Jaish-e-Mohammed
Jaish-e-Mohammed (Urdu: جيشِ محمدؐ, lit. 'The Army of Muhammad', abbreviated as JeM) is a Pakistan-based[15] Deobandi[16] Jihadist[16][5][17] terrorist group active in Kashmir.[18] The group's primary motive is to separate Kashmir from India and merge it into Pakistan.
Not to be confused with Jeish Muhammad.Jaish-e-Mohammed
2000–present
State opponents
Since its inception in 2000, the group has carried out several attacks in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. It portrays Kashmir as a "gateway" to the entire India, whose Muslims are also deemed to be in need of liberation. It has carried out several attacks primarily in the Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir.[2][19] It also maintained close relations with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and continues to be allied with these groups.[20][7][8]
JeM was apparently created with the support of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),[3][21][22] which uses it to fight in Kashmir and other places, and continues to provide it backing.[23][24] The JeM has been banned in Pakistan since 2002, but resurfaced under other names.[25][26][27] Its apparent variants openly continue to operate several facilities in the country.[28][29]
According to B. Raman, Jaish-e-Mohammed is viewed as the "deadliest" and "the principal Islamic terrorist organisation in Jammu and Kashmir".[18][30] The group was responsible for several terror attacks: the 2001 attack on Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly, the 2001 Indian Parliament attack, the 2016 Pathankot airbase attack, the 2016 attack on the Indian Mission in Mazar-i-Sharif, the 2016 Uri attack, and the 2019 Pulwama attack, each of which has had strategic consequences for India–Pakistan relations.[31] The group has been designated as a terrorist organisation by Pakistan, Russia, Australia, Canada,[12] India, New Zealand, the United Arab Emirates, the European Union,[32] the United Kingdom,[33] the United States, and the United Nations.[34]
In 2016, JeM was suspected of being responsible for an attack on the Pathankot airbase in India. The Indian government,[35] and some other sources, accused Pakistan of assisting JeM in conducting the attack.[23][24] Pakistan denied assisting JeM, and arrested several members of JeM in connection with the attack,[36] who were then released by the security establishment according to a report in Dawn.[37] Pakistan called the report an "amalgamation of fiction and fabrication".[38] In February 2019, the group took responsibility for a suicide bombing attack on a security convoy in the Pulwama district that killed 40 security personnel, named as one of the largest attacks in recent years.[39][40]
Origins[edit]
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is said to have created Jaish-e-Mohammed by working with several Deobandi Islamic jihadis associated with Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.[41][42][43] By the late 1990s, states Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistani military justified jihad in Kashmir as a legitimate part of its foreign policy. Harkat had been set up in mid-1990s with ISI support to carry out "spectacular acts of terrorism". The United States declared it an Islamic jihadist group in 1998 and bombed its training camps in Afghanistan.[44]
In December 1999, Harkat Islamic jihadis hijacked the Indian Airlines Flight 814 scheduled to fly from Kathmandu to Delhi, and diverted it to Kandahar, where they were looked after by the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani officials stationed at the airport. After they slit the throat of a passenger, the Indian government agreed to their demands and released Maulana Masood Azhar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, three Harkat operatives previously imprisoned in India.[45] The released prisoners were escorted to Pakistan by the ISI,[41] and Masood Azhar was chosen to head the new group Jaish-e-Mohammed. The ISI is said to have paraded him on a victory tour through Pakistan to raise money for the new organisation.[46] Some analysts argue that ISI built up the JeM to counter the growing power of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).[47] Many analysts believed that around 1999, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) used JeM to fight in Kashmir and other places, and continues to provide it backing.[45][48][41] Although the JeM has been officially banned in Pakistan since 2002, it continues to openly operate several facilities in the country.[28]
Azhar's leadership is said to be nominal. The group has a largely decentralised structure. JeM's membership, drawn from the former members of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, was allied to the Taliban in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda. The members had shared the Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and carried loyalty to Al Qaeda.[7][18][49] A majority of the members of Harkat are said to have followed Azhar into the newly founded group, leaving Harkat under-funded and under-supported.[18][30]
Organisation[edit]
Leadership[edit]
JeM's founder and leader (emir) is Maulana Masood Azhar, who had earlier been a leader of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. Having trained at the same religious seminary (Jamia Uloom-ul-Islamia in Karachi) as the Taliban founder Mullah Omar, he had long-standing connections to Taliban and Al Qaeda.[83] He had fought in Afghanistan and set up Harkat affiliates in Chechnya, Central Asia and Somalia. He was reputed to have taught the Somalis how to shoot down American Black Hawk helicopters.[44] He was regarded as a close associate of Osama bin Laden, when he was sent to Britain for fund raising in the early 1990s.[84] In 1994 Azhar went to Indian-administered Kashmir on a "mission" and got arrested by Indian security forces. Reportedly, Osama bin Laden wanted Azhar freed and ordered Al Qaeda to arrange the hijacking that led to his release. Subsequently, Azhar was lionized in Pakistan and promoted by the ISI as the leader of the new group Jaish-e-Mohammed.[44] Azhar was specially designated as a "global Islamic terrorist" by the US Treasury Department in 2010.[83]
JeM is run by Azhar's family like a family enterprise.[85] Masood Azhar's brother, Abdul Rauf Asghar, is a senior leader of JeM and its intelligence coordinator. He was one of the hijackers of the flight IC 814 and served as the "acting leader" of JeM in Masood Azhar's absence in 2007. Since 2008, he has been involved with organising suicide attacks in India, including the 2016 Pathankot attack, where he was found to have directed the militants via telephone. Abdul Rauf Asghar has also been designated as a "global terrorists" by the US Treasury department.[86][87] In 2023 one of it commander Shahid
Latif was mysteriously assassinated in Daska town, Sialkot district[88]
Membership[edit]
The launch of JeM in Karachi in 2000 was attended by 10,000 armed followers.[89] The majority of the early membership was drawn from Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.[18] Having fought in Afghanistan alongside the Taliban and Al Qaeda, these members carried loyalty to those organisations and enmity towards the United States.[7]
Approximately three-quarters of JeM's membership is drawn from Punjab in Pakistan, from Multan, Bahawalpur and Rahim Yar Khan districts. This region being the main ethnic origin of the Pakistani military corps, ISI believed that the shared ethnicity would make the JeM aligned to the military's strategic goals. There are also a large number of Afghans and Arabs.[47][90] Several western militants of Pakistani origin have also joined the organisation. Prominent among them are Rashid Rauf, who was involved with a 2006 plot to blow up transatlantic airliners, Shehzad Tanweer, who was involved with the 2005 London Underground bombings, and Ahmed Omar Sheikh, convicted of murdering Daniel Pearl.[28]
Following the split in 2002, the majority of the original fighters left the parent organisation and joined renegade groups. When the organisation was revived by 2009, JeM was believed to have between one and two thousand fighters and several thousand supporting personnel.[59] Masood Azhar claimed having 300 suicide attackers at his command.[42]
Infrastructure[edit]
JeM originally operated training camps in Afghanistan, jointly with the other militant groups. After the fall of the Taliban government, it relocated them to Balakot and Peshawar in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.[91] By 2009, it developed a new headquarters in Bahawalpur in Pakistani Punjab, 420 miles south of Islamabad. These include a madrassa in the centre of the city and a 6.5 acre walled complex that serves as a training facility, including water training and horse back riding. Bahawalpur also serves as a rest and recuperation facility for jihadists fighting in Afghanistan, away from the areas of US drone attacks. It is also close to the bases of other militant groups with which JeM is believed to have operational ties: Lashkar-e-Taiba in Muridke, Sipah-e-Sahaba in Gojra, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi also based in Punjab. There are at least 500–1000 other madrassas in Bahawalpur, most of which teach a violent version of Islam to children.[28][92]
Publications[edit]
Like other jihadi outfits in the country, JeM distills its ideology through the print media, its publications including the weekly Al-Qalam in Urdu and English, monthly Ayeshatul Binat in Urdu for women and weekly Musalman Bachy for children.[93]
Other E-publications are made on telegram channels usually stating their successes in their operations against Indian
army and publishing statements of the leadership of the organization[94]
Links to other organisations[edit]
When JeM started, it had strong ties to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, sharing their training camps in Afghanistan, and exchanging intelligence, training and coordination.[95] Bruce Riedel suggests that the 2001 Indian Parliament attack was possibly a "payback" to Al-Qaeda for its earlier help in getting Masood Azhar released. With the Indian reaction to the attack, Pakistan was forced to move its forces from the Afghan border to the Indian border, relieving pressure on Al-Qaeda.[96]
Most of the JeM members with loyalties to the Taliban left to join renegade groups in 2002. However, Masood Azhar's group was noticed recruiting fighters for the Afghan jihad in 2008.[83][28] In 2010, Pakistan's Interior minister Rehman Malik stated that the JeM, along with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, were allied to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.[8][97] Within South Punjab, the JeM is closely allied to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba. Scholars Abou Zahab and Roy state that the three organisations appear to be "the same party" focusing on different sectors of activity.[98]
JeM continues to have links to its ancestor, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. In addition, the group has operational ties to Lashkar-e-Taiba, which it employed in launching the 2001 Indian Parliament attack.[42] It joined the ISI-sponsored United Jihad Council, an umbrella organisation of 13–16 militant organisations that fight in Indian-administered Kashmir.[99]
Khuddam ul-Islam is a militant splinter group of the Jaish-e-Mohammed. It is a Proscribed Organisation in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000[33] and said to be politically aligned with Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman's faction of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam.[100] Some sources believe that Khuddam ul-Islam is simply a restructuring of JeM and that the group is under the command of Mufti Abdul Rauf Asghar, the younger brother of JeM's founder, Maulana Masood Azhar.[101][102]