Dwarika Prasad Sharma
Occupying a large public building, attracting attention of the security forces by some stratagem like burning a small fire in one of the upper rooms, and then starting intermittent firing to engage them, has become a preferred plan B of terrorists. The terrorists, from their vantage position, hope to cause casualties among the security forces disproportionate to their own numbers that they put on line. The security forces are procedurally stymied as they have to operate in a way that would cause no or minimum collateral damage to physical structures and human lives. On the other hand, there is madness in the method of the terrorists.
In the context of Kashmir, terrorists would also try to avoid casualties among common civilians lest they should alienate them. For the same reason, they would try to avoid damage to their properties. Terrorists consider public property to be “government” property and therefore a prime target. They would damage or destroy public property by design or default. But they can also invite collateral damage to private property when they shoot, scoot and, if they get trapped, hole up in a home. The blame, of course, is put on the security forces even when they have repeatedly urged the terrorists over a megaphone to surrender and brought the householders out to safety.
Plan B is often resorted to when a planned attack on the security forces, either on a convoy, a deployment, a base, a camp or any other security-linked formation or property, fails to succeed. Occupying a large building would probably prove to be more spectacular than what the terrorists had hoped to achieve in their plan A. The likelihood of the operation being long-drawn- out, with the security forces pressing in not only commandos but possibly also helicopters for surveillance, would make it high-profile, and therefore attention-drawing, to the satisfaction of the terrorists and their handlers.
On the other hand, the security forces, who would try to avoid casualties among their own ranks, would not make a full-frontal raid. They would gradually raise the heat by, say, firing rockets and reducing the manoeuvrability of the terrorists. This elongation of the operation and use of considerable resources by the security forces adds to the romance of the terrorist action in the eyes of their sympathisers. The security forces hardly expect any romantic accretion from such operations, unless a considerable number of terrorists are taken out.
In the case of the recent terrorist occupation of the Entrepreneurial Development Institution building in Pampore, it is not clear whether the two terrorists had a brief for some other primary target, from which they had been deterred by its immediate impracticability, before settling in there. It is more likely that the lark was up the extremists’ lane since the occupation of the same building in February this year. In that incident, the operation of the security forces lasted 48 hours, in which three terrorists were killed. But the losses of the security forces were on the high side, with five personnel, including two Army captains, dead. An employee of the institute was also killed.
The recent (October 10-12) operation lasted 56 hours, in which the two terrorists, believed to be of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, were killed. The lessons learnt from the previous occupation of the EDI proved handy for the security forces and they suffered only one Army jawan and a policeman injured. In the February attack, the security forces had been impatient to raid the building and be over with it, thus incurring the unacceptable number of casualties. Later, however, caution was applied, resulting in prolongation of the operation.
In Poonch in September, terrorists occupied the large unfinished Mini Secretariat building and a nearby home, from where the householders were brought out to safety. The large number of rooms in the secretariat building afforded manoeuvrability to the terrorists, complicating the operation. It lasted three days (September 11-13), over which four terrorists were killed. On the very first day of the terrorists’ movements, one policeman was killed and four army jawans injured. In the vicinity of the building is a Brigade HQ, which the terrorists had probably eyed in the first place.
In the case of the Poonch attack, the occupation of the building, where the terrorists had been holed up to probably execute a sensational attack, proved to be no less attention-attracting. Such terrorist actions, apart from any casualties among the security forces, have been a big thing with the extremist community. The terrorists who are eliminated are not there to gloat over engaging the security forces for long hours, causing them to deploy considerable resources, and attracting collateral damage to public property and incidental civilian casualties. But they leave behind many tub-thumpers, in Kashmir and across the border.
Since the supply of fidayeen from Pakistan and PoK, the attention-seeking element in terror strikes has been considered to be a major psychological gain for the extremists and separatists. Even, Pakistan-trained local terrorists have, down the years, overcome their native impulse of self-preservation.
In Poonch, the damage to the building is no doubt an economic public loss or, in the thinking of extremists, loss to the government. But the loss to the Pampore EDI falls in an absolutely different category. It provides entrepreneurial training, accommodation and follow-up support to young persons who venture off the pervasive preference for ever-shrinking government jobs. The start-ups of some youths have already become success stories. The EDI has marked itself as an institution of excellence and a huge source of hope and inspiration for the youth.
The blinkered vision and shrunken minds of the local extremists and separatists are oblivious of this reality (and their handlers in Pakistan understandably care two hoots). They consider such centres as so much brick and mortar and their loss in terrorist strikes as a gain for their “freedom movement”. They feel pumped up and extend their closure calls. The record loss of studies of the youth and the general economic squeeze in the Valley has put it on target for “freedom” from education and economic avenues.
(The writer is a Senior Journalist)
feedbackexcelsior@gmail.com
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel