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| India-Pakistan |
| Jawans may be acting as terrorists' couriers |
| 2008-02-24 |
| The arrest of a CRPF jawan from Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir carrying IEDs, grenades and other ammunition to blow up his own battalion headquarters has once again raised concerns on the vulnerability of security forces to threats from within. Questions are being asked about the susceptibilty of recruits from the Valley to the jihad call of terrorists. A detailed dossier prepared by intelligence agencies recently articulated the growing threat perception. It said that some soldiers in the security forces and police personnel hailing from far-flung areas such as Poonch, Kupwara and Rajouri had been coerced into acting as couriers for terrorist outfits — supplying arms, ammunition and working as informers. It was not without basis. Since 2003 more than a dozen policemen and soldiers have been arrested for charges as serious as assisting in carrying out fidayeen attacks on army camps to arranging and supplying arms, ammunition, SIM cards, batteries and carrying letters for various militant commanders across the Valley. Besides the appeal of jihadi propaganda, threat to kin and lure of money have been identified as the factors why security personnel are turning into accomplices of those whom they were supposed to fight. Sources said that most of the cases of policemen working as footsoldiers for militants had occurred in the bordering areas of Poonch, Kupwara and Rajouri. In July 2007, a Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry (JAKLI) jawan was held in Delhi while passing on secret information on the training modules of Indian Army to an ISI contact in the Pakistani High Commission here. Quite similar to Wednesday's arrest in which the CRPF jawan was on leave for two weeks, the JAKLI jawan had been in Delhi on month-long leave before he tried to reach his ISI contacts. In 2006, three JAKLI soldiers were held in Poonch while they were in the process of passing SIM cards, batteries and documents to their contacts in the ranks of Lashkar-e-Taiba. Sources said more than the soldiers in the paramilitary forces and the army, the lower ranks of the J&K police were susceptible to such infiltration. Police personnel in J&K, mostly in the lower ranks, are being used as couriers by militant outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen to transport arms and ammunition and for carrying hawala money to militant commanders in their patrol vehicles, a senior official said. In several cases, policemen have been found to have lent their uniforms to militants to carry out operations, sources said. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Jawans - sheesh! And don't get me started about those darn Tusken Raiders.... |
| Posted by: Scooter McGruder 2008-02-24 07:18 |