If any doubts existed regarding the direction and future intensity of the Pakistan-backedIslamist terrorist assault in India, incidents over the past week will put these to rest. With Iraq consumingthe preponderance of the world's attention and interest, and with the extraordinary licence enjoyed by theMusharraf regime in Pakistan as a result of its 'special status' in America's 'global war against terror', thespace for terrorism in South Asia has suddenly and considerably been enlarged.
In Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), summer is the season of terror, as the snows melt, opening up passes fromPakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK), and providing easier access to armed infiltrators, most of whom hibernate inPakistani camps through winter. This year, however, the killings are beginning to escalate much before thesnows begin to melt.
Portents of a bloody summer came late in the night of March 15-16, when an extraordinarily large group (atleast 50 men, on preliminary estimates) of heavily armed terrorists attacked a remote police post in Indvillage in district Udhampur in the Jammu region. 11 persons, including at least nine policemen, were killedin the attack, the armoury was looted and destroyed, and several houses and a hospital torched.