स्टोरी ऑफ सोशलाइजेशन ऑफ चिल्ड्रन एंड कश्मीर सोसाइटी
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Answer+Explanation:
According to data accessed from the J&K police, at least 24 children below the age of 18 were recruited by various militant groups from 2010 to July 2018.Additionally, a news report quoted the locals from south Kashmir—where the new wave of militancy is most intense—stating that the police underplays the number of new recruits: “Locals aware of the happenings differ with the figures. They say around ten of these militants are below 18 and police avoids mentioning their age correctly.” The police data only mention the children who may have been arrested or detained and the militants who have shown up on the radar of intelligence units. However, there are many more juveniles who are involved with groups such as Hizbul Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad as over-ground workers providing logistic support, for instance, Mudasir Rashid Parray, as per reports, he was an over-ground worker for LeT commanders Abu Zargam and Abu Fanan
The data maintained by the J&K police show that the first underage recruit in the new, social-media driven wave of militancy was its poster boy Burhan Wani. At the age of 15, he was recruited by Hizbul Mujahideen, and by 2013, he had become the leading figure of the group. The police data show there were no juvenile recruits during 2011–13. In 2014, a 16-year-old boy joined Hizbul Mujahideen, and he subsequently surrendered to the police.Following this, 2015 saw a sudden spike in the recruitment of underage boys. This was also the year when pictures of Wani became a viral sensation on social media. At least seven children were recruited by Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Taiba that year: six joined the former and one was recruited by the latter. Of the seven recruits that year, four were killed in various encounters, two surrendered to the police, and the whereabouts of one is not known. In 2016, four children were recruited by Hizbul Mujahideen, of which three were arrested and one surrendered to the police.
In 2017, the number of child recruits was eight, seven of them in Hizbul Mujahideen and one in Jaish-e-Mohammad, called Fardeen Khanday. Khanday hit the headlines after he launched a fidayeen (suicidal) attack on a paramilitary camp in the Lethpora area of Pulwama. (This case will be examined in detail in the following section.) In the same year, the J&K police managed to prevent eight minor boys from joining militant groups; the boys were subsequently returned to the families after counselling. Four of them were intercepted on the LOC as they tried to cross over to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir for training.
In 2018, five children were recruited by militant groups. Two of them joined Hizbul Mujahideen and one became part of Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, an AQIS affiliate group operating in J&K. The remaining two—Mudasir Parrey and Saqib Bilal Sheikh—had joined Lashkar-e-Taiba and were killed in an encounter on 9 December 2018. The Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind recruit surrendered two months after he took up arms.
According to official figures, the total number of local recruits in the militant groups in 2015 and 2016 was 66 and 88, respectively. The numbers rose to 126 in the year 2018 and around 165 in the first 10 months of 2018.