Hi-tech attacks before polls stun Indian forces in IIOJK, reveals Guardian

The British newspaper reveals that Kashmiri freedom fighters have launched a hi-tech strategic series of attacks on Indian forces, leaving them stunned and struggling to respond.

The report contradicts the Modi-led government’s claims of bringing peace to the Illegally Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

The Guardian report revealed that the freedom fighters are now more determined than ever, while Indian forces are morally down in the disputed region.

“The freedom fighters are using advanced weapons and guerrilla warfare tactics, targeting Indian forces with precision and disappearing into the rugged terrain,” stated in the report.

Moreover, it is revealed, that the Indian forces have acknowledged difficulties in gathering intelligence on these fighters and it has become a challenge to track them down.

The freedom fighters have scattered in new areas including the Hindu-majority region in IIOJK, which was previously relatively peaceful.

Experts say the new tactics, including ambushes, have rendered the Indian troops’ efforts to control the armed struggle ineffective.

A survivor of the most recent ambush in IIOJK, Santosh Kumar Verma told Guardian that a bus carrying Hindi Pilgrims was ambushed by the freedom fighters in southern Reasi, killing nine and injuring 33.

“A masked militant appeared on the road and started firing towards us, hitting the driver in his forehead,” Kumar, 44, quoted by the newspaper.

Even after the bus had rolled down into a deep gorge, they continued to fire on it for half an hour.

“The aim was clearly to kill all of us and send a message to Modi,” said Verma, who was hospitalised by his injuries.

The Reasi attack was not an isolated incident but part of a mounting number of freedom fighters ambushes in Kashmir that have killed almost 200 security personal and over 350 civilians since 2020.

With regional elections are just around the corner for the first time in a decade, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party’s manifesto boasting of transforming the region from a “terrorist hotspot to a tourist spot” contradicts the claims of bringing peace to the disputed territory.

Since independence in 1947, both India and Pakistan have claimed the entire region as their own while controlling only parts of it.

However, the latest wave of attacks are also linked with the Modi government’s decision to strip Kashmir of its special status in 2019.

“The freedom fighters are highly trained and are using sophisticated weapons and hi-tech equipment, including drones and Chinese applications to communicate. The Indian army has described the freedom fighters as highly trained and totally unprecedented.”

The report revealed that more attacks have been carried out by “newer groups”, which emerged after Modi’s cancellation of Kashmir’s special status in 2019.

The Guardian report says that elections will be held in Jammu and Kashmir this week, with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party’s manifesto boasting of transforming the territory into a tourist spot.

The report also warned the consequences or prevailing situation in the region stating that “the insurgency has become so potent in the Jammu region that it has led to the revival of a controversial local civilian militia, which is now being armed with automatic and semi-automatic rifles by the state”.

The separatist insurgency, however, could never be crushed completely. Waves of terrorist attacks and the rise of new militant figures ensured that Kashmir still remains one of the most heavily militarised zones in the world.

Former officer and defence expert Parvin Sawhney said that the threat India faces on its border is totally unprecedented.

After an ambush killed five soldiers last November, India’s army chief, Gen Upendra Dwivedi said these new militants were “highly trained”, possibly in “Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries”.

He also alleged that some of them were retired Pakistani soldiers. Pakistan has not responded to the allegation.

Moreover, former director general of Jammu and Kashmir police Shesh Paul Vaid also made a similar comment stating, as well as being highly skilled, these militants were also using sophisticated weapons such as M4 assault rifles that the US military left behind in Afghanistan and steel-cased bullets.

“The way they have been ambushing our forces in the last two years reveals a totally new phenomenon,” said Vaid. “I have decades of experience in dealing with the insurgency, but I can tell you that we have never faced anything like this – certainly not in the past two decades.”

According to police and Indian military officers, there are about 150 militants active in the region.

Security officials described how Indian soldiers were ambushed by freedom fighters who wore body cameras and then released the videos online in the aftermath.

In July, after an attack in the region’s Doda area, militants released a gruesome video online of an Indian army officer being beheaded.

“Now there is a change in tactics. They [militants] ambush soldiers, then disappear and later show up in some other place and attack there,” said former Northern Command chief Deependra Singh Hooda.