The Scare of a Red October

They are on the prowl along J&K’s dividing line. Militants lie in wait for a chance to sneak in and wreak havoc during the Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

Handpicked Alphonso mangoes, 20 kg of them. This is what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has packaged for his Pakistani counterpart to sweeten his latest set of peace overtures to India’s vexatious neighbour. In Islamabad, Yousaf Raza Gilani, the recipient of the consignment, will probably savour them, and perhaps even send some delicacy in return to New Delhi. It’s the stuff of official bilateral exchanges these days.

But what is sent from across the border unofficially is an entirely different story. And therein lies the rub. 

Not in ones or twos, but in hordes across the mountain passes along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu & Kashmir, and through treacherous passes newly discovered along the international border, they are coming. They are coming to rub Indians the wrong way.

These are battle-hardened militants, trained in camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), waiting for the slightest crack of a chance to sneak in. “There are 2,000–2,500 armed militants in these camps, and they are ready to cross over,” says Brigadier General Staff of the Indian Army’s 16 Corps Gurdeep Singh. “There are 42 training camps,” he says, “34 of them fully functional.” 

Fully functional. It has an eerie echo. Especially because, this time round, the ‘function’ includes militant training to create mayhem not just in Kashmir Valley. Open learns from highly placed sources in Indian intelligence agencies that about two-three militant groups have been specifically directed by their Pakistani handlers to make their way from Kashmir to Delhi by the onset of autumn, well in time to create large-scale disturbances before and during the October Commonwealth Games to be held in the capital. 

The ongoing infiltration trend in J&K suggests as much. Dozens of armed infiltrators have already been eliminated by the Army and paramilitary forces. But some are reckoned to have made the LoC crossing safely and be hiding in the upper reaches of border towns like Kupwara and Bandipore in Kashmir, apart from Dharamsal and Kalakote forests in Jammu’s Rajouri region. 

In all, India’s intelligence agencies are expecting a hot summer this year. “‘Hot summer’ is a fancy term,” says Lieutenant Colonel JS Brar, the Srinagar-based defence spokesperson, “some of the militants have crossed towards the second-tier security [set-up] behind the LoC, but we are ready for them.”

According to the Indian Army, it has thwarted at least six major infiltration bids in the past few weeks. Since 5 May, the Army’s Rashtriya Rifles, along with paramilitary and police forces, have been engaged in a huge operation across a 25 sq km swathe in north Kashmir, which has mountainous and forested terrain that makes their task an especially tough challenge. Codenamed Operation Thunder Strike, the explicit aim of this armed undertaking is to neutralise militants who have crossed over and are hiding in this area. If even a few of them manage to reach Srinagar city, it could spell disaster. 

Earlier, there was a series of infiltration bids in the Rajouri, Pallanwala, Samba and Kathua sectors of the Jammu region. In a seven-day encounter in the Kalakote forest of Rajouri, 16 militants were killed while six Army soldiers lost their lives. An alarming discovery was made as well. As the Army says, the militants’ Pakistani handlers have found new routes across the Pallanwala and Nowshera sectors of Jammu. Some groups are even trying to push militants through the international border in Punjab’s Gurdaspur district. Such is the determination, perhaps even desperation, to unsettle a country that is the talk of the global circuit for its economic emergence.

Police sources say that the militants who are waiting to cross over have set up camps along the LoC mostly in PoK’s Neelam valley. In the past few weeks, locals there have reported the presence of armed men with long hair and beards who don’t speak the local language. 

Early alarm bells for Delhi sounded the day that the J&K police arrested a man from downtown Srinagar and later his accomplice as well. The man, Shabir Ahmad Zargar alias Omar, the police say, has links with the Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba. He was in touch with a hardcore Lashkar commander, codenamed Furqan, on the subject of attacks on crowded markets in Delhi. In his communication with Furqan, Zargar had also pointed at a group of militants having sneaked into India through Bangladesh and Nepal to carry out attacks in Delhi. Intelligence officials believe that these are not stray incidents. They reek of wider coordination.

Intelligence sources have reason to believe that some of the attacks are being planned around the forthcoming Commonwealth Games; this is because the Games are seen as something of a diplomatic victory for India. In the recent past, even separatist groups in Kashmir have raised the ante against the Games by way of rhetoric. The Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, for example, recently appealed to Kashmiris living abroad to stage peaceful protests during the Commonwealth Games to draw attention to the “grave situation” in the Valley. 

Even inside Kashmir, the militants’ handlers are working overtime to spark a resurgence of militant strikes. Documents made available to Open reveal that the Lashkar, assisted by Hizbul Mujahideen, is intent on carrying out suicide attacks on vital installations in the Valley, such as: the Civil Secretariat, Police Headquarters and Radio Kashmir. Intelligence information also indicates that a big fidayeen attack was planned in Srinagar on 6 May by four Lashkar militants that was called off at the last moment for reasons not known yet. 

The live plans are more worrisome, with militants having marked out military convoys as targets and deputed men to damage J&K’s newly laid railway tracks in Badgam and Anantnag districts. Also on the militant agenda is the planned assassination of Ghulam Mohammed Mir alias Momma Kana, a renegade who was controversially awarded the Padma Shri award by the Government of India a few months ago. The report also indicates that a consignment of small-calibre firearms (such as pen and lighter guns) has been distributed among the militant cadre to target police and paramilitary personnel deployed in crowded places. 

Police sources believe that some of the infiltrators’ instructions have been issued by the Lashkar founder Hafiz Saeed himself, who India believes is also the mastermind of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. While this story was being written, Pakistan’s Supreme Court dismissed two appeals challenging Saeed’s release from house arrest, which means that he is a free man now. He had been placed under house arrest in December 2008 after pressure from the US and Indian authorities in the wake of 26/11. 

There are other Pakistani citizens on India’s watch list as well. According to intelligence sources, Hafiz Saeed is assisted by a group of officers from the Pakistan Army and Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). Prominent among them is one Major Iqbal of the ISI, also believed to be a key 26/11 conspirator; his number (3214528652) also cropped up during the interrogation of terror operative David Coleman Headley by America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

All signs point to a larger network than India’s neighbour cares to admit. There is also little doubt that local Kashmiri youth are being lured to aid the revival of militancy in the Valley. The state police recently nabbed six teenagers in north Kashmir who were on their way to PoK for arms training. Apparently, they had been brainwashed by a local handler who asked them to train and return to Kashmir to wage war against the Indian Army. In Jammu region’s Kishtwar district, another four youth on their way to meet Lashkar commander Habib Gujjar were intercepted and turned over to their parents. Also, in response to the J&K government’s recent rehabilitation policy for youth in PoK wanting to surrender, the PoK administration is believed to have enhanced stipends from Rs 1,000 to Rs 3,000.

All this has prompted a major overhaul in the security set-up across J&K. While senior police officials were tight-lipped about militants trying to reach Delhi, sources say that about two dozen infiltration routes have been identified along the LoC and international border, and these have been put under a three-tier security regime that involves the Army, paramilitary forces/police and village defence committees of local people. The police also intends to train residents of Jammu’s border villages as a measure to clamp infiltration. These men will be given mobile phones and weapons with an authorisation to fire when needed. The first camp was recently held in Jammu’s RS Pura sector, where 100 villagers were trained. The police hopes to form at least 80 such committees across the border villages. Along the international border, the Border Security Force (BSF) alone has foiled dozens of infiltration attempts in the past two months. 

Amidst all this, New Delhi looks all set to begin yet another round of talks with Pakistan, peace with which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh considers integral to India’s achievement of its full potential, as he reiterated on 24 May. Kashmir is part of the agenda of talks, and feelers are being sent yet again to separatist groups in Kashmir. 

All that is fine. But whatever these talks may achieve, one thing is clear: there will be no let-up anytime soon in anti-India plots formulated across the country’s western border. Whether the government in Islamabad is party to these plots or not, does not matter. In the final analysis, let’s be clear, what really matters is whether Indians can consider themselves safe.

Commonwealth GamesJ&Kterrorism