On August 5, 2019, the Narendra Modi-led Union government read down Article 370, taking Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and statehood, and splitting it into two Union Territories. The past five years have seen sweeping changes, glaring rights abuses and big developments in the region. This series is a look at where J&K was and where it is now, five years after the move.
The recent uptick in militancy in Jammu and Kashmir has taken place in the areas to the south of Pir Panjal that separates Kashmir valley from the Jammu region. The area with its heterogeneity has its own challenges as compared to Kashmir valley. To better understand the present phase one has to unpack the recent rise in militancy in J&K namely the infiltration patterns, why attacks are taking place frequently, granular components of political context which are exacerbating the situation in J&K and what can be done to avert. The present context demands that the assembly elections in J&K be held expeditiously in a free and fair manner, as this would facilitate local participation in the executive decision-making. A bureaucratic regime is incapable of knowing and processing granular nuances rooted in the ground-level realities which require inter-disciplinary knowledge of decades. In a way, the worsening security situation is directly linked to the centralisation of powers, which came with the abrogation of Article 370 and absence of political participation in J&K affairs.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Cinema tickets bought in Pakistan’s border town of Sialkot were found in the pockets of three suicide militants who were killed — after they had attacked the Kaluchak army camp — on May 14, 2002. The camp was situated on the National Highway 1 A and was close to the India-Pakistan international border.
Thirty people, mostly women, and children of army personnel, were killed by the militants. The Kaluchak attack came five months after the 13 December, 2001 parliament attack which had already vitiated the relations between India and Pakistan. India had launched Operation Parakaram which entailed mobilisation of troops along the Pakistan frontier as part of coercive diplomacy. A similar response came from Pakistan, with the international community fearing a nuclear conflagration between the two nuclear powers, and only after a few months of extensive backchannel diplomacy by the US, tensions were defused.
The Kaluchak incident demonstrated that the attacks not just within Kashmir valley but outside can be more consequential and devastating. That is why recent attacks on security personnel in the hills to the south of Pir Panjal that separates Kashmir valley from Jammu cannot be ignored. To understand the recent rise in militancy in J&K, one needs to unpack the key factors, namely: the infiltration patterns, the reasons behind the frequent attacks, the granular components of the political context that are exacerbating the situation, and identify potential solutions to avert the crisis in J&K.
In this context, the additional presence of troops (or some will say unsustainable) in Kashmir valley since August 5, 2019 has shored-up local intelligence that have enabled relatively quiet consecutive summers in the valley and an end to stone-pelting. But that doesn’t mean attacks have stopped and recruitment has ebbed in the valley. In 2022, there were targeted assassinations thus indicating that at any given opportunity militants will strike their targets. However, what has alarmed the security establishment are the attacks outside the valley which are taking place in areas that were not unaffected by militancy in the past though had attained peace in the last few years.
Local sources and collation of reports from the ground attest that in the April-May season this year high infiltration had taken place along the international border from Pakistani Punjab’s Shakergarh area as militants entered through the Samba-Kathua plains in the south. In fact, some of the attacks that had taken place in April left enough hints that a large number of militants have sneaked in. For instance, on April 28, in hilly parts of Kathua district, militants were spotted by the personnel of Village Defence Committee, a civilian armed arrangement started in the 1990s. They killed one person in this regard. Notably, the detected infiltration is normally far lower compared to the undetected ones.
Also, militants have been able to establish a network that facilitates entry, provides initial logistical support and then the network guides them to the hinterland. And at times when this network has failed, militants had been trapped as they lost their way. This happened this June 10-11 when militants lost their way as the guide that had to take them to the hinterland didn’t come. The communication messages are encrypted through apps like Signal than before. Basic precautions are being taken to avoid surveillance and this is basic cyber security techniques which are not hard to master. From south to north, the movement of militants is from the plains of Pakistan Punjab and Kathua plains to the Kathua-Doda hilly areas.
To understand the present we have to know the past. It is a lesser known fact that militancy to the south of Pir Panjal that divides Kashmir valley from Jammu was 35% of the total violence in J&K from 1990 to 2007. The area to the south of Pir Panjal is double the size of Kashmir valley and is far more heterogenous in terms of ethnicity, religion and geography. The location of two attacks in the same district may be 200 kilometres away from each other. For instance, Kathua district has plains as well as hills and the two militancy incidents i.e. June 10-11 and July 8 were nearly 150 kilometres away from each other. In the same vein, the incidents in Doda district on July 16, in which four security personnel were killed, is more than 250 kilometres away from Kathua plains and that too a hilly distance which is double the time to traverse than the plains.
Also read: 48 Soldiers Killed in Less Than 3 Years: How Jammu Became a New Epicentre for Militancy
Culturally and linguistically, the militants coming from Pakistani Punjab are not alien in Jammu unlike the Kashmir valley as they share the ethnic stock with many in Jammu. This means when the security establishment calls the militants “foreign” it is easier for the same militants to assimilate, without being detected, in Jammu as compared to Kashmir valley. By the mid-1990s, as detailed in this author’s book Militancy in Jammu and Kashmir: The Uncovered Face, spanning the period from 1989 to 2007, the challenge intensified for the security forces in the religiously heterogeneous parts of J&K, particularly Rajouri-Poonch belt, as there was a greater presence of militants who did not speak Kashmiri, and they had started establishing their bases there.
Psychological warfare is a component of militant strategy, which is reflected in the fact that attackers use body cameras to film attacks and then upload videos on social media. The mutilated bodies of soldiers, along with captured weapons, are frequently shown on social media platforms, accompanied by propaganda audios. Rajouri-Poonch is an extension of Pakistan controlled Kashmir in terms of ethnicity and geography.
The only difference between the two areas in demographics is the presence of a significant number of Hindus and Sikhs, many of whose families migrated from across the Line of Control (LoC) in 1947; they are living majorly in Rajouri and Poonch towns in an otherwise Muslim-majority region. In Pakistan controlled Kashmir, there are no non-Muslims. In August 1965, many of the pockets in this belt were captured by Pakistani infiltrators as part of their Operation Gibraltar, said to be the brainchild of the Pakistani officer in command of the region across the LoC, Maj Gen Akhtar Hussain Malik. Many Muslim families had also escaped across the LoC after the Indian Army re-established control, particularly in border areas of Poonch.
Now coming to the present attacks, ambushes are easier along the areas of Pir Panjal in Rajouri-Poonch or other hilly areas of Doda, Kathua, Reasi and Udhampur as militants can take up vantage position. Unlike Kashmir or Jammu plains, where the terrain consists of plains and a road network has been built, the transportation system to the south of Pir Panjal is underdeveloped. Therefore, the formulation of an effective counter-militancy strategy will have to factor in the new set of challenges. The ambushes require in-depth knowledge of the geography, reconnaissance and knowledge of the movement of the troops. This is only enabled by the local intelligence and this indicates enough homework had been done. There are some worrying trends that got triggered by recent flawed decision-making that has an implication on border management.
On the advice of a public intellectual from J&K, a key initiative was taken by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who realised the importance of border security with a civilian component. In 1976, she participated in a Gujjar conference in J&K as part of the outreach to the Gujjar-Bakarwal community, one of the main communities which live across the state, particularly in the areas which are presently a point of concern. Over time, there has been a concerted effort to forge strong bonds between J&K Gujjars, who are Muslims, and Hindu Gujjars, particularly from Rajasthan and the areas around Delhi. This endeavour aims to secularise the Gujjar identity.
In 1991, Gujjars-Bakarwals were granted Scheduled Tribe (ST) status and that solidified their support against terrorism, particularly in the elite sections of the community. A number of serving IAS and IPS officers, coming from the Gujjar community, were direct beneficiaries of this decision. The multi-pronged approach yielded more dividends as the Gujjars in the area collaborated with security personnel, contributing to cleansing the region of the ranks of a terrorist outfit, Lashkar-e-Taiba. One of the Gujjar groups hailed from Bafliaz, and specifically, the Marrah hamlet, which is not far from the area where some of the attacks occurred in the last three-years. After one of the attacks, some community members were allegedly picked up by the Army on the suspicion that they were working for the militants; three of them died in custodial torture. The continuing attacks on security personnel and alleged custodial deaths were a setback to the investment made in border management over the years in an area that had almost become militancy-free two decades ago.
Moreover, as pointed out earlier, since the abrogation of Article 370, a number of ill-thought announcements disturbed the delicate societal equilibrium of the region. One of them was granting ST status to the Pahari-speaking community, a diverse group that includes upper-caste Muslims as well as Hindus, brought together by a shared language. An impression spread among the strongly-knitted Gujjar-Bakarwal community that the decision was detrimental to them.
Now coming to the question of how seriously these attacks should be taken and what can be done to avert. Fifty-one security personnel have been killed to the south of Pir Panjal since 2021. The civilian as well as security personnel fatalities in the valley in the same period are more and not less. No doubt, the levels of violence in Jammu and Kashmir are considerably low as compared to the 1990s and early 2000s. But this is a flawed comparison.
Regional and international factors in the 1990s and early 2000s allowed the Pakistani deep state to sponsor militants without much scrutiny. The position of the Western world, which continues to have leverage over Pakistan due to its fragile economy — as reflected in the country’s inclusion on the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) grey list from 2018 to 2022 — on terrorism has clarity, particularly after the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Therefore, a more realistic comparison is the situation prevailing now and in the pre-2019 phase and in that respect the situation is a matter of concern.
The present context demands that the assembly elections in J&K be held expeditiously in a free and fair manner as that would facilitate local participation in the executive decision making. A bureaucratic regime is incapable of knowing and processing granular nuances rooted in the ground-level realities which require inter-disciplinary knowledge of decades.
If the ruling BJP at the center is waiting for the right electoral opportunity and alliances to improve its electoral prospects, the fact remains that the BJP will always be a secondary player in J&K assembly elections, despite having encashed issues linked to J&K nationally. At its peak, the BJP got 22.98% votes in the 2014 assembly elections as in 2008 and 2002 it got 12.45% and 8.57%, respectively. The BJP didn’t contest the three Muslim majority seats in the 2024 parliamentary polls. The BJP’s victory margin in the two Hindu majority seats it won in J&K, when compared to that of 2019, has fallen dramatically. It would have decidedly lost the old Jammu-Poonch Lok Sabha segment to INDIA alliance had the controversial delimitation exercise for this segment not taken place.
While the BJP has linked the abrogation of Article 370 with national security or the fight against terrorism, the fact is that the two issues are the least correlated. The abrogation has not changed geopolitical realities. Because of various reasons, including structural factors and those rooted in post-colonial contestations, J&K is prone to be in trouble and the situation impacts pan-India security and some aspects of India’s foreign policy.
Irrespective of the party in power at the Centre, the Pakistani deep state’s tacit support to terrorism and the alienation in J&K are the two factors that will directly impact the national security calculus. And this requires a granular understanding rather than political grandstanding. The post-2019 targeted attacks on minorities in the Kashmir valley and present brutal attacks on security personnel are an indicator that political dynamics and terrorism cannot be neatly separated as this affects the intelligence flow and local support.
Linked with the issue is the key lesson of the last 75 years — that New Delhi should ensure the integrity of the electoral process, both in perception and reality. In the post-1990 era, it has often been argued that an empowered regional political party governing J&K provides a buffer between New Delhi and the J&K, thereby keeping the discontent over governance within J&K. The executive at the Center defended the abrogation of Article 370 to end exceptionality for J&K. As argued earlier, the government must meet the requirements of holding elections at the earliest and providing all constitutional rights to J&K residents, like in the rest of the country, including freedom of speech and respect for civil liberties. This will support the claim that abrogation provides the same fundamental rights to the people of J&K as to Indian citizens in other states and UTs. And also it will provide local ownership to the political structure and thus beef-up the human intelligence to the counter militancy grid.
Another flawed policy is the recent amendment of rules under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019 which has empowered the Lieutenant Governor (LG) to make decisions on crucial matters such as police and all-India services officers and granting sanctions for prosecution in various cases. This has effectively reduced the J&K model of governance to the Delhi model which is a perennial turf war between the LG and the political executive. In the context of militancy, where the stakes of national security are second to none, the political executive in J&K should be proactive in creating and fortifying a civilian deterrence to militancy. By curtailing J&K political executive’s powers, via weaning away police from its jurisdiction, is a severely counterproductive step and should be rolled-back immediately.
No doubt, security review is required in view of fresh challenges. To complement this, a broad set of initiatives, as the December 11, 2023 Supreme Court ordered in its judgement on abrogation of Article 370, including elections to the assembly and restoration of statehood to J&K can ensure an efficient, seamless and robust civilian deterrent to militancy. This is also a basic constitutional necessity of J&K being an empowered and represented unit of a federal and democratic India.
Luv Puri has authored two books on J&K, including Uncovered face of militancy and Across the Line of Control.
Read more from the series here.
