'Afzal Guru squad' emerges as biggest challenge for security agencies in J&K

The 'Afzal Guru squad' of Jaish-e-Mohammad terror outfit believed to be behind Saturday's deadly attack on Sunjuwan army camp in Jammu, is emerging as the biggest challenge for security agencies in Jammu and Kashmir.

The fidayeen (suicide) militants of the squad have carried out audacious attacks at will on security forces including the army. The squad is part of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad terror outfit headed by Moulana Masood Azhar.
 
Five years since Afzal Guru was hanged in Delhi's Tihar jail for his role in carrying out attack on Parliament in 2001, Jaish has carried nearly a dozen deadly attacks in Guru's name. On October 2 last year  the squad carried out a similar attack on a BSF camp near Srinagar airport. The responsibility for the fidayeen attack on district police lines in Pulwama in August 2017, in which eight security personnel were killed, was also claimed by 'Afzal Guru squad.'
 
The terror attack that killed seven officers in Nagrota in Jammu in November 2016 was also reportedly carried out by the outfit to avenge the hanging of Guru. Before that the Pathankot attackers had reportedly left a handwritten note, which said, "Jaish-e-Muhammad Zindabad - Tangdhar se le kar Samba Kathua, Rajbagh aur Delhi tak, Afzal Guru shaheed kay jaanisar tum ko miltay rahega inshallah A G S 25-12-15" (Long live Jaish-e-Muhammad - From Tangdhar (in Kupwara) to Sambha Kathua (in Jammu), Rajbagh (Srinagar) and Delhi, you will keep meeting with Afzal Guru's fervid loyalists who are ready to lay down their lives for him).
 
Earlier Jaish, to which Guru belonged, was instrumental in carrying fidayeen phase of attacks in Kashmir from early to mid last decade. Less than two and half months before the fidayeen attack on Parliament, one of the deadliest attacks carried on the Jammu and Kashmir State Legislative Assembly in Srinagar, using a car bomb on 1 October 2001 was the handiwork of Jaish. More than 40 people were killed and many more injured in that incident.
 
However, the graph of Jaish went down after 2004 when Pakistani establishment started a crackdown after it carried an abortive bid to assassinate then Pakistan president and military dictator General Parvez Musharaf. Its Kashmir chief and mastermind of Parliament attack Ghazi Baba was killed in an encounter with the Border Security Force (BSF) in Srinagar on August 30, 2003.
 
A senior police officer told Deccan Herald that the Jaish has made a comeback and is encashing Guru's hanging an opportunity to connect Kashmir to its larger project in the entire region from Afghanistan to India.
 
"There are evidence on the ground that Jaish, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen are operating jointly and sharing their resources to revive the lethal phase of militancy in Kashmir. Jaish is trying to exploit the sympathy wave in Kashmir which was generated after Guru's hanging," he said.
 
"With ground ripe for radicalization and fidayeen attacks in Kashmir, we fear more violence in coming months and years," the officer warned.