Even as security forces have deepened counter-terrorism operations in Kashmir, bad blood seems to have crept in between them over taking credit for attacks and counter-attacks against Pakistan-trained militants operating in the Valley.
This is exemplified — following the successful surgical strikes by the Indian commandos in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir — by the army’s eagerness to win laurels at the expense of the Border Security Force (BSF) which too is involved in counter-terror operations in Kashmir.
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Army and BSF Caught in a Nascent Rivalry
Claiming that a nascent rivalry has gripped both the army and the BSF, highly placed Northern Command sources revealed that the most recent instance in which the antagonism surfaced was the counter-terrorist operation in Nowgam where four terrorists were slain by the BSF, though the army took all the credit.
The sources feared that the rivalry could take a turn for the worse and adversely affect the Centre’s proactive counter-terrorist operations across Kashmir.
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Tracking Terrorists Through the LORROS
Divulging details of the Nowgam operation, sources said that at around 8:30 pm on 5 October, soldiers manning joint army-BSF posts on the Line of Control, in the wake of the surgical strikes the previous month, saw through a surveillance gadget called the Long-Range Reconnaissance and Observation System (LORROS), a group of seven armed terrorists trying to cross the LoC.
The Israeli-made LORROS is a fully-integrated, rapidly deployable compact surveillance system that is modular in design, portable and is tripod or mast-mounted. In daytime, these systems can detect human movement at a distance of 15 kms and “recognition” up to 6 kms. The thermal imaging cameras fitted with the LORROS detects human activity in the night at a distance of 12 kms.
“We let the terrorists cross the LoC. We wanted them to get closer to the range of our machine gun fire,” a senior BSF officer said, adding that the terrorists appeared to have emerged from Pakistani army posts.
Three BSF officers in North Kashmir confirmed that information about the terrorists’ impending move to cross the LoC was conveyed to army officers who too ordered that LORROS be used to track the movement of the infiltrators.
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Army and BSF’s Joint Operation in Nowgam
When the terrorists were at a distance of 2 kms from the nearest Indian outposts, army and BSF Medium Machine Guns (MMGs) opened fire. The terrorists reacted by firing back. As intermittent firing continued for a few hours through late night, one guide or terrorist ran back, crossing the LoC to return to PoK territory.
“The others took shelter in the mountain ridges and dense vegetation,” a BSF source said, adding that firing by the soldiers was followed by the use of mortar shells against the terrorists. The next morning (6 October), the army units sent out search parties which recovered two bodies and two under-barrel grenade launchers from the areas hit by mortar shells.
While two more bodies were recovered following more firing from MMGs and mortar, the remaining two terrorists were believed to have escaped back across the LoC to PoK. “The search operation is still on, though it is unlikely they are still in Indian territory,” an army source said.
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BSF Yet to Take Up the ‘Serious Issue’
Northern Command officers The Quint spoke to admitted that while the army commands all counter-terrorism operations in Kashmir, it takes away all the credit without so much as mentioning the involvement of either the BSF or the J&K police in such operations.
In this context, BSF officers at the force’s New Delhi headquarter complained that “when all the forces are taking part in equal measure in counter-terror operations, BSF troops should have been part of the search operations in the Nowgam sector” and “this affects morale and inclination to effectively take part in future operations”.
The army also made short shrift of the involvement of the J&K Police’s Special Operations Group in the gun battle against terrorists in Handwara where three terrorists were killed.
The BSF is yet to take up the “serious issue” with the army top brass in Srinagar and Udhampur where the Northern Command is based. While army officers privately claim that a mismatch in operational procedures renders conducting joint operations with the BSF difficult, their counterparts in the paramilitary force said that their jawans were as well equipped and trained as army soldiers.
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