Rocket attacks point to terrorist-gangster nexus

Lt Gen SK Saini (retd)

Former Vice Chief Of Army Staff

SARHALI police station in the border district of Tarn Taran (Punjab) was attacked by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) on December 10. Though no casualty was reported, windowpanes of the adjoining Saanjh Kendar and a portion of the wall were damaged in the attack.

According to the police, the recovered RPG seemed to have been smuggled from across the border. The Punjab Police have seized several drones, arms and ammunition this year in areas along the India-Pakistan border.

Earlier this year, an RPG was fired at the Punjab Police’s Intelligence headquarters in Mohali. There have been three other attacks in Punjab launched with weapons other than RPG, including a grenade blast outside the gate of the Army cantonment in Pathankot.

According to media reports, the police and investigation agencies have found a common thread in various attacks. The accused were lured with money and foreign dreams to carry out these strikes. Gangsters, shooters and even small-time criminals executed the attacks on the ground.

The second RPG incident in seven months has far-reaching security ramifications that need to be understood and corrective measures should be taken before the situation deteriorates.

Apparently, both RPG attacks were carried out with a demonstrative intent rather than to cause large-scale collateral damage — to send out a message of the capabilities of anti-national elements to repeatedly carry out such attacks at will and gain experience for more effective and successful strikes in future.

Attacks on the police and the Army reflect the motive of the perpetrators to systematically undermine the government machinery. This will, in time, lead to a perception of incompetence of the government to safeguard its citizens, creating alienation and insecurity.

The use of RPG in these two attacks is itself alarming. The RPG is a 70-mm heavy-calibre Soviet-era weapon used by regular armies to destroy hardened targets. According to South Asia Terrorism Portal, there were just 43 incidents of rocket attacks in J&K between 2000 and 2014. Availability of such weapons in Punjab at this juncture is a cause for concern. Incidents of drones being used to ferry weapons, ammunition and narcotics across the border are being regularly reported. Punjab has witnessed an alarming increase in drone activities across the international border with Pakistan this year as compared to previous years.

The Border Security Force (BSF), which guards the borders with Pakistan, has collated around 200 drone incidents this year at various points along the border, according to data available with the Punjab Police. Drones fly at low altitude above the ground level and are difficult to detect by conventional air-surveillance radars deployed along the border. Given their small size and minimal cost, they have become the preferred mode for cross-border ferrying of illicit consignments.

It is also apparent that these attacks were carried out by untrained persons rather than by trained terrorists as no casualties took place. Moreover, even the rocket launcher used in the attack was recovered from the scene, which a well-trained person will rarely do. It also indicates that such weapon systems are available in adequate numbers, making their retrieval after the attack unnecessary. More importantly, the execution of such attacks has been outsourced to criminals who are acting like overground workers of terrorist organisations. As time passes, they can enhance the survivability and relevance of the terrorists to further create a sense of lawlessness and insecurity.

The nexus between terrorist organisations and criminal elements is evident from the findings of the preliminary police investigation into the Tarn Taran incident. According to the police, the December 10 attack was masterminded by foreign-based wanted terrorists at the behest of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) with the help of a prisoner currently lodged in the Goindwal Sahib jail.

The police also arrested four persons who provided logistical support to two juveniles who carried out the attack. The Punjab DGP told the media that foreign-based handlers used “cutouts and dead letter box techniques for retrieval of consignments and establishing contact so that the module members were assigned tasks directly by the handlers and were aware of their roles only.” Even the identities of sub-modules remained hidden from other sub-modules. Monetary allurement appears to be the main motivating factor for the attackers.

The security establishment also needs to recognise the fact that these anti-national elements have the ability to establish safe houses and weapon caches within rural as well as urban Punjab. While funds for such actions may be channelled externally, financing of terrorist activities internally needs to be looked into.

It is not too late to reverse this decline by breaking the terrorist-criminal-gangster nexus through coordinated and effective border management, including anti-drone measures, and relentless intelligence-based operations against anti-national elements. Anti-drone measures along the western border need to be put in place with the Ministry of Home Affairs taking the lead. It will entail inter-agency coordination, real-time intelligence-sharing, a surveillance grid, both technical and physical, and soft and hard kill counter-drone weapon systems deployment along the border.

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.