Opinion | Not A Victim, But An Enemy Of Her Own People: The Truth About Asiya Andrabi

Feeling for the people of Kashmir and supporting Asiya Andrabi are two contradictory positions and cannot logically coexist

Asiya Andrabi, an ailing 66-year-old woman from Kashmir, a mother, a wife, has been awarded three terms of life imprisonment under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for the crime of raising her voice for the people of Kashmir. This is the narrative now being constructed by Pakistani handlers and echoed by their paid and unpaid amplifiers across Indian and global media. In reality, however, even a brief examination of the life and activities of Asiya Andrabi and her close associates tells us that awarding three terms of life imprisonment is actually a case of being lenient with the figures in question. The recent article by her son, presenting both his parents—convicted on terror-related charges—as helpless victims of state repression, fits neatly into this larger attempt to recast hardened ideological actors as casualties of the system. This piece is a response to that narrative, and to the broader effort to portray Asiya Andrabi, Sofi Fehmeeda, and Nahida Nasreen not as agents of a violent separatist project, but as innocent voices silenced by the Indian state.

Asiya Andrabi, being portrayed as a hapless, innocent woman, founded Dukhtaran-e-Millat, an all-women militant organisation that has consistently advocated jihad, the imposition of Islamic law in Kashmir, and secession from India in favour of Pakistan, functioning as a front aligned with Hizbul Mujahideen. Since its founding in 1987 under Andrabi’s leadership, the organisation has not merely propagated ideology but enforced it. During the height of militancy in the early 1990s, it issued diktats to Kashmiri women mandating the wearing of the veil, and those who defied these edicts were subjected to intimidation, violence, and in some cases, acid attacks. And this, though enough to warrant life sentences, is just the beginning of the story.

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Andrabi’s ideological and operational ecosystem becomes even clearer when one examines her well-documented proximity to figures such as Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba and a UN-designated global terrorist. This is not a matter of guilt by association, but of open alignment. She has repeatedly endorsed Saeed’s agenda and echoed the same anti-India, separatist rhetoric that underpins cross-border militancy. In August 2015, she addressed a rally organised by Saeed in Multan via phone, a gathering where calls were openly made to break India apart. Andrabi not only lent her voice to that platform but went further, explicitly calling for war against the Indian state and seeking support from Pakistan. It would be unfair to not mention that Hafiz Saeed lovingly refers to Asiya Andrabi as his “sister".

Beyond her direct associations, Andrabi has also consistently deployed symbolic gestures as instruments of ideological signalling. From waving the Pakistani flag in Srinagar to publicly observing Pakistan’s National Day, her actions have not merely been rhetorical but performative assertions of allegiance that seek to normalise separatist sentiment in the public sphere. Under her leadership, Dukhtaran-e-Millat extended its influence beyond overt politics into the regulation of culture and everyday life. The group notoriously targeted Kashmir’s first all-girls rock band, issuing threats that sought to suppress artistic expression under the guise of moral policing. It went further, criticising families and young girls for participating in cultural exchange programmes such as Army-organised tours to Delhi and Agra, portraying such engagements as ideological betrayal. Even basic expressions of youth culture—celebrating New Year, dancing, singing—were met with threats and intimidation. This pattern reveals not a struggle for rights or dignity, but an attempt to impose a rigid, exclusionary, theocratic worldview that leaves little room for personal freedom, cultural plurality, or dissent.

To present her arrest and sentencing in isolation, stripped of context, is a deeply misleading and treacherous exercise. It reduces a long and well-documented trajectory of separatist mobilisation, extremist propaganda, and associations with designated terrorist networks into a simplistic narrative of victimhood. Her personal affiliations make it increasingly difficult to sustain this narrative as well. Andrabi was married to Ashiq Hussain Faktoo, a member of the proscribed Hizbul Mujahideen, who is serving life imprisonment for the killing of HN Wanchoo, a prominent human rights activist. This is not merely incidental proximity but reflects a deeper ideological alignment within the same militant ecosystem. In addition, there have been reported familial linkages with Pakistan’s military establishment, including relatives associated with its officer corps, along with networks that have allegedly intersected with Pakistan’s intelligence ecosystem. Taken together, these associations do not suggest an isolated voice of dissent, but rather an individual operating within, and drawing strength from, a broader architecture that has long sought to instrumentalise Kashmir for political and strategic ends.

Therefore, while describing her as “an ailing 66-year-old woman from Kashmir, a mother, a wife" wronged by the system, a few questions arise. Was she not a woman when she endorsed and enforced deeply regressive anti-women positions such as compulsory veiling? Was she not a mother when she participated in the radicalisation of Kashmiri youth, many of whom were drawn into cycles of violence they did not fully comprehend? Was she not elderly when she continued to advocate for an armed confrontation with the Indian state, fully aware of its human cost? And yet today, selective narratives—like the one advanced by her son—seek to recast her as a frail, wronged figure deserving of sympathy and remembrance. What is conveniently erased in this retelling is the generation of young Kashmiris who were pushed into violent street confrontations between 2010 and 2019, many of whom never returned home. Their stories remain largely unnamed and unremembered. Who were they? What were their aspirations? What became of their families, their parents, their siblings, who continue to live with the consequences of those years? If memory is to be invoked, it cannot be selective; it must account for all those whose lives were altered, and often ended, in the process.

Feeling for the people of Kashmir and supporting Asiya Andrabi are two contradictory positions, and cannot logically coexist. The biggest enemies of the people of Kashmir are people like Asiya Andrabi and her ilk, who have systematically destroyed generations of Kashmiri lives in pursuit of the delusional dream of merging with Pakistan, a state that itself struggles with instability, extremism, and institutional failure. Not all those who support her are committed Islamists; there is also a long list of useful idiots who hide behind the polished vocabulary of “self-determinism" and “freedom." But stripped of this intellectual cover, what they are defending is not liberty, but the idea of a radical, theocratic, illiberal order. Knowingly or unknowingly, they are amplifying a project that has brought nothing but violence, grief, and regression to the region, and one that, despite all the noise around it, stands on foundations too weak to ever be realised.

The writer takes special interest in history, culture and geopolitics. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views

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