The Resistance Front (TRF) is an offshoot of the Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
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When did The Resistance Front surface?
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) declared the TRF a “terrorist organisation” under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in January 2023. The government said it was engaged in propaganda on terror activities, recruitment of terrorists, infiltration of terrorists and smuggling of weapons and narcotics from Pakistan into Jammu and Kashmir.
But the TRF first started making headlines in 2020. In May of that year, five Army commandos were killed in a gunbattle in Keran, in which five TRF militants were also killed. Similar clashes occurred around that time in Handwara and Sopore, killing security personnel.
Two key events had taken place before this.
The first was the revocation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 in August 2019. The second was the decapitation of the LeT in Kashmir in 2018.
How did The Resistance Front grow?
The Lashkar-e-Taiba was founded around 1985, and one of its main goals was merging the whole of Kashmir with Pakistan. However, by the end of 2018, it had suffered significant reverses at the hands of Indian security forces.
In November 2018, Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Naveed Jatt alias Abu Hanzulla was killed in a gunfight on the outskirts of Srinagar. Jatt was the fifth top Lashkar commander to have been killed in a period of 45 days. Before Jatt, Lashkar’s Srinagar chief Mehraj-ud-din Bangroo, its top commander in North Kashmir, Abu Muaz, and its top South Kashmir commanders Azad Ahmad Malik and Mushtaq Ahmad Mir, had been killed.
The wiping off of the top leadership drastically reduced LeT’s strike capability in the Valley.
Then came the revocation of Article 370.
According to sources in the security forces, Pakistan wanted to retaliate against this, but was mindful of its greylisting by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The FATF is an inter-governmental body which tracks terrorism financing. If it believes that a country is not doing enough to prevent international money laundering and terrorist financing, it puts the country on the grey list. This impacts the country’s ability to attract international investment and engage with banks and other international financial institutions.
Thus, it wanted a militant outfit in Kashmir that sounded more “secular and indigenous”.
A police officer had told The Indian Express in 2020, “Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammad had religious connotations and Pakistan didn’t want that. They wanted to secularise the Kashmir militancy and make it appear indigenous. Hence they opted for ‘Resistance’ — that has some currency in global politics — in its name.”
Another officer had said, “Unlike local militants, who have no training, these new militants seem to have trained hard. As far as we know, they are trained for at least six months before being inducted. The outfit has a mix of both local and foreign militants so that it looks indigenous. The surprising part is that the local militants are also very well trained in Pakistan.”
The TRF is active on social media channels, such as Facebook, Telegram, and WhatsApp, where it posts propaganda videos and claims responsibility for various attacks.
