India, Nov. 18 -- Three alarming signals are coming from the recent Red Fort bomb blast. First, the doctor's module comprised mostly Kashmiris from the Valley. Second, what functioned in Jammu and Kashmir as an overground network of supporters and sympathisers, who provided shelter and finance to the militancy, have now graduated to become active terrorists. And third, the ongoing investigations are revealing much deeper and sustained support for terrorism in the region. Since 1990, Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has been hit by a separatist militancy that has led to thousands of people dying through acts of violence. But this violence, which has featured many acts of terrorism, has been confined to the state. Acts, such as the Delhi blast of November 10, have been rare. It would seem that the doctor-terrorist module has been radicalised by Maulvi Irfan Ahmad Wagay, a Srinagar-based cleric. The alleged perpetrator of the Delhi blast, Umar un-Nabi, a doctor, was from Government Medical College (GMC), Srinagar, and Adeel Ahmad Rather, another doctor and the first person to be arrested, from whose locker an AK-47 was recovered, worked at GMC Anantnag. Though there have been a lot of source-based reports on the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) connection of Wagay as well as Shaeen Shahid, another doctor, there is no clear picture yet of the ideological journey of those involved. Additional arrests and interrogation should provide a fuller picture. The initial target of the Kashmiri militancy was the Pandit community; several terrorist attacks forced their migration out of the Kashmir Valley. Thereafter, besides the security forces, Kashmiri Muslims have suffered substantial casualties from gunfights, assassinations, bombings and so on. Kashmiris have ended up both as perpetrators and victims of the militancy. There have been just two other major terror incidents directly involving Kashmiris in other parts of the country in the past 35 years. These were two bomb blasts in 1996, on two consecutive days: The first one on May 21, 1996, in New Delhi's Lajpat Nagar market that killed 13 persons and injured 40, and the second occurred in a bus near the town of Dausa, Rajasthan, which claimed 14 lives. Both were attributed to the Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Front (JKIF), an Islamist faction of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, led by Bilal Ahmed Baig, now a designated terrorist living somewhere in Pakistan. This outfit had carried out two earlier blasts in Delhi - in Connaught Place in November 1995 and Sadar Bazar in January 1996. Four members of the JKIF, all Kashmiris, were sentenced to life imprisonment for the crime. Within J&K, there were several instances of bomb blasts, mainly before 2005. In the early 1990s, there had been a spate of blasts in the Jammu area. On January 26, 1995, there had been a series of three blasts at the Maulana Azad Memorial Stadium, targeting the Republic Day Parade there that killed eight people. In July 1995, in Jammu, 17 people died and 50 were injured in the Purani Mandi area, one of the most crowded markets of the old city, in a blast. This, too, was caused by an RDX-based explosive and the act was traced to Harkat-ul-Ansar, a Pakistani group. The next major blast on October 1, 2001, targeted the legislative assembly building in Srinagar and was the result of a suicide attack carried out by the JeM. An explosive-laden Tata Sumo blew up, killing 38 people, including three terrorists. There were IED attacks, mainly on the highways leading out of Srinagar, in 2002 and 2004. But by and large, these attacks tapered off after 2005. Thereafter, the ISI and its minions shifted focus to other Indian cities, including Mumbai, Delhi, Surat, Patna, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Varanasi, Pune, and Hyderabad. Here, they used a variety of instruments, the primary being a group of Indian Muslims who called themselves the Indian Mujahideen but whose leadership operated from Pakistan. Hundreds of people were killed in the campaign that petered out after the 2011 Delhi High Court blast, in which a Kashmiri was the main accused. It was only in 2019 that bomb blasts returned to J&K when a JeM suicide bomber blew up a bus ferrying Indian paramilitary personnel near Pulwama, killing 46 jawans. As can be seen, this was the biggest casualty of its kind in the state, and it elicited a tough Indian reaction, which has served as a template subsequently in dealing with terror strikes traced to Pakistan. But, the unfolding conspiracy allegedly involving doctors indicates that even tough actions like Operation Sindoor are not having the kind of impact intended. Indeed, had the terror plan not been detected early, it could have had horrific consequences across the country. The incident has upended the Union government's belief that following the abrogation of Article 370, the demotion of the state to a Union Territory, and the subsequent crackdown, has fatally wounded the terror ecosystem and that Kashmir would soon return to normal. A force-alone counter-terrorism policy has not worked anywhere in the world. Besides an extensive campaign of de-radicalisation in the educational institutions of the Valley, there is also a need to reach out to the mainstream political class in the Valley, which has currently been sidelined. J&K is not foreign territory like Gaza, where the Israelis do what they want. It is very much a part of the country and will always remain so....