New Delhi, India – Just when the news of the most deadly attack against Kashmir tourists administered by the Indians in decades leaked into social media platforms and television screens, a message appeared in the telegrams chats.
The Resistance Front (TRF), a little -known armed group that emerged in the region in 2019, the responsibility of the attack was attributed in which at least 26 tourists were killed and more Thans were killed on Tuesday.
The armed rebels, who have been struggling for the secession of Kashmir of India, had greatly saved tourists from their attacks in recent years. Tuesday’s murders changed that.
But what is TRF and what influence was in Kashmir? And what is at stake for the Indian administration in Kashmir now?
What happened on Tuesday?
In a pleasant sunny afternoon in the city of Baisaran Meadow or Pahalgam in Kashmir, the tourists were attacked by armed men who left a nearby forest.
The men armed with automatic rifles fired at least 26 dead tourists and wounded several others. All those killed were men.
The Interior Minister of India, Amit Shah, arrived in Srinagar, the summer capital of the region in dispute, as the condolences arrived at world leaders, including the president of the United States, Donald Trump, and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, wrote on social networks that “those behind this atrocious act will be taken before justice … They will not be saved!”
By then, TRF had assumed the responsibility of the attack, just when the armed attackers who carried out the murders remained in the race.
What is TRF?
In a message that appeared on Telegram, TRF opposed the granting of residence permits to “strangers”, who critics say that he could help India change the demography of the disputed region. “Consequently, violence will go towards those who try to establish illegally,” he said.
He thought that the objectives of the attack were tourists, not newcomer residents who made their home, the election of the telegram group to claim responsibility did not surprise security officials.
TRF is still called “the virtual front” within the background safety apparatus, because this is how it begins.
After the former Indian unilaterally revoked the partial autonomy of Kashmir in August 2019 and imposed a repression of one month, the First Tok group forms when starting messages on social networks. In the reorganization of Kashmir, the government also extended the status of domicile, which allows the property of rights and access to work quotas sponsored by the Government, to non -local ones, the alleged justification for the attack of the pahalgama.
The name of the Resistance Front is a break of traditional rebel groups in Kashmir, most of which are Islamic names. This, the Indian intelligence agencies, aimed to project “a neutral character, with” resistance “in the name focused on the nationalism of Kashmir,” said a police officer, who has worked in cases involved in armed groups for almost an anonymity of Thade.
However, Indian officials have constantly maintained that, in reality, TRF is a branch or only a Lashkar-E-Taiba front, an armed group based in Pakistan. India says that Pakistan supports the armed rebellion in Kashmira, a position denied by Islamabad. Pakistan says that it only provides diplomatic and moral support to the people of Kashmir. He also condemned the attack on tourists in Pahalgam.
Some Indian officials said they believe that Tuesday’s attack may have been the real work of Lashkar-E-Taiba, with TRF with the responsibility of clouding India’s investigations in the murders.
Has TRF carried out attacks in the past?
By 2020, the group begins the responsibility of minor attacks, including murders or specific individuals. His recruits consisted or combatants of a rebel group of amalgam or splinter. Since then, Indian security agencies have broken multiple groups of TRF combatants.
But the group survived and grew.
By 2022, most armed combatants killed in cashmere were affiliated with TRF, according to government records. TRF members used more and more small arms such as guns to carry out specific murders, including those of retired security personnel and accused or being informants.
The group also arrived at the headlines that year after it appointed Cashmiro journalists in a “list of traitorous successes” for allegedly colluding with the Indian state. At least five of the appointed journalists resigned immediately, since there is a story of such attacks. Shujaat Bukhari, an outstanding assistant journalist and editor of the publication of Cashmiro on the rise, was killed on June 14, 2018, outside his office in Srinagar. The Kashmir Police has attributed the murder to Lashkar-E-Taiba.
In June 2024, TRF also attributed the responsibility of an attack on a bus that transports Hindu pilgrims, killing at least nine people and hurting 33, in the Readi area of Jammu. The bus was at Flogger in a gorge by walking the attack.
How is TRF differentiated?
When TRF left his mark with his mortal attacks, he also used a mixture of old and new strategies. His name in English stood out, as the use of Dids social networks. But in other ways, it was based on more traditional techniques.
Before the arrival of TRF, Kashmir’s rebel commanders had adopted more and more public characters. His groups would publish videos on the social networks of his commanders walking coincidentally through the apples orchards, play the cryket or bicycle in Srinagar. This scope of social networks led to an increase in recruitment. Among the commanders who adopted this method was Burhan Wani, whose murder in July 2016 led to an uprising, that 100 civilians were killed in street protests.
But after the repression of 2019, this approach no longer worked. The TRF fighters, the newcomers on the scene, returned to the proven and proven forms. “The faces were hidden again; the number of attacks fell, but the intensity became more acute,” said the police officer who requested anonymity.
Under the leadership of Mohammad Abbas Sheikh, one of the oldest Kashmir combatants, according to him, joined the rebellion in 1996, the group focused its attacks against Srinagar.
After his murder in 2021, and the murders of many other armed rebels in the later year, TRF retired with his fighters to the jungles above in the mountains, said a central intelligence official based on anonymity.
In January 2023, the Indian Government declared TRF a “terrorist organization”, citing the recruitment of rebels and smuggling or weapons from Pakistan to Kashmira.
As more and more TRF fighters were killed by security agencies, their numbers decreased. The rebels, according to police and intelligence officials, were well trained, but largely remained in their hiding places.
What does the attack for the modes of the Kashmir Policy mean?
However, if Indian security and intelligence agencies were not unsuspecting for the attack, some experts believe that this is the result of the holes in the Modi Government’s puppy policy.
Modi and Interior Minister, Shah, responsible for the law and order and the deputy of Modis widely seen, have repeatedly made claims of “normality” in Kashmir from the semi -autonomous state since 2019.
It was that security and the promotion of tourism by the Indian government that led Kailash Sethi to Kashmira this summer with his family. Now, he is frantically looking for the region as soon as possible.
“We were in Pahalgam only two days ago, in the same place where the attack occurred,” said Sethi, who is Jamnagar in the western state of Gujarat, Al Jazeera from Srinagar. “I can’t tell you how scared I am now. I just want to get my family.”
On Wednesday, panic seized travel and travel operators when visitors rushed to cancel their reservations and return home. The traffic struck the roads to Srinagar airport, and prices to fly out of cashmere increased by more than 300 percent.
“There is no normality in Kashmiro. And this narrative of ‘normality’ is the most unfortunate of the Kashmir Policy of this Government,” said Ajai Sahni, executive director of the terrorism portal of southern Asia, a platform that traces.
“First, the zero militancy in Kashmira is an impossible goal to realize, at least in the absence of a political solution within the State,” said Sahni. “Secondly, the ‘Normality narrative’ creates a situation in which groups are encouraged to design attacks.” That, he said, is because they know that “even if a small attack occurs, it is no longer normal.”
Separated from occasional attacks, the rebel groups had largely saved the tourism industry until now, Sahni added. “This also led to a complacency level, perhaps, in the security apparatus,” he said, adding that “this is a very steep escalation by TRF.”
For Tuesday night, when the dead and wounded were demolished in military and military vehicles, the police had sealed the tourist city of Pahalgam. Several areas in Kashmira, including Srinagar, witnessed a closure after merchant associations and political parties requested collective duel.
Raúl, who works in the hospitality sector in Pahalgam and requested that they identify him only by his first name, said he is still anxious to the future. “There will be repressions and the greatest presence of armed forces in the area again,” he said. “Everyone, my customers, just want to get out of Kashmir.”