Muhammad Ayaz Shafqat, like many young men caught in his circumstances, acquired training in insurgency from the ISI to cross over the border from PoK.
Muhammad Ayaz Shafqat, like many young men caught in his circumstances, acquired training in insurgency from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to cross over the border from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). But as the day of reckoning came closer, Shafqat's soul was tormented by the gentle feelings he got whenever he thought about his mother. He fled the terror camp.
Today, Shafqat, who believes Kashmir should be free, attends a peace course in Bangkok from where he plans to reach out to the world with his ‘Azad Kashmir’ cause.
“My mission is still the same: to see a united, peaceful Kashmir. However, I feel that the means to achieve it must change. I strongly believe that my dream cannot be realised through violence. We have to take recourse to peaceful means,” Shafqat, a fellow at the Rotary Peace and Conflict Studies Centre, Chulalongkorn University, says, explaining the profound change he has undergone in his political outlook and personal life.
He says it is easy for him to put himself in the shoes of Ajmal Amir, aka Kasab, the lone terrorist caught in 26/11, an event that for Shafqat brought back memories of his days in the ISI’s terror nursery. “You must understand that had Ajmal refused to do what he did, he would not have remained alive. I backed out after the first round of training. Had I crossed over into Kashmir, my fate would have been sealed.”
Shafqat’s journey into the terror camp started from his college — Khan Mohammad Khan College in Plandari, PoK — where he was active in the students’ movement, the main agenda of which was Kashmiri liberation. Insurgency training was a step away. “The camps had been originally set up by the United States to fight the
Russians in Afghanistan by proxy. When the Russians pulled out, the ISI took over the camps from the Americans,” he says. “During the day we were given discourses and other training. At night we learnt how to handle arms and rocket launchers. It was hush-hush. People in the vicinity didn’t even have a whiff about our activities.”
The key moment in Shafqat’s transformation came when he realised that he had to ultimately cross the border. “My mother would have died of shock,” he says. “I could feel her pain. After being through the first phase, I knew if I became a terrorist my family would be ruined. It was my mother's love that stopped me.”
After the change of course, he decided to see the world and spend time in the pursuit of knowledge. He read voraciously and met new people. All this opened his mind to fresh possibilities of pursuing his dream. “Through my peace studies, I have realised there are many ways to reach out to people… I am trying to find answers to questions like why isn’t
China — Asia’s superpower — taking a stand on Kashmir? Why do we need to be slaves of either Pakistan or India?” Shafqat asks rhetorically, then pauses and ponders. There is a glint of optimism in his eyes, the sort of thing that differentiates radicals, but not when they are far gone in the alley of terror.
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