle of the burqa has been anyway completely abandoned to support the cause of jihad: Andrabi has organized demonstrations in favor of the Taliban and campaigns for a boycott of American goods, severely criticizing the position of Pakistan. It is prepared to die fighting "the occupation of Islamic world", because "every Muslim must take the opportunity to fight the jihad against the occupying armies in Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya."
Mother and militant
Beyond all polemics, Aasya is a quite singular person. A clever woman who strangely mix the passion of a religious integralist with the management skills of an American corporate business woman and who built step by step her legend and gained her power skillfully maneuvering consensus and protests and, when she could, local and even international media. Declaring "The veil is for our safety, it is Allah who demands it", Aasiya has made a myth of her invisibility. Every time she want to protest or communicate something, she calls for a telephone press conference. Her statements are frequent and detailed, but very few people had the privilege to meet her face to face and even less people to see her face. And even those few are forced to undergo a twisted path made of phone calls, appointments, cancellations and postpones for several times. For security reason, perhaps, but maybe also because a little mystery can spice up her statements. At meetings or interviews she arrives always veiled, and often in the company of Osama, the youngest of her children, brought up been taught to kiss a holy picture of Osama bin Laden and to define "Satan" George W. Bush. About the fourteen years old boy, she proudly declares: "I want him to become a mujahedeen. I never dreamed or prayed that my sons would become a doctor or prime minister. I want them to become mujahedeens and fight for the cause of Islam. If I had a daughter, instead, I'd like to see her become prime minister. Men are meant for war, women for managing the world". She has no daughters, luckily or unfortunately, but she has another son, Kurram, now eighteen. While Osama is much into religion and observant Islam, Kurram, who’s personal life has been heavily affected by his mother militancy (he went to jail first when he was a baby in his mother’s arms), is completely different. Kurram’s strongest desire, in fact, is to become a professional cricket player. When he was sixteen he had been selected to play into the Cricket National Youth Team. He has been stopped by his mother, who didn’t want to see him playing and winning for India. Aasya prevented him also from listening music, watching movies, reading books except religious ones. The result is that Kuram spends all the time free from school he has hanging around with friends and chatting about sports. He looks sad and defeated when he talks of his broken dream but, at the same time, he is loyal enough (or scared) to his mother not to speak openly against her. He bursts out only once: “She wants me to be the next Osama bin laden and devote my life to fight for Kashmir’s freedom struggle”, adding immediately that anyway she is a good mother, the best you can think of, and he’s now trying at least to behave like a good Muslim and making his studies his first goal in life. Of course, and she doesn’t deny it, the cause of Islam and her militancy, for Aasya, always comes first. Her life, according to her, is first of all devoted to something bigger than human life, children, everyday problems. She is not interested, is never been, in the small good things in life. And, like all the women everywhere in the world, she finds difficult to hold together her public and private life. To be a chief militant, a mother and a wife.
Love and war
But again, when you think you can frame and categorize her, she surprises you again. Her public feature, in fact, is completely different, and sometimes in a strident contrast, from her public one. With the burqa on, she has dark, deep and fierce bursting and shining eyes, but when she takes off her black clad reveals a plain, gentle, round, unremarkable face. The face of a religion teacher, of a quiet housewife. When she speaks in public her voice is powerful and loud, while face to face she speaks in whispers, smiling slightly. Her eyes and her face come alive and suddenly brightened only when she speaks of her husband, currently in jail for murder and massacre: a patriot, a hero. Again, regarding to this, she has an interesting story to tell: “I didn’t want to get married, never been interested in love and household chores or dreamt to have babies. I wanted to devote my life to Islam, to God, and to empower girls and women within Islam. What happened to me, being denied to go to college because it was out of Kashmir and not following Islamic values, shouldn’t happen to any girl any more”. Going deeper into her religious quest and study of Islam and, above all, in her effort to try to live following Islamic rules, Aasya changed her mind about marriages. A good Muslim woman must be married and have children, she realized. So: “I asked my father to arrange my marriage, but with two conditions: my husband should have been a militant committed to the cause of Islam, a freedom fighter, and not of my same caste. I wanted to show that the custom to divide muslim in castes we have here it is taken by hindu culture and is completely unislamic”. Aasya got married to Mohammed Qasim Faktu, one of the most prominent members of the Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen. She didn’t want to meet him before the wedding, even if her father was willing to allow her knowing his daughter was not the usual kind of Muslim girl. She met Qasim the day of her wedding, looked at his face and: “I felt madly in love with him”. Because this was her duty, falling in love with her husband, and because maybe, trough the shared interested for Islam and the freedom fight, she had found another source to nurture her need for mysticism. She completely idealized her husband, in which company she spent, in almost twenty years, just a couple of weeks. Qasim in fact went into jail very soon after the wedding, just the time to leave her pregnant with Kurram. When he was realized, after almost five years, he immediately had been charged with another murder and a suicide bomb blast and was taken again into custody. They had just the time to conceive the youngest son. Aasya, unless the average Muslim women in this part of the world, doesn’t wear any jewel, any ornament. Her clothes are grey and dull, her hair frizzy and casually tied in a lose knot, no make-up, not even kajal, no any sign of what she calls “vanity”. “My favorite color is green” she says “The green of Islam. And yes, I do like jewels. But I’m not going to wear anything nice or pretty, to do anything to make myself attractive unless my husband is with me. It is what I feel and my duty as a faithful Muslim wife”. Since almost fourteen years, Qasim is in jail and Aasya goes in and out from it, spending also lot of time going underground to avoid police inquires. Their political star, nevertheless, shines higher and brighter than ever. Ali Syed Gilani, the All Party Hurriyat Conference chief is old and slowly losing his grip on the militants group. He is a religious man, but never made a religious fight out of the fight for Kashmir’s freedom. Gilani always made a point to allow all religious faiths and to fight for Kashmiris, for citizens of Kashmir, not for Muslims only and not to convert anyone to Islam. But things are changing. The face of jihad itself is changing. Militants from abroad prefer to fuel the local youth affected by the economic crisis, lack of jobs, lack of instruction because the schools are closed most of the time. The struggle for freedom is now ruled trough so called ‘spontaneous’ groups of teenagers throwing stones against police. Teenagers like Kurram, who’s been sent by his mother to organize one of such groups. Khurram and boys like him, who live in downtown Srinagar separated from 'the rich' town by an invisible but unsormountable wall. You see them running and shouting down the streets while engaging fights with army and police. Armed with stones and, above all, with a hot rage skillfully fomented by those in their who see in their young lives an exceptionally convincing tool to pursue their own political goals. Education, at least for the youth living in downtown, is more and more religious oriented and provided by madrasas settled with Saudi and Pakistani money. On those young lives a game, a dirty, immoral game has been played for months into Srinagar’s roads. With the connivance, of course, of Indian Army who’s completely unable to deal with this new kind of protest. Those who die, are no longer jihadi fighters but kids. Two of them, in the past months, were just eleven years old. Victims of a game bigger than them, in which teenage boys are sent in the streets to protest aganinst Delhi throwing stones at police and army. Police and army equipped with shields and helmets made of bamboo and, basically, used to fight terrorists and not to manage teenager’s revolts. Each time they open the fire against the crowds and someone is killed, they stir up popular anger and play the game of those who crave to have always new 'martyrs'. Martyrs who of course have decided ‘spontaneously’, especially being eleven years old, to give up kites and cricket bats for a sudden awakening of political consciousness. Martyrs which are used by a new network of terror quickly taking the place of the traditional form of jihad. A network making out of teenagers with no future and no hope, no job and no education, an exceptional shield. This is transforming an eminently political issue, like the Kashmir issue, in a religious struggle with the all implications of the case. The attacks on Sikh community last August and against churches and schools run by Christians, are a first symptom. In Kashmir, a region traditionally home to an enlightened and tolerant Islam, wahabi oriented madrasas are mushrooming every day. At the expense of Khurram and guys like him, deprived of their dreams and of a decent education because governative schools, the only schools poor people can afford to send their kids, are closed. Closed because of curfews and lockouts, exactly like shops and commercial activities. The economy of Kashmir is now falling apart. In a very short time boys will have no choice but to turn to the madrasas to have a shred of education, and the idea of a great Muslim nation to find an identity. Aasya and Qasim who, while being in jail, meanwhile joined the Muslim League in a quite prominent position, are said to be behind this new turmoil. Aasya is said to get money and instructions from Pakistani intelligence and to maneuver to accredit Qasim as the new chief of jihadis in the area. If they will succeed, analyst say, Srinagar will be turned into the next Swat valley. Aasya’s victory, if she wins, will be her complete defeat as a person: but, strangely enough, she doesn’t realize it and regarding to this lives in a complete state of denial. Her interpretation of observant Islam is quite different from that given by Pakistani mullahs, but she seems not to understand. And not getting that, if a Taliban-style rule will be imposed in Kashmir, she will be forced by mullahs to do what she never wanted to: sitting at home being a simple housewife with no voice to be heard outside the walls of her house.
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AASYA ANDRABI
Relatively few people know her voice, and even fewer have seen her face. But her name is on everyone’s lips. She is Aasiya Andrabi, the chief of Dukhtaran-e-Millat, a women’s organization that holds the unenviable distinction of being the only female revolutionary group in Indian Kashmir. The group is suspected of offering active support to terrorist organizations affiliated with Islamic separatist movements. Yet, as she often hints, had she been able to attend university, Kashmir might today have one revolutionary group fewer.
“I was born into a family of intellectuals, one of the most enlightened Muslim families in Kashmir,” she says. “When I was young I wanted to become a biologist, a researcher. For many reasons that wasn’t possible, and I fell into depression. I spent weeks and months locked in my room reading books, until one day I found in our library a book of poems and reflections by a Christian convert to Islam, and it opened a completely new horizon for me.”
That “new horizon” was devotion. “Since then,” she says, “I decided to live and die for Islam.” Her mission, as she defines it, is to restore to women the rights guaranteed by Islam. “I fought to show the imam that women can and should have a voice. I won for myself and my associates the right to speak in the mosque, and to guarantee young girls a religious education.”
Now forty-seven and articulate, she refuses to be confined by what she calls “Western stereotypes” or forced into the usual image of an observant Muslim woman. As she likes to put it, she wears her veil “on my body, not on my brain.” Aasya calls herself an Islamic feminist, and to those who point out the apparent contradiction she replies: “Women should not be seen, but they can and must be heard. Of course, I paid a high price for my ideas. When I began my struggle, my mother and grandmother—who had never worn a burqa—thought I was crazy. My grandmother died without forgiving me. My struggle for equal rights leads from behind the burqa. I know that to Western eyes this seems contradictory, but I’ve never felt that the veil hindered my work.”
Her work, officially, is as President, founder, and spokesperson of Dukhtaran-e-Millat.
Dukhtaran-e-Millat
The Dukhtaran-e-Millat (DeM) began as a social organization. Its goals were to provide education for girls and ensure equal rights for women within the bounds of observant Islam. They fought for seemingly small rights—such as reserved seats for women on public transport—as well as more significant issues, like opposing dowry practices.
Its transition to militancy was gradual, yet in Aasiya’s telling, almost inevitable. “Since my brothers were already involved in separatist politics, my initiation into anti-India sentiment happened automatically while I was still in school. I was used to police raids long before I joined the freedom movement full-time. I was fascinated by the heroic deeds of the mujahideen and longed to join the jihad. For me, jihad is not just a means to an end; it is a lifelong mission. Allah says in the Qur’an that jihad is the only way to uproot evil from the world.”
The DeM began organizing demonstrations and strikes in support of militant groups, eventually becoming closely associated with them. Today it is viewed as a soft-terrorist outfit—using extralegal methods, including threats, to enforce its doctrines, though it has not openly taken up arms. Formed in 1987, the DeM argues that the Kashmir conflict is fundamentally a religious issue and that jihad is mandatory. It supports the accession of the Kashmir Valley to Pakistan.
For Aasiya, the issue is not political but religious and emotional. “I don’t believe in Kashmiriyat. I don’t believe in nationalism. I believe there are only two nations: Muslims and non-Muslims. I am a Muslim. India was divided on a religious basis—that is undeniable. And Kashmir was annexed against the will of its people. I believe in Islamic nationalism, in the Ummah. I want the whole universe governed by the laws of Allah. Kashmir should be part of Pakistan because that is where it belongs.”
The DeM operates primarily in the Kashmir Valley and reportedly has about 450 members. It has coordinated its activities with the insurgency that began in 1989. In the 1990s it organized protests targeting Kashmiri women who did not wear the burqa. In May 1993, it warned women in Srinagar not to leave home without a veil. It has protested alleged displays of pornographic material in Jammu and Kashmir, and has frequently demonstrated against the counter-insurgency actions of Indian security forces.
At one point, Aasiya urged all women in the Valley to carry a knife or other weapon to protect themselves from the Indian Army. The DeM has cooperated regularly with the All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC), led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, in organizing these protests. In June 2000, it called for a strike against alleged custodial killings in Jammu and Kashmir.
Although security forces have not officially recorded any terrorist attacks by the DeM, they suspect that its members serve as couriers for arms and funds for various militant groups. A 1995 U.S. State Department report linked a DeM activist to a parcel bomb at the BBC office in Srinagar that killed one person and injured two.
Aasiya and her group have also strongly supported Lashkar-e-Jabbar (LeJ), which gained notoriety after its activists threw acid on two women in Srinagar on August 7, 2001, for not being “Islamically” dressed. The group threatened similar violence against Muslim women who did not follow its dress code. Aasiya praised the campaign as “the beginning of a comprehensive social reform movement based on true Islamic thought,” and urged Kashmiri women to avoid government jobs. She also urged non-Muslim women to wear identifying marks such as bindis, saffron scarves, or yellow clothing.
The impact was immediate: newspapers reported a rush to buy burqas and black fabric. Some estimates suggested that burqa use among working women rose from 5% to 30% after the announcement. Critics accused Aasiya of having a financial stake in the sale of traditional Islamic clothing.
Several girls have been scarred by acid and at least three women killed in the broader climate of fear—but Aasiya denies any responsibility. “We have never done such things. Hurting women is against Islam. We must persuade, not force.”
She has also been accused of receiving funds from Pakistan’s ISI through hawala channels and distributing them to militant groups, including Hizbul Mujahideen.
After September 11, she abandoned the “burqa campaign” to focus entirely on supporting jihad. She organized demonstrations in favor of the Taliban and campaigns to boycott American goods, sharply criticizing Pakistan’s stance. She declares herself ready to die fighting “the occupation of the Islamic world,” because “every Muslim must seize the opportunity to fight jihad in Palestine, Kashmir, and Chechnya.”
Mother and Militant
Beyond the polemics, Aasiya is a singular figure: a clever woman who blends the zeal of a religious fundamentalist with the organizational instincts of a corporate strategist. She built her reputation step by step, skillfully mobilizing public support and media attention. Proclaiming that “the veil is for our safety; Allah demands it,” she has made a myth of her own invisibility. When she wants to protest or make a statement, she often holds telephone press conferences. Her statements are frequent and detailed, but very few people have met her in person—and fewer still have seen her face.
Those who arrange meetings with her endure a labyrinth of phone calls, appointments, cancellations, and postponements. Whether for security or mystique, the effect is the same: a carefully cultivated aura. She always arrives veiled, often accompanied by her youngest son, Osama, whom she raised to kiss a picture of Osama bin Laden and call George W. Bush “Satan.”
Of the boy, now fourteen, she says: “I want him to become a mujahid. I never dreamed my sons would be doctors or prime ministers. I want them to fight for Islam. If I had a daughter, I would want her to become prime minister. Men are meant for war; women for managing the world.”
She has no daughters, only two sons—Osama and Kurram, now eighteen. While Osama is devout, Kurram—whose childhood was shaped by repeated imprisonments alongside his mother—longs to become a professional cricketer. At sixteen he was selected for India’s National Youth Cricket Team, but Aasiya refused to allow him to play for India.
She forbade him music, movies, and non-religious books. He spends his free time hanging out with friends and talking about sports. He looks defeated when he speaks of his broken dream, though he remains too loyal—or too intimidated—to openly criticize her. Only once does he break: “She wants me to be the next Osama bin Laden and devote my life to the freedom struggle,” he says, then quickly adds that she is “a good mother” and that he now focuses on being a good Muslim and on his studies.
For Aasiya, Islam and militancy always come first. She freely admits she is not interested in the “small good things” of life. Like women everywhere, she struggles to balance public and private life, to be a militant leader, a mother, and a wife.
Love and War
Just when you think you understand her, she defies the frame. Her public persona and private self often clash. In a burqa she is fierce, her dark eyes flashing; without it, she reveals a gentle, plain face—more that of a religion teacher than a revolutionary.
In public her voice is strong and sharp; in private she speaks softly, almost shyly. Her face truly brightens only when she speaks of her husband, Mohammed Qasim Faktu, imprisoned for murder and bombings—a patriot and hero in her view.
“I never wanted to marry,” she says. “I wasn’t interested in love or household chores. I wanted to devote my life to Islam and to empowering women. What happened to me—being denied higher education because it was outside Kashmir—should not happen to any girl.”
But the deeper she went into religion, the more she came to believe that a good Muslim woman should marry and have children. So she asked her father to arrange her marriage on two conditions: her husband had to be a militant committed to Islam, and he could not be from her caste—“to show that caste divisions among Muslims come from Hindu culture and are un-Islamic.”
She married Qasim, a prominent member of Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen, without meeting him beforehand. When she saw him on their wedding day, she says she “fell madly in love,” partly out of duty and partly because he embodied her ideals. They spent only a few weeks together. Qasim was imprisoned shortly after their marriage, released after five years, then immediately arrested again. They conceived their second son during that brief window.
Unlike most women in her region, Aasiya wears no jewelry, no makeup, no ornaments. Her clothes are plain, her hair simply tied. “My favorite color is green—the green of Islam,” she says. “And yes, I like jewelry. But I will not wear anything beautiful unless my husband is with me. It is my duty as a Muslim wife.”
For fourteen years Qasim has been in jail. Aasiya moves in and out of hiding, evading police inquiries. Yet her political influence—and his—has only grown. Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the aging Hurriyat leader, is losing his hold. He fought for Kashmir as a political issue, not a religious one. But the nature of jihad in Kashmir is shifting.
Foreign militants have redirected their energy toward mobilizing unemployed, under-educated youth whose schools remain closed by curfews. The new struggle is carried out by teenage boys throwing stones—young men like Kurram, whom Aasiya sent to organize such a group. These boys live in downtown Srinagar, segregated from the “rich” parts of the city by an invisible wall. They run through the streets, raging against police and soldiers, fueled by those who see them as tools for their own goals.
With government schools closed and the economy collapsing, more youth are turning to Wahhabi-oriented madrasas funded by Saudi and Pakistani money. Attacks on Sikhs, churches, and Christian schools signal the rise of an increasingly religiously framed conflict in a region once known for tolerant Islam.
Aasiya and Qasim—who has joined the Muslim League while in prison—are believed by some analysts to be key players in this shift. Aasiya is rumored to receive money and directives from Pakistani intelligence, maneuvering to elevate Qasim as the next commander of local jihad. If successful, they say, Srinagar could become another Swat Valley.
And ironically, that would destroy the very autonomy Aasiya claims. Under Taliban-style rule she would be forced into the role she has always resisted: a silent housewife, unseen and unheard.
Yet she does not seem to perceive this contradiction. She remains, in this regard, in a profound state of denial.
