Following the April 22 massacre of 26 tourists at Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, India and Pakistan engaged in a tit-for-tat drone, air and missile exchanges as well as artillery fires at the Line of Control (LoC) before pulling back from the brink of an all-out war through a U.S.-brokered ceasefire on May 10.
Blaming Pakistan for the Pahalgam attack without sharing any evidence and rejecting Islamabad’s offer for an international inquiry, India vowed to pursue the attackers to “the ends of the earth.”
As the fragile ceasefire holds, the India-Pakistan rivalry has entered a dangerous new phase. India has warned that any future terrorist attack will be considered “an act of war.” However, the perpetrators of the Pahalgam attack are still at large, and according to India’s Ministry of External Affairs, the investigation of the Pahalgam attack is still ongoing. Yet, India decided to strike “terrorist camps” in Pakistan, which the latter maintains were mosques.
In any case, whether the perpetrators of the Pahalgam attack were indigenous Kashmiris or allegedly came from Pakistan, it constitutes a major security failure and raises several questions. If the terrorists crossed the LoC and successfully bypassed several check posts dotting Indian Kashmir’s landscape in the presence of 700,000 strong Indian security forces, Delhi needs to introspect and revisit its existing security measures. On the other hand, if the perpetrators were local Kashmiris, then the Indian narrative of restoring “normalcy” in the Indian Kashmir rings hollow.
Notwithstanding Indian and Pakistani accusations and counteraccusations in the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack, a little-known terrorist group, The Resistance Front (TRF), claimed and then retracted its responsibility claim after realizing the gravity of the situation.
India’s Ministry of Home Affairs banned TRF in 2023 under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967. Following the Pahalgam attack, India has submitted a dossier to the United Nations 1267 Committee to list TRF as a terrorist organization.
At any rate, there are two varying narratives about TRF’s origin, affiliation and activities in the open source.
The predominant narrative is that TRF is an offshoot of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) with roots in Pakistan. Following the revocations of Kashmir’s statehood and semiautonomous status in 2019, LeT’s remnants regathered to oppose the granting of residency permits and domicile certificates to non-locals. The twin steps could enable India to change Kashmir’s demographic balance as well as extend land owning rights and government-owned job quotas to non-locals.
Hitherto, TRF has targeted minorities, such as Kashmiri Pandits — Hindus from the Kashmir valley — migrant laborers from other parts of India and security forces in the Indian Kashmir, including multi-day encounters, but spared tourists.
However, the Pahalgam attack marked a significant shift in TRF’s strategy of engaging in indiscriminate violence.
Although the exact operational strength of TRF is unknown, it comprises a couple of hundred of militants operating in decentralized cell formations. Sheikh Sajjad Gul is the incumbent head of TRF and has been named as the mastermind of the Pahalgam attack in a police report, while Ahmad Khalid is the terror group’s spokesperson. Muhammad Abbas Sheikh, who was TRF’s founder, was killed in a counterterrorism operation in August 2021.
TRF started its activities by posting propaganda messages on its Telegram channel and gradually engaged in terrorist attacks as well. To hide its LeT roots and cross-border connections, TRF used a non-religious moniker and engaged in neutral propaganda instead of engaging in jihadist discourse. In doing so, TRF portrayed itself as an ethno-nationalist group, which focused on Kashmiriyat or Kashmiri nationalism. TRF tried to indigenize its narrative by grounding it in local grievances to win local support and gain legitimacy by aligning with global narratives of “resistance” and “self-determination.”
Tracing and eliminating TRF terrorists, some key breakthroughs notwithstanding, has been an arduous task due to the absence of previous police records against them. Most TRF militants are new entrants and, unlike Burhan Wani and his associates, who openly posted pictures and videos on Facebook and other social media platforms to attract attention and recruits, TRF rarely posts about its activities on social media and is very discreet. Instead of open social media platforms, TRF uses Telegram to recruit, communicate and plot attacks.
The second narrative about TRF portrays it as a constellation of LeT, Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) remnants in Indian Kashmir. Following Pakistan’s “gray-listing” by the global financial watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force, the COVID-19 lockdown and revocation of Kashmir’s statehood, along with beefed-up Indian security, these elements coalesced and reincarnated as TRF to continue their violent campaign.
Ostensibly, TRF has some support structure, whether linked to LeT or otherwise, in Pakistan. In its propaganda statements, the terror group has drawn several parallels between the situation in Balochistan and Indian-administered Kashmir, such as “if foreign investment in Balochistan is not safe, then businesses in Kashmir will also be at risk.” These propaganda narratives undermine claims of TRF’s indigenous roots.
However, to what extent TRF’s support system in Pakistan facilitated the Pahalgam attack will remain inconclusive unless an impartial and independent inquiry by a third party is carried out. And if any cross-border traces of the Pahalgam attack are found, the international community must use its influence on Pakistan to dismantle any support structure sustaining TRF and other such groups. Otherwise, the vicious cycle of accusations and violence between the two nuclear rivals will persist.
At the same time, denying Kashmiris any agency and treating them as expendables is equally reductive and oversimplistic. To assume that in the face of India’s heavy-handed policies, Kashmiris will act as silent spectators is an attempt to cover up tensions boiling under the “normalcy narrative.”
However, experts say that India’s belligerent posture of considering any future terrorist attack as a declaration of war, without providing sufficient evidence of Pakistan’s culpability, has placed South Asia on a knife’s edge.
It is well-known that al-Qaida’s commander Ilyas Kashmiri wanted to provoke an India-Pakistan war through a cross-border terrorist attack to distract the latter’s campaign against al-Qaida in Pakistan. Hence, it will make the job of terrorist groups like al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), which have long dreamt of exploiting the India-Pakistan rivalry to grow their network, a lot easier. Placing the next India-Pakistan conflict with its attendant nuclear risks at the doorstep of a terrorist attack is suicidal.