Ahmed Ali Fayyaz/Jammu

Thursday’s ambush on an Army vehicle in Jammu’s Poonch district has once again established the presence of the battle-hardened Pakistani terrorists on the Line of Control. The attackers are believed to be a few but seem to be getting the advantage of being well-entrenched in the terrain.

In the daylight attack on an Army vehicle in the area between Dera Ki Gali (DKG) and Bafliaz, four soldiers were killed and six injured. This road goes to Poonch and takes off for the Kashmir valley at Bafliaz ahead.

The Rajouri-Bafliaz-Shopian-Srinagar road is also known as the Mughal Road for the emperors chose this axis to invade Kashmir towards the end of the 16th century. The Mughals didn’t succeed and deceitfully invited the valley’s last native King Yousuf Shah Chak to Delhi and imprisoned him.

Today, it is a vital road link connecting Kashmir to Jammu’s border districts of Poonch and Rajouri. This strategically important 86-km road from Bafliaz to Shopian did not exist until the beginning of the 21st century.

Notwithstanding heavy surveillance and checking, terrorists easily mingled with the local Pahari passengers to reach Kashmir undetected through this road And also the hilly forest terrain to the left and right of Pir Ki Gali. 

Previously, many terrorists took this route to reach Kashmir on their return from Pakistan with arms and ammunition.

Dense bushes and shrubs with a deep sylvan cover of the hills coupled with the composition of the population provide an ideal atmosphere for the terrorists to move safely.

Notwithstanding logistic superiority, many groups of Pakistani and Kashmiri terrorists have been wiped out by security forces in the last 34 years. 

From the Army’s Hill Kaka operations (During the Kargil war) to a sustained counter-terror drive by a local Muslim lady Police officer everything is still fresh in the memory of the local population.

“We remember how militancy was finished in this area several times but with long or short intervals it returned again and again”, said Mohammad Qasim of Thanamandi. 

“Today we believe the number of the militants is not even one-tenth of what we saw in the past but, at the same time, it is a fact that they have disturbed peace and spread waves of terror with back-to-back strikes on the security forces. Sometimes we feel completely safe but sometimes we believe that the whole tranquillity is deceptive”.

J&K BJP’s chief Ravinder Raina is a resident of the same area.

The militants from Pakistan have always retained some space though miniscule but often deceptive in the local ethnic population in Poonch-Rajouri. 

Mohammad Riyaz aka Abu Qasim of Poonch, who was wanted in over a dozen terror cases and hopped between the areas and POK, was shot dead by an unidentified gunman inside a mosque at Rawlakot, across the Poonch LoC in September.

In just three days, terrorists of a jihadist group claimed to have avenged Abu Qasim’s killing with a major gunbattle at Ahlan Kokernag in Kashmir’s Anantnag district. Four soldiers, including three officers, and a deputy SP of the J&K Police died in the gunfight which appeared to have begun with a tactfully conducted ambush in the deep forest cover.

That the terrorists are keen to keep this whole belt hot is evident from the strikes they carried out in the last two years. Officials have declared an end to the over three-decade insurgency after the abrogation of Article 370. Even after the majority of the terrorists and their overground network have been neutralized in Kashmir in the last four years, sporadic incidents have kept the pot boiling in a particular territory.

As many as 28 soldiers have died in 6 major terror attacks in the Poonch-Rajouri belt in the last two years.

This year began with the killing of seven civilians, mostly children of the Hindu community, at Dangri village in Rajouri.

In another attack, four soldiers and a Police officer were killed in a terror strike at Ahlan Kokernag three months ago. Earlier, three soldiers were killed in a similar strike near Manzgam, Kulgam in the foothills of Pir Panjal mountain.

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Almost an identical pattern in these eight attacks indicates the footprints of battle-hardened, trained, and heavily armed guerrillas, who many tend to believe are Pakistani soldiers or retired troopers.