Militants are changing tack in the Pir Panjal valley to outsmart the security agencies and survive longer in a region with topography “as tough as Afghanistan’s mountains”, officials say. The valley comprises the twin districts of Rajouri and Poonch, and includes 225 km of the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK).
The Poonch-Rajouri sector has witnessed 18 deaths this year so far, including 10 Army jawans, seven civilians and one militant. The casualties of both security forces and civilians are much higher than in the militancy-infested Kashmir valley, where one Army jawan and one civilian were killed by militancy in the same period. This seems to indicate that militants have shifted their focus to a new region once declared a zero-military zone with waning militant activities from 2007 to 2019.
