India's insurgency-hit region of Jammu and Kashmir has witnessed a sudden spike in terrorism in recent weeks, and the role of military equipment left behind by American and allied forces in Afghanistan in these developments is seemingly haunting the country's security forces.
In almost all the recent encounters that the security forces have waged in the volatile region, the recovery of US leftover weapons in Afghanistan has emerged as a common thread.
Last week's attack in Jammu's Kathua that left five soldiers dead, terrorists used US-made M4 carbine assault rifles, an investigation following the ambush found.
The close nexus between the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and other groups, is aiding the arrival of US-made weapons in India, Abhinav Pandya, a commentator on Afghanistan-Pakistan geopolitics and Indian foreign policy, specializing in Kashmir, told Sputnik India on Wednesday.
According to him, the use of sophisticated US/NATO weapons in Kashmir goes back to the time when the state and its allies pulled out from Afghanistan.
"When the Americans left their weapons in Afghanistan, the Kashmir-specific terror groups got hold of these military items. All those high-quality US weapons like the M4 carbine and M-16s are coming to Kashmir via Afghanistan through Pakistan," Pandya, the author of the top-selling books "Radicalisation in India: An Exploration" and "Terror Financing in Kashmir", stated.
Besides that, terrorists in Kashmir are using US-made armored piercing bullets that successfully neutralize the bulletproof vests born by Indian soldiers, the strategic affairs pundit revealed.
"The terrorists are innovating in the field of other technologies using advanced drones. The rotors of these UAVs work for more than four hours, and they can fly at high speeds and much higher altitudes. Such drones don't even leave any sound or light signature," Pandya underlined.
He highlighted that there was enough evidence of the usage of US/NATO weapons in recent attacks in Kashmir. The alliance countries' arms and ammunition can be distinctly seen in some of the pictures that are being posted by terrorist groups explicitly showing these weapons, he noted. For instance, following the Indian Armed Forces attack in Pulwama, a terrorist shared a photo of him holding an American gun, he explained.
Prior to that, however, the terrorists had mostly used AK-47 assault rifles. Until May this year, India's border guarding force collected approximately 1,600 rounds of bullets, which stood at only 435 in 2023, according to the Border Security Force (BSF) stats. Besides, the amount of hand grenades recovered from terrorists reached 309 last year from 19 in 2022.