J&K: Security Forces brace for summer unrest

New Delhi: With a slew of factors indicating that the situation in militancy-plagued Jammu and Kashmir may take a turn for the worse, security forces engaged in the counter-insurgency operations — the Army, paramilitary and the state police — are bracing for a torrid summer this time around.

Despite a border fence and robust presence by the Army and paramilitary, early pre-winter infiltration had already taken place leading to more than 300 well-equipped militants operating in the state now, of which 120 are foreign jihadi militants with 180 being local ones.

“This time it did not snow much in north Kashmir areas where the traditional infiltration routes are located, making infiltration relatively easier,” said a top military official who did not want to be identified.

But what is making the situation very worrisome for the authorities is the surge in local recruitment with young boys taking to the gun without much training. “These young boys are considered very expendable by the Pakistani agencies. So there is a stress on numbers taking to arms not on how many of them die. As a result, the young militants are dying much faster. But the problem is also that recruitment is more than matching up to the eliminations,” the official said.

Said Colonel Aman Anand, spokesperson of the Indian Army: “This is akin to a war situation and of course the challenges are there, but not only is the Indian Army prepared to meet it, we are among the best if not the best and are respected globally for it”.

A.K. Srivastava, a former additional director with a central intelligence agency and closely associated with Kashmir operations, also endorsed the view that the coming summer season could be a tough challenge for the security forces in the Valley. “The two combined factors of mountain passes not being completely blocked due to snow this winter would have resulted in higher infiltration and increase in recruitment local youth could well result in increased terror activities during the summer season,’’ he added.

A senior CRPF official deployed in the Valley also claimed that they had received specific intelligence that more militants might have sneaked in during winter and they had already prepared a more aggressive plan to target leadership of terror groups in days ahead. He also confirmed that terror groups were now supporting each other in carrying out attacks in quick succession on security forces as was witnessed during the attack on Sunjwan Army camp last Saturday which was followed by similar attacks on CRPF installations in Srinagar the next day.

The life span of militants has gone down to just 6-7 months now while nearly 33 per cent of new recruits already having been eliminated.

Militant outfits are also finding it much easier to find recruits with rising resentment. The army has also been pursuing a hard posture in combating militancy as a result of which the number of ‘kills’ has increased in recent times. For more than a year, in a major operational shift that have toughened the rules of engagement, the Indian Army has operated in a “seek and engage” mode and brought back the Cordon and Search Operations (CASO) operations that were abandoned in 2002 after a public hue and cry over rights violations.

Prof Noor Ahmed Baba, one of the state’s leading political scientists who teaches at the Kashmir Central University, told this newspaper: “Resentment and alienation among the people have increased, more so in south Kashmir. With rising civilian deaths, local support levels have gone up. Moreover, using the army in a role they are not trained for rather than the police and paramilitary, to my mind, may not be working. The situation is definitely not looking very good now. There is despair writ large.” According to Northern Army commander Lieutenant General Devraj Anbu, 185-220 militants in the south of the Pirpanjal and 190-225 militants in the north are waiting to cross over to India even as they bide for an opportune time in the terror launch pads that are set up in collusion with the Pakistani establishment. Another factor that further worsens the impending scenario is the reported coming together of the three main militant outfits — the Hizb ul Mujaheedin (HuM), the Lashkar e Tayyaba (LeT) and the Jaish eMahmood (JeM ) — that are operating in the state, of which the HM largely consists of local Kashmiris.