The Resistance Front | New face of terror-OxBig News Network

The site where terrorists opened fire three days ago April 22, killing at least 26 people and injuring several at a meadow near Pahalgam town, in Anantnag district, Jammu and Kashmir.
| Photo Credit: PTI

The killings of 25 tourists, including one Nepali, and a local pony operator by a group of terrorists trained in jungle warfare in a meadow of Pahalgam’s Baisaran in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district on April 22 shook the entire nation. It turned the spotlight on The Resistance Front (TRF), an outfit that initially claimed responsibility (a claim it later withdrew) for the attack.

Security agencies in Kashmir see the TRF as an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). The nomenclature, many security experts in Kashmir believe, was aimed at presenting itself as a “new-age ideological force” and distancing itself from other Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda and Jaish-e-Muhammad.

The TRF emerged on the militancy landscape of Jammu and Kashmir after the Centre abrogated the provisions of Article 370 in 2019. Kashmir has seen around two dozen militant outfits active since the militancy started in the 1990s. Many smaller groups have eventually vanished from the scene. The TRF came into the crosshairs of the security agencies in April 2020 when a group of terrorists engaged security forces in a firefight for four days close to the Line of Control (LoC) in Kupwara’s Keran Sector in snow-filled mountain passes. The killing of five elite commandos of the Army in extreme weather conditions in Keran signalled the changing tack and tactics of terrorists in Kashmir.

One senior police official said the major shift the TRF brought was a higher level of training, online propaganda and high-end weaponry and body cameras to film the attacks live and stream them online. The outfit operates on social media platforms “to promote their cause and lure unemployed youth to carry out terror activities”, according to the National Investigation Agency’s (NIA) probe.

Urban militancy

Around 200 TRF cadres have been killed since 2019 in Kashmir. At present, the TRF, which was mandated by its handlers across the border to revive militancy in urban pockets in Kashmir, remains a faceless outfit. The killing of Muhammad Abbas Sheikh, a resident of Kulgam, in 2021 and Basit Dar, also from Kulgam, in May 2024 left the outfit faceless. According to the police records, Sheikh, who was active since 1996, was the brain behind the TRF’s actions and revival of militancy in Srinagar. Dar, who joined the TRF in 2021, was involved in 18 FIRs before being killed in Kulgam in a chance encounter, officials said.

Departing from attacking security forces’ patrols and installations, the TRF in 2021 started a series of targeted killings of the members of minorities, including a well-known chemist, Makhan Lal Pandita, and a school principal, Supinder Kaur. Several non-local labourers were targeted by the group. These killings resulted in mass migration of Kashmiri Pandits from the Kashmir Valley that year.

So far, the NIA has zeroed in on a Pakistani national Habibullah Malik alias Sajid Jutt, from Kasur district in Pakistan’s Punjab as the TRF’s main handler. Malik is seen as the brain behind the expansion of the TRF operations from the Kashmir Valley into the Pir Panjal Valley in the Jammu region. He is accused of “motivating vulnerable Kashmiri youth to join the TRF for carrying out terrorist activities in J&K”.

The TRF first attributed the attack on tourists in Pahalgam to the increasing number of domicile certificates issued to outsiders in J&K. With pressure mounting globally over the massacre, the TRF in an online statement distanced itself from the attack, saying the outfit “unequivocally denies any involvement in the Pahalgam incident”. “Any attribution of this act to the TRF is false, hasty, and part of an orchestrated campaign to malign the Kashmiri resistance”. It termed the release of the earlier statement online as “a result of a coordinated cyber intrusion”.

As security agencies claim the TRF support structure stands dismantled in the Kashmir Valley, the latest attack only shows how delicate peace remains in Kashmir with challenges being posed by such organisations as the TRF with new tactics and targets.