Recruitment of terrorists is a key aspect. Over the last three decades, Pakistan has been able to sustain terrorism in the Kashmir Valley merely because it was able to create anti-India sentiments among the locals and recruit innocent boys in various terror modules.
When we see the current figures, at first instance, the recruitments don’t seem to be affected at all by the change in scenario. In fact, it shows a slight increase from last year. While in 2019, we had 140 new recruitments, 2020 witnessed 145 recruitments till November 15 itself. The highest recruitments were reported during COVID times and there can be two reasons for this.
First is that due to COVID19 outbreak, there has been a significant reduction in anti-terror operations which gave way to these recruitments. These times were well utilised by the recruiters who brainwashed the youth on religious pretexts. Second is that due to prolonged curtailment of various social activities and ban on the internet since August 2019, a large number of youths developed anti-establishment sentiments which were well encashed by the recruiters.
Some may ask why the recruitments are on the rise despite an unannounced ban on funerals and other kinds of Jihadi meetings. But the fact of the day is that most of these recruitments cannot be called true recruitments. Typically the trend we saw in last decades was that a guy is totally brainwashed before he is taken into the folds of any terror organisation but now they are so desperate to increase their numbers that they are just filling up their ranks with the young boys who are unemployed and frustrated and hence falling in their trap.
Since we mentioned that these recruitments are not true recruitments, the boys who had anti-establishment feelings were recruited on fake promises and as a result, these poor motivated boys cannot stand before the security forces and finally surrender.
Stone-pelting became much common in the last six years since the NDA govt came to power. If we take the data of the last 5 years, maximum stone-pelting incidents were recorded in 2016 as 2653 which was primarily due to the killing of Burhan Wani and the unrest caused thereafter. In 2017, a total of 1412 incidents were reported, there were 1999 incidents in 2018 and in 2019, there was a total of 2056 incidents of stone-pelting were reported. Ironically, out of these 2056, 658 were reported just in the month of August 2019 which was due to the government notification amending the status of Jammu and Kashmir in the Parliament.
When we analyse 2020, we get a surprise. Till the first week of November 2020, there have been less than 700 incidents of stone-pelting in the Valley. This has a reason. An interrogation of a member of so-called “Sangbaaz Association” (a group of organised stone pelters) revealed that earlier, they were getting Rs 500 per day for pelting stones and if the stone hit a security person, they would get an additional reward. In a state where unemployment is at its peak, it is very easy to lure the boys into the stone-pelting. Now things have changed. After 5th August 2020, terror financing got a big jolt. Most of the financers are now put in jails across India, flow of funds has dried up since cross border trade is stopped and as a result, the payment to the stone pelters also getting affected. In absence of funds, the number of youths coming for the stone-pelting job is reduced drastically.
Apart from these terrorist groups, various political and social leaders who used to claim themselves as “Messiah” of Kashmir are also affected badly. We will discuss it in the fifth and last part of our series.
