With the brutal killing of over 40 CRPF personnel by a suicide bomber who rammed his explosive-laden vehicle against their bus, “suicide terrorism” is poised to dominate the subcontinent’s narrative. Pulwama- based militant Adil Ahmad Dar, barely 22, had studied up to Class 12, followed by a course in religious studies. He had left home to join the ranks of the Jaish-e-Mohammed, without the compulsion to graduate and seek a job. “He wanted to become a cleric and had already memorised eight chapters of the Quran, ” his father was quoted as saying to a news portal. The last time a Kashmiri was involved in a suicide attack was in 2000, when Afaq Ahmed Shah, again a JeM militant, tried to ram an explosive-laden car into the Army’s 15 Corps headquarters at Badami Bagh in Srinagar.

As a new ‘recruit’ Adil replaced JeM’s previous fidayeen militant, Fardeen Ahmad Khanday, who was killed in 2018. Khanday belonged to a suicide attack that had attacked a CRPF camp in Lethpora in January 2018, killing five men of the paramilitary force. The induction of Fardeen, the son of a policeman, who was only 16 when he led a suicide attack marked a new trend ~ the use of young suicide attackers in Kashmir. Militant teenagers who become suicide attackers is the new norm in the cycle of relentless violence in Kashmir. After the killing of Burhan Wani in 2016, there are reports suggesting that south Kashmir, notably Pulwama, Awantipora, Shopian, Anantnag and Kulgam, are a fertile recruiting ground for militant groups. Recruits are sourced from Bandipore, Baramulla, Sopore, and Kupwara as well. This points to increasing radicalisation of youth in the Valley.

For years, Israeli secret service analysts and social scientists have been trying to construct a typical profile of the suicide ‘assassin’. There is some consensus in the thought that suicide bombing is an instance of people being driven to extremes. ‘Children who have seen so much inhumanity,’ Eyad El-Sarraj, a pioneering Palestinian psychiatrist wrote, ‘inevitably come out with inhuman responses.’

Not that we are ignorant. For over a quarter century, terrorist groups have been increasingly relying on suicide attacks to achieve major political objectives. From 1980 to 2003, terrorists across the world had initiated campaigns to give an impetus to suicide terrorism, including the one spearheaded by Hezbollah to drive the American, French, and Israeli forces out of Lebanon. The compulsion of Palestinian terrorist groups was to force Israel to abandon the West Bank and Gaza. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam wanted the Sri Lankan government to accept an independent Tamil homeland. The Al Qaida’s objective was to exert pressure on the United States to withdraw from the Persian Gulf region and Iraq. It spread further during the first years of the 21st century. Suicide attacks continued in Sri Lanka, Israel, and the Persian Gulf. In 2000 and 2001, rebel groups in Chechnya launched suicide attacks against Russian targets, rebels in Kashmir conducted similar attacks against Indian targets, and Al Qaida escalated its operations with the most spectacular suicide attack in history ~ the direct attack on the United States on 11 September 2001.

When the BJP came to power at the Centre in 1998 at the head of a coalition, terrorism, featuring large-scale suicide attacks, intensified the very same year. The upper hand that the security forces had gained since 1996 was lost. Groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e- Mohammed, both almost entirely non-Kashmiri and later branded as terrorist organisations by the US, began suicide missions in 1998. Kargil and the spurt in suicide attacks made India feel that its defensive posture had emboldened Pakistan and that a new aggressive approach was imperative. Talk of a ‘limited war’ began in India in early 2000 leading to Operation Parakram (code name for a putative confrontation) that lasted ten months. Then suddenly in May 2001, largely to assuage international concern at the long face-off by two nuclear adversaries, India invited General Musharraf for talks. Within two months of the Agra summit occurred the horrendous tragedy of 9/11 that triggered the American war on terrorism. On 1 October 2001, suicide bombers belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammed attacked the J&K legislative assembly in Srinagar and killed 40 people. This was the first major terrorist outrage after 9/11. On 13 December 2001, three months after 9/11 and two months after an attack on the J&K assembly, terrorists from Jaish-e- Mohammed and LeT attacked Parliament. This was the second major terrorist incident after 9/11. Both militant entities had coordinated their actions, probably with some oversight by elements from the ISI and the Pakistan Army.

“The real war”, the Lashkare- Taiba’s overall head Hafiz Muhammad Saeed had asserted after the end of the Kargil war, “will be inside [India]”. He promised to “unfurl the Islamic flag at the Red Fort”. In February 2000, at a rally in Islamabad’s Aabpara Square, just a few hundred metres from the headquarters of the ISI, he proclaimed that the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir had reached a new stage. Kargil, he said, had been the first component of this new campaign; the wave of fidayeen attacks the organisation had unleashed on major security and civilian installations was the second. “Very soon”, he warned, “we will be launching a third round”. Is it a nuclear jihad? In January 1994, Mohammad Masood Azhar who founded Jaish-e- Mohammad in the wake of his release from prison as part of the Indian Airlines hostages-for-prisoners swap of 1999, was despatched to India to reconcile the fractious cadres of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and the Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami. He said the organisation’s major objective was “to liberate Kashmir from Indian rule, and to establish Islamic rule in Kashmir”.

Pakistan’s defeat in the Kargil war did not mean the start of a phase of peace in Jammu and Kashmir. Another putative defeat inflicted on it cannot be made as momentous as it was in 1971. Since 1998, Pakistan has realised that stability at the nuclear level makes sub-conventional conflict safer and without the risk of escalation and that it can continue to bleed India through Kashmir. The Kargil conflict demonstrated that Pakistan could indulge in adventurism.

It needs to be underlined that after 9/11, America has not been attacked. However, this does not mean that it does not have enemies. It has overhauled its internal security network to the extent that it is practically impenetrable. Pulwama would not have happened without a colossal intelligence failure and an insider conspiracy. India must find a mechanism to deal with Pakistan’s suicide mission and nuclear blackmail. While suicide bombings by Palestinians have only made the Israelis more uncompromising and strengthened the hardline political forces in the country, the Israeli approach has led to extremist Islam, in the form of Hamas and Islamic jihad. Therefore, the battle for India is more ideological than military. Delhi needs to plug the loopholes in its Kashmir policy, border management and in a host of other areas.

(The writer is a Kolkata based commentator on politics, development and cultural issues)