Old Embers, Young Fire

On New Year’s Eve, a Jaish-e-Mohammad suicide squad attacked a CRPF camp in Kashmir, killing five security personnel. The first suicide attack in 17 years by local militants, it was masterminded by a 16-yearold. THE WEEK examines how JeM attracts teenagers to join the ranks of fidayeen in an attempt to become the predominant militant group in Kashmir

- Tariq Bhat

Dawn was breaking when I reached Tral, a town in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir. I was on my way to Nazneenpora, the village of Fardeen Khanday, the 16-yearold boy who led a suicide attack on a camp of the Central Reserve Police Force at Lethpora on the Srinagar-Jammu national highway. Fardeen and two of his accomplices—Manzoor Ahmed Baba, another local Kashmiri, and Muhammad Shakoor from Pakistan—were part of a Jaish-e-Mohammad suicide squad, which targeted the camp on New Year’s Eve. The CRPF was shaken by the attack on the high security camp, which also housed a training facility and residential quarters. Four CRPF personnel died in the firefight; one died of cardiac arrest during the attack.

The last time a Kashmiri was involved in a suicide attack was in 2000, when Afaq Ahmed Shah, a JeM militant from Khanyar in Srinagar, tried to ram an explosive-laden car into the Army’s 15 Corps headquarters at Badami Bagh in Srinagar. The involvement of two local boys in a suicide attack after 17 years has alarmed security agencies. Two days after the attack, the JeM posted a video on Facebook, which was recorded just before the attack. In the video, Fardeen is seen sitting cross-legged, wearing a pheran (a winter gown popular in Kashmir) and a kaffiyeh, in front of a stash of grenades and an AK-47 rifle, and explaining in chaste Urdu why he had become a fidayeen.