NEW DELHI, May 15 (UPI) -- India's intelligence and security agencies are indulging in a blame game over a recent foiled infiltration bid by militants on the Pakistani border, with one agency accusing the paramilitary forces guarding the border of lacking alertness.
India's elite Intelligence Bureau sent a report to the Interior Ministry in which it charged that the lack of alertness displayed by the paramilitary Border Security Force led to renewed infiltration in strife-torn Kashmir. The IB said the rebels who crossed into Kashmir belonged to the separatist terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba and that they sought to exploit the complacency that has crept into the BSF.
According to a senior Interior Ministry official, the IB is warning of more attempts by extremists who have gathered at different points along the border to sneak in. The border town of Samba, where the infiltration took place, used to be a favorite route for infiltrators till the Border Security Force sealed it.
"The security forces and intelligence agencies should realize that terrorists seek to exploit vulnerability. It is clear from Sunday's incident that militants made full use of lowering of guards on the part of the paramilitary force," said A.B. Mahapatra, director of the Center for Asian Strategic Studies, a non-governmental think tank that handles insurgency-related matters.
Intelligence reports suggest that Sunday's militant operation was just the beginning of a major plan by militants to make their presence felt before the forthcoming assembly elections. A pilgrimage that begins in summer will provide them an opportunity to strike at easy targets. The Interior Ministry official said that the groups were desperate to reinforce their numbers through infiltration from Pakistan.
Currently, the reports say, all the terror organizations together have nearly 1,200 fighters in Kashmir, which is half of their strength in 2006. They are waiting for the ice to melt in the higher ranges, as it will provide them an opportunity to infiltrate through the unfenced border.
Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry has alerted the local government in Kashmir that more incidents of infiltration could take place in the near future. It has asked the BSF to step up its vigilance along the border. The Central Reserve Police Force, a paramilitary force that handles counter-terrorism, has also started deploying its personnel along the route of the annual pilgrimage of Hindus known as the Amarnath yatra. The yatra will begin June 18 and continue for nearly two months.
Sunday, Islamist militants crossed over to the border town of Samba in Kashmir and attacked a nearby village, taking several people hostage in an attack that left six people dead. It was the first major terror strike in Kashmir since 2002 and has led to questions about government claims that terror-related violence in the state of Jammu & Kashmir has declined.
It also indicates that armed rebels who have been waging a battle against Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan state are trying to open new fronts outside the Kashmir Valley.
"The infiltration bids and terror strikes establish the fact that training camps for militants continue to exist on Pakistan's side of the Line of Control," said Ravindra Dubey, a security expert, referring to the disputed border between the two countries. "The ruling coalition in Islamabad is made up of political opportunists and is obviously not keen to rein in these jihadis."
He said India should take up this matter with Pakistani authorities when Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee visits Islamabad later this month for a review of the 4-year-old peace dialogue between the two neighbors. The two nuclear-powered states are currently engaged in a peace process to resolve their bilateral disputes, including Kashmir, which both nations claim.
The security force manning the border has ordered an internal probe to find out how the terrorists managed to enter India in Sunday's incident. A report is being drawn up for submission to the interior minister.
India accuses Pakistan of training terrorists and encouraging terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir and other parts of the country. It also charged that terror camps and other infrastructure to train jihadis exist in the Pakistan-administered part of Kashmir, a charge Pakistan has always denied.
More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict in Jammu & Kashmir since 1989. An Interior Ministry status paper says the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir has yet to be dismantled and is being used by Pakistan-based and -sponsored groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Al-Badr and Hizbul-Mujahideen.
"Amidst the hype on people-to-people contacts and confidence-building measures, it is evident that the reduced levels of violence in Jammu and Kashmir primarily reflect a tactical rather than strategic shift in the Pakistani calculus, as a two-pronged strategy of parallel talks and terrorism is pursued by that country to secure its ambitions against India," said a Web site of the Indian Institute of Conflict Management, which is run by India's former supercop and insurgency expert K.P.S. Gill.
