Life after the gun: Why surrender does not mean peace

Years after they gave up arms, thousands of former militants live under suspicion, without livelihoods, and with no way to shed the past.

Srinagar: In the early 1990s, Jabbar* was just 18, crouched in the apple orchards of Baramulla with a Kalashnikov (a weapon) digging into his shoulder. His face was hidden, but his heart burned with the fire others had lit. “We were told we were the chosen ones,” he recalls now at 51. “Martyrs in the making,” he adds. 

Back then, the village believed it too. Slogans ricocheted through the streets, masjid speakers echoed speeches about jihad (the holy war), and recruiters promised glory. The unseen toll of this was that boys barely old enough to shave were sent into gunfights they could not win. 

Between 1990 and 2024, official figures suggest around 4,100 militants surrendered due to relentless counter-insurgency operations, combat fatigue, internal factionalism and the lure of government rehabilitation schemes.  Over 21,000 were arrested in the first two decades alone. Some got jobs. Most did not. 

Jabbar was not alone in falling into the trap of believing that after surrendering, he would be able to leave the violence behind and live a normal life. There were thousands of youngsters who bought into this belief. Among them were Farooq* and Shabir* from Jabbar’s neighbouring villages.

Years later, the three would surrender, empty-handed and broken, returning to a homeland that looked the same but had no place for them — spurned by the state, mistrusted by their own. 

The price of the return

Farooq crossed back over the Line of Control (LoC) in 1994 after spending three years in Pakistan for arms training and surrendered to the army. His mother wept, clutching his face in her palms. 

“To some, I was a deserter. To others, a traitor. To most… nobody.” Today, he drives a rented cab. “My daughter is 26. Nobody will marry into our family,” he says.

Ishfaq, who surrendered in the late 1990s, built a small garment shop with borrowed money. But the frequent police summons, the sudden knocks at the door and the shadow of suspicion have emptied the shop faster than it was in business.

“You give up the gun, thinking life will return to normal,” he says, looking out at the empty storefront. “But it never does quite return to normal,” he says. 

Their stories are not rare. They are repeated in hundreds of homes across Kashmir. Men who try to return to life find many roadblocks.

Surrendered militants have also brought stigma to their families. Mothers still wait for their sons to be seen as more than their past; daughters and sons inherit this stigma even though they have not participated in this fight. 

Their stories of unsuccessful integration, in part, have contributed to the dwindling figures of militant surrenders in the region over the past decade. This crisis is deepened by political alienation and civilian casualties.

In the first years of militancy, recruitment held some appeal for some young Kashmiris. Young men were told that their deaths would be in history’s ink. But those who survived long enough to surrender came to learn the truth of this glory and the toll it demanded. 

The loudest voices calling for such violence were protected from the violent realities of insurgency. They were most likely removed from the violence, in protected rooms, some in Kashmir, some in Pakistan and some in Western capitals. 

Some enrolled their own sons and daughters in professional colleges in Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, London and New York. They stayed safe, built careers and aged comfortably. It was boys like Jabbar, Ishfaq, and Farooq who have paid in prison years and in endless social exile.

The Ikhwan

By the mid-1990s, many surrendered militants were channelled into an authority that Kashmir would never forget: The Ikhwan. This was a pro-government militia, led by Kuka Parray (formerly a singer and later a Member of the Legislative Assembly). The group was armed and trained by the Army and police and was given unencumbered allowance to operate in the Valley. 

The Ikhwan, in these years, earned a reputation for carrying out large-scale human rights violations, extortion and creating terror among locals in Kashmir. 

A 1998 Human Rights Watch report stated that Ikhwan was responsible for severe human rights violations, including executions, enforced disappearances, torture, and unlawful detention.

“The government uses the groups principally to assassinate and intimidate members of militant organisations and political groups, especially the banned pro-Pakistan party Jamaat-e-Islami,” the report reads.

Villagers spoke of incidents in which women were assaulted, families faced extortion, and land was taken by force. Shops were looted, and young men were beaten in front of relatives.

The line between counterinsurgency and personal grievance grew increasingly blurred in these years. “They were given a free hand,” says a retired police officer from Bandipora. “And when that hand turned violent, no one stepped in,” he adds. 

When militancy ebbed in the early 2000s, the Ikhwan was quietly disbanded. All connections with its members, once celebrated as assets, were quietly cut off. Many were hunted down and killed in revenge attacks by militants; others lived like pariahs, unwelcome in the same villages they once ruled with terror.

“We were used and thrown away like tissue paper,” says Ayoub*, a former Ikhwani whose brother was gunned down in retaliation. In the public memory of the people of Kashmir, their faces remain clear, and the shadow of the Ikhwan’s still remains. 

Broken promises 

Over the years, there have been many policies to encourage those who get recruited into militancy to give up arms. The first surrender policy was put forth in 1995, under Governor K V Krishna Rao, who promised a Rs 1.5 lakh fixed deposit, Rs 1,800 a month, and vocational training. However, this promise was far from realised and most who surrendered never saw the benefits. Many were absorbed into Ikhwan instead and were forced to trade one war for another.

A 2004 policy under Governor N N Vohra added weapon incentives and a delayed payout after good conduct, but payments lagged, and jobs were scarce.

The 2010 policy tried to bring back militants from Pakistan-administered areas, but bureaucratic roadblocks left many without identity papers, ration cards, or livelihoods. The latest was a 2019 policy. The 1995 scheme was revised to offer Rs 6 lakh, training, and stipends, but excluded hardcore militants.

Ensuring that rehabilitation policies are effective is key. Major General (retd) Harsha Kakar, in his ORF column “Why Kashmir Needs Much More Than Surrender Appeals”, emphasises that surrendered militants must be given security, relocated, and provided timely financial assistance to prevent their return to militancy.

“Harassment should be minimal, employment offered at the earliest, and policies strictly implemented and monitored by the Centre. Most joined for financial reasons. Timely support can deter a relapse into militancy and encourage others to surrender,” he wrote.

The reality is that even though such policies remain in place, they are implemented poorly. “I surrendered almost three decades back, but the promised money and job never came, even after trying to avail the scheme multiple times,” Jabbar says. “All I wanted was a normal life, but even that seems out of reach,” he says. 

Social rejection is even sharper. Faheem*, son of a surrendered militant, still remembers his girlfriend’s parents rejecting his marriage proposal because of his father’s history. “We were educated people. I had a good job, everything. But her family still thought of us as cursed,” he says. 

A former militant explains that continued suspicion has also extended the social exile. “Every time something happens in the area, they call me in,” he says. “They check my phone, my house. I have been clean for twenty years, but it does not matter.” 

Recycled violence

Security experts warn that failure to reintegrate ex-militants is not just a moral issue, it is a strategic blind spot.

“If we fail to properly reintegrate surrendered militants, we leave the door open for them to be exploited again by militant recruiters, political actors, or even criminal gangs,” a senior police officer tells DH. “Rehabilitation is not just a moral responsibility, it is a security imperative.”

A stark example is Abbas Sheikh, who first joined Hizbul Mujahideen in the 1990s, was arrested and released multiple times. He rejoined militancy in the 2010s and rose to become chief of The Resistance Front (TRF), believed to be a Lashkar-e-Taiba front. Sheikh revived militancy in Srinagar before being killed in 2021.

“There is always a danger when people feel they have no stake in peace,” says a senior police officer. “We monitor them because of that. But the solution is not just surveillance, it is support,” he adds. 

Some ex-militants slip into narcotics smuggling or petty crime, not out of ideology but desperation. “No one will give them a job… It is a recipe for instability,” says a local social worker.

A lost generation

Kashmir’s conflict has no shortage of victims — widows, orphans, and the wounded. But among the least acknowledged are the men who walked away from violence only to find the road ahead barred.

“Everyone wants peace in Kashmir,” says Dr Farrukh Faheem, who teaches at the University of Kashmir’s Institute of Kashmir Studies. “But peace also means giving space to those who renounced violence. You cannot build a new society by burying the past and those who lived it.”

Many live with injuries — shattered knees, lost fingers, bad lungs from years in hiding. Others bear the invisible damage of torture, of betrayal, of isolation.

Few have ever been offered counselling or meaningful help. In the post-Article 370 push for tourism, elections, and development, surrendered militants are invisible. They are not part of the speeches, the slogans, or the plans. 

Some experts argue for reopening rehabilitation talks, issuing identity papers to those who returned from across the LoC, and creating structured employment schemes. Others say Kashmir needs a truth-and-reconciliation process, one that confronts the Ikhwan era, state complicity, and the full, messy reality of the past.

Until then, the cycle will go on in the same orchards, with weapons and boys who are too young to know the consequences of the decisions they are making.  

“When we picked up the gun, we thought we were fighting for tomorrow,” Jabbar says quietly. “Now, tomorrow does not even have a place for us.”

(*Names changed on request)