Kashmir: What made the David Beckham of Sadiquabad join the Lashkar-e-Taiba?

Until a few weeks ago, the David Beckham of Sadiquabad was dribbling a football. But last Friday, a picture of him wielding a gun went viral on social media. Twenty-year-old Majid Khan went missing from his home in South Kashmir’s Anantnag district on November 9 to join the Lashkar-e-Taiba. According to a picture doing the rounds on social media, he now has a new code name: Abu Ishmayel.

With his Beckham hairstyle and his imitation Ray Ban glasses, Khan cut a dashing figure in the village. He was a student at the Government Degree Boy’s College in Anantnag. Legend has it that Anantnag won its first inter-district football match because of him.

“Sports was his passion. We all thought he would go ahead in sports and encouraged him,” said his cousin, Nazir Ahmad, pointing to dozens of trophies, including one from a tournament organised by the Jammu and Kashmir Police. When he was not being Beckham, Khan worked tirelessly for a local charitable organisation and had mobilised volunteers for blood donation drives over the past year.

Khan’s sudden departure has left his family in shock. His father, Irshad Khan, suffered a cardiac arrest hearing the news and was discharged from hospital on Tuesday. Sitting in a dimly lit room, Irshad Khan referred to Majid, his only son, in the past tense. “Majid was 20 years old,” he said softly. “I just want him to come home, safe and alive.

A turning point?

For a week before he went missing, Majid Khan’s cousin Ahmad said, nothing was out of place except that he intently gazed at his mother every day, saying nothing. “He was closer to his father, they were like friends,” said Ahmad. “But that week he only looked at his mother.”

Khan had been detained by the police only once and, to the family’s knowledge, did not have a history of taking part in violent protests. “He was detained before the Burhan unrest in 2016,” Ahmad said, referring to the mass uprising that followed the killing of the Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani. “Then he was counselled by the police and released after 10 days. He stayed away from protests during the unrest after that. He kept busy with his social work and skipped his college exams because he couldn’t prepare.”

The turning point, according to Khan’s co-workers in the charitable organisation, seems to have come with the killing of Yawar Nisar, who had joined militant ranks only days before he was killed. On August 4, hundreds of residents of Anantnag town gathered for his funeral. The slain militant and Khan had been friends. The two shared a love of sports.

For three days, Irshad Khan said, Khan was at Nisar’s home and returned after observing rituals on the fourth day of mourning. The picture of Khan that went viral on social media bore a grim warning: “How many Yawars will you kill? A Yawar will emerge from every house”.

But the family is not sure. “He showed no intentions of joining the mujahid [fighters],” said Ahmad. “He was disturbed because of his death. In fact the town felt bad for him [Nisar]. He was killed while he was in the bathroom, he could have been apprehended.”

A close relative, who did not want to be named, said that Khan had made an “immature decision”, and that it may have been “under someone’s influence”. “He did not need to go for this, it was unnecessary,” he said. “He is aware of his responsibilities. He skipped the first for the second jihad. His jihad is at his home, where he has an ailing father and a mother to take care of. ”

Another relative said the family had stayed away from militancy even during the 1990s, when thousands from the Valley left to join up. “Majid was supposed to go to Dubai through the NGO, for which he acquired a passport recently,” he said. “We wanted to see him off for a better future but he left us without saying a word.”

Call for return

Majid Khan’s transition can be traced through his profile pictures on Facebook. Beckham replaced an earlier hero, David Villa, at one point. As a teenager, Khan had also inserted himself into a poster of the famous wrestler John Cena, copying Cena’s piercing stare.

In 2015, the famous picture of Afzal Guru, hanged for his involvement in the 2001 Parliament attacks, replaces the superstars. His most recent profile picture is that of his slain friend. In between, the profile pictures tell stories of heartbreak, a love for motorbikes and Pakistani cricketer Shahid Afridi, and days spent with friends in the snows and mountains of Kashmir.

Soon after it became known that Khan had become a militant, a video of his inconsolable mother, Aisha, went viral on social media in Kashmir. “If he is reading what is being written and shown [on videos online], I just want to tell him to come back home,” a heartbroken Aisha, said on Wednesday. Videos entreating him to come back now crowd his Facebook timeline.

His family said that the Jammu and Kashmir Police had assured them a safe return for Khan, if he so wished. However, relatives think establishing contact with him is near impossible. “In the ’90s, there was a commander for every locality. Today, who knows where they are?” a cousin asked. “Where do we find him” in absence of a commander?

Khan took the plunge into militancy a day after the Centre’s interlocutor, Dineshwar Sharma, left the Valley. “Unless there is a resolution to Kashmir issue, our boys will continue leaving their families to join militancy,” a member of Khan’s family said. “The only way to stop is solve the problem.”

But for now, young men like Majid Khan have prepared for a different future. “When the heart aspires for martyrdom, why fear the gallows?” reads a caption to one of the pictures in Khan’s Facebook account. His introduction to himself on the social media platform declares: “Jihad is my mission, shahadat is my dream....Missing you Abu Talha.”