The End Of An Escape Artist

On Tuesday night, August 1, slain Lashkar-e-Toiba commander Abu Dujana, one of the longest surviving foreign militants, was given a quiet burial at Gant­amulla village in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district by the Jammu and Kashmir Police. The pol­ice have been strictly following the policy of not handing over the bodies of foreign militants to locals since Octo­ber 2015, when nearly 35,000 loc­als participated in the funeral procession of top Lashkar commander Abu Qasim in Kulgam. The bodies are INS­tead ­given to the local waqf in Uri town near the Line of Control in Baramulla district for low-key burial.

In the case of Dujana, J&K DGP S.P. Vaid tells Outlook, “We wrote to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to com­municate about Dujana’s body to the Pakistan High Commission.” People from at least three villages of south Kashmir’s Anantnag district had gone to the police seeking the body, claiming he was from their village. The police, however, insisted he was a foreigner as he hailed from Gilgit in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). Dujana, 26, was killed along with his associate Arif Nabi Dar in Pulwama by the J&K Police’s Special Operations Group (SOG), according to police sources. The SOG men who surrounded the house at Pulwama’s Harkipora hamlet were rep­ortedly in plain clothes, so as not to let Dujana get a whiff of their presence—the Lashkar commander was well-known as a “master of disguises” and had broken out of many cordons before.

Claiming there were no large-scale protests after the killing and no huge procession at Arif’s funeral, the police see an indication of militancy beginning to decline in south Kashmir. On Wed­nesday evening, the police carried out another operation, killing two more militants at Kulgam’s Gopalpora hamlet, and followed it up the next morning with an operation, jointly with the army, in Shopian’s Imam Sahab area.

More militants have been killed this year in south Kashmir than in the past three years, leading the police to believe the security situation will improve with the continuous counter-insurgency ope­rations. In the four districts of north Kashmir—Ganderbal, Kupwara, Ban­di­pora and Baramulla—there are no more than 85 foreign and 15 local militants and popular support for militancy is relatively less, according to a senior pol­ice officer posted there.

“If anyone joins militancy here, it is promptly reported by their parents and there is full cooperation from the family in bringing them back,” says the official. According to police sources, militants in these parts prefer staying in the forests and higher reaches of the mountains. They are better trained and organised than their counterparts in the south, bes­ides being very secretive and careful about their movements. Unlike the south Kashmir militants, mostly fresh recruits who frequently use social media to att­ract other youngsters towards militancy, the north Kashmir militants stay away from social media to keep the government forces off their trail.

During 2014-16, 30-33 militants were killed every year. This year, the number of militants killed in the south Kashmir districts of Kulgam, Anantnag, Pulwama and Shopian has touched 41 as we go to press, while a total of 109 militants—highest in the decade—have been killed in the entire Valley. Besides Dujana, the slain militants include at least two top commanders known for their operational capabilities—Bashir Lashkari and Junaid Mattu. “We are getting accurate information and hope to successfully target more militants in the coming months,” says IGP (Kashmir) Muneer Khan. “I cannot say when the militants will be down to single digit, but we do have an upper hand.”

Once the police and security agencies are done with Amarnath Yatra duty, there will be more operations. “We are an overstretched force, used for every­thing from law and order to counter-insur­gency, securing the yatra routes and provide security to politicians and other dignitaries,” says a senior police official. “From August to March, when there is no Amarnath Yatra and the Darbar moves to Jammu (J&K’s winter capital), the operations will be stepped up. But unless the other stakeholders such as political parties and the government reach out to the people, all the gains will be lost again.”

On the militancy front, the police have an upper hand, with 19 militants killed in the past one month. As a top police official posted in south Kashmir puts it, “It means one militant every other day.” Militancy was made popular in these parts by Burhan Wani, who took to social media for galvanising public support. Just five years after 2010, when he joined Hizbul Mujahideen, local militants outnumbered the foreigners. Dujana, who had been active in north Kashmir for at least two years after infiltrating into J&K in 2011, also shifted base to the south.

Since Burhan’s killing last July, around 55 locals joined the militant ranks in south Kashmir. Wani’s funeral broke all records, according to police sources, with over 2 lakh people participating. The prolonged unrest that shook Kashmir left around 90 civilians dead and over 16,000 wounded as government forces fired bullets and pellets to quell the protests.

Dujana, who reportedly escaped from at least six cordons this year alone, was an ‘A++ militant’ in the police records, with a bounty of Rs 12.5 lakh on his head. He had made the Srinagar-Anantnag-Baramulla high­way quite unsafe for government forces, forcing them to step up the security along the highway. Police sources say he was the mastermind behind many att­acks, including last year’s ambush on a paramilitary convoy at Pampore, on the Srinagar outskirts, in which eight CRPF personnel were killed. With Dujana no more, militant recruitment is likely to go down, say the police.

Dujana came up on the radar of the government forces during the investigation of the 2015 Udhampur attack in which militants ambushed a BSF convoy. When Qasim, who had allegedly masterminded the attack, was killed in October that year, Dujana took over Lashkar-e-Toiba’s command in the Valley. Police sources claim that Dujana had fallen out with the Lashkar in recent months and was thought to be getting close to Zakir Musa, who is bel­ieved to have formed a new Islamist militant group backed by al-Qaida.

Seven months ago, according to police sources, Dujana had got married to a Kashmiri woman. It was inside his ­in-­laws’ house at Harkipora that he was eventually killed. Describing him as a womaniser, IGP Khan says, “I think people should relax. The girls, our sisters, they should relax now that no such person is there to harass them.”

Others in the police force disagree, saying Dujana would not have survived so long in the Valley if the allegation was true. “Whether or not he was married doesn’t matter to us,” says a senior police official. “Osama Bin Laden had four wives. Three of them were in the house when he was killed. Have you ever seen the US press writing about it? Our problem is we leave the substance and indulge in frivolities. Dujana was a top commander who planned and executed many attacks; he was a fighter who, had he survived a few more years, would have recruited a large number of local young men and trained them. The big thing is that he was killed and not his marriage.”  The official, who requested anonymity, said Dujana had been replaced by Abu Ismail, another foreigner, who is also the key suspect in the attack on Amarnath yatris last month.

The police say they are concerned about killings of civilians near encounter sites. While the enc­ounter with Dujana and his associate was going on at Harkipora hamlet, two civilian protestors were killed and several others injured after the army all­egedly opened fire at them several kilometres away from the encounter site. At Kakpora hamlet, Firdous Ahmad Khan of Begambagh village was killed when the army allegedly fired at stone-pelting protestors.

Around 15 km from the enc­ounter site, at Gabarapora hamlet, 22-year-old Akeel Ahmad Bhat was critically wounded after the army allegedly fired at the protestors who had blocked a road. Eyewitnesses say it was only a small blockade and allege that the army “straightaway opened fire on a few youth, killing one of them”. The army is also acc­used of opening fire outside the Pulwama district hospital, causing bullet injuries to two persons, who were later shifted to Srinagar for treatment. “We have registered FIRs in all these cases and are investigating it,” says a senior police official. IGP Khan says an FIR has been filed in case of Akeel’s killing, but Firdous was killed in cross-fire near the encounter site.

As counter-insurgency operations int­ensify, ideological discord among militants operating on the ground, with militant commander Zakir Musa calling for the establishment of the Khilafat even as Hizbul and Lashkar reiterate they have no global ambitions, would work in favour of government forces, say police sources.

‘Should the movement be pro-Pakistan or solely Islamist?’ This question has become part of the discourse during funeral processions and security exp­erts hope that internal discord over these “ideological fault lines” will ultimately keep people away from pro-­militant processions and protests. And yet, they warn, any political unrest like what was seen last year would help militants regain ground.

The prolonged protests last year had halted operations of the police and other government forces for months, besides creating space for militants to organise themselves and recruit youngsters. Given the differences that CM Mehbooba Mufti has with the RSS and the central government over political issues such as Article 35(A) of the Constitution of India, no one can predict the coming political upheavals in the restive region. The CM has said that nobody would hold the tricolour in Kashmir if the Article is tinkered with.

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Red Valley June-July Timeline

North Kashmir

• June 1 Two local militants of Hizbul Mujahideen killed in a Sopore gunfight

• June 5 Four foreign militants killed as CRPF foils fidayeen attack on their camp at Sumbal, Bandipore district

• June 7 Four foreign militants killed as army foils infiltration bid in Machil

• June 8 Three foreign militants and a soldier killed during infiltration bid in Nowgam

• June 9 Five foreign militants were killed along LoC in Uri sector

• June 10 A foreign militant killed in Gurez

• June 21 Two local Hizbul militants killed in an encounter at Pazalpora, Sopore district

• June 22 Foreign militant killed as army foils infiltration bid in Keran

• July 10 Three unidentified militants killed as army foils infiltration bid in Nowgam

• July 12 Two army soldiers killed in ceasefire violation in Keran

• July 18 Two foreign militants killed during infiltration bid in Gurez, Bandipora district

• July 18 Army soldier killed in ceasefire ­violation in Nowgam, Kupwara district

• July 23 Unidentified militant killed as army foils infiltration bid in Machil, Kupwara

• July 27 Three militants killed in Gurez as army foils infiltration bid

Srinagar and Budgam

• June 15 A policeman killed in Srinagar by militants

• July 12 Three local militants killed in Budgam

• June 23 DSP lynched by mob outside Jamia Masjid, Srinagar

• June 24-25: A CRPF sub-inspector killed in an ambush at Pantha Chowk. Two Pakistani militants take refuge in Delhi Public School, Srinagar and are killed in a gunfight

South Kashmir

• June 3 Two army soldiers killed and four injured in a militant ambush on a convoy in Qazigund

• June 15 A policeman killed by militants in Kulgam district

• June 16  Three Lashkar-e-Toiba militants, including Junaid Mattu, killed in a gunfight in Kulgam district

• June 16 Six policemen, including an SHO, killed in an ambush by militants in Achabal, Anantnag district

• June 22 Three local Lashkar militants killed in Kakpora, Pulwama district

• July 1 Two local Lashkar militants, including Bashir Lashkari, killed in a gunfight in Anantnag district

• July 3-4 Three local militants killed at Bahmnoo in Pulwama district

• July 15 Three Jaish militants, including two locals, killed in Tral

• July 17 Three militants, including two ­locals, killed in a brief gunfight in Anantnag district

• July 26 Policeman killed in a militant ­attack at Yaripora in Kulgam district

• July 30 Two locals militants of Hizbul Mujahideen killed at Tahab in Pulwama district

By Naseer Ganai in Srinagar