Executive Summary: On March 7, India’s Ministry of Home Affairs designated 41-year-old Kashmiri militant Mohammad Qasim Gujjar as a terrorist. Gujjar has been involved in multiple high-profile attacks, financed and supplied arms to terrorists, and is a major recruiter for the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba. Gujjar has been especially effective at radicalizing relatives of deceased militants.
On February 14 (2019), over 40 Indian paramilitary force personnel belonging to Central Reserve Police Force were killed near Awantipora in Pulwama district, when a Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) fidayeen (suicide) squad member Adil Ahmed Dar ambushed the security convoy with an explosives-laden vehicle (VBIED), or simply put, with a car bomb. While the use of a car bomb in itself is not new in the Kashmir region, but the terrorist outfit led by Masood Azhar used this method after a gap of almost 14 years.
Following major crackdown on terrorists in the Kashmir Valley and the redeployment of troops from the southern Pir Panjal range to Ladakh due to the ongoing border standoff with China, terrorists have shifted their base from Kashmir to the Jammu region.
Over the last couple of years, Islamic terror-related issues have been escalating in southern and western parts of India. Terrorist outfits are not only targeting security forces and government establishments but aiming at vital economic and strategic assets.
There has been much ado over the neutral expert’s verdict on the Baglihar Hydel Project (BHP). For over sixteen years, the 450 Mega Watt (MW) BHP on the Chenab River in the Doda district of Jammu and Kashmir has been the bone of contention between India and Pakistan. After holding five meetings – in Paris, Geneva, London, Paris & Washington; visiting the project site, including its hydraulic model at Roorkee University and examining the written and oral submissions made by both parties, the final report of the neutral expert has given the BHP the ‘go ahead’.