In India’s Jammu province, a spike in terrorist attacks in recent months has highlighted the traditional foot routes that crisscross the scenic northern region.
The routes, which once formed part of a vast trade network including the ancient Silk Road and the Grand Trunk Road, fell into disuse with the advent of modern transportation.
Winding through forested, mountainous terrain as they connect the Kashmir Valley with the state of Punjab, they now give cover to armed terrorists whose attacks rose sharply with the reelection of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June.
Sandwiched between Punjab and the Kashmir Valley, Jammu is one of the world’s richest biospheres. It boasts picturesque, misty valleys, and an extensive network of streams, waterfalls, rivers, and lakes. The region’s freshwater resources are a significant part of the Indus River basin, which extends through India, Pakistan, and eastern Afghanistan.
Yet the apparent peace of this wild, beautiful region bordering Pakistan hides a parallel reality of drug trafficking and rising cross-border terrorism.
For centuries, these pathways were the economic and cultural lifeline of a wider region—including the northern Himalayas and the Indus River basin—that was historically connected with Central Asia, Tibet, and China by various civilizational routes, including the Silk Road.
With the advent of railroads and “Great Game” geopolitics—a mid-19th century rivalry between British and Russian empires for influence in the region—they fell into disuse.
A Vibrant Trade Network Falls Into Disuse
Former Indian deputy national security adviser S.D. Pradhan spoke with The Epoch Times about the traditional routes, which fell into disuse for a variety of reasons.For centuries, India’s northern regions were characterized by economic and cultural relations between Himalayan nomads and semi-urban populations in the Kashmir Valley and the Punjab, Pradhan said.
Before the 1880s brought rail transport to India, India’s Banjara people drove trade in the region. The vast nomadic people transported hundreds of metric tons of goods across the Indian plains each year, employing millions of oxen.
According to Pradhan, an equally dynamic trade network of northern Himalayan nomads carried goods along Himalayan foot routes—some major, some obscure—connecting to trans-continental routes such as the Silk Road and the Grand Trunk Road.
However, British colonial rulers discouraged the age-old relations between the two populations, Pradhan said, using a permit system to discourage travel to the area. In addition, he said, “the British wanted to see that people living in these areas were not in touch with people in Central Asia,” which was under Russian control.
The Great Game period was marked by diplomatic intrigue and distrust between the two empires, as they used various means to expand their influence in Central and South Asia.
By the late 19th century, the Russian empire had captured the whole of Central Asia and reached the northern frontiers of British India. In response, Britain drew an extensive line of territorial boundaries.
The ghosts of the Great Game continue to haunt the area today, instigating conflict between India and Pakistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and India and China.
With the onset of an armed insurgency in Kashmir in 1989, the now-neglected foot routes became useful to cross-border terrorists.
“They were forgotten by common people and were only used by militants, criminals, smugglers for their clandestine movement,” Pradhan said.
Today, the routes are strategically important, he said, because “first, they need to be secured from the militants and second, these are valuable for economic reasons.”
A Silent Conduit for Drugs
Due to a history of terrorism in Kashmir and Punjab, India developed an extensive security apparatus in those regions. Jammu, by contrast, was relatively peaceful until recent years. This allowed the routes through its apparently peaceful mountains and scenic valleys to remain a silent conduit for drug and animal smuggling.Local media and police reports record multiple recent smuggling cases involving cattle, heroin, and poppy straw, which is used in the production of illegal morphine.
“Whereas the intent of narcoterrorism in other parts of the world is primarily profit-making to fund terrorism, the phenomenon is more complex in India,” the authors said, highlighting the “symbiotic relationship between terrorist organisations and drug trafficking syndicates” and noting that the same routes are used by both drug smugglers and terrorists.
According to media reports, drug trafficking between Kashmir and adjacent Himachal Pradesh has also increased.
‘Terror’s New Address’
India’s northern regions consist of three geo-strategic territories: Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, and Ladakh, which share a substantial length of India’s disputed borders with Pakistan and China. Over the past several decades, these borders—which cut through various historic trans-continental routes—have become increasingly militarized.Jammu and Kashmir is now a single federal territory comprising the two provinces of Jammu and Kashmir. Jammu is also the geographical bridge between Punjab and Kashmir. Although the India–Pakistan border along Punjab is the internationally recognized border, at its northern end is the disputed territory known as the Line of Control.
Terrorism in Punjab and Kashmir has cost India a substantial part of its GDP. While India declared victory over home-grown terrorism in Punjab in the mid-1990s, cross-border terrorism in Kashmir persists, though it is substantially less than what it was in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
Although Jammu was not immune to violence, until recently it remained largely free of terrorism.
Modi’s third term, which began on June 9, was greeted by a new wave of terrorism in Jammu. Just an hour before Modi’s swearing in, a terrorist attack killed nine and injured 33 pilgrims near a Hindu shrine in Jammu’s Reasi region.
Since then a series of attacks—particularly on military personnel—have occurred in the province’s thickly forested mountains, the latest being a gun battle between Indian security forces and terrorists in the remote forest village of Koug-Mandli, on Sept. 28.
A Susceptible Region
Government officials, law enforcement, prosecutors, and locals spoke with The Epoch Times about life in the high terrain, thickly forested region. Sleepy, remote mountain roads have become safe havens for cattle smugglers, they said, and the traditional routes have become paths for terrorism and trafficking.The issue has drawn government attention, prompting a campaign to steer youth away from drugs, and “stern action against illegal miners, crushers and cattle smugglers in Kathua and its adjoining area,” according to a recent government statement.
Vikrant Dogra, chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Dairy Co-operative Federation, told The Epoch Times the major issue in the remote regions is the lack of livelihood, which makes them susceptible to unscrupulous elements.
“It can be gauged from the fact that cooperatives in districts like Kathua and Samba [another border district] contribute less than one percent to the GDP of Jammu and Kashmir, while the Baramulla district in Kashmir contributes the highest 13 percent,” Dogra said.
Although Jammu boasts “extremely rich bio-diversity,” its contribution to agriculture and horticulture is “insignificant,” Dogra said.
A Marketplace Lost Its Customers
Although high-terrain roads were built in India’s northern regions starting in the 1950s, in the higher Himalayan regions, vehicular roads came much later. The regions were primarily connected by traditional foot routes. Government workers in their sixties told The Epoch Times they recalled trekking to work on foot, or by mule or horseback.In Panyalag—a tiny village in the Bani region of Jammu’s Kathua district—a 500-year-old Hindu temple and a small marketplace of six shops stand witness to the centuries-old route between Basohli to the south and Bhaderwah to the north.
The local network of paths includes a route connecting the town of Bani, six miles south of Panyalag, north to the town of Billawar, a 12- to 15-hour foot trek.
Panyalag’s temple was built by a 17th-century king so he could pray on the journey from his capital of Basohli to Bhaderwah.
Today, Panyalag has about 1,000 inhabitants; the town of Basohli is slightly larger at around 5,000 inhabitants, and Bhaderwah is much bigger, with a population of roughly 75,000.
Locals told The Epoch Times that the route remained regionally active until just over a decade ago. Shopkeepers in the small square noted a daily footfall of about 1,000 people.
Then the main leg of the mule road was converted into a vehicular road, and Panyalag’s market lost its customers.
Even today, Panyalag isn’t connected to the main road. Visitors must walk a mile from the vehicular road to reach the temple.
The village saw its last terrorist incident in late 2001, when four terrorists killed a local leader of the Indian National Congress party in another village. Indian troops chased the terrorists, killing two in the cedar forest behind the village’s temple, while two escaped. The village has been peaceful since then, residents said.
On Sept. 7, on the vehicular road between the nearby villages of Bani and Dulangal, locals reported that a terrorist had opened fire in an incident the week before. There was a visible military presence along this road.
Following the Foot Routes
From Panyalag, the traditional mountain route traverses a series of locations—Duggan, Durrangal, Deri Gala, Katli, Billawar, and Bhaddu. It winds over 25 miles and becomes a river trail that ends at “Panjtirthi,” an isolated, remote spot marking the junction of five rivers.An ancient temple to Shiva stands at the rivers’ convergence. The route floods during the rainy season, and there is no bridge: travelers wade the stream at its shallowest point.
Panjtirthi, a six-hour walk from the Jammu–Punjab highway that parallels the India–Pakistan border, is the proposed site of a major dam project.
On July 8, an attack on army vehicles in Billawar near this route killed five soldiers and injured five others, leading to the arrest of multiple suspects along the wider route in subsequent months. The attack took place at a junction called Lohai Malhar-Badnota.
In Bhaddu, locals described a gun battle that broke out in the Basantgarh region, on the Kathua-Udhampur border. The incident between security forces and terrorists on Sept. 11 left two terrorists dead.
A retired schoolteacher, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Epoch Times that during his work in various area posts, he had traveled direct routes through thick forest between Lohai Malhar and Basantgarh—a journey of five or six hours on foot.
The Epoch Times could not independently verify that terrorists are using the route, but increasing terrorist incidents in Basantgarh have raised concerns among the region’s residents, particularly among those who are familiar with the traditional routes.
Impact of Terrorism
The increase in terrorist activity has coincided with an increasing government push for development in the otherwise sleepy regions. Experts have called for greater vision, innovation, and judicious investment in the region, involving the interconnectivity of the otherwise overlooked traditional routes.“The presence of a major terrorist incident in a district in a year reduces long-term fixed investment by around 17 percent after controlling for district fixed-effects, time trends, district trends and other farm-level controls,” Singh wrote.
Pradhan said that the Jammu region has particularly suffered because the government of Jammu and Kashmir has typically been “Kashmir-centric.”
“The [Kashmiri] political leaders perceived that their strength lay in the support of [the Kashmir Valley] people. Therefore, the routes that could connect people in remote areas were neglected. Now these are used by militants, criminals, and smugglers,” he said.
Reclaiming the Ancient Routes
In addition to heading a dairy cooperative, Dogra is chairman of Unati, an agricultural cooperative that has been operating in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh since 2003. Unati has surveyed almost 200,000 acres for organic crops since its founding. Today, Unati works with 55 farm cooperatives and employs 320 women from rural areas.Unati began operating in Jammu and Kashmir after the two states were reorganized as a federal territory in 2019, ensuring federal funding for the organization. Since then, it has helped to establish 15 farm and tourism cooperatives in the wider region.
“These poor people are sitting on a gold mine,” Dogra said.
Unati also set up a fruit growers cooperative in Lohai Malhar under a federal government program—an encouraging development in an area better known for terrorist attacks.
“In the forests of Lohai Malhar, apples and pears of great market value are growing. We are working to get organic certification for them. We are hoping that grassroots livelihood generation will help address the problems of the region,” Dogra said. Unati has also identified other areas in Jammu for organic crops like hazelnuts, saffron, and walnuts.
Other initiatives include government allocation of land for industrial development, enterprise and skill development programs, and agricultural credit societies to implement grassroots development schemes.
Jammu has a long way to go, Dogra said, but he is hopeful.
“Bio-agriculture, organic certifications, and grassroots-based enterprises will be the best way forward for these regions. They can create new avenues of people–people connectivity on these otherwise ignored traditional routes, and revive the economy of the place and combat terrorism.”
