PERILOUS PILGRIMAGE
THE SHOCK AND HORROR OF THE ANANTNAG TERROR STRIKE MAY ALSO HAVE BROUGHT IN ITS WAKE A STEELY POLITICAL RESOLVE TO TURN BACK THE CLOCK IN KASHMIR
Jammu paralysed after attack on Amarnath pilgrims; Opposition derides Centre’s security lapses
SSRINAGAR HAS TURNED sombre. The July 10 attack on a bus ferrying pilgrims back from the Amarnath shrine in Anantnag ominously signals that the new breed of militants in the Valley are intent on pushing boundaries that have long been held sacred amidst Kashmir’s syncretic Sufi traditions.
Dangerously pushing the ‘threshold of tolerance’ in the Valley, the incident, coming in the wake of the lynching of a police officer in Srinagar’s Jamia Masjid mosque, the disfigurement of six policemen at Achabal and the coldblooded murder of a young army officer while on leave, raises concerns on the efficacy of New Delhi’s muscular Kashmir policy as well as the Mehbooba Mufti government’s capacity to deliver on the ground.
Seven pilgrims from Gujarat and Maharashtra, six of them women, were killed in what is the fourth major terror attack targeting the sacred Hindu pilgrimage since 2000, the year the Jammu & Kashmir government handed over administration of the pilgrimage to the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board, with the state governor as its chairman.
On August 1, 2000, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militants used hand grenades and Kalashnikov rifles to kill 27 people, including devotees, porters and police personnel, at a yatra base camp in Pahalgam. Thirteen more people were killed in a grenade attack en route to the shrine, at Sheshnag, on July
20 the following year. And in a repeat of the attack in 2000, eight pilgrims were gunned down in their sleep at the camp at Nunwan on August 6, 2002.
Sharp condemnation and public outrage across the Valley in the wake of the successive attacks on the Amarnath yatra—viewed as an important symbol of the Kashmiriyat tradition—evidently provoked a rethinking amongst the jehadist leadership. There has been no attack on the yatra in the past 15 years. Even in the summer of 2008, when protests erupted in the Valley against the decision to hand over a hundred acres of forest land along the route of the yatra to the shrine board, the pilgrimage was not touched. The yatra was similarly excluded from the realm of the ongoing conflict through the violent public unrest in 2009, 2010 and, most recently, in the wake of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani’s killing in July 2016.
The July 10 attack has drawn condemnation from across Kashmir’s political spectrum, including from the Hurriyat separatists, who, given their slackening influence over the pro-azadi youth, are equally fearful of losing the movement to the radicalised Islamist elements amid the militant ranks. Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the most intractable of the separatists, joined Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front’s Yasin Malik in deploring the attack. “This incident goes against the very grain of Kashmiri ethos,” they declared, noting that the centuries-old Amarnath yatra was part of the annual rhythms of the Valley, and would remain so.
A day after the incident, crowds of human rights activists, traders, academics, local journalists and students braved the pouring rain at Srinagar’s Pratap Park to register their protest against the killings. There were vociferous demands that the perpetrators be tracked down and brought to justice. Khurram Parvez, coordinator of the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, pointed to the government’s failure in “creating deterrence” by apprehending culprits. The activist cited a number of earlier cases including earlier yatra attacks and the massacre of Sikhs at Chattisingpora, where the truth never came out.
On the ground, though, police and security forces have no doubt that the July 10 killings were the handiwork of LeT militants active in south Kashmir. Inspector general of police (Kashmir zone) Muneer Ahmad Khan told india today that the attack was carried out by the LeT’s Abu Ismail, who is ‘active’ and known to be involved in many recent attacks on security forces. “He (Ismail) is doing all this nonsense. He’s feeling emboldened after planning some of
THERE HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE BOOTS ON THE GROUND, OVER 40,000 PERSONNEL TO PROTECT SOME 250,000 PILGRIMS
recent attacks. It’s all being done at Pakistan’s behest,” Khan said on July 12.
Interestingly, both the LeT and the United Jihad Council, an umbrella body of PoK (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir)based terror groups, condemned the attack. Describing the killings as “highly reprehensible” and “anti-Islamic”, the UJC statement sought to blame the Indian security forces “for trying to sabotage the freedom struggle of Kashmiris”.
But police officials say the LeT, which was blamed for all the three earlier yatra attacks too, has never claimed responsibility. A high-level army-led investigation instituted after the Pahalgam attack, had also pointed to the LeT, though the actual perpetrators were never caught.
“We are not going by what terror groups put out through the media,” says Ram Madhav, the BJP’s point person for J&K. Like most of the establishment, the BJP general secretary is clearly keen to play down the significance of the July 10 killings and what these could portend. Madhav sees the attack as evidence of the “desperation of the terrorists who have been thwarted by our security forces”. In the wake of the attack on the pilgrims, the BJP has been holding out the “92 terrorists who have been neutralised in the Valley since January”.
But amid all the incongruous chest-thumping, the one thing obvious is that the death of seven pilgrims was the consequence of a colossal security and intelligence failure. Consider this: there have never been more boots on the ground in the Valley. More than 40,000 police, paramilitary and army personnel have been specially deployed to protect the 250,000 lakh Amarnath pilgrims who are exthe