New Delhi, Sep 2 (IANS) Pakistan has significantly scaled up recruitment into the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Tayiba (LeT) in the last couple of months, for fomenting terror activities in Jammu and Kashmir. However, there has been a noticeable change in the manner in which the recruitments are taking place. During high level meetings that took place in Pakistan recently, it was decided that there would be very less reliance on locals in Jammu and Kashmir to be recruited as terrorists.
A majority of the terrorists who would be sent to Jammu and Kashmir would be Pakistani nationals. The ISI feels that the locals have very less sustainability when compared to terrorists in Pakistan. The terrorists from Pakistan are capable of undertaking the long-haul. They can wait for months within dense jungles and attack when they get orders.
An Intelligence Bureau official said that there has been a massive drop in recruitment of locals to fight alongside the Jaish-e-Mohammad or Lashkar-e-Tayiba in Jammu and Kashmir.
The ISI feels that the game in Jammu and Kashmir should be a long one and hence the Pakistani nationals are more suited, the official said. The official explained that apart from longevity, there are other factors too behind this decision taken by the ISI. The locals are not as hardened when compared to the terrorists of Pakistani origin.
Further, there have been many cases when the security forces have asked family members to intervene and get the locals to surrender. Moreover, such surrenders are not good for ISI’s narrative as the locals can spill out information about operations and other tactics to the security agencies. An official said that there are hardly any local terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir.
Following the streak of encounters that eliminated local terrorists, the Hizbul Mujahideen was never able to recover, the official said. The morale of the locals went down drastically and many refused to take up arms.
Several youth, who were charged up when the likes of Burhan Wani were at their peak became completely demoralised following his death and others that followed.
In addition to the death of separatism and the elimination of local terrorists, the locals were so demoralised that they stopped indulging in stone-pelting. Another official said post the abrogation of Article 370, peace returned largely to Jammu and Kashmir. This also resulted in development and more opportunities for the youth.
This is something that the ISI took note of and decided that the locals currently care more about their livelihood rather than in carrying out terror attacks or indulge in stone pelting. The Kashmir study group that was set up by the ISI suggested that locals are not only weaker compared to the Pakistanis, but are also vulnerable. They tend to get caught or eliminated too soon and their life span on the ground is not over two to three months. Those caught easily break down during an interrogation and end up exposing communication and logistic networks of terror groups such as the Lashkar-e-Tayiba or Jaish-e-Mohammad.
Officials say that while Pakistani terrorists would operate more in Jammu and Kashmir, the ISI would simultaneously create more smokescreen groups. These groups would be the ones taking up responsibility each time there is an attack.
Such groups would however comprise locals who would operate on the digital space and claim responsibility for the attacks so that Pakistan has the deniability factor. The ISI has also made sure that these groups should have secular names. Currently, the ISI has created groups such as The Resistence Front, Kashmir Tigers, All Tigers and People’s Anti Fascist Front (PAFF).
These groups have been created to claim responsibility for an attack that would originally have been carried out by either the Lashkar-e-Tayiba or Jaish-e-Mohammad. While ISI has reduced its reliance on locals to be part of ground operations, it has however recruited a good number of youth to function as over ground workers (OWGs).
For the OWG network having locals is important as they are better suited to provide logistics and also shelter to foreign terrorists are they are well-versed with the geography of Jammu and Kashmir. While OWGs provide logistics and shelter, their knowledge about an operation is very limited. This automatically reduces the risk of operational or communication details being leaked to the Indian security forces, the official said.
–IANS
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