After days of bombardments between India and Pakistan, a cessation of hostilities has been announced.
This followed a ceasefire after at least four days of shelling between the rival neighbours, which risked escalating into a full-fledged war.
However, it is what India terms ‘Operation Sindoor’ that brings the underlying factors in the conflict — beyond the fight for Kashmir — closer to Kenya and the Horn of Africa region: Terrorism.
On May 7, India launched Operation Sindoor, a military operation targeting terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
This was a response to the April 22 attack in Pahalgam, in the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. In the attack, 26 civilians, including one Nepali national, were killed.
According to Indian media, the operation “successfully neutralised nearly 100 terrorists, including high-value terrorist operatives such as the most wanted Abdul Rauf Azhar.”
Azhar was a Pakistani commander of the jihadist militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, which was linked to the IC-814 hijacking in December 1999.
This was less than a year after the American Embassy bombing in Nairobi. Azhar’s role in the hijacking led to the release of Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-Pakistani terrorist, in exchange for hostages in the Indian Airlines Flight 814 hijacking.
Sheikh later kidnapped and killed Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl who was covering Bahawalpur, Pakistan.
Pearl’s former colleague at WSJ Asra Nomani recalled these events in a statement reacting to Operation Sindoor.
“For the 23 years since, I have reported on how Pakistani intelligence and military leaders have used that city — Bahawalpur — in the southern province of Punjab as a base for its homegrown domestic terrorists,” Nomani wrote.
“When I heard India bombed training camps in Pakistan this week in Operation Sindoor, in response to a Pakistani terrorist rampage in India’s Kashmir state, I had one city’s name on my lips: Bahawalpur.”
“They used them as weapons against India. But in fact these domestic terrorists have waged war against innocents in Pakistan, like civil society activists, Benazir Bhutto, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, schoolchildren and countless others. Their extremism has ruined Pakistan,” she says.
She adds that Pakistan has had a duty to dismantle those terrorist bases — for even the safety of its own people.
Defence Minister Khwaja Asif told the BBC in May that Pakistan does not shelter active terrorists or terrorist outfits, and those living in its territory "do not indulge in terror activities, either in Pak or across the border in India'.
Pearl’s case reflects that of Amanda Lindhout, Nigel Brennan and Abdifatah Mohammed Elmi in Mogadishu, Somalia, in August 2008.
Lindhout, a Canadian freelance reporter, Brennan, a freelance Australian photojournalist, and Elmi from Somalia were kidnapped by al Shabaab as they travelled to camps outside Mogadishu for Somalis displaced by insecurity and terrorism.
In October 2023, al Shabaab at a restaurant in Mogadishu killed Abdifatah Moalim Nur in a suicide attack.
On March 14, Dalsan TV journalist Ibrahim Mohamed Mayow survived an al Shabaab attack in Awdheegle district, Lower Shabelle, while covering a military operation.
In the same month, the Committee to Protect Journalists urged Somalia authorities to investigate the killing of journalist Mohamed Abukar Dabashe in a March 18 bombing by al Shabaab in Mogadishu.
“Mohamed Abukar Dabashe’s death is devastating. Unfortunately, he joins a long list of Somali journalists killed in Al-Shabaab attacks with impunity. Somali authorities should investigate the killing of Mohamed Abukar Dabashe and desist from further intimidation and censorship of journalists who are already operating under difficult circumstances,” CPJ Africa programme coordinator Muthoki Mumo.
The cases of these journalists are just few among many other people who have been killed and maimed by terrorists across the world.
