Was it JeM attack in Kashmir that killed 40 CRPF Jawans?

1. How Pulwama terror attack unfolded: SUV packed with 200 kg
explosives rammed CRPF convoy
Militants from the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorist organisation targetted
a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) convoy in Pulwama on Thursday
(February 14) with an SUV stuffed with explosives.
The blast blew up one of the buses that was carrying about 40 jawans and
killed at least 44 of them.
The attack took place on the Srinagar-Jammu highway in Pulwama's
Awantipora area.
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According to the police, the blast was carried out by suicide bomber Adil
Ahmad Dar alias Waqas Commando.
When Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar emerged from years of
seclusion in January 2014 to call for the resumption of jihad against India,
alarm bells went off in New Delhi
Since then, Azhar’s group has been blamed for some of the most brazen
and devastating terrorist assaults in India, including the September 2016
attack on an Indian Army facility at Uri that killed 19 and Thursday’s suicide
car bombing on a security forces convoy that claimed the lives of at least
43 troopers.
After remaining mostly confined to his base at Bahawalpur in Pakistan’s
most populous province of Punjab for years, Azhar addressed a rally of his
jihadi supporters at Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-occupied

2. Kashmir, on January 26, 2014. Even then, he wasn’t seen in public —
Azhar made the speech over phone.
The message, however, went out crystal clear. “There are 313 fidayeen in
this gathering and if a call is given, the number will go up to 3,000,” he was
quoted as saying at the time, as he called for the resumption of the so-
called “holy war” against India.
The rally, attended by thousands, was ostensibly organised to launch a
book by Mohammed Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri hanged for his role in the 2001
attack on India’s Parliament, which too was blamed on the JeM and the
Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Such a massive gathering couldn’t have been organised within PoK without
the sanction of Pakistan’s all-powerful military, experts said at the time.
Azhar’s comeback was followed by an uptick in fund-raising and
recruitment by JeM in Pakistan’s Punjab province and louder anti-India
rhetoric by the group’s leadership.
Many in India’s security and foreign policy establishment haven’t forgotten
the ignominy of watching Azhar create the JeM after he was released in
1999 from an Indian prison along with two other terrorists in exchange for
the passengers of an Indian airliner hijacked by Pakistan-backed
operatives from Kathmandu to Kandahar.
JeM was banned in Pakistan in 2002 by then president Pervez Musharraf
but it has continued its activities virtually unfettered in recent years and it
has continued to publish jihadi literature such as the “Zarb-e-Momin”
newspaper. The group was among terror organisations cited by India and
its Western allies when they pressed the Financial Action Task Force

3. (FATF) to put Pakistan on a “grey list” for failing to crack down on terror
financing.
Even more worrying for India has been the blocking by China of efforts by
New Delhi and several Western governments to sanction Azhar at the UN
Security Council. Since 2016, China, a veto-wielding member of the
Security Council, has used what is known as a “technical hold” to stymie
efforts by countries such as India, the US, Britain and France to sanction
Azhar under Resolution 1267 for his links with al-Qaeda.
Leading strategic affairs analyst Brahma Chellaney said China had
persisted with this course of action as it could use Azhar as leverage
without any cost and because India “had not done anything in response”.
He said, “In a sense, the deaths of the CRFP men in Thursday’s attack can
be laid at the door of China, because it is protecting Pakistan and the man
in-charge of JeM.”
“There is absolutely no cost for China in continuing with this exercise and
the Indian side doesn’t speak up on this issue,” he said, adding India
should also tread cautiously on the JeM’s claim for Thursday’s attack
through a video featuring the purported bomber.
Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik has said that Thursday’s
Pulwama attack was partly the result of an intelligence failure, especially
due to the fact that security forces could not detect the loading and
movement of the explosive-laden Scorpio.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Malik said: “We cannot not accept that
(intelligence failure). We could not detect or check the vehicle full of

4. explosives moving on the highway. We must accept that we are at fault
also.”
He admitted that while security forces were “eliminating” local militants —
including those belonging to the Jaish — there was no warning or
intelligence input about any of them being trained to become a “suicide
bomber.”
He said: “The fact that we did not know that there was a fidayeen among
them is also part of the intelligence failure. I can admit that. This man (the
bomber identified as Adil Ahmad Dar) was very much on our list of
suspects. But due to the pressure they were under, no one was giving them
shelter in their homes. So he must have escaped to the jungles or the hills
and got lost. We knew about him but could not trace him. This was just a
chance thing and he was the rare one who got away. The rest have been
getting killed.”
He attributed the Pulwama attack to the “frustration” that was being felt by
handlers across the border. “There was pressure from Pakistan for the
militants to do something big. This attack is the result of that desperation
they were facing.”
Pulwama suicide bomber: A sawmill worker, he joined Jaish-e-Mohammad
last March_ Adil Ahmad Dar
ILL MARCH last year, Adil Ahmad Dar (20), a resident of Gundibagh village
in Pulwama district of South Kashmir, used to work in a sawmill. On
Thursday, the Jaish-e-Mohammad named him as the suicide bomber
behind the attack on the CRPF convoy.

5. According to reports, Adil left his home on March 19, 2018, and didn’t
return. His friend, Sameer Ahmad, a post-graduate student of Geology at
Kashmir University, went missing the same day. Adil’s family filed a missing
person report at the local police station. But their search ended a few days
later, when his photograph was posted on social networking sites, holding
an AK-47 and with the code name ‘Waqas Commando’.