New Delhi: Winter snow doesn’t set in so early in the Kashmir Valley as it did this year on Wednesday—reeling as it is under a government clampdown to arrest possible unrest after the August 5 abrogation of Article 370.
Snow may not mean much to the common Kashmiris used as much as they are to concertina wires and multiple check-posts, but for the security forces and militants in the militancy-plagued Kashmir Valley, it is a world of difference as far as the matrix of insurgency and countering it goes. It will be so at least for the next three months till early February when snow starts melting.
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Reports say that from Wednesday onwards there has been about one foot of snow in Srinagar, while Pahalagam and Gulmarg saw about two feet of snow.
“The passes in the higher reaches—often used by militants to infiltrate from the Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir side—are now covered with heavy snow and would be difficult for anyone to move without being detected. The big advantage is therefore for people who are already deployed and equipped with adequate clothing and rations. So security forces are at a distinct advantage,” a top security official dealing with Kashmir told ETV Bharat.
“For those terrorists who are already stationed inside the Valley, it will be very difficult for them to undertake any movement as it will now be discernible in the snow as any movement leaves footprints and tracks. Also, unprecedented monitoring in terms of tools and techniques are also in place,” the official added.
What the official may have meant is more and better deployment of advanced unmanned aerial drones and other top grade technical surveillance equipment—some unprecedented—are in deployment.
In effect, it will be more difficult for militants to communicate with their contacts and sympathizers from the militant networks because of the snow.
With weather curbing conventional operations by militants, there is a distinct feeling in the security establishment that for the next three months at least, militancy will largely be confined to operations from ‘within’ or by militants who are already stationed inside the Valley. Already government reports point out at several ‘successful’ infiltrations while many have been thwarted.
At the same time, the possibility of holed-in militants who may go all out to mount spectacular ‘fidayeen’ type suicide attacks out of sheer desperation is also remote because of the difficulty of guiding the militants from ‘outside’.
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“All suicide attacks to be spectacular have to be effectively guided from outside. You must remember that even the Pulwama suicide attack (February, 2019) was guided from outside. So terrorists are picking soft and easy targets. That is why on October 29, five Bengali labourers were gunned down despite all of them being Muslims,” the official said.
Again on Monday (November 4), militants lobbed a grenade in Srinagar’s buzzing Goni Khan Market, killing a non-local and injuring about 20.
While the militants have the distinct advantage of choosing their time, place and type of attack, the security forces are curbed by the huge and difficult area they have to be in control of and dominate. But all in all, the next three months could come as a much-needed breather from the counter-insurgency and security point of view.
