The recent spurt in terror attacks and the unabashed killings is a worrying sign. In the melee, common Kashmiris bear the brunt of this “business”. Raja Muneeb argues that Pakistan sponsored terrorism is the key factor of violence in the valley.
The recent killing of Hizb commander Riyaz Naikoo has rendered a severe blow to militancy in Kashmir. Naikoo rose to prominence within the HM ranks after the killing of Burhan Wani in 2016. Riyaz Naikoo took over the operational commander after Zakir Musa defected from Hizb. Zakir operationalized Ansar Ghazwa-Tul-Hind- a part of AQIS in Kashmir after he had a serious fall out with HM chief Syed Salahuddin.
During that period, Riyaz Naikoo was able to keep the cadre of Hizbul Mujahideen largely intact and also fought a vicious turf war with Zakir led AGUH in South Kashmir. His men not only hunted down the AGUH cadre but sources on the ground indicate that his OGW network was instrumental in providing intelligence to security agencies on the location of AGUH militants, thus getting them eliminated.
Naikoo was instrumental in unleashing a reign of renewed terror particularly in South Kashmir. His men once again started kidnapping and killing innocent civilians which were either labelled as mainstream political workers or informers. They also targeted unarmed policemen who were off duty, visiting their homes and families in the villages.
The Background
Hizbul Mujahideen surfaced in the valley in 1989 as a Pro-Pakistani militant organization with the sole purpose of integrating Kashmir with Pakistan. They fought a bitter turf war in the early 1990’s with Yasin Malik led JKLF- a pro freedom militant outfit and ultimately emerged as a dominant militant organization in the valley. HM has been responsible for killing scores of innocent civilians in the valley. Their primary target were political workers and leaders. The prominent ones killed by Hizbul Mujahideen are the religious leader Mirwaiz Farooq and a moderate Hurriyat leader Abdul Gani Lone besides other mainstream leaders. The politico-religious organization Jamaat-e-Islami has been its ideologue and mentor in the valley.
As militancy waned in the late 1990’s all through to the early 2000, HM limited its activities. With locals unwilling to join militant ranks with dwindling resources, its role got limited to killing of mostly political targets, while Pakistan pushed foreign terrorists from LET/JEM to carry out the more deadly attacks against the security forces. Hizbul Mujahideen was also used by Jamaat-e-Islami to settle political scores with its opponents in the valley.
There was a considerable lull in militancy from the year 2002-2005. This was primarily due to the peace process initiated first by the Vajpayee led BJP government and then taken forward by Manmohan Singh led UPA government. However, as the process stalled with the removal of Musharraf as in-charge in Pakistan, it was only a matter of time before it finally fell apart completely after the Mumbai terror attacks. Post 2008, the land row agitation resulted in the militant activities picking up in South Kashmir. It was after the agitation of 2010 which once again galvanized militancy that the focus area changed from North Kashmir to South Kashmir.
The ‘rise of Burhan Wani’ and his use of social media to propagate militancy revived Hizb ranks down south. Burhan became the new poster boy of militancy in Kashmir. Since the beginning of this decade, owing to a tighter security grid along LOC, the supply of arms and ammunition from Pakistan had dried up drastically in the valley. The main modus operandi of these galvanized youth was to snatch weapons from security and police personnel. This resulted in HM cadre being mostly ill-trained and ill-equipped to undertake any major terror attack.
Current Scenario
The most noticeable and a worried change is the growing graph of radical youth in the valley. Militants feed on them and recruit them to kill and get killed in this theatre of absurd. Post Burhan period, Pakistan has strategically started making changes. It focused on hybrid war. Social media was extensively used to propagate anti-India sentiment. It was extensively used to glorify jihad and militants killed in encounters. It had a resonating effect on the youth of Kashmir. South Kashmir is the worst hit.
According to sources since 2016, Pakistan has focused on training new group of hardcore insurgents to fight specifically in Kashmir. Many local boys are reported to have crossed over towards the other side of LOC to receive arms training in guerrilla warfare. Most of the training camps are run by Lashkar-e-Toiba.
With the change in status-quo after the abrogation of article 370, the theatre of militancy is once again changing in the valley. Pakistan is going all out to internationalize the Kashmir issue. It’s using all overt and covert tactics to gain an upper hand in Kashmir discourse. In the valley, Pakistan is aggressively pushing well trained and heavily armed men from across the border to fight a renewed insurgency in Kashmir. There are some intelligence reports which suggest that around four hundred heavily armed foreign terrorists are camping at different launch pads across the border.
After being grey listed by FATF over terror funding charges, Pakistan has repackaged the terror organizations like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad under a new banner of TRF (The Resistance Front). The focus now is to increase the terror footprint in other parts of the valley. LOC has been hot and the artillery has been booming from both sides continuously since last year. The terror activity has picked up recently and reports of fresh infiltration from across the border has kept the security agencies on their toes.
The recent ops in mountainous North Kashmir’s Keran sector where a unit of five elite paratroopers lost their lives in a firefight with militants who had recently crossed over from LOC, followed by Handwara encounter in which CO 21 RR along with a Major and three other personnel from army and JK police were killed while fighting a wanted Pakistani terrorist, are signs of deadly insurgency shaping up. While the LET/JEM insurgents will keep much of the theatre-going on in the valley HM will go back to walk on its old footprints of killing soft targets and terrorizing the common people.
Disclaimer: Views expressed are the author’s own.