Proxy War In Jammu And Kashmir Has Taken A New Turn With Targeting Of Police Officers’ Families

Terrorists kidnaped eleven family members of police officers from the Jammu and Kashmir Police (JKP) on 30 August from some villages and towns of South Kashmir. It signalled a turn in the long-standing proxy conflict in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) because, strangely, an ethical dimension of the conflict had thus far avoided a focused terrorist campaign to target police officers or soldiers’ families. Through many years the armed professions continued to receive respect from the locals. Personnel from the J&K Light Infantry, a fine regiment of the Indian Army comprising locals, could go on leave and reside in their homes without threats to safety. Police officers, as it is, mostly stay inside their homes or return to them frequently because they are locally deployed. The ratio of young men turning up for recruiting rallies for the two forces against the number of vacancies has always been very high, and that continues to be the case even today.

The targeting of police officers, and, to a lesser extent, local soldiers enrolled with the Indian Army, however, has undoubtedly been a part of terrorist strategy for long – a ploy to break their will and prevent local inhabitants from being seen as visibly in support of the counter-terrorism campaign of the Army and JKP. The killing of informers linked to the police has occurred, and some police officers themselves have been targeted. Yet, there was no large-scale campaign in play as is being witnessed in the past six months, in particular.

After the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani, police officers’ homes were targeted and many families forced to swear allegiance to the separatist movement. Over the last two years, many police officers have been killed in targeted attacks, especially when they were off duty in their homes. It is to the credit of the force that despite the threats and tragic deaths, JKP as a force has continued to remain at the forefront of the counter-terrorism campaign.

The 11 family members in question were released unharmed with a message from Hizbul Mujahideen leader Riyaz Naikoo, who claimed that the terrorist group resorted to the act in retaliation to the actions of the Army, Special Operations Group, and JKP targeting terrorist homes and members of their families a day earlier.

Naikoo’s father had apparently been picked up by the police after the killing of four local police officers in an ambush near Shopian. Unconfirmed reports and media sources stated that under some kind of a new policy, the JKP along with the Army was tasked with interrogating families with terrorist links and place pressure on them.

Contact from the Army and the JKP with families of terrorists is nothing new. It has been a norm to urge the parents and other close relatives to appeal to terrorists, especially newly inducted ones, to return to normal life. Some high-profile actions have been publicised in the past with the return of Majid Khan, the 20-year-old football player who had joined the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in November 2017 and who was later motivated by his parents to return with the help of the police.

Surrenders in the past were mostly enabled by local sources who knew such families and helped in communicating, providing confidence, and urging a terrorist to return to their regular life. In fact, it’s little-known that the Army itself had set up a high-profile orphanage (“Muskaan”) to cater to the wards of neutralised terrorists and also assist some non-governmental organisations who run such facilities for the children of conflict. Thus, intimidation of terrorist families has never been a norm except perhaps in the case of some unrelenting ones who insisted on facilitating the activities of terror groups.

The terrorists have rarely targeted police officers in the cogent and focused way to which they have now resorted. There is no doubt that JKP, with its local content, is a tremendous asset in the counter-terrorism campaign. Its advantages in terms of local knowledge, intelligence, liaison, and advice are something that the Army and Central Reserve Police Force fully utilise.

The mostly ill-informed social media users burst out with a sentiment demanding retaliation against the families of terrorists. My tweet asking people in India to condemn terrorist action against innocent families was retweeted over 20,000 times, but the comments expressed anger and even regret that the Army and other security forces were not doing enough to send home a strong message to terror groups – this strong message that most users advocated was a tit-for-tat action to target families of terrorists.

Explanations that government forces do not target innocents unlike terrorists, who have no apparent obligations to rules of conflict, cut no ice across most of the country. Many suggested and, in fact, even asked why the concept adopted by Punjab Police during the militancy in the state could not be duplicated here; they once again recalled that the police leadership in Punjab in 1990 legitimised targeting of terrorist families, which, in turn, forced terrorists to relent and cease their targeting campaign.

It is an interesting mix of sentiment and a paradox of sorts emerging in the situation in Kashmir Valley. The quick-fix solutions that people seek are going to remain elusive, and the temptation to employ counter-violence against innocents is going to exacerbate rather than resolve the problem. A few issues need to be highlighted before examining the potential direction this can take.

People must never view the security situation purely from the Army’s point of view and wonder why the JKP cannot secure its own. The concept of policing and soldiering in a hybrid proxy conflict has different strokes. The Army after operating in the field returns to the secure environment of its billets and camps; the JKP does not do that. People need to realise why. A police force has many components – only the armed police is organised as units, and they live in secure billets or are deployed as sub-units. The rest of the police personnel, especially those working in police stations and as traffic police officers, live in their homes, making them doubly vulnerable.

Many feel that an enraged local police force, seething at terrorist attempts to target its families, will automatically respond in kind and be victorious in the outcome. There is no such guarantee. The level of local alienation in Kashmir is many notches higher than ever experienced in Punjab. In fact, the Punjab gentry did not take to supporting the terrorist elements in the manner we are witnessing in Kashmir; flash mobs at terror hideouts was not even imagined in Punjab.

Ethically, any campaign against innocents always ends with persons having egg on their face, so to say, and is not an acceptable way of conducting a counter-campaign. Where evidence of the involvement of terrorist families in overground support or otherwise is proved, legal action must be initiated.

The temptation to target families with links to those in terrorist ranks is something that will please the sponsors of the proxy war, who would probably get another opportunity to further their campaign without having to work for it. The action-reaction spiral based upon response by terrorists against police officers’ families and the subsequent counter will let loose a bloody cycle and create yet another uncontrollable situation, furthering alienation. The JKP’s professionalism will be tested and actually diluted if this were to happen, and the Army would be left on its own, with intelligence and the campaign against financial networks taking a back-seat.

Ensuring the security of police families is a difficult task. First, there is the physical security where some temporary efforts can be made in clubbing vulnerable families together or enhancing the number of police officers and families inside police lines. None of this is a permanent solution as family connections are widespread and, thus, the vulnerability of all is high. What the police are capable of doing is undertake a social awareness campaign for people to accord cooperative security with the police families. This needs a sophisticated communication strategy that must be professionally set up for it.

The JKP has always come in for high praise for its professionalism, loyalty, and patriotism. More needs to be done for it as far as the terms and conditions of service are concerned. It is a resource that the sponsors across the Line of Control know is a significant asset on India’s side. We need to be cautious in doing anything that may upset its equilibrium. Once that is lost, regaining it may just end up an elusive dream.