Fighting militants in the mountains

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It has been 45 days since 20-year-old Abishek Badkali’s father, Amarjit Sharma, a chemist, was murdered at night in Mela village in Kathua district of Jammu division. His family and the residents of Mela are still in shock. They have near heard of brutal murders taking place in this region, located in the lush green Shivalik hills in the outer Himalayas.

A charpoy lies at the entrance of the single-storey house of the family. This is where the family — Abishek, his mother, and sister — gather for some respite from the unbearably hot rooms inside. The backyards of the small cluster of houses in Mela village are dotted with the deciduous Khair trees, and Chir pines; the forest stretches out ahead. Venturing deep into them could be dangerous for many, but for militants, whose presence has been increasing in the region, the density provides cover and security.

Abishek, a science graduate, says his father, 49, left the house at 10 p.m. for a walk on June 9. “I was relaxing on the terrace. When he didn’t return, we called him on his phone, but he didn’t answer. When we started searching for him on the narrow track leading to the forest, we saw him lying dead on the ground, with his face towards the surface. There was a deep, long cut on his neck,” he says.

The residents of Mela are certain that militants killed their beloved “doctor sahib”. “We all suspect that my father spotted the local guide of the militants. They may have killed him to ensure that the identity of the guide does not get revealed,” says Abishek.

After the dilution of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) in 2019, which ended the special status of the erstwhile State, more and more militants have been entering Jammu, according to senior security officials. They say this is “a deliberate and desperate bid to destabilise the region after the abrogation of Article 370 integrated J&K into the mainstream.”

The government believed that militancy had ended in the Jammu region by 2005 after security forces had launched major operations. In 2020, however, 18 militants were killed in the area. In 2021, militants made the Pir Panjal valley, comprising Rajouri and Poonch in Jammu division, their new base and began attacking Army camps and convoys, especially in Dera Ki Gali and Bhata Dhurian.

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Now, militancy has spilled over into the Doda, Ramban, and Kishtwar districts in Chenab valley in Jammu division. Twelve security personnel, including 11 soldiers from the Army, were killed this year in the Jammu division. So were five militants. Fourteen militant attacks were reported in June and July alone this year — nearly one every four days. Security officials describe the Pir Panjal and the Chenab valleys as “Jammu’s Tora Bora”, the mountain ranges in Afghanistan where al-Qaeda survived for years.

Kathua, a transit route

On June 11, two days after Amarjit Sharma’s body was recovered, two militants surfaced in Saida village, just 10 kilometres away. They knocked on the shutters of a kirana shop that sells basic necessities, such as oil, salt, and spices.

A view of a bullet mark in Kathua’s Saida village, where an encounter took place on June 11. | Photo Credit: Imran Nissar

“I was sleeping on the floor when I heard them knock,” says 62-year-old Maniram Sharma, the owner. “I saw two boys in their 20s with guns. One sported a short beard. The other had shaven his moustache. They asked for water. Before they came to me, I had heard a loud bang. I heard later that they had opened fire nearby. I noticed that they had a Lahori accent, which is used on the other side of Punjab (Pakistan).”

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According to locals, the militants had opened fire in the village. One unidentified militant died after a grenade exploded in his hand. Another, who ran towards the forest and later killed a jawan of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), was killed in a 15-hour-long anti-militancy operation, carried out jointly by the J&K Police and the CRPF. The militants also opened fire on civilian houses. Omkar Dinanath, a civilian, was hit in the arm and carries a scar. The incident has also left a bullet mark on the wall of his house.

Omkar Dinanath, a resident of Kathua’s Saida village, was fired upon by militants. He sustained a bullet injury in the arm. | Photo Credit: Imran Nissar

Since the encounter, the residents of Saida return home early and are suspicious of outsiders. “People have grown fearful. We are poor. We have to tend fields and cattle to survive,” says Shankar Chand, a resident of Saida.

The police recovered knives from the militants at the encounter site. They have sent them to the forensic science laboratory to determine whether one of these was used to kill Amarjit Sharma.

“Even at the peak of militancy in J&K (in the 1990s) and in Punjab (mid-1980s to the mid-1990s), we never encountered a gunman in Saida village. The government must find a political solution to end militancy,” says Maniram.

Located around 20 km from the International Border (IB) between India and Pakistan, Saida village, much like many other villages in Kathua, is being used as a transit route by militants from Pakistan, say police officials. They describe how militants dig tunnels and enter the region.

On July 5, a farmer stumbled on one such tunnel in Thangli village in the Hiranagar sector of Kathua, when the water from his farmland started draining only at one point, 500 metres away from the border. Security forces have started a major exercise on the IB to detect underground tunnels but admit that it “is humanly impossible to sanitise the entire region” on a daily basis.

Kathua, a Hindu-majority district, is adjacent to Punjab. The police say the militants use the area to fan out into nearby districts such as Doda, which has become the new battleground.

That militants are shifting their base is nothing new in Kashmir. In the last three decades, militant commanders have shifted their base from north Kashmir to central Kashmir and later to south Kashmir. However, security agents say they did not think that the militants would shift to districts where they have little local support.

“Militants have revived old infiltration routes in Jammu region, especially using the IB, in Kathua and Samba. And also in Punjab. These routes were active during the Punjab militancy, which impacted Jammu too, and also during the peak of Kashmir militancy. All these routes had dried up by 2000 due to the efforts of security forces,” says a senior police official, who recently attended a high-level inter-State meeting of top officials of the Army, Border Security Force, and police from J&K and Punjab, in Kathua.

A challenging terrain

A Jammu-based Army officer says the highest militant footprint in Jammu region since 2005 has been recorded this year. “The terrain is being used by terrorists to their advantage. It is a challenging situation, but we are prepared to defeat them,” he says.

Security agencies say this is “a deliberate move to achieve certain strategic goals including raising the cost of the conflict by forcing troop de-induction (the withdrawal of troops from conflict areas) and re-induction (redeployment of troops where trouble resurfaces) processes, subverting troop thinning exercises, and shifting focus from the Ladakh front”.

The Army has re-inducted more than 700 soldiers this month. It has stepped up patrolling in the Pir Panjal and Chenab valleys. It also uses drones to patrol the dense forests. An official says a tip-off about the presence of militants from the upper reaches of the Doda mountain region takes the Army anywhere between six hours to a few days to reach the spot. The mountain slopes are sparsely populated and dotted with caves, which the militants use for shelter.

Children walk to school with the Shivalik hills of Kathua district in the backdrop. | Photo Credit: Imran Nissar

The forest area in Jammu is eight times the size of Delhi. Militants who were dominating the Pir Panjal valley, a mix of coniferous and deciduous forests, between 2020 and 2023 are shifting towards higher peaks and the forests of the Chenab valley, says a senior police official.

“The upper reaches in the Pir Panjal and Chenab valleys are far away from the roads. It takes the Army days to patrol these pockets by foot and return to their bases,” the Army officer says.

In Doda, the mountains are 1,200-1,500 ft high. The militants have been spotted in the upper reaches of the Bhalessa, Chattergala, and Dessa forests. “This arc has provided strategic depth to militants,” says a senior police official.

“They are operating from the upper ridges. The presence of nomads in the upper reaches in summer makes it easy for the militants to fetch food. They keep changing their locations. They get to know about the Army’s movement because of their positions,” says a senior police officer, who led anti-militancy operations in the Doda belt in the recent past.

Doda was a hub for militants in the 1990s. According to police data, 118 locals have shifted to Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir since the 1990s. The police have begun to re-open old cases against locals and seal the houses of suspected active militants. Such action has pushed many people who joined the mainstream back to the margin, say residents.

Change in modus operandi

Jammu is witnessing a dynamic shift in militancy. According to Army officials, terrorists no longer engage the security forces in a stand-off fire, but lay an ambush with the intention of killing them and fleeing from the spot. “They are highly trained in jungle warfare,” says an Army officer.

The arrest of two locals — Nissar Ahmad, 56, a resident of Rajouri’s Gursai, in April 2023; and Hakam Din, 40, a resident of Rajouri’s Bandhrahi, in June this year — gave officials an idea about the modus operandi of the militants. Ahmad allegedly hosted a group of them, who later carried out an attack in Dangri that left seven civilians dead in January 2023. Din allegedly sheltered a group of militants who were responsible for the attack in Reasi in June, which left nine pilgrims dead and more than 33 people injured. Ahmad, the father of two schoolgoing children, has also been accused of ferrying weapons for the militants. He had militant links in the 1990s, but stayed silent all these years, the police say.

According to the police, militants do not rely on locals for shelter for a long period of time; they remain on the move. There is growing evidence that the militants use mobile apps like Alpine, which trekkers use, to cover steep slopes of mountains, without accessing the Internet.

Din did not have any association with militants earlier, but hosted the Reasi attackers. He admitted that he informed the militants about the movement of the pilgrims’ bus, say the police. In fact, he stayed in the area where the attack took place, in Teryath village near Shiv Khori area, to provide a cue to the attackers about the movement of the bus, say the police. “Din’s role went beyond providing shelter. His ideological inclination too is under investigation,” says another senior police officer.

Both Din and Ahmad belong to the Gujjar community. A police officer says the support network for the militants could increase because of various factors, such as increasing polarisation between Hindus and Muslims. The Gujjars feel alienated after a new reservation policy included the Paharis, who, they believe, are a linguistic group and well-off. Growing unemployment could also push more Gujjars into the support network, he says. The Rajouri-Poonch belt is home to around 11 lakh Gujjars and Bakerwals. Hundreds of them have been rounded up for questioning in the past three years, especially around areas where militants attacked security forces. Army officials say they have set up special mobile schools, and medical patrols for Gujjars, Bakerwals, and even their livestock, “to reach out to the population”.

From across the border

Police officials also worry that the effects of the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2020 will spill over into J&K.

“In the past, locals would mostly say Urdu and Punjabi-speaking militants passed by or stayed with them. Sometimes, Pashto-speaking militants roamed the forests too. Whether they are from Afghanistan or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (a province in Pakistan close to Afghanistan) has to be investigated,” says another senior police officer.

Officials point out that the increasing use of U.S.-made M4 carbine, steel bullets, guns fitted with night thermal cameras, Glock and Beretta pistols, Austria-made Steyr AUG rifles, and Tukey-made rifles indicate this spillover.

“Handling guns fitted with night thermal cameras requires a higher degree of training. Those are not like pistols or AK rifles, which are easier to fire from,” says a police officer.

“Most active militants have also changed the way they dress. Khan suits and Afghan headgear are hardly found in the photos that were recovered during investigation. The militants don’t have flowing beards. A militant roams around the way an Army trooper would. It is hard to differentiate the two,” he adds.

With winter approaching in a few months, the upper reaches will be covered in snow and will turn hostile for the militants. Security agencies fear that the militants will come down the mountains, which could mean more encounters. “Our bigger worry is that they may recruit locals in the Doda belt. That could prove disastrous. It is a hard-earned peace in Doda for security agencies. But the high unemployment rate, inflation, and polarisation could all be exploited by them. We need to take measures now,” says a police officer.