NEW DELHI: The Jammu & Kashmir police arrested four times more militants and Over Ground Workers (OGWs) of banned outfits than the number of terrorists they killed in the Valley last year.The militancy data accessed exclusively by TOI shows that though the number of militants killed last year, over 240, was the highest since 2007, the number of militants and their aides arrested in 2018, is the highest in a decade. Over 800 militants and OGWs were arrested last year, the data reveals.An OGW, in the security parlance, “is an aide of terrorists, who wilfully helps them in providing shelter, place to store arms and ammunition, food, medication and even funds and facilitates their movement,” an Army officer told TOI.OGWs are essentially “local civilians” but they form the backbone of militancy in Kashmir, said a police officer who was not authorized to speak officially. “Without OGWs and their logistic support, militancy cannot survive for long,” he said.In 2014, almost as many militants and OGWs were arrested as killed by the security forces. However, in the following years, especially after the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani, lesser number of militants and OGWs were arrested as compared to the number of militants killed. That trend changed in 2018 when the number of militancy-related arrests went up eight times from the previous year.After several years of steady decline, the militant recruitment in Kashmir witnessed a sudden upsurge following the Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru’s hanging in 2013, leading to the new phase of militancy. The counter-insurgency specialists in Kashmir said the police were unable to demolish the new terror infrastructure that had emerged after Guru’s hanging because of the widespread network of OGWs across the Valley.“It was challenging till 2017 because of political pressures mounted by the PDP ministers and legislators. Every time, we went out to arrest the facilitators of terror groups, our hands were tied by politicians because they feared to lose their votes in the next elections. Since the PDP led coalition government fell apart, we have been relatively freer to arrest OGWs, the jugular of the Pakistan sponsored terror groups operating in Kashmir,” a senior police officer said.Contrary to the common belief that the 2010s militancy has been more indigenous than foreign, the data shows that except 2018, more foreign terrorists (which includes unidentified militants) have been killed than Kashmiri militants in the last decade.“Often, media makes the mistake not to include the unidentified terrorists in the total number of foreign terrorists killed. But the fact is that the unidentified terrorists are not locals even though they get buried in the local ‘martyrs’ graves’. If a native goes missing in Kashmir, there are spontaneous protests by locals and the media takes note. Until the bodies are exhumed, no one sits quiet in Kashmir. The terrorists who remain unidentified after their death are mostly Pakistanis affiliated with Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. None of the Pakistani terror groups acknowledge their existence, let alone take their bodies back. It is a false impression that militancy in Kashmir in the last five years has been mostly local. It is not true,” a senior Army officer of the Northern Command told TOI.However, in 2018, the data shows that more Kashmiri militants were killed than Pakistani terrorists. “That is because we were able to dismantle the local logistic support of the new recruits by initiating massive arrests,” a counter-insurgency officer of J&K police said.Even as the security forces suffered massive losses in 2018, a police officer said that their first preference is always to arrest militants and their collaborators through mediation of families and society. “We believe arrests can be more effective than killings in the long run. Killing militants, for us, is the last option. After all, every time we go out for an operation, I put my men in the line of fire too,” a police officer who has been conducting counter-insurgency operations for the last 20 years, said.