ISI To ISIS: The New Code

Now, funerals of militants see black Islamic State flags being waved in place of green Pakistani ones.

- Naseer Ganai

SOON after Sajad Ahmed Gil­kar’s body was brought to his home in downtown Srinagar on July 12, youths who led the fun­eral procession of the young militant did something unprec­edented in the history of Kashmir’s insurgency: they waved black flags. The colour, representative of the Islamic State terror group, has brought to the fore new ideological faultlines in the restive Valley, where Pakistan’s national flag is a usual sight on such occasions of loud protest.

At Nowhatta, men demonstrating support to 26-year-old Sajad and his separatist ideology also shouted slogans hailing Hizbul Mujahideen militant Zakir Musa. Exactly a month before it, 23-year-old Musa had proclaimed that Kashmir struggle was all about Shariat and shahadat (martyrdom). What’s more, the Pakistani flag, he proclaimed, doesn’t fall within the “pure realm” of the Quran prescribed Islamic guidelines “because there is no Kalimah (declaration) inscribed on it”. The militant conglomerate of United Jihad Council distanced itself from the statement, prompting Musa to announce his departure from the 1989-founded Hizb.

Kaw Mohalla witnessed loud protests ahead of the last rites of its son Sajad, who security personnel had killed along with two other militants the previous evening at a hamlet in Budgam district of central Kashmir. That encounter at Redbug was on specific information about the presence of certain ultras, according to the police. Five days later, another funeral of a militant in Pulwama district was marked by waving of the same black flags. The body of Jaish-e-Mohammed’s Mukhtar Lone was shrouded in ISIS flag at the procession in Amurabad, inclining observers to suspect whether there is a new worry taking over the Valley since the burst of insurgency in 1990.