Wednesday, Jul 23, 2003
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By Praveen Swami
The body of a militant lies on the ground as a jawan looks on at the Army camp targeted by ``fidayeen'' at Tanda, north of Jammu, on Tuesday. - AP
Brigadier V.K. Govil, in charge of the 16 Corp Headquarters' Electrical and Mechanical Engineering battalion, was killed in the attack. The `fidayeen' (suicide squad) attack inflicted injuries on the Northern Command chief, Lieutenant-General Hari Prasad. Gen. Prasad is the senior-most officer to have sustained combat injuries during the 15-year low-intensity war in Jammu and Kashmir. The attack also almost claimed the life of Lieutenant-General T.P.S. Brar, who commands the 1.75 lakh-strong 16 Corps, the largest formation of its kind in the world. Major-General T.K. Sapru, General Officer-Commanding of the Akhnoor-based 10 Division, a formation with key responsibilities in the event of an India-Pakistan war, suffered grenade injuries. Major-General D. Khanna and Brigadier Baldev Singh, too, were injured. Before dawn, a group of three terrorists attacked the camp of the Electrical and Mechanical Engineers at Tanda, near the border town of Akhnoor. One terrorist, army officials said, was interdicted at the outset of the attack and eliminated. A second terrorist made his way into the barracks where soldiers were preparing for the day's work. Six soldiers died before this second terrorist was eliminated. (Agency reports said another soldier too died.) For reasons which have yet to become clear, searches failed to detect a third terrorist, who is believed to have hidden himself in the tall elephant grass around the camp. Gen. Prasad, along with a large team of subordinates, arrived on being informed that the Tanda camp had been sanitised. At this point, the third terrorist emerged from the elephant grass and threw a grenade at the top officials who were huddled a short distance away. It is possible that the terrorist had remained hidden anticipating that senior officers would arrive at the scene. A dangerous practice The practice of top officials making their way to the scenes of major terrorist attacks has had near-calamitous consequences at several times in the past. The former Jammu and Kashmir Director-General of Police, Ashok Suri, was trapped in an annexe of the Assembly after the October 2001 suicide squad attack there, and was fortunate to escape unhurt. A clutch of top officers arrived at the scene of another suicide squad attack on the Police Housing Colony in Bemina, Srinagar, the following year. The confusion led to the Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Farooq Ahmad, getting injured. Just last month, a suicide squad attack on a military camp at Sujwan, near Jammu claimed the lives of a dozen soldiers. 
Perimeter security — the central issue in all these attacks — paradoxically seems a more acute problem in relatively safe areas such as urban Jammu or Akhnoor than in the worst-hit parts of Jammu and Kashmir. Since January, 10 attempted fidayeen attacks have been reported in Jammu and Kashmir. In only one incident — bar those of Sujwan and Tanda — was the number of security personnel killed greater than the number of terrorists eliminated. This had led terrorist groups to gradually reduce the scale of suicide-squad attacks. While 2001 saw 28 such attacks, there were only 10 in 2002. This year, however, has seen an upswing again. Move to disrupt peace process The escalation seems closely linked to the ongoing India-Pakistan detente process, since 8 of the 10 attacks this year have come after the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, announced his new peace initiative in May. The al-Shuhda Brigade, which Indian intelligence groups claim is a front organisation for the Lashkar-e-Taiba, says it carried out the attacks to protest against what it says are "provocative comments" made by the Pakistani politician, Fazlur Rahman, during his recent visit to India. The Lashkar-e-Taiba has repeatedly opposed dialogue, and called instead for an escalation of the jehad against India. The Hizb-ul-Mujahideen chief, Mohammad Yusuf Shah, also recently warned of an escalation of suicide-squad attacks on India. For the moment, New Delhi has refrained from blaming the Tanda attack on Pakistan, and has instead held responsible forces it says that wish to sabotage the dialogue process. Top officials in New Delhi are, however, starting to grapple with the question of what options India could exercise if Pakistan fails to rein in hardline forces such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. A joint meeting of intelligence organisations called by the Defence Intelligence Agency tomorrow is expected to address the issue, and sources say an emergency session of the Cabinet Committee on Security could also be called. Luv Puri reports from Jammu: Of late, there has been a sudden increase in infiltration from the Akhnoor belt, the place where the Line of Control starts. The villagers have been frequently sighting militants. Just a few days back militants picked up three youths of the Sunderbani area, and the villagers had blocked the route to put pressure on the authorities for increasing security in the region. It is felt that the militants who attacked the Army camp today had used the chak nalluh infiltration route of Khour area to sneak into the dense forests before taking a lift in a vehicle by posing as serving defence personnel. The fidayeen attack on an army camp again exposed the vulnerability of the camps despite a security review having been ordered by the Army Chief, N.C. Vij, during his last trip to Jammu. Three weeks back militants dressed in army fatigues had in a similar fashion attacked an army camp at Sujwan in the thick forest belt and killed 12 sleeping army personnel. On May 14 last year three suicide attackers killed 23 men when they mounted an attack on the Kaluchak army camp. Today's attack on the army camp took Jammu by alarm as it came hours after the gruesome suicide attack at Katra where seven persons, including a child, were killed. Meanwhile, there were heavy traffic jams on the Jammu-Poonch National Highway as the road had to be blocked during the operations.
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