Soft target, brash claim

Apparently disconnected events sometimes provide important insights on the same story. In JK, two developments on Thursday 8212; yet anoth...

Apparently disconnected events sometimes provide important insights on the same story. In J038;K, two developments on Thursday 8212; yet another killing of innocents, this time a school teacher and his two sons in Gopalora, and the claim by the Jamiat-ul-Muhajideen of having downed a MiG-21 that had crashed in Badgam district 8212; could speak of a terrorism in decline and of the desperation of those who make a political cause in butchering people. Notice the new trend of seeking out soft targets 8212; women who don8217;t wear burqas, devotees in temples, children playing outside homes, school teachers who have nothing to do with politics. Notice, too, the eagerness to make bombastic claims like downing aircraft, and such like. Could all this possibly speak of a terrorism that fears it own decline?

Those who have closely studied the militancy phase of Punjab politics speak, interestingly enough, of a conscious shift to easy targets that characterised the declining years of terrorism in that state. As people got increasingly disenchanted with the ubiquitous terror and tragedy that marred their lives and searched for democratic alternatives to violence, the masked men with their AK-47s tended to perpetrate more and more desperate acts of violence. Of course, what happened next in Punjab is well documented. The state, firmly and unequivocally, turned its back on the militants and on the politicians who gave them legitimacy and respectability. It is, of course, premature to draw any parallels between the Punjab of the nineties and the J038;K of today, but the significance of the emerging pattern of violence must not be overlooked.

It is for this factor alone that the Indian Air Force, and the ministry of defence, must be quick about the inquiry into the Badgam air crash and go public with the findings. If it can be conclusively proved that militants did not bring down that aircraft, it would be a useful offensive against jehadi militant groups 8212; the Jamiat-ul-Muhajideen is just another upstart organisation of this kind 8212; who think nothing of employing the most vicious lies to buttress their project of terror.