After facing a severe onslaught from Indian security forces, Pakistani sponsored Islamist terrorists have been pushed into a corner and have resorted to looting weapons of fellow terrorists, reported Times of India.
Reportedly, few terrorists belonging to Zakir Musa‘s Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind (AGuH), an Al-Qaeda affiliate present in south Kashmir had been in contact with Musa’s former group, Hizbul Mujahideen, who had sought a meeting with Musa’s men. Four AGuH terrorists had arrived in Pulwama to meet the Hizbul commanders but later realised that they were fooled as their weapons were looted by Hizbul terrorists.
Zakir Musa, a former Hizbul Mujahideen commander was also a close aide of dead terrorist Burhan Wani. Zakir Musa had left the Hizbul in May 2017 and had claimed to lead Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, a local affiliate of Al-Qaeda.
The Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, which is being eliminated by the security forces has been facing an existential crisis. The Indian army has executed six terrorists belonging to AGuH this week which has resulted in only a few terrorists being alive. Facing with severe resource constraint and failure to gain any foothold in Kashmir, Zakir Musa’s AGuH has been incompetent to inflict any terror in Jammu and Kashmir.
The looting of weapons belonging to AGuH by Hizbul Commanders is going to be a setback for them despite the fact that Zakir Musa’s outfit is being supported by few Islamic state-linked terrorist groups. Interestingly, Pakistani backed terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad are averse to the idea of Zakir Musa being the face of Kashmiri terrorism.
“While there is potential for Musa’s outfit to grow in popularity and attract a large number of Kashmiri youth, lack of funding and source of weapons has prevented it from growing into a major threat,” said an army officer.
The security forces have killed most of the terrorists belonging to AGuH, leaving Zakir Musa severely resource constrained, especially weapons. Weapons have also been recovered from the dead terrorists, further restricting firepower of AGuH. Musa has been facing a tough situation as the flow of funds is restricted and sourcing weapons have also become difficult leading him to lay low for a while.
A senior officer said that Musa possibly realises that with little financial backing and weapons, his men cannot make much of an impact on the terror/militancy scene in J&K. “He is believed to be lying low, is possibly not using a phone to communicate for fear of being tracked and may have also disguised his appearance to escape detection by human intelligence assets of Jammu and Kashmir police,” the officer said.
