Opinion Express View on J&K terror attack: A fragile peace

The terror attack on Sunday, barely five days after Jammu and Kashmir’s first elected government in nine years assumed office, is a reminder of the fragility of the peace in the region. Seven employees of a construction company, six of them migrants, were gunned down when they had gathered for dinner. The signals sent by the perpetrators of the inhuman act should not be lost on the governments in New Delhi and Srinagar. The Z-Morh tunnel project at Sonamarg on the Srinagar-Leh highway, which the victims were engaged in, is part of a larger initiative to create all-weather and all-year connectivity between J&K’s capital and Ladakh. Its strategic and economic significance cannot be overstated. The road project is significant for both security and tourism. Militants had so far kept away from major infrastructure projects in the Valley. The new direction in their activity is worrying. It should also be a matter of grave concern that the attack took place in an area that has seen very little terrorist activity in the past three decades.

The strengthening of a counter-terrorism grid in the Valley and stringent security clampdown has led to a significant reduction in militant activity in the last five years. But terrorist activity has also followed an unmistakable pattern of late. Insurgents have not been averse to shifting to areas where their imprint had almost faded in the past two decades. The attack on a bus carrying pilgrims in Reasi in June was a terrible jolt after the stirrings of hope and optimism that followed a high voter turnout in the Lok Sabha elections. The gruesome ambush from a forested area also indicated a new modus operandi. Sunday’s attack similarly indicates that the terror system has been at work, even as J&K begins a new chapter in its tryst with democracy. Like in the Reasi attack, the militants seem to have exploited a difficult terrain to strike at the workers’ camp. And, the Sonamarg killings aren’t too different from the Reasi ambush in their timing — the June attack took place the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his new council of ministers were being sworn in.

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At the SCO summit last week, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif desisted from his recent tendency to rake up the Kashmir issue at every international meet. India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, too, was measured in asking Islamabad to reflect on how its encouragement of terrorism had hurt neighbourly ties. However, the Sonamarg attack, barely two days after the signs of a thaw in the relations between the two countries, seems to be another demonstration of Pakistan’s intransigence on the use of terrorism as an element of its foreign policy. The killings are a reminder that the Centre, the security forces, the UT’s new government and everyone with a stake in democracy in J&K cannot afford to let their guards down.