Bibhu Prasad Routray
On a
Wednesday morning, a little before the clock struck 11, two Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT)
militants carried out a fidayeen (suicide) attack on a Central Reserve Police
Force (CRPF) camp near a public school in Bemina area of Srinagar. On that
fateful March 13, the CRPF personnel had been put on standby deployment in wake
of a strike call announced by the separatist groups. Repulsed by the first
responders from the CRPF and the Srinagar
district police, the attack ended with the death of five CRPF personnel and the
two militants.
A
week later, on March 19, LeT cadres killed 18-year-old Suhail Ahmad Sofi in
Baramulla district. Militants followed the youth into a mosque and pumped
bullets into him while he was hiding in the hamam (fire place) of the mosque. The
youth, a school dropout, had participated in officially sanctioned programmes
and had become an anathema for the militants for whom any form of association
with the state militates against the azadi project.
The
militants carried out yet another attack on March 21. Firing on a vehicle of
the Border Security Force (BSF) at Methain Bypass in the outskirts of Srinagar ,
killing a security personnel.
These
attacks, three in about a week’s time, may still appear to be isolated in a
state where space for militancy is largely seen to have shrunk over the past
years. Militancy-related fatalities have consistently dipped in Jammu and
Kashmir since 2001, below the 1,000-mark in 2007 and the 200-mark in 2011. In 2012,
only 117 fatalities were recorded. Even the March 13 attack came five months
after the October 19 attack by the LeT last year on a convoy of the Indian Army
near Srinagar railway station.
Amid
such relative tranquillity, data, however, reveals a steep ascendancy in
militancy-related fatalities in recent months. While the killing of civilians
and security forces in the first three months of 2013 have already surpassed 50
per cent of the fatalities recorded in entire 2012 in the same categories, data
further points at a renewed militant attempt to up the ante since September 2012.
Over 50 per cent of the 117 militancy-related fatalities in 2012 had been
recorded in the last four months of that year. The trend could very well
indicate a serious attempt to revive militancy in the state.
The
preparations that went into orchestrating the March 13 attack underline just
that. Investigations have revealed an elaborate month-long preparation
involving Pakistani militants and their handlers across the border, repeated
recce of the attack site, and careful selection of the site in the vicinity of
a cricket ground to induce civilian deaths which can subsequently be blamed on
the security forces.
A
well thought-out strategy is also evident in the attacks on the civilians as
well. Since 2012, the Panchayati Raj institutions have come under a well-designed
violence pattern. Threats and actual attacks have resulted in the resignation
of hundreds of sarpanch, a fact that the state government has attempted to play
down. Among the civilians killed so far in 2013—majority in the Baramulla
district—are Bashir Ahmad Wani, a sarpanch of Kalantra village shot dead by
militants at his residence on February 24, and Habibullah Mir, another sarpanch,
killed in the Sopore area on January 11. Apart from the fact that Sofi’s
killing is the continuation of the same strategy against civilians seen to be
aligned with the state, its brazenness complements the meticulously planned
March 13 attack well.
The
significant increase in the direct involvement of Pakistani militants in recent
attacks could point at a new strategy linked to the perceived weakness of local
jihadists by their sponsors across the border. Intentions and augmented
capacities of the militants to carry out attacks is supported both by oral
incitements by LeT chief Hafiz Saeed and by the ability of the militants to
infiltrate into India.
On
January 29, the BSF inspector general of the Jammu Frontier asserted that not a
single incident of infiltration from Pakistan had taken place in the last six
months in the Jammu region (Jammu, Samba and Kathua districts). The claim is
buttressed by the fact that majority of the foiled infiltrations and militant
attacks in recent past have taken place in the Srinagar region.
The
relative peace that dawned upon Jammu & Kashmir could very well be a thing
of the past. After all, even the illusion of control the Pakistan civilian
government brought upon the militants has disappeared pending the May 11 elections
in that country.
Republished in Eurasia Review
Related articles by the Author: Ominous Signs in Kashmir, Unambiguous signs of trouble in Kashmir and India-Pakistan Relations: The Lashkar-e-Taiba Factor
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