Three CRPF jawans were injured in a few seconds of firing. The attack tests official claims that terrorism is nearly finished.
On Wednesday, two men on a motorcycle opened fire at a CRPF checkpoint at Akhran, near Mir Bazar in Kulgam. Three jawans were injured. The attackers fled. Within hours, checkpoints multiplied from Srinagar’s MA Road to the Vaishno Devi route in Katra.
The firing lasted moments. Its message will last longer. Only last week, the police said that just one local terrorist remained active in Kashmir. That figure may be accurate. But Kulgam shows that a headcount is not a measure of security. It takes two men, one motorcycle and one weapon to put an entire Union Territory on alert.
The threat has changed its shape. Hit-and-run strikes on fixed targets are cheap to carry out and hard to predict. A naka party standing at a known spot on a busy road is the easiest target of all. The jawans who guard these posts deserve better protection, better surveillance cover and better intelligence about who is watching them.
The first questions go to those who hold the charge. Policing and public order in the Union Territory rest with the Lieutenant Governor’s administration and the Union Home Ministry. The Centre has said more than once that the terror network here is almost crippled. How, then, did armed men reach a checkpoint and escape? Who sheltered them? Who supplied the weapon? The public is owed answers, and barricades are not answers.
The elected government cannot hide behind the division of powers. Health Minister Sakina Itoo condemned the attack and asked for stringent security. That is the least a government can do. It runs the departments closest to the people, and it must use them to keep young men away from those who recruit and pay for such attacks.
The response on the ground needs care. More frisking and more barricades are understandable after an attack. They cannot become the permanent answer. Every hour a commuter loses at a checkpoint is a small gain for the men who fired. Security that punishes the public does not last. Security that earns public cooperation does.
This week the Home Ministry designated 23 Pakistan-based terrorists under the UAPA. Eleven of them are natives of Jammu and Kashmir. The list is a reminder of where the planning still happens. Designations matter, but they must be matched by sealed infiltration routes and by breaking the local support that every such attack needs.
The people of Kashmir have paid for violence for more than three decades. They have no stake in its return. Those who fire on jawans are enemies of that peace. The administration must find the attackers, fix the gaps and tell the public the truth about the threat. Calm claimed in statistics has to be visible on the road at Akhran.
