TRF designated terror organisation: Setback for Pakistan, but in Valley, the challenges that remain

“It is a diplomatic win and puts Pakistan in a tight spot, but as far as the militancy is concerned, we will have to wait and watch. We have enough examples from the past — Lashkar, Jaish and even Hizb. All of them have been designated as terrorist organisations, yet they continued their attacks,” said a senior police officer, who has been part of Jammu and Kashmir Police’s counter-insurgency grid.

“Unlike Lashkar or Jaish, it (TRF) is not an outfit with a global presence; it has restricted itself to Jammu and Kashmir. After some days, you may see the same people operating under a new name. They will keep changing the nomenclature,” the officer cautioned.

“For outfits like the TRF, terrorism is important, not the brand under which they operate,” he said. “It is an underground outfit and there is little information about their known assets or structures that can be frozen to deal them a blow.”

TRF, police say, is a shadow group of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) that was cast to give “an indigenous look” to the militancy in Jammu and Kashmir after the abrogation of the special status. While Pakistan was on the FATF grey list,  it didn’t want Lashkar or Jaish to operate under their own names in the Valley, and floated the TRF and the People Against Fascist Forces (PAFF) to skirt accountability, senior officers say.

This is why, experts in the Valley say, the US decision is a setback for Pakistan, given that it has been calling the militancy in Jammu and Kashmir an “indigenous struggle”.

TRF emerged almost immediately after the abrogation of special status on August 5, 2019. In October that year, a grenade exploded in a street market in Srinagar, injuring a few vendors. TRF claimed responsibility, but the security agencies labelled the attack “an act of miscreants”. The attack came at a time when Srinagar was beginning to open after two months of shutdown to protest the revocation of Article 370, and was seen as an attempt to disrupt normalcy.

By mid-2020, the TRF had emerged as a prominent force on Kashmir’s terror map. They were behind a string of attacks that caught the attention of the security establishment in the Kashmir Valley. It didn’t take agencies long to trace the TRF’s roots to the LeT, a Pakistan-based terror outfit already designated as a terrorist organisation by the US. TRF, the security establishment said, was a “rebranded Lashkar”.

Security officials said that while TRF is a front for the LeT, it works jointly with other terror outfits in the Valley. “The lines on the ground have blurred. They may have different names, but on the ground, they are one,” said a security official. “So even if TRF is responsible for a terror attack, some other organisation may claim it. In the last three years, several new names have cropped up, like the Kashmir Fight, the Kashmir Tigers, etc. The cadres are the same, only the name is different. They are all shadow groups.”

Security officials also believe, and hope, that the US decision to declare TRF a terror organisation is likely a signal for Pakistan to step back. “After Pakistan virtually bailed out the US in Afghanistan and, more recently, the Pakistan Army chief was invited to the White House, perhaps they were under the impression there would be no repercussions,” said one official. “It remains to be seen whether the US acts beyond designating TRF as a terrorist organisation. If that happens, we may see Pakistan establishments forcing the Lashkar commanders to pull back the strings of the TRF.”