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Arun Joshi
Tribune News Service
Jammu, May 24
After months of manhunt, security forces were able to eliminate Zakir Musa, a dreadful militant of the Al-Qaeda in Kashmir, on the intervening night of Thursday and Friday. This underlined the rapid speed with which anti-militancy operations appear to be heading toward their logical conclusion.
The speed with which the security forces have dominated the landscape in Kashmir by uprooting a series of hubs of militancy is all set to be accelerated further in the coming days for the security forces have been getting uninterrupted flow of information about the whereabouts and movements of the militants.
“There is an overflow of information,” said a senior officer, adding that credible inputs had been coming from people from all over.
Musa represented two cults — one which had gained an aura of invincibility as he had escaped a series of cordon and search operations, but more worrisome was his invocation of the Islamic State ideology of setting up of a Caliphate in Kashmir.
Given the emerging scenario in India’s neighbourhood, particularly the Easter suicide bombings in Sri Lanka on April 21, and deepening of the Islamic State footprints in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Musa’s presence represented the threat becoming larger and more dangerous in Kashmir.
In military terms, the security forces have analysed his killing in Daesar, Tral in Pulwama, as “a major setback to the militancy” and a great success for themselves, but is more than that — the intensified anti-militancy operations have delivered a clear message that nothing short of the elimination of all militants would make the security forces to halt their mission. The other option before them is to surrender. Musa, too, was given an offer to surrender but he didn’t.
The security forces’ mission gained a new urgency and sanctity following the February 14 Pulwama terror attack in which at least 40 CRPF personnel were killed.
The Narendra Modi government that has been mandated to govern the country now with a larger support than the one it got in 2014, is living up to its word of having “given free hand to the security forces to deal with the menace of terrorism,” whether sponsored by Pakistan or home grown. Both threats are real.
Early this week, Northern Command chief Lt Gen Ranbir Singh while applauding the success of the security forces in eliminating 86 militants had also underlined a concern of “40 local youth” having joined the militancy. This was his assessment. There is another fact as well. There has been a silent recruitment of the local youth into the ranks of militant groups.
They come on radar only after the acts of terror are committed . The example of Adil Ahmad Dar, the suicide bomber who rammed his van into the CRPF convoy in Lethpora, Pulwama, is cited to substantiate the point. He came on the radar only after he had blown up himself and killed CRPF personnel.
Now, the Musa’s killing in an encounter in Tral, brings forth two major points. First, that the militants are losing their leadership — it was pointedly mentioned by Lt Gen KJS Dhillon in one of his press conferences that “no one from the Jaish-e-Mohammad was coming forward to take up the leadership of the group, such was the impact of the anti-militancy operations in Kashmir.”
The Jaish-e-Mohammad has suffered most of the losses of its leaders and cadre after Pulwama.
Second, this is likely to ease the fears of people who are scared because of the hovering presence of the militants, especially the likes of Musa who would always hurl a series of threats through audio-visual media, and who also would not spare the separatist leadership of the consequences if they continued to pursue their “Kashmir, a political issue,” theme.
Geelani pays homage
Separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani, who competed against Zakir Musa and his jihadist ideology for years, on Friday described the slain militant commander as a “real hero”. In a brief statement issued after his killing in a night-long gunfight, Geelani said Musa was a “renowned commander”. The homage to Musa is in contrast to Geelani’s competition against the militant commander as the duo had sharp ideological divide. While Musa propagated an Islamist agenda and also challenged Pakistan’s control of militancy, Geelani and his group often questioned the militant commander’s credentials.