ON JUNE 19, two terrorists were killed by the Army in an encounter in Sopore in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district. The two had crossed from Pakistan into Rajouri-Poonch in Jammu and were behind the December 21 killing of four soldiers in an ambush in Thanamandi last year.
Their cellphones, a probe revealed, had clips of a T20 cricket match in Abu Dhabi, details that suggested a “level of education not very common and a good family background”, and their use of weapons reflected they were among the “most highly trained terrorists seen in 20 years”, said an official.
The story of how these two terrorists moved from Jammu to Kashmir is illustrative of a significant security shift five years since August 5, 2019, when the state lost its special status and later split into two, downgraded to a Union Territory and put under an unprecedented security dragnet.
As a series in Hindustan Mirror will reveal, this is one of the key challenges that touches many aspects of daily life here — from society to politics, economics to development — amid a concerted push for elections promised by September with an Election Commission team visiting next week.
Yet, many fingers in the security establishment remain crossed after the surge of terror incidents in Jammu (see box) as it works on how to, as Union Home Minister Amit Shah put it, “replicate” the Valley’s success on the ground in Jammu.
Interviews with a range of officers in the Army, administration and police reveal that this is easier said than done with one common response being: it will need “patience and effort”. For, it will take time to crank up in Jammu since the Army moved some forces out of there to eastern Ladakh in 2021 to address the China challenge after the Galwan attack in June 2020 triggered the protracted stand-off along the Line of Actual Control.
Officials admit it was a “mistake” to not deploy the paramilitary — the CRPF or the BSF — to fill the “vacuum” created in the “counter-terrorism (CT) grid” in Jammu after the Army thinned its presence. “We may be paying for it now. We lowered the guard in Jammu because of many years of peace and when we moved some troops out, that strained the already thin networks on the ground. This vacuum allowed the terrorists to come in, operate and activate a support system in Jammu,” said a top security official.
‘Maturing’ the counter-terror grid
A redeployment over the last 3-4 weeks has brought the security personnel numbers in Jammu back up: In addition to 3,000 Army soldiers and 2,000 personnel from the BSF, the government Saturday decided to deploy two battalions of Assam Rifles in Jammu over the next three months, including in the upper reaches of Poonch-Rajouri. The police are reactivating their human intelligence network, intensifying surveillance of those who crossed over the borders in the 1990s and are settled down in Pakistan.
“The situation is tense,” said another officer in the security establishment, acknowledging that the killing of 52 armed forces personnel since mid-2021 has kept the Army on the edge. “There is concern, but the infiltrators are still in a nascent state of settling down; it is not like the 1990s and early 2000s,” this officer said.
Setting up a CT grid is a task cut out. “The security forces will have to set up camps and take positions in the hills, where the infiltrators take refuge. Establishing a grid will take a while. Patience and perseverance is required. The grid will take time to mature and manifest,” the officer said.
Intensifying its efforts to build intelligence, the J&K Police has “indexed” 4,300 persons who went from Jammu and settled down in Pakistan. “While 85-90 per cent of these people are harmless, some 400-500 persons are under huge pressure from Pakistan to reconnect with locals in Jammu, make OGWs (over ground workers), help infiltrators with local transport, etc. They are under close watch” said a police officer.
What is not lost on the security establishment also is the possible “indirect role” of China in the spate of terror attacks in Jammu. “This could be telecommunication support and equipment… We all know the links between China and the Pak Army so there could be equipment, like guns, that are from there.”
With the year witnessing a shift in terror activity from the Poonch-Rajouri sectors to the interior regions of Kathua and Doda, the need for realignment of the boundaries of the Northern Command has also gained urgency.
As a first step, a Division under a Corps of the Western Command (which doesn’t undertake counter-terror operations) will be brought under the Nagrota-headquartered XVI Corps of the Northern Command (which is also responsible for countering terrorism in J&K). The move was discussed when Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi visited the region on July 3-4 to review the “prevailing security dynamics”.
“We are reconfiguring ourselves. We are plugging the gaps. We will detect and defeat their new mechanism of operation. In certain places, which we had vacated (because of prolonged peace), we are again asserting our presence. Militarily, defeating them is just a question of time,” said R R Swain, Director General of J&K Police.
Defence sources estimate about 80-90 terrorists, including 60-70 foreign nationals, are operating in the Valley. And an estimated 90-100 terrorists, of whom 55-60 are suspected to be foreign terrorists, are operating in Jammu, in areas south of Pir Panjal. That frames the challenge today — and has its roots in 2020.
Roots of today’s Jammu challenge
Almost a year after August 5, 2019, that saw a sprawling crackdown in the Valley, and amid the India-China standoff at the LAC, there was evidence that Pakistan-based groups had turned their focus to Jammu, establishing contact with surrendered militants and their old contacts. In 2021, Pakistan pushed militants across the border into Jammu, the plan was to not only target security forces but also “communalise” the violence, a task given to recruits from the Valley.
A senior defence official said while there was a constant pressure on terrorists operating in the Valley, the same could not be said of Jammu.
“Areas south of the Pir Panjal range started getting denuded of troops as the two additional divisions deployed there were moved out to their original locations and the Uniform Force of the Rashtriya Rifles, which was specially raised for the area, was moved out to eastern Ladakh in 2021 (post the Galwan incident). There was a void which the terrorists were able to exploit,” he said.
Since the beginning of 2021, police and security forces began recovering IEDs, sticky (magnet) bombs, arms and ammunition across the Jammu division. By July end of that year, police had apprehended 16 terrorists and overground workers who “claimed” during interrogations they had been tasked with targeting civilian areas or Hindu pilgrimage sites. In between, a drone dropped two IEDs on the Jammu base of the Indian Air Force in June.
This was followed by targeting of pilgrim buses in Katra and Reasi and civilians in Dangri village of Rajouri which together claimed 20 lives.
Security forces began facing serious attacks in the Jammu region beginning June 2021 when two soldiers, including a JCO, were killed in an encounter with terrorists at Daddal village in Rajouri district’s Sunderbani area. Since then, a total of 52 soldiers and police personnel have died in encounters with terrorists across Jammu division.
“Initially, the men who came in went back to Pakistan after an attack. Later, Pakistan began infiltrating highly trained fighters with previous battle experience. These fighters stayed on, operated with stealth, living in jungles, maintaining minimum contact with local populations and using no communication tech that could be intercepted,” a senior security officer said.
Local networks and Pak handlers
Prolonged peace in Jammu, since 2005-06, riding on the success of Operation Sarp Vinash in 2003, in which over 100 terrorists were killed, brought a “sense of achievement,” said a senior officer. “We never felt that the security grid in Jammu needs to be as tight as in Kashmir.” On the ground, this translated into reduced contact of the forces with the public which, coupled with a general dependence on tech intelligence, has led to poor collection of human intelligence.
Many reasons are attributed to what is seen as a growing chasm between security forces and the local population of Gujjar-Bakarwals, who have traditionally been the eyes and ears of the forces. These range from anti-minority rhetoric in the national political discourse to the Centre’s decision to grant reservations to Pahadis, perceived as an injustice to their own community by Gujjar-Bakarwals.
The killing of three Gujjars in custody following a terror ambush on an Army convoy in December last year has not helped either.
Said a resident of Marrah, who along with many of his co-villagers left their lucrative jobs in Saudi Arabia in 2002-03 and fought terrorists alongside the Army in the Hill Kaka area: “We continue to move into the forests but no one gives us information about militants. Our own community members criticise us for exposing them to militant threats for the sake of those who care little for them,’’ he said.
Acting DGP Swain disagrees. “The problem is not information. The problem is turning it into action. Mobile networks are not available everywhere. So even if a militant has been spotted, or he has taken food from someone, the person is able to inform the police only hours later. A gap of three-four hours between information and organised action can be too much in the hilly terrains of Jammu,” he said.
What has also compounded the challenge is the limited contact between the infiltrators and the locals. Said a senior officer: “They often disappear into the upper reaches of Poonch-Rajouri and avoid direct contact with locals. Their handler from Pakistan is the point of contact for both the militant and the local. The telecom networks are sparse and not easy to intercept.”
