With highly educated young men, including postgraduates and PhD scholars, picking up the gun in Jammu & Kashmir, the security establishment has decided to intensify its efforts to reach out to the parents to counsel their wards before it’s too late. More so, since the casualties among terrorist ranks indicate that the survival tenure of newly-recruited ill-trained youths is just six months from the time they jump the fence.
Security forces have so far neutralised 200 terrorists this year and at least 60 per cent of them were in the age group of 18-20 and all of them were local Kashmiris who got swayed by the so-called cause. Besides urging parents to caution their children about the consequences of resorting to violence, the Army has also announced that during an encounter if a trapped local ultra wants to surrender he will be allowed to do so.
Elaborating upon this measure, officials said here on Sunday security forces realise that gullible youths fell for the lure of the gun and allowing them to surrender is a goodwill gesture.
However, they admitted notwithstanding the high casualty rate, nearly 165 young men have picked up the gun for the cause as compared to 127 for the entire last year thereby ringing alarm bells in the security establishment over the spike. It means that reverses faced by terrorist organisations in terms of ultras killed have failed to deter the impressionable minds from fighting for the cause, officials said.
Anticipating that the number of youths joining the terror groups may go up before the year ends, the operational commanders are also worried that it may give a boost to the terrorists’ organisations with more than 250 trained ultras already active in the Kashmir Valley and 300 plus waiting to infiltrate into the State from across the Line of Control (LoC) in the coming weeks.
In fact, the security forces are bracing themselves for a determined bid by Pakistan-backed terrorists to sneak into the State from the launch pads in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) in the next few days before snow blocks ingress routes in the upper reaches. The main objective of these terrorists is to increase levels of violence even during the winter months when generally terrorism comes down due to harsh weather conditions.
The security forces will maintain the tempo of operations even during the winter months to deny ultras freedom of space and movement.
The aim is to deter the terrorists, especially the foreign ultras, from gaining upper hand in the fight against terrorism, they said. There are at least 70 to 80 foreign ultras now hiding in north Kashmir.
Attributing the high number of terrorists killed this year as compared to 217 for the entire last year to improved intelligence inflow from the local police, they said it has come about despite several policemen targeted by the terrorists as a warning two months back. Officials said the real time intelligence has helped the security forces, including the Army and paramilitary, to launch operations sometimes within seven to 10 minutes after getting the vital clue about the whereabouts of the terrorists.
As regard the overall situation in terms of terrorism related violence, 14 incidents of attacks on Army camps took place this year but the Army foiled most of them. However, two incidents saw casualties including six soldiers killed when ultras managed to get into an Army camp in Sunjwan near Jammu this year. One soldier was killed on Thursday when terrorists fired from a distance at sentry on guard duty of 42 Rashtriya Rifles camp in Tral.
