Profile of a terror outfit

Published : Dec 22, 2002 00:00 IST

JUST WEEKS AFTER top terrorist Masood Azhar was released by the Indian government in the December 1999 hostages-for-prisoners swap that followed the hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight IC-814, he announced the formation of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM). Azhar's handlers from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had hoped that the organisation would forge a new unity of the Islamic Right. Instead, its existence has mirrored the factional politics of the organisation, notably a power struggle between pro-U.S. elements and the fundamentalists.

Azhar's first public pronouncements after arriving in Pakistan set the stage for battle. Speaking at the Binori Masjid in Karachi on January 5, 2000, he attacked the U.S. as an enemy of Islam. That provoked furious protests from the U.S. For the moderates in the ISI, things soon got worse.

Azhar, who studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science had been sent to India to bring about the unification of the Harkatul Mujahideen and the Harkatul Jihad Islami into the new organisation of Harkatul Ansar. Shortly after he announced the formation of the JeM in February 2000, the British citizen who turned leading luminary of the Pakistani religious Right visited Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. The visit, intelligence sources say, was facilitated by Nazimuddin Shamzai, the head of the Binori Masjid, who led the pre-war delegation of Pakistani religious leaders to Afghanistan ahead of the U.S. attack on Afghanistan.

Even worse, Azhar tied up with the ultra-Right Sipah-i-Sahiban of Pakistan, dedicated to a sectarian battle against the country's Shia minority. The Sipah-i-Sahiban chief Azam Tariq not only provided security for Azhar during his political visits, but announced that he would place 100,000 cadre at the his disposal for the jehad in Jammu and Kashmir.

Shortly afterwards, the pro-U.S. faction of the ideologically fissured ISI ensured that Azhar went to jail. Six weeks later, however, the religious-chauvinist faction bailed him out. If nothing else, the affair illustrated just who pulled the strings in the ISI. The Islamic Right had its own old boys' network in place. Interestingly, Taliban head Omar and Azhar were both Shamzai's students at a seminary attached to the Binori Masjid.

The bulk of the Harkat cadre, particularly those who operate in Jammu and Kashmir, were now ordered to join the new outfit en bloc. Fazl-ur-Rehman, the head of the pre-unification Harkatul Mujahideen and Azhar's main intra-organisation rival, was demoted and placed under the operational command of his one-time Naib Amir (deputy chief), Maulana Farooq Kashmiri. The action was taken, sources say, because Harkat cadre in some areas resisted handing over charge of assets and office space to the JeM.

Azhar announced his elevation in style. In April 2000, a 14-year old suicide bomber, Afaaq Ahmad, a resident of Khanyar in downtown Srinagar, blew himself up outside the city's Army headquarters. That December, another suicide bomber, codenamed Abdullah Bhai and identified as 24-year old Mohammad Bilal from Birmingham in the United Kingdom, carried out a near-identical attack in the same area. On average, one suicide attack a month has taken place after the JeM introduced the fidayeen (suicide squad) culture to Jammu and Kashmir and gave extensive publicity to it, even though data show that their actual strategic impact has been minimal.

Interestingly, the organisation has maintained a remarkable command-level continuity within Jammu and Kashmir, despite the factional struggle in Pakistan. Ghazi Baba, who like Azhar is a resident of Bhawalpur in the Pakistan province in Punjab, has led operations in the Kashmir valley since 1992. He started off as the operations commander of the Harkatul Jihad Islami in 1992 and retained command of the outfit after it merged with the Harkatul Mujahideen to form the Harkatul Ansar in 1993. Then the Harkatul Ansar, proscribed by the U.S. following its kidnapping of Western hostages from Pahalgam, transformed itself into the Harkatul Mujahideen once again, but with Baba still in place. Azhar again left him in charge when the JeM was formed.

Little is known about Ghazi Baba himself. One major terrorist crime in which he is known to have participated personally is the 1998 massacre of 25 members of the Kashmiri Pandit community in the village of Wandhama in Anantnag. He is also believed to have ordered the October 2001 attack on the Legislative Assembly complex in Srinagar.

Intelligence officials in Srinagar told Frontline that they are perplexed by Delhi Police Commissioner Ajai Raj Sharma's recent pronouncement that Ghazi Baba was the JeM's "all-India chief". "Unlike the LeT, the JeM does not have full-time modules outside Jammu and Kashmir," one official told Frontline, "nor, at least so far, has it recruited cadre from outside the State." Indeed, the Parliament House attack is the first operation the JeM has executed outside Jammu and Kashmir.

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