Hybrid terrorists: These nameless, faceless pawns are the hardest to spot

Hybrid terrorists are the boys next door. They lead a normal life and are called in for a specific mission by terror groups or their ideological mentors.

New Delhi, Aug 04: Among the many challenges that India faces on the security front, the latest one is that of hybrid terrorists. Loosely defined, hybrid terrorists are the boys next door.

They lead a normal life and are called in for a specific mission by terror groups or their ideological mentors. While this trend is catching on in Jammu and Kashmir rapidly, it would not be wrong to describe the killers of Hindus in Udaipur and Amaravati as hybrid terrorists as well.

An Intelligence Bureau official explains to OneIndia that there is zero information on such persons and they succeed due to this fact. The very fact that there is no intel whatsoever on these persons makes them extremely lethal.

These terrorists mingle among the people normally and when they strike, they aim at disrupting the entire ecosystem. Currently it is the Lashkar-e-Tayiba which nurtures such terrorists in a big way.

In October last year, hybrid terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba killed two non-Muslim teachers in Srinagar. The aim was clear and that was to disrupt the ecosystem. There was absolutely no information on these persons. Such terrorists are told to watch the ecosystem and then strike when there is not even an iota of suspicion.

An analysis done by the Intelligence Bureau suggests that the number of hybrid terrorists are also linked to the number of pistols that have been delivered through drones in recent times. It was found that the Chinese Star Pistols used by these terrorists were delivered to the hybrid terrorists and over the past couple of months it has been their weapon of choice.

The official cited above said that the hybrid terrorists have been tasked with eliminating the soft targets with pistols. Unlike the AK-47s which has been a weapon of choice for the terrorists, these carry pistols which largely go undetected. Killing them is also not the solution as it is hard to pin them down to any one terrorist group. This gives an impression that a civilian is being killed and it could lead to more persons taking up arms.

The security agencies are working on a mechanism to first put a complete end to the weapon delivery mechanism through drones. The Intelligence too would have to go deeper and watch out for the interactions such persons have with their handlers in order to completely eliminate this threat. Another official explains that this is almost like lone wolf terror where a terrorist with no foot-print comes out and wrecks havoc.