The many dark shades of the Kokernag encounter

The tragedy of the Kokernag encounter has been felt across the country, perhaps felt even more, following hard on the heels of the triumph of the G20 meeting. Yet the two events are part of the future of India. The country will continue to grow in stature and weight if all goes as planned by the government and terror attacks will continue as long as it remains a policy of the government in Pakistan. The one is a path of confident growth, the other a path of acknowledged defeat. The operation The operation to nab the terrorists has entered its sixth day, which is unsurprising given that this is a heavily forested area, with literally a hundred caves and gullies where a terrorist group could hide for weeks together without being spotted. But the point is that they have been located, with the help of local support, and that is what the army is targetting. It’s a difficult job, and there is no doubt that this is a well-trained group, willing to fight it out. In such a situation, even drones carrying grenades can only help as much. But the crucial support factor has ended. Gone are the days when villagers willingly sheltered them or when crowds came out to protect them. No one wants them back, and the tide has turned. Figures released by security forces revealed that there has been a 78 per cent decline in the number of terrorists killed in the valley since the start of 2023 compared to last year. True, it is the media’s job to cover every aspect of the situation, even as the Opposition has tried to score points over the government, as politicians do, and most of the time in the worst of taste. In the process, however, the incident – notwithstanding the terrible tragedy to the families of the officers – has been blown out of proportion, and thus acquired an importance that is all to the liking of terror handlers next door. That’s one good day for them in a sea of discontent. Understanding terrorism from Pakistan Consider the situation just a few dozen kilometres away, in Gilgit Baltistan, where the people had recently risen up in fury against army dominance, inflation and violence demanding yet again, that they join with India. Inside ‘mainland’ Pakistan, instability is compounded by yet another rise in petrol prices, multiple attacks against minorities, even as the country has seen a rise in terror attacks by a hefty 79 per cent. This is the overall cesspool from which the terrorists come, motivated in part by the promise of money (there are fixed rates for whom they kill, and an officer rates the most) and in part brainwashed by a religious system that glorifies the most cowardly of deaths, that of killing someone with not even a semblance of a fair fight. Radicalism has caught Pakistan by the throat, and the worse its situation, the more the zealots will recruit. The irony? The ones who first fanned the fires of jihadism are now its targets. That not just the army or the police who are being systematically targeted. It’s also the Jamiat Ulema Islam (F) of Maulana Fazlur Rehman, with an attack just a day before the time of writing; and earlier the Maulana himself surviving yet another attack against himself. The further irony; in the present climate of desperate extremism the Maulana, whose madrassas trained thousands for the Afghan jihad, is now seen as a moderate! The problem has reached ‘critical stage’ Now look at the outflow. A Pakistan is sentenced almost every month and in nearly all major capitals for terrorism. Just get the latest in reverse order. Just this month, a Dutch court sentenced Pakistani former international cricketer Khalid Latif to 12 years in prison for urging the murder of anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders. Latif, 37, had offered $22,500 for the head of Wilders in an online video after the firebrand lawmaker sought to arrange a competition for cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. Latif of course is hardly likely to face the penalty. Already TV channels in Pakistan are calling him the ‘saviour’ of Islam, never mind that he was banned from cricket for five years in 2017 for spot-fixing in a Pakistan Super League match in Dubai. Apparently, that doesn’t count. It is extremely unlikely that Latif, who was convicted in absentia, will serve his sentence since any Pakistan government which extradites him might quite literally lose their collective heads.  A month earlier, Muhammad Masood, was sentenced by the Department of Justice in the US, to a period equivalent to 18 years, followed by five years of supervised release for attempting to provide “material support to a foreign terrorist organization”. According to court documents, Massod, a licensed medical doctor in Pakistan, was formerly employed as a research coordinator at a medical clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, under an H-1B visa. He not just pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS), but also expressed his desire to conduct “lone wolf” terrorist attacks in the United States. He then tried to travel to Syria, and was eventually caught when he was promised a passage on a cargo ship. A month prior to that, in July,  Anjem Choudary, a radical Islamist preacher with dual British and Pakistani nationality who had been freed from prison a few years ago was charged by a UK court with three terrorism-related offences to be produced in court in London on Monday. Choudary, 56, was charged with membership of a proscribed (banned) organisation, addressing meetings to encourage support for a proscribed organisation, and directing a terrorist organisation under different sections of the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000.  That’s three cases in just three months in three different countries. A little further, in March, was the arrest by Greek police of two Pakistani nationals who were planning to attack a Chabad house and target Jews abroad, allegedly as part of an Iranian network. Apparently, now you can even hire Pakistanis to do your extremist work for you. In sum, terrorism in Pakistan is out of control. Blame that on years of feeding jihadism to the population, and now is a situation that the Pakistan army has proved it cannot handle. When the Opposition says talk Not that it is trying to. At least not against the Kashmir-centric groups. The key problem is that Rawalpindi is unable to grasp that terrorism is a mindset that cannot be restricted to one area. The gun-wielding hombre in the ranks of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan is not that different from the terrorists in Kokernag. It’s just that brainwashing is in a different category. In the tribal areas in particular, the youth have taken to guns out of sheer desperation, after being at the receiving end of ‘counter-terror’ operations for years, that involved bombing their houses from the air, and artillery attacks. If Pakistan doesn’t take a step back, the same could happen in Occupied Kashmir. Rising prices due to a rupee in free fall, almost continuous power outages, and chaotic government means Pakistan as a whole is in deep turmoil. The Army Chief Gen Asim Munir’s move to include Yasin Malik’s wife, Mashaal Hussein Mulick in the cabinet – ironically on Human rights – hardly sends the right message. The Opposition leaders calling for talks with Pakistan need to also consider whether Pakistan has closed down a single terrorist camp in the Occupied Areas. If Pakistan wants to be part of the huge shifts occurring in the neighbourhood, where Islamic allies like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are all busy with new economic initiatives, it needs to send a signal to the world by a crackdown on terror, of all kinds. The army had the stomach to do this against an elected leader Imran Khan and his hundreds of supporters, with no mercy or justice. Now let it wield a stick against the terrorists who have brought nothing but dishonour and death. Then we talk. And it might just be the best thing to happen to Pakistan in a very long time for the Pakistani people. The writer is a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi. She tweets @kartha_tara. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost_’s_ views. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. 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