HM Desk
Four Army personnel, including Colonel Manpreet Singh, Commanding Officer of the 19 Rashtriya Rifles battalion, Major Ashish Dhonack, Deputy Superintendent Humayun Bhat of the Jammu and Kashmir Police and a jawan were killed in a terrorist encounter in Kokorenag. Another soldier went missing in the gunfight on Wednesday (September 13) morning.
The operation against the terrorists commenced on Tuesday evening in the Garol area but was temporarily halted during the night. It resumed when information suggested that they were spotted at a hideout in the vicinity.
Colonel Singh, leading his team from the front, was critically injured during the gunfight and succumbed to his injuries along with other officers.
To denounce the killing in Anantnag, people from different walks of life held protests and took out candle light in many areas of Kashmir.
Civil society members, trade bodies, transporters and political activists held protests and took out candle light marches in districts to deplore the killings.
In Shopian, scores of people, carrying placards staged a protest near historic Goal chowk.
The protested were demanding an end to terrorism in Kashmir.
Pakistan has no legitimate claims on Kashmir anymore than it has on Hyderabad or Bhopal. But the Valley became the vessel for Pakistan’s anger at itself after the idea of Pakistan died at birth when most Muslims stayed back in India. And, it was buried with the creation of Bangladesh.
Pakistan’s terror factory was born at a meeting in 1980 between General Zia-ul-Haq and Jamait-i-Islami’s (JEI) Maulana Abdul Bari in Rawalpindi. JEI was founded in 1941 by Maulana Syed Maududi, whose 1920s’ book Jihad in Islam advocated an Islamic state and detailed the vanguard revolutionary tactics that are used by terrorists today.
Pakistan’s support of America’s covert war against Russia using mujahideen and ISI was a necessary calculation. General Zia responded to Maulana Bari’s hesitations by asking, “How can the Americans stop us from waging jihad in Kashmir when they are waging jihad in Afghanistan?” Zia suggested he would massively over-inflate the Afghanistan costs — reimbursed by the CIA and Saudis — and divert that surplus to Kashmir. Since 1990, Pakistan has exported over a lakh handguns/AK-47s to J&K, hurting 75,00 families in the region.
Terrorism undermines the fundamental law of war by removing the distinction between combatants and noncombatants. Terrorist outfits like LeT, which kill innocent men, women and children, do not thrive in democracies. They have a totalitarian mindset that recognises no limits to power.
