Face Of Radicalism

- Naseer Ganai in Srinagar

ZAKIR Musa was unlike any other militant to have emerged from the bloodied battlefield of Kash­ mir. Musa, 25—who left his engi­ neering studies halfway to pick up the gun—was a radical Islamist who wanted to establish the “rule of Allah” and had once threatened to publicly hang separatist leaders for refusing to acknowledge Kashmir’s battle as a “religious war”. And Zakir Musa’s killing by security forces last week could potentially mark the end of a phase in Kashmir’s militancy that is seen by police and secu­rity experts as an abe r­ ration. Jammu and Kash­ mir police chief Dilbagh Singh said as much, “Zak­ ir’s killing” has ended the “cult and concept of radi­ cal jihad as he was the last militant of ISIS­ influenced ideology”.