On Saturday, militants in a fidayeen attack, targeted a convoy of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) at Pampore on Srinagar-Jammu national highway killing eight personnel and injuring 20. The attack on convoy, third high profile militant attack on the national highway in recent months, has sent the security agencies into a huddle. After a relative clam of three years, Kashmir has witnessed a sudden spurt in the militant attacks and the fidayeen attacks, which saw a steep decline since 2010 - only a few fidayeen attacks were carried out by militants between 2010 and 2015 - are back. While the security agencies anticipated a "hot summer" after the phased withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan began in 2014, Kashmir was surprisingly calm, partly because of Pakistan was itself engaged in a war against militants in Waziristan. [related-post] Watch Video: What's making news Over the past three years, the infiltration from across the Line of Control (LoC) has been at its lowest, which has been time and again acknowledged by the security agencies especially Army that is manning the border between India and Pakistan. Though the support from Pakistan declined, valley witnessed a new phenomenon of home grown militancy, where young and educated boys took to gun. However, unlike the foreign militants who were at the centrestage of the militancy from 1999 to 2010, the local militants rarely made spectacular strikes on security establishments. Instead, these local boys took militancy to a new level, glamourizing it by posting their gun-wielding pictures on social networking sites to attract more youth. Even as the local militants are less pro-active, the security agencies see it as a more stiff challenge to deal with them than the foriegn militants as they feel that local boys get more public sympathy and killing of a local youth generates resentment and increases alienation. However, over the last some months, more and more foreign militants are breaching the Line of Control to enter the Kashmir valley. The security agencies put the number of militants that have infiltrated into the valley this year at 38 but the ground reports suggest that the number could be much higher, something also acknowledged by Inspector General of Police (IGP) Kashmir Javed Mujtaba Geelani. In the wake of the increased infiltration by militants from across the border - and with a good number of local boys already operating in the valley especially south Kashmir - it could be a deadly mix of strike power and strategy. And 2016 could well be the 'hot summer' security agencies have been talking about from past several years.
