The Unit moved to different parts of Kashmir with the essential task at hand – to maintain law and order in the valley. We would patrol day and night, work very hard, but for the first eight to nine months, we did not have any success. We often heard news from other units – how they had killed so many terrorists, but we had still not gotten a chance to come face to face with any terrorist group.
We realized it had been a really long time and our efforts had not been any less. We were giving the task our heart and soul, but to no avail. Finally, we all started looking into the reasons for this – why we were not able to find any terrorists? It couldn’t be that there were no such elements in the area. Maybe our intelligence network was not efficient enough. The only way forward seemed like a simple thing – we would have to win the confidence of the locals. It was a well-known fact that in Kashmir, terrorists could not operate without local sources or support, so our work would be very difficult without the support of locals.
Fighting terrorism in Kashmir is a different kind of battle because the enemy wears the dress of the locals, speaks their language and stays amidst them. It is challenging to distinguish between the terrorists and the local people. It is a difficult task for the Army as well, especially because people cannot cooperate out of fear. On the one hand you have to look after the security of the local people, and on the other hand, you have to eliminate the terrorists. After being with the Unit for nine months, and numerous fruitless attempts, our battalion conducted a ‘Cordon and search operation’ in a village. That was when we ended up fighting terrorists for the first time. I remember that I had just come back from leave and the operation was launched the night after.
