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Kashmir's Separatist Trioka Have Foreign Wives

By Fayaz Wani

Srinagar, Jan 27: The pro-independence Kashmiri leader, Mohammad Yasin Malik, 39, is to tie the nuptial knot with a Pakistani girl. He has become the third separatist moderate leader to have a foreign wife.

The trend among the separatist leaders to have a foreign wife was set by moderate Sajjad Gani Lone, whose father was assassinated by unidentified gunmen in 2002. Sajjad's wife hails from Pakistani controlled Kashmir (PcK). She is the daughter of a pro-independence leader based in PcK.

Senior separatist leader and chairman of moderate faction of Hurriyat Conference (amalgam of separatist groups), Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has an American wife. He married a Kashmiri girl based in the United States few years back.

Mohammad Yasin Malik, who is a former militant commander, left for Pakistan yesterday. The girl is a Pakistani painter studying in London. Her father, a senior Pakistani defence official died last year and her brother, a security affairs expert, teaches in a university in the United States.

Yasin Malik is among the first group of the Kashmir youth who took to guns and launched the armed rebellion in Kashmir in 1989. He declared a unilateral ceasefire in 1994 and turned his militant group, Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) into a political party.

The move of the top moderate separatist leaders to marry foreign nationals has been criticised by some and hailed by others. "They should have set an example by marrying an orphan girl but unfortunately none of our leaders has done it to inspire the commoners to marry the orphans," said an elderly person in Srinagar, Abdul Salam.

Fayaz Wani reports on life in Srinagar, Kashmir.