Security forces casualties of Kashmir ceasefire

Kashmiri militants keep up killing, RAHUL BEDI writes.

NEW DELHI - Sustaining the ceasefire against Muslim militants in northern India's disputed Kashmir state is straining the "tolerance threshold" of the security forces who have lost over 60 personnel since it came into effect seven weeks ago.

Extended by four weeks, the ceasefire ends on Friday. "If the present rate of casualties continues, the morale of the security forces, already at a low ebb, will take a further beating," an Army commander said.

Militants were successfully carrying out "stand-off" attacks against the Army, paramilitary and local police with rockets, grenade launchers and mines without fear of reprisal. More than 2300 security forces personnel have died in Kashmir's 11-year civil war, which has claimed 30,000 lives.

Army officers in Kashmir's summer capital, Srinagar, make no secret of their frustration at a situation in which they claim to have become "target-practice dummies" for Pakistan-backed militant groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT or Army of the Pure) and the Jaish-e-Mohammadi (Army of Mohammad). The Indian Army, which leads the battle against Kashmiri militants, has lost 35 men since Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee announced the unilateral ceasefire in the war-torn province.

A six-member LeT suicide squad was shot dead by Indian police last week trying to storm the heavily fortified Srinagar Airport following an hour-long fire fight. Three paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force personnel and two civilians who were injured in the shooting died later in hospital.

The airport assault came a day after Federal Home Minister Lal Krishen Advani declared that Muslim militants in the war-torn state were jeopardising the future of the unilateral ceasefire.

"If such activities go on, then we will have to see how and in what manner the peace initiative will go on,"Advani said.

Vajpayee ordered a month-long suspension of counter-insurgency operations against militant groups in Kashmir from November 27. Most militant groups fighting rejected the truce, dismissing it as an "Indian ploy" to win international sympathy.

On Christmas Day, a LeT suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives outside the Army headquarters in Srinagar, killing 11 people, including five soldiers. Three days earlier, two LeT gunmen shot dead three people including a soldier at an Army garrison in the capital, New Delhi.

"The ceasefire is proving expensive for us," a senior officer said.

"Orders not to retaliate are frustrating the soldiers, especially as many are being killed."

Overall violence in Kashmir has not declined during the ceasefire.

The Federal Home Ministry said that in the ceasefire's first fortnight to December 12 there had been 95 violent incidents and killings compared with 99 for the corresponding period last year, when militancy was at its height. The number of people injured during the ceasefire's first fortnight had tripled to 174, compared with the same period in 1999.

The only substantive fall was in the numbers of terrorists killed, which have almost halved after the security forces called off all search-and-cordon operations and suspended offensive actions. "Although there have been no spectacular massacres of the kind many officials had anticipated, terrorist groups have clearly sustained their pre-ceasefire levels of activity," a Federal Home Ministry official said.

Meanwhile, India will allow a group of Kashmiri separatist leaders to visit Pakistan to talk to militant groups leading the insurgency in the disputed state to try to negotiate peace. India blames Pakistan, which controls a third of Kashmir, for fuelling Kashmir's insurgency by harbouring, arming and training militant groups. Pakistan denies the allegation.