Dukhtaran-e-Millat: Most dangerous women’s terrorist organization in Kashmir

Aya Ezz

On the morning of Tuesday, August 8, the Indian police arrested a female terrorist cell in the territory of Kashmir consisting of five women who were in possession of firearms and homemade bombs.

The police said in a statement that the women were planning to carry out a terrorist operation against Hindus in the region, but after arduous searches and investigations, the police were able to find and arrest them.

Dukhtaran-e-Millat

Beginning in the 1980s, India witnessed the birth of a women’s terrorist organization considered the first of its kind in Asia. In 1981, Asiya Andrabibegan inviting her family and colleagues to wear a face covering, and the call received a great response, such that her call moved from family to family in Kashmir, which made her establish a school to teach the Holy Quran in the territory, and the number of its students reached 400 girls, according to a report published by the Guardian.

In one of the gatherings that they set up in the various streets of Kashmir, these women took down posters of Indian and foreign films, and they also blurred the movie posters with black paint, claiming that these films incite pornography and vulgarity. The girls were not satisfied with this only, but also attacked beauty salons and cafes, claiming them to be dens of the underworld.

These women repeatedly appeared in the region’s streets, and every time they appeared, they carried out many terrorist acts, especially since they were famous for carrying weapons. Since then, India has witnessed the birth of the Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Nation) organization, led by Andrabi.

The organization is on the Indian terrorist lists, and its leader has been arrested more than once. Although Andrabi is in her jail in an Indian prison, the organization’s work still goes on.

According to information, Andrabi is 60 years old and obtained a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry, then a master’s degree in Arabic from the University of Kashmir. She married Ashiq Hussain Faktoo, a well-known leader in the Kashmiri Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen (JM), who is serving a life sentence in India’s prisons.

The organization aims to liberate Kashmir from the grip of India and annex it to Pakistan.

Female body, terrorist mind

Dukhtaran-e-Millat was keen to place itself on the map of terrorist organizations, as it announced that its ideological framework was defined as a “reformist revolutionary feminist organization.”

From a social point of view, it works to control and monopolize religious education for girls, especially in Quranic schools for young girls, and they also demand the marriage of girls from the armed organizations in Kashmir and financial assistance to facilitate marriage for poor girls in the region.

The organization provides financial assistance to the families of dead militants in the region, urges girls not to join government jobs, calls on girls to take up arms and wage jihad against the Indian government, which it describes as the occupier, and calls for secession from India and joining Pakistan.

Andrabi stated in her memoirs, which she wrote part of before her arrest in 2018, that she was influenced at the beginning of her life by three books that served as her intellectual reference, namely “Conversations on the Hearts of Women” by Maber al-Qadiri (a fundamentalist Islamist author), “Deep Thoughts of Muslim Woman”, and Abul Ala al-Maududi’s interpretation of the Holy Qur’an.