Fresh spell of militancy in Jammu and Kashmir
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Militants escaped from 16 operations in 12 months

Ø Gallantry medals, out-of-turn promotions stopped for ‘operational’ personnel

 

Ø PSA detention dossiers turned down by District Magistrates

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

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SRINAGAR, Aug 19: Disbanding the Special Operations Group (SOG) of the Jammu and Kashmir Police, prosecution of the ‘operational’ personnel allegedly involved in human rights abuse and revocation of J&K Armed Forces Special Powers Act were the key planks of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s Peoples Democratic Party in the 2002 and 2008 Assembly elections. Even after National Conference regained power in partnership with Congress in 2009, Omar Abdullah seemed to be implementing PDP’s manifesto in his attempt to outsmart his arch rival. However, in the year-2010 street turmoil, that left over a hundred demonstrators dead and many more injured, he was compelled to rely heavily on the hard face of Police and paramilitary forces.

Omar recalled the counterinsurgency’s iconic faces like the once unceremoniously removed IGP Shiv Murari Sahai and SSP Ashiq Bukhari---who was the first in 2009 to be sent on a punishment posting for his “pro-PDP” tag---when almost all the ‘soft faces’ failed to deliver. Sahai’s team not only controlled the law and order situation effectively but also brought militancy to its lowest ebb in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Around its exit, militants began to regroup and the next two years indicated an upward swing in their growth. Senior Police officers found themselves vulnerable to serious political interventions and the things came to a head when DGP Ashok Prasad stopped listening to both, MOS Home Sajjad Kichloo as well as Principal Secretary Home Suresh Kumar.

With the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections drawing nearer, Omar and his Cabinet began emitting starker signals of “soft separatism”. Most of the detained militants and separatist activists were released from jails. District Magistrates turned down PSA dossiers submitted to them previously by SPs. Home Department under Omar reduced the PSA detention period from two years to six months and most of the detainees got the orders revoked in court with little resistance from the State.

All out-of-turn promotions recommended on the basis of a performance on counterterrorism front were suspended. Even the Union Home Secretary Anil Goswami made magisterial inquiry mandatory for all the Gallantry Medals recommended on the basis of an officer’s role in a counterterrorism operation.

Ironically, it didn’t pay any electoral dividends to the National Conference that had to be content with just half the seats it had bagged in 2008 and 2002 and one-fourth of what it had got in 1996.

By the time, Mufti assumed power, in coalition with BJP, for his second term, an ‘operational tag’ had become a total liability. Most of the SOG components became non-functional as numerous appointments of SPs and SDPOs were the outcome of only the political references. Even the senior officers whose districts had overnight turned into the fortresses of new-found insurgency, indoctrination and recruitment, were picked up for prize postings.

In the beginning, militants re-established their bases in the areas where the separatists enjoyed a strong ideological and social support. In a short span of time, insurgents began surfacing on Handwara-Sopore-Palhalan strip in the North and Tral-Awantipore-Pulwama-Shopian axis in the South. With the people dying in a fast sequence and the militants enjoying a field day, the government ignored every criticism on the working of the Police officers in the two “liberated zones”.

With little emphasis on combating insurgency and none of the Ministers, legislators and senior mainstream politicians attending a slain civilian’s funeral or a soldier’s wreath-laying ritual, militants are now understood to be establishing hideouts, training camps and communication networks  without fear of any resistance or interception. Even the websites and Google and Facebook pages that had been shut down by Police last year, have surfaced again with blatant abuses for the administrators. The level of confidence among the guerrilla cadres could be gauged from the fact that the militants and their ‘fans’ have been regularly uploading and broadcasting pictures, videos and other data files of the Hizbul Mujahideen group.

“It is well possible to block this entire terror traffic but it needs will and accountability”, said a senior Police officer. He admitted, on the condition of anonymity, that the spiralling militancy was “nobody’s headache today”.

IGP Kashmir Javaid Mujtaba Gillani refused to accept that the militancy was gaining a fresh ground in Kashmir since the beginning of 2014. He told STATE TIMES that this perception was wrong and “not borne out by facts”. According to him, the situation in 2015 is no different from that of 2014. DGP K. Rajendra Kumar did not respond to a WhatsApp request from this newspaper.

Two of the lower rung Police officers, nonetheless, admitted that entire pro-Indian political activity had been grounded to a halt in both the territories in the North and South of Kashmir. “The interrogation account of the detained LeT militant Naveed makes it clear that the militants are moving around with unprecedented confidence and without fear of being intercepted”, an official pointed out. He asserted that Massarat Alam’s release by the Mufti government, followed by an unprecedented pro-Pakistan demonstration outside DGP’s office on the day of hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s arrival from New Delhi, were the major moral boosters for the militants on either side of LoC.

Significantly, in the last 12 months, holed up militants have escaped from as many as 16 cordon-and-search operations. Around a dozen of such incidents have occurred since March 1, 2015, when the PDP-BJP government assumed office. On March 24, militants escaped from an operation at Badipora, on May 8 in Sugan Shopian, on May 19 in Heff Shirmal Shopian, on June 14 from Bardalow Khrew, on July 2 from Rawatpora Delina, on July 8 from Imam Sahab Shopian, on July 24 from Bajren Khrew, on July 25 from Drubjan Dreinar, on August 6 from Kakpora Pulwama and on August 9 from Mahend Bijbehara.

On August 10, two militants escaped from Lajora in Pulwama but under pressure from top, Army put in reinforcement and employed an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. Both the militants were spotted and killed in the successful operation witnessed first time in the last one year.

[To be continued tomorrow….]

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