Militants are changing tack in the Pir Panjal valley to outsmart the security agencies and survive longer in a region with topography “as tough as Afghanistan’s mountains”, officials say. The valley comprises the twin districts of Rajouri and Poonch, and includes 225 km of the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK).
The Poonch-Rajouri sector has witnessed 18 deaths this year so far, including 10 Army jawans, seven civilians and one militant. The casualties of both security forces and civilians are much higher than in the militancy-infested Kashmir valley, where one Army jawan and one civilian were killed by militancy in the same period. This seems to indicate that militants have shifted their focus to a new region once declared a zero-military zone with waning militant activities from 2007 to 2019.
New modus operandi
The questioning of over 225 residents living in and around Batta Durian in Poonch’s Mendhar sector after the April 20 attack, which left five truck-borne soldiers dead, has thrown a light on the new modus operandi used by militants after infiltrating into the jungles of the Pir Panjal valley.
A senior security official told The Hindu that the arrest of Nisar Ahmad, a local from Gursai village in Poonch, and his three relatives, has provided “clues on the operations of the hiding militants”.
“After infiltration, they [infiltrators] either head towards a sympathiser, whose geo-coordinates are known and fed to their phones, like that of Ahmad, or take shelter in the houses in higher ridges forcibly,” the security official said. Mr. Ahmad is also accused of receiving a drone drop, which was carrying weapons and cash.
Threatening villagers
Security agencies have coalesced the statements of several villagers, who divulged that the militants came and lined up the family members and used their smartphones to download an application and communicate across the LoC and then deleted it immediately. In many cases, they clicked their photographs and forwarded them to their handlers across the LoC, “in a bid to threaten the families”.
“The militants never visit the same house, for they don’t trust them,” the official added.
It is not just the spike in militant activities in Rajouri-Poonch that is a cause of concern among security agencies, but also the change in strategy, the use of “smarter” sleeper cells, the impenetrable means of communication, the use of technology, and the high level of training that militants are being given to fight and survive in hostile forests.
No digital footprint
Militants are using YSMS technology, which is hard to trace and detect. These encrypted messages leave no digital footprint and make it “almost impenetrable”.
“There are pockets in the Pir Panjal valley where cellular services from Pakistan are active and can be detected on phones too. This remains a cause of concern,” another security official said.
Another use of technology is offline SIM-less phone activation, where Bluetooth is used for communication and pre-fed locations are followed on the offline application on phones. The attackers of Dangri on January 1, and Butta Durian on April 20, “most possibly used offline applications like ‘Alpine’ to escape after the attack on the pre-fed routes”, senior officials in the security agencies said.
Divided families, tough terrain
“Undulating topography and hundreds of ridges are to the advantage of terrorists. They move ridge to ridge in thick jungles. Unlike Kashmir, the mountain ranges witness fast melting of snow. It used to be a transit route to reach south Kashmir. Of late, militants have stayed back. Topography is as tough as in Afghanistan,” another official said.
Hundreds of divided families, with relatives across the LoC, and the growing number of locals migrating to Gulf countries have allowed “a triangular means of communication” and remain a cause of concern for the security agencies. “We fear that the sympathisers communicate via Gulf countries to Pakistan. It’s easy and unsuspicious,” the security official said.
According to the security agencies, the digital footprints suggest that six to eight highly-trained militants, involved in the recent attacks and encounters, are staying back in the mountains of the Pir Panjal valley and “waiting for the direction from handlers across the LoC”.
‘More troops needed’
With just 3,000 policemen to man the entire Rajouri-Poonch sector, the thinning out of troops is allowing militants to roam freely compared to the past. The first such reduction in troops started after the ceasefire agreement with Pakistan in 2002, which helped India to complete over 110 km-long fencing in the region. This was followed by troop relocation after the China-India border skirmishes of 2020. The Dangri attack has seen the induction of 18 CRPF companies in the region this year and more are on their way, official sources said.
“The region needs more Army presence to plug the movement of militants,” Dheeraj Gupta, sarpanch of Dangri village, said.
Manipulating troop movement
However, the People’s Anti-Fascist Front (PAFF) in a purported online statement, suggested that their activities in the Pir Panjal valley were aimed at “shifting resources back from Ladakh to the Poonch-Rajouri sector”. The PAFF is the militant outfit which has claimed responsibility for two attacks in the region over the last month.
“We will make you do that and you will hand over a strategic win to us. And then after some time our friends will make you shift back your resources to Ladakh. Your two-front theory is now a self-fulfilling prophecy,” it reads. The security agencies have not commented on the veracity of the PAFF statement.
