First week of Ramzan truce sees south Kashmir quiet

Azhar Qadri

Tribune News Service

Shopian/Pulwama, May 22

With the completion of the first week of Ramzan ceasefire on Tuesday, quietness has descended on South Kashmir– the ground zero of new-age militancy and home to most of the local militants in the region.

The ceasefire, announced by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday last, has meant that the cordon and search operations and the gunfights — which had become a routine — have temporarily halted and the local population is at ease.

The cordon and search operations — the sealing off of a locality followed by either a random or precise search for militants — are the backbone of counter-insurgency and area-domination activity of security forces.

In the last two years, these operations became the cornerstone of an increasingly deadly enmity between residents of volatile pockets of south Kashmir and security forces and several such operations ended up with civilian casualties.

Bashir Ahmad, a resident of Pulwama district, said the ceasefire had come as a respite. “Earlier it was difficult for us to go outside after dark. For the last few days the situation is different, but we are careful and cautious… we do not want to end up making any error that can get us killed,” he said.

The recent years of confrontation in south Kashmir has given birth to a new anger and also fearlessness. Some residents are not too optimistic about the outcome of the ceasefire. “These things (ceasefire) mean nothing. Once the Ramzan will end, it will go back to what it was,” a resident of Shopian district said.

The quietness is pervasive across south Kashmir. Its orchards are in full bloom and covered in green outgrowth. These orchards have often served as summer stopovers for militants, where they have posed for pictures and sat for meetings. 

Though one of the militant outfits has officially rejected the ceasefire and others have been silent, ultras have made no attempt to mount any major attack. There have been isolated incidents, including that of weapon-snatching, but so far militants have either not attempted or not succeeded in inflicting casualties during the ceasefire’s first week.

The cessation of attacks or failure to carry out any by militants is also rooted in the reality that militants suffered severe setbacks in recent months with 66 of them, including seven senior commanders, getting killed in counter-insurgency operations. “There has been a successful mitigation of threats, most of it from the Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Toiba,” Kashmir IGP Swayam Prakash Pani told The Tribune.

The senior police officer said the elimination of the senior leadership of militant outfits has caused severe reversals to the militants. “That is the reason there has been no major attack this year like it happened last year,” Pani said.

Most of the militants killed in the year so far were locals who were part of a modest and localised insurgent resurgence which concentrated itself in south Kashmir districts. Shopian district, which had the highest concentration of militants, witnessed some of the deadliest gunfights in which more than 20 militants were killed.

Sources said 45 new militants joined insurgency in five months, including few highly educated youth, and some of them resorted to snatching of weapons from the policemen — an indication that the new militants are short of supplies to fuel their war.

Isolated incidents reported

There have been isolated incidents, including that of weapon-snatching, but so far militants have either not attempted or not succeeded in inflicting casualties during the first week of the ceasefire.