Three the Very Hard Way

The

last time Bashir Ahmed saw his nephew was one morning three years ago in their modest home in Gujrat, an industrial town in Pakistan's Punjab province. Mohzam Siddique was wearing the brown shalwar kameez his mother had ironed the night before and carried a spare in a plastic shopping bag. "All he said was that he was going to a public rally," recalls Ahmed, who had taken care of Siddique's family ever since the lad's father, a Pakistani artilleryman, was killed by Indian soldiers in a firefight in Kashmir in 1980, when Siddique was just two.

Siddique was not heading to a public rally but to a private war—to join Islamic militants fighting for Kashmir, to kill Indians, perhaps to avenge his father. It was a journey marked by blood and sweat: four months of intensive guerrilla training, crawling through barbed-wire obstacle courses, running up and down peaks, target practice, planting mines, making bombs—and, later, real killing. And it was a journey that would end in tears in Srinagar, summer capital of Indian Kashmir, at the high-security prison of the state's dreaded counterinsurgency special ops division.

As it begins voting for a new legislative assembly, Kashmir is reeling from fresh waves of violence. Already, nearly 300 people have been killed, including the state's Law Minister last week. Pakistan has denounced the election process, while New Delhi says Islamabad is encouraging the infiltration of Islamic militants to disrupt the polls. To prove their claim that Pakistanis or guerrillas based in Pakistan are responsible for the bloodshed, Indian authorities in Srinagar allowed Time to meet three recently captured militants: Siddique, along with comrades-in-arms Tariq Mahmood and Hamid Numan Butt.

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At 24, Siddique was the most experienced in guerrilla warfare, the most defiant and considered the most dangerous of the trio by his jailers because he had tried to grab a policeman's revolver shortly after he was arrested. "This man would shoot us all if he saw a chance to escape," muttered the Indian officer in charge. The prisoners, seated in a dim interrogation cell, said Islamabad would not demand their extradition because it did not acknowledge their presence in Kashmir. Said Mahmood: "We all knew, when we came, that we might not be able to go home."

Neither Siddique nor Mahmood fit the common profile of hardened militants. Both are from middle-class families and attended regular schools, not the madrasahs that are often breeding grounds for radicals. Siddique seemed a well-adjusted boy who enjoyed playing football and hiking. "We gave him everything," Uncle Ahmed says. Mahmood was even more privileged: studying medicine, practicing as a homeopathic doctor, and marrying a fellow physician.

But both young men began to yearn for jihad. Siddique's cousin Zahid Islam says that while studying at Gujrat Technical College, Siddique would increasingly express concern about the plight of Kashmiris. Mahmood's brother Tahir says he began to hate his job at a clinic, eventually quitting to join Islamic groups. One day, Mahmood asked his family for permission to go to Kashmir. "My father's initial reaction," relates Tahir, a onetime fighter himself, "was neutral—not bad, not good. But later he reckoned (Mahmood) had done the right thing."

In jail, Siddique and Mahmood remained fully committed to militancy. They spouted the usual radical rhetoric: the West was trying to crush Islam, Osama bin Laden was a hero, martyrdom led to everlasting life. Their only regret, said the men, was that they were caught alive. "Mujahedin wait for justice and reward in the other world," intoned Siddique.

He and the others got their wish. A few days after Time saw them, the three jihadis were shot dead by Indian authorities, who said they were trying to escape. It's not clear if their families know yet, and what their reaction will be. But even before his cousin's death, Zahid had made up his mind to join him: "I need to know what to do to go to Kashmir. I want to go on jihad."