The New Game

AFTER THE ABROGATION of Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir in 2019, the prevail­ing joke in the Kashmir Valley was that the Kashmiris kept waiting for Pakistan to do something while the Pakistanis kept wait­ing for the Kashmiris to act. As a result, the unrest intelligence agencies were expecting did not happen. The year 2024 marked five years of abrogation; this year the Kashmiris found another way to convey to New Delhi that they can still thwart the Centre’s plan in the region. Earlier this year, in the Lok Sabha elections, they made the Kashmiri separatist leader Rashid Engineer win the Baramulla seat by a huge margin, in which two leaders, Omar Abdullah and Sajad Lone lost. Politi­cal insiders were of the opinion that BJP wanted both Kash­miri mainstream parties, the National Conference (NC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to lose badly. PDP did not have much chance since there is palpable anger against it for its previous alliance with BJP. There was hope that Engineer will cut into NC’s votes and perhaps Lone, who is seen by many as BJP’s proxy, could emerge as the winner. But the vot­ers overwhelmingly voted for Engineer, making both Omar and Sajad Lone lose. In the Assembly elections later in the year, BJP’s strategy was to win as many seats as possible in the Jammu region and then together with its proxies in Kashmir, forge a government. But this time, they overplayed it by putting up proxies other than Engineer. This time the Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir (JIJK), which was banned in 2019 after the Pulwama suicide attack, was desperate to somehow win the Centre’s approval. In the wake of the ban, they were not able to operate their bank account or impart religious educa­tion in their schools. So, they supported a number of proxy candidates. Butthistimeamessagewentthatthesewereproxiesof New Delhi who need to be defeated. The Kashmiris ensured that leading to a clear majority for NC. What also helped NC was its alliance with Congress. In the months prior to the elections, Rahul Gandhi had become very popular in the Kashmir Valley. In fact, political insiders say that had Congress worked harder in the Jammu region, it would have fared much better.

The elections went off without any incident. But there were other challenges to come. Since the last few years, a small group of highly-trained terrorists had made its way into the Jammu re­gion and spread themselves across in an arc of sorts. They began ambushing security forces and then launched attacks on civilians. The area has not seen much terrorist activity since the early 2000s after a massive operation by the Army in 2003 called Operation Sarp Vinash. In it, 64 hardcore terrorists, most of them foreign, who had made the upper reaches of the Pir Panjal their hideout, were killed. The operation pushed the remaining terrorists back and until recently, barring an incident here or there, this part of the Jammu division had stayed free of terrorist activities.

The aim of such attacks was to engage more Army (and other security) personnel in the Jammu region. And this is precisely what happened. Since the area had been devoid of any significant militant activity, even the intelligence gathering in these parts had come down. With the attacks claiming more lives of security personnel than the Pulwama attack, the Centre had to create a new security grid in the area.

But while security forces became busy in the Jammu region, a fresh spate of terrorist attacks in Kashmir Valley took everyone by surprise. That there was a presence of terrorists, especially foreign terrorists, in the upper reaches of both North and South Kashmir was known to them. But suddenly, this year, signs of fresh infiltration became clear. In the past few years, most infil­tration has happened through the international border on the Jammu-Punjab axis—even the Pulwama attack mastermind Umar Farooq made his way into Kashmir through this border. But this time, fresh infiltration seems to have happened through the Line of Control in North Kashmir.

The terrorist handlers, people in the security establishment believe, have become aware of how the Indian agencies have ef­fectively used technical surveillance to neutralise terrorists. This time they have changed their modus operandi. One, according to intelligence agencies, the highly-trained Pakistani terrorists are relying less and less on the local Kashmiri population. This they are doing to ensure that they remain undetected. Their methods of communication have also become more advanced, creating challenges for Indian intelligence agencies. Sources in the police reveal that encrypting messages from the new devices and technology used by terrorists is proving to be a difficult task.

In the past months, a new breed of terrorists has also been used to carry out attacks on soft targets. Known as hybrid militants, these are usually young men who have not yet come under the police radar, making it difficult to trace them. Also, this time ter­rorists who have infiltrated are carrying significantly more so­phisticated weapons than in the past. Some of the deadly weapons left behind by the US army in Afghanistan have also made their way to Kashmir. What is adding to the headache is the significant use of drones to ferry weapons across the border.

In the last few years, since the police directly came under the Centre, there has been a concerted effort to keep terrorists and their sympathisers under pressure in the Kashmir Valley, espe­cially in the Srinagar district. This was done particularly after killings of a number of soft targets, including Hindu labourers and minority Kashmiri Pandits. A number of operations carried out after pinpoint intelligence ensured that terrorists are not able to move freely through Srinagar. A procedure of area domina­tion in terms of random checks and barriers prevented this free movement—its absence had led to some high-profile attacks in the past, including the killing of prominent Kashmiri journalist, Shujaat Bukhari. But with the new infiltration, terrorists seem to be knocking on the doors of Srinagar.

As a new government takes over, the challenge for New Delhi now is to break into the terrorist network and ensure that no big attacks take place in the coming months. Since some of the ter­rorists operating in both Kashmir and Jammu regions seem to be trained in the best facilities in Pakistan (and perhaps Afghani­stan) and most of them have evaded detection so far, this is a hard task but one which must be accomplished. The voting pattern in Kashmir is a clear indication that the root of secessionism from hearts and minds is not gone. The last thing it needs is a boost and an impression that Pakistan is not out of game, and that security forces can still be sent on the back foot.

Indian ArmyIslamist militantsJammuKashmirsecuritytrained terrorists