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Sajjad’s jihad journey from Pak to Srinagar via love, drugs, murder
Story of captured Pakistani terrorist illustrates how Lashkar-e-Taiba is raising an army from a dysfunctional social group ravaged by drugs and poverty.
Pakistani terrorist Sajjad Ahmad alias Javed Ahmed who was captured alive by the army in an encounter in Rafiabad area of Baramulla district on Thursday. (Source: PTI)
In the spring of 2009, Sajjad Ahmad stepped out of prison. He’d fall in love, to a woman he’d killed for, only to see her married off to a more appropriate match, the local veterinarian. He’d fall in love again, this time with the brown, toxic powder that has claimed the lives of thousands of young men in Pakistan’s south Punjab. Then, he’d find an even more powerful drug: jihad.
Last week, Ahmad’s journey ended in another prison cell, this time in Srinagar where he was brought after surrendering to the Indian Army at the end of a day-long firefight.
His life, pieced together by The Indian Express from investigators’ accounts and community sources in Rahim Yar Khan, illuminates how the Lashkar-e-Taiba is raising an army of the wretched, from a dystopic social landscape shaped by grinding poverty, drugs and injustice.
Born in 1992 to Faiz Baksh, a landless agricultural labourer and homemaker Pathani Mai in the village of Kot Addu, Ahmad is the third of four sons and a daughter. Like his brothers, Ahmad didn’t have much of an education. Having dropped out of the local municipal school in Class 4, at age 10, Ahmad and his younger brother Javed Iqbal were put to work, grazing cattle for local landowners.
Later, as teenagers, the boys began travelling to Rawalpindi in search of work at construction sites. Ahmad also worked for two months as a truck conductor. “He hated the job,” a Kot Addu resident told The Indian Express. “Boys working on the trucks are treated very badly.”
From the accounts of local residents, though, Ahmad responded to his environment with a defiance his brothers didn’t demonstrate — hanging around with small-time local criminals, often linked to the region’s heroin rackets and land-owners.
Early in 2008, one of those friends, Muhammad Qasim, heard from his sister that she was being sexually harassed by another villager. Enraged, Qasim and Ahmad procured a pistol from a contact in the drug trade, and shot the alleged stalker. He was promptly arrested, and would spend the next 13 months in jail, until Qasim’s family paid the bribes needed to obtain bail.
In 2011, records show, a sessions court in Muzaffargarh finally disposed off the murder case, acquitting Ahmad for want of evidence.
The case, community sources said, marked a turning point in Ahmad’s life. Just 16 years old when he was incarcerated for murder, he came out of prison determined to marry Hajira Mai — the woman he had killed for. Hajira Mai’s family had ambitions for her, though, beyond the prospectless young criminal. His friendship with Qasim snapped and, not long afterwards, the young woman was married off to a more appropriate man, the local veterinarian.
For three years afterwards, Ahmad lived on the streets — making just enough from petty crime, local residents say, to feed his growing drug habit.
In 2012, according to investigation records, Ahmad ran into a man he knows only as Niyaz Bhai, a preacher for the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s parent religious-political organisation. Niyaz Bhai’s lectures on jihad, Ahmad has told investigators, gave him a sense of purpose. The preacher promised to open the doors to a new brotherhood, where all were equal, and united in a cause worth giving one’s life for.
Shahbaz Khan Kulachi, one of Ahmad’s closest friends, lost his brother, Zeeshan Khan, in the Kashmir jihad in 2006.
Four major jihadi organisations — the Kashmir-focussed Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Muhammad, and the anti-Shi’a Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi — compete for legitimacy in south Punjab. The Lashkar’s growth, spurred on by high-profile charitable activity, has been the most spectacular.
From 26/11 perpetrator Muhammad Ajmal Kasab to Muhammad Naveed, arrested recently in Udhampur, the region has been sending a growing stream of jihadists across the border into India.
“Young people have no real prospects, and there is little economic activity,” says scholar Ayesha Siddiqa, who herself hails from south Punjab’s Bahawalpur. “In areas like this, amid economic stagnation and hopelessness, religious extremists find fertile ground to plant their ideology.”
Later in 2012, investigators say, Ahmad was taken to a jihad training camp some two hours drive from Peer Jagi Morh, and participated in the Lashkar’s Daura Aam, or basic course. In addition to intense physical conditioning, he was introduced to the use of assault rifles, machine guns and grenades.
Following his basic training, investigation records say, Ahmad also underwent the Daura-e-Sufa, an intermediate course, in December, 2012, and the Daura Khas, or advanced course, in the summer of 2013.
He was now, ready for war.
In the summer of 2013, Ahmad joined a group scheduled to cross the Line of Control, but intensified army patrolling blocked their progress. He returned home, joining Lashkar preaching groups and living off a stipend offered by the organisation. Then, in March, 2015, he travelled to Quetta, and began work at the Lashkar office, selling copies of its magazine Jarar.
Finally, in June, 2015, he volunteered to join another group preparing to cross the Line of Control, this one tasked with setting up hideouts in the Rafiabad forests for future units.
Local residents say the family has reacted with stoicism to news of Ahmad’s arrest — but also think having a martyr may bring it some prestige in the community, and with it, opportunity.
The brothers still live lives of hardship. The youngest, Javed Iqbal, continues to work on trucks; he is yet to be married. Mohammad Aslam, the older one, works as a rickshawala, supporting his wife Maryam Mai and three children, sons Shazian Khan and Shazeb Khan and daughter Fatima. Mehraj Khalid, the oldest, is also a truck conductor. Khalid’s wife, Aamina Mai, brings up two children — Zulkarnain and a new born, not yet named — on his meagre earnings.
Ahmad’s wider family isn’t much better off. His sister, Nasreen Bibi, is married to Muhammad Nawaz, who runs a tractor workshop in nearby Rahim Yar Khan. Hazoor Baksh, one of two paternal uncles, is unemployed; the other, Noor Ahmad, struggles to make ends meet as a driver.
Sajjad’s jihad journey from Pak to Srinagar via love, drugs, murder | The Indian Express
Story of captured Pakistani terrorist illustrates how Lashkar-e-Taiba is raising an army from a dysfunctional social group ravaged by drugs and poverty.
Pakistani terrorist Sajjad Ahmad alias Javed Ahmed who was captured alive by the army in an encounter in Rafiabad area of Baramulla district on Thursday. (Source: PTI)
In the spring of 2009, Sajjad Ahmad stepped out of prison. He’d fall in love, to a woman he’d killed for, only to see her married off to a more appropriate match, the local veterinarian. He’d fall in love again, this time with the brown, toxic powder that has claimed the lives of thousands of young men in Pakistan’s south Punjab. Then, he’d find an even more powerful drug: jihad.
Last week, Ahmad’s journey ended in another prison cell, this time in Srinagar where he was brought after surrendering to the Indian Army at the end of a day-long firefight.
His life, pieced together by The Indian Express from investigators’ accounts and community sources in Rahim Yar Khan, illuminates how the Lashkar-e-Taiba is raising an army of the wretched, from a dystopic social landscape shaped by grinding poverty, drugs and injustice.
Born in 1992 to Faiz Baksh, a landless agricultural labourer and homemaker Pathani Mai in the village of Kot Addu, Ahmad is the third of four sons and a daughter. Like his brothers, Ahmad didn’t have much of an education. Having dropped out of the local municipal school in Class 4, at age 10, Ahmad and his younger brother Javed Iqbal were put to work, grazing cattle for local landowners.
Later, as teenagers, the boys began travelling to Rawalpindi in search of work at construction sites. Ahmad also worked for two months as a truck conductor. “He hated the job,” a Kot Addu resident told The Indian Express. “Boys working on the trucks are treated very badly.”
From the accounts of local residents, though, Ahmad responded to his environment with a defiance his brothers didn’t demonstrate — hanging around with small-time local criminals, often linked to the region’s heroin rackets and land-owners.
Early in 2008, one of those friends, Muhammad Qasim, heard from his sister that she was being sexually harassed by another villager. Enraged, Qasim and Ahmad procured a pistol from a contact in the drug trade, and shot the alleged stalker. He was promptly arrested, and would spend the next 13 months in jail, until Qasim’s family paid the bribes needed to obtain bail.
In 2011, records show, a sessions court in Muzaffargarh finally disposed off the murder case, acquitting Ahmad for want of evidence.
The case, community sources said, marked a turning point in Ahmad’s life. Just 16 years old when he was incarcerated for murder, he came out of prison determined to marry Hajira Mai — the woman he had killed for. Hajira Mai’s family had ambitions for her, though, beyond the prospectless young criminal. His friendship with Qasim snapped and, not long afterwards, the young woman was married off to a more appropriate man, the local veterinarian.
For three years afterwards, Ahmad lived on the streets — making just enough from petty crime, local residents say, to feed his growing drug habit.
In 2012, according to investigation records, Ahmad ran into a man he knows only as Niyaz Bhai, a preacher for the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s parent religious-political organisation. Niyaz Bhai’s lectures on jihad, Ahmad has told investigators, gave him a sense of purpose. The preacher promised to open the doors to a new brotherhood, where all were equal, and united in a cause worth giving one’s life for.
Shahbaz Khan Kulachi, one of Ahmad’s closest friends, lost his brother, Zeeshan Khan, in the Kashmir jihad in 2006.
Four major jihadi organisations — the Kashmir-focussed Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Muhammad, and the anti-Shi’a Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi — compete for legitimacy in south Punjab. The Lashkar’s growth, spurred on by high-profile charitable activity, has been the most spectacular.
From 26/11 perpetrator Muhammad Ajmal Kasab to Muhammad Naveed, arrested recently in Udhampur, the region has been sending a growing stream of jihadists across the border into India.
“Young people have no real prospects, and there is little economic activity,” says scholar Ayesha Siddiqa, who herself hails from south Punjab’s Bahawalpur. “In areas like this, amid economic stagnation and hopelessness, religious extremists find fertile ground to plant their ideology.”
Later in 2012, investigators say, Ahmad was taken to a jihad training camp some two hours drive from Peer Jagi Morh, and participated in the Lashkar’s Daura Aam, or basic course. In addition to intense physical conditioning, he was introduced to the use of assault rifles, machine guns and grenades.
Following his basic training, investigation records say, Ahmad also underwent the Daura-e-Sufa, an intermediate course, in December, 2012, and the Daura Khas, or advanced course, in the summer of 2013.
He was now, ready for war.
In the summer of 2013, Ahmad joined a group scheduled to cross the Line of Control, but intensified army patrolling blocked their progress. He returned home, joining Lashkar preaching groups and living off a stipend offered by the organisation. Then, in March, 2015, he travelled to Quetta, and began work at the Lashkar office, selling copies of its magazine Jarar.
Finally, in June, 2015, he volunteered to join another group preparing to cross the Line of Control, this one tasked with setting up hideouts in the Rafiabad forests for future units.
Local residents say the family has reacted with stoicism to news of Ahmad’s arrest — but also think having a martyr may bring it some prestige in the community, and with it, opportunity.
The brothers still live lives of hardship. The youngest, Javed Iqbal, continues to work on trucks; he is yet to be married. Mohammad Aslam, the older one, works as a rickshawala, supporting his wife Maryam Mai and three children, sons Shazian Khan and Shazeb Khan and daughter Fatima. Mehraj Khalid, the oldest, is also a truck conductor. Khalid’s wife, Aamina Mai, brings up two children — Zulkarnain and a new born, not yet named — on his meagre earnings.
Ahmad’s wider family isn’t much better off. His sister, Nasreen Bibi, is married to Muhammad Nawaz, who runs a tractor workshop in nearby Rahim Yar Khan. Hazoor Baksh, one of two paternal uncles, is unemployed; the other, Noor Ahmad, struggles to make ends meet as a driver.
Sajjad’s jihad journey from Pak to Srinagar via love, drugs, murder | The Indian Express
