[🇮🇳] R&AW’s secret war on LeT in Pakistan secures India some retribution, but Kashmir problem far from over

R&AW’s secret war on LeT in Pakistan secures India some retribution, but Kashmir problem far from over​

Story by Praveen Swami
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7 min read



R&AW’s secret war on LeT in Pakistan secures India some retribution, but Kashmir problem far from over
New Delhi: Lit up by the full moon, the path to paradise led past the minefields and glistening rolls of razor-wire strung along the Poonch river through the rugged mountains of Mehdhar and Gool-Gulabgarh. Earlier that day, top Lashkar-e-Taiba commanders, Sajid Saifullah Jatt and Adnan Ahmad, had handed Muhammad Naved Yakub and three other members of his group their assault weapons and GPS units. Then, the group bid farewell to the manager of the camp, a middle-aged man with a distinct Sindhi accent.


The four men, magazines and books record, would have left behind a wasihatnamah, or testament, promising their family: “I shall be waiting at the door of Paradise.”

Earlier this week, the Sindhi-speaking manager of the camp, commander Zia-ur-Rahman, was killed in a drive-by shooting in the town of Dina—an hour’s drive from the Lashkar office he operated in the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir city of Mirpur. For more than a decade, Indian police records say, Zia had supervised the logistics of Lashkar jihadists across the Line of Control—among them, the terrorists who killed five people in a 2023 communal massacre near Rajouri.

The Government of India has offered no comment on the killing, which is being seen as part of a series of blows delivered by a long-running Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) campaign to degrade the Lashkar’s leadership. Adnan Ahmad, one of the two Lashkar commanders who provided weapons to Yakub, was assassinated in 2023, again in a drive-by hit. Lashkar chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and his son Talha Saeed have also narrowly escaped assassination attempts.


Few details have emerged on what happened, but Pakistan-based analyst Iftikhar Firdaus reported that Zia and his bodyguard were shot through the head—suggesting a carefully planned ambush by attackers who either tailed the Lashkar commander from Mirpur or knew he would stop in Dina.

As American drones and special forces did, R&AW’s campaign is demonstrating that terrorists harboured in Pakistan are not secure from retribution. There’s no certainty, however, if or how much the assassination campaign will degrade the Lashkar’s capabilities.

Also Read: Pakistan doesn’t have enough troops for 2 fronts. It has to choose between LOC, Balochistan

The middle-manager​

Zia, who was 45 years old—according to Indian intelligence officials’ estimate—grew up in the small village of Jhangra in the scrublands near the Manchar lake, west of the city of Nawabshah. Little is known about how he joined the organisation, but Lashkar significantly expanded its operations in the Sindh province early in the millennium. Its charitable wing, Anjuman Falah-i-Insaniat, scholar C. Christine Fair records, spearheaded these efforts.

An intelligence official told ThePrint that Zia was likely drawn into Lashkar through Falah-i-Insaniat’s charitable work. He is thought to have engaged in military training at the terror group’s now-abandoned military camp at Thatta around 2005-2006.

About 250 kilometres south of Jhangra, Thatta briefly encountered international notoriety after it was revealed to have been used to train the Fidayeen team that attacked Mumbai on 26 November, 2008. Tariq Khosa, who headed investigations by Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency into 26/11, later wrote that his officers had discovered explosives and shell casings at the Thatta camp, matching those used in Mumbai. Eighteen men named by the FIA as suspects have not been prosecuted, ThePrint reported in 2023.

Even though Zia had no role in 26/11, he rose through the ranks of Lashkar, serving multiple tours in the Kashmir valley, Rajouri and Poonch. Following the killing of his predecessor at Ajas in 2008, he was assigned the kuniyat, or code name, “Abu Qital”, and given charge of operations in northern Kashmir. Qital is an Arabic word that refers to theologically justifiable combat.


Following 26/11 though, Pakistan came under intense international pressure to wind down jihadist operations in Kashmir. Large numbers of key Lashkar commanders were withdrawn. Zia, one official familiar with the case told ThePrint, returned to the ranks of the Anjuman Falah-i-Insaniat.

Later, a Mirpur-based journalist told ThePrint, he became an activist of the Milli Muslim League—a Lashkar political front set-up in 2017—and participated in flood-relief operations organised by the group five years later.

Lashkar’s low-key jihad​

Even though Zia would never cross the Line of Control again, he played a central role in building a new phase of low-key warfare in Kashmir after 26/11. The group, which included Muhammad Naved Yakub, crossed the Line of Control on 2 June, 2015, National Investigation Agency investigators say. Four weeks later, the group attacked a Border Security Force convoy at Udhampur, leading India to call off talks between the National Security Advisers of the two countries.


The new strategy was commanded by Sajid Saifullah Jatt—nicknamed “Langda (or lame)” after a bullet injury—who served as the Lashkar’s southern Kashmir commander until 2007. Together with his Kashmiri wife, Shabbira Kuchay, Sajid had fled back to Pakistan just before 26/11. His local knowledge would be critical to the Lashkar’s plans to keep jihad alive in hard times.

Like the executed 26/11 attacker Ajmal Kasaab, many of the operatives Zia and Sajid recruited came from impoverished backgrounds. Yakub is the son of a landless labourer from the village of Ghulam Mustafabad in southern Punjab. Even the oldest brother, Mohammad Nadeem, set up a small hosiery business, doing well enough to purchase a red motorcycle, the jihadist had recalled with some envy, an officer who questioned him told ThePrint. Another brother found work at a government-run college in Faisalabad.


Lashkar’s promise of participation in a heroic war, however, drew Yakub to the training camps, where he was prepared for the 2015 attack. Faced with the moment of martyrdom though, Yakub fled from the firing and was eventually captured by a group of local villagers.

Ali Babar Patran, who surrendered to the Indian Army in 2021, was also the son of a landless labourer who worked in the fields of Wasawewala in Pakistan’s Punjab. Ali began attending Lashkar gatherings at his village mosque in 2019, and later trained at a camp in Garhi Habibullah.

For the most part, the ISI assigned high-profile operations during this period to the better-trained and more committed cadre of the Jaish-e-Muhammad, many with combat training in Afghanistan, Indian intelligence officials say. In 2015, Jaish-e-Muhammad fidayeen struck in Gurdaspur, following up with attacks on the Pathankot air base and an army brigade headquarters in Uri in 2016.


The Indian Army hit across the Line of Control after those attacks—but the Jaish struck back. Fidayeen units struck at military bases in Nagrota and Sunjwan as well as a CRPF training centre in Lethpora.

Lashkar commanders, meanwhile, allied themselves with the Islamist political movement building in Kashmir’s countryside. The burial of Bahawalpur-born Abdul Rehman, also known as Abu Qasim, drew tens of thousands. Two villages fought a pitched battle for the honour of burying him. His successor, Abu Dujanah—like Sajid, married to a local woman, Rukayyah Dar—appeared at the 2016 funeral of jihadist social-media icon Burhan Wani to a near-hysterical popular reception.

Then, in 2019, came the Jaish-e-Muhammad attack in Pulwama and India’s counter-strike across the Line of Control in Balakote. General Qamar Javed Bajwa, then Pakistan army chief, realised this escalation threatened Pakistan’s economic prospects and authorised secret negotiation between the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and R&AW. The two countries agreed to a ceasefire on the Line Of Control in 2021, but things would soon blow up again.


Also Read: Train hijack by Baloch insurgents in Pakistan holds critical lesson—railways can drive geopolitics

Tit-for-tat killing​

Elements of the Pakistan Army, Indian intelligence analysts told ThePrint, either disagreed with General Bajwa’s promise to end cross-Line of Control operations or simply disregarded it. Following a brief pause in violence, Lashkar operations resumed again. Five sleeping Indian Army soldiers were shot dead at point-blank range at Chamrer, near Poonch, in the summer of 2021, just after the ceasefire was announced. Four more soldiers were killed as they attempted unsuccessfully to hunt down the perpetrators.

This time, India hit back. As members of the multinational Financial Action Task Force began a meeting in Paris to consider removing Pakistan from a terror watchlist, a bomb went off at a checkpost outside Lashkar chief Saeed’s home—demonstrating that he was not held in prison, despite a conviction on charges of financing terrorism. An attempt was soon made on the life of Talha Saeed, Saeed’s son and successor.


Following the bombings, at least 18 terrorists are believed to have been killed in Pakistan. The Government of Pakistan has publicly blamed India for some of the assassinations. These include the killing of Shaheed Latif, who was released from an Indian prison in 2010 and accused of organising the attack on the Pathankot Air Base. Lashkar operative Muhammad Riaz, an Indian national sought in several terrorism-related cases, received a hero’s burial at the organisation’s headquarters—ostensibly run by the Government of Pakistan.

All the assassinations, however, have not involved persons of significance in the Lashkar hierarchy. Kashif Ali, a cleric killed in Swabi earlier this year, was claimed in social media accounts to be a Lashkar operative with family ties to Saeed. Local journalists familiar with Kashif, however, told ThePrint he was a low-level worker for the terrorist group’s political front and was unrelated to the Lashkar chief. Like Zia, Kashif was active in Lashkar’s charitable operations, but there is no record of him being involved in terrorist recruitment or operations.


The assassination campaign though hasn’t so far served to deter Lashkar and Jaish operations. As India thinned out troops along the Line of Control to address the new crisis on its frontier with China, the ISI stepped up the pressure. A succession of ambushes and attacks by highly-trained Lashkar and Jaish units claimed the lives of dozens of soldiers.

Although killings in Jammu and Kashmir were at their lowest level last year in over a decade, attacks mounted by terrorists in until-recently peaceful districts along the Pir Panjal mountains have forced India to pump in large numbers of troops to keep the peace.

Finding men willing to give their lives for its cause, the Lashkar has shown, is not a problem. Even though Pakistan’s army is flailing in the face of a massive upsurge of terrorism in Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the attacks on Pir Panjal demonstrate it is not willing to give up on its campaign in Kashmir. The covert campaign R&AW is waging against the Lashkar is securing India some retribution, but an end to the long war in Kashmir is still far from sight.

(Edited by Mannat Chugh)