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Militant and terrorist organizations |
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| The NLF | HuM | HM | JeM | LeT | JKLF | |
The National Liberation FrontFormed in 1965 by Mohammad Maqbool Bhat, the Front fought for an independent Kashmir. Bhat, who belonged to Trehgam, a border village in Kupwara district, was the first Kashmiri to pick up the gun. Even today he enjoys, in the eyes of Kashmiris, an image second only to the legendary Sheikh Abdullah. As a 20 year old, Bhat crossed over to Pakistan in 1958. He spent the next few years in Muzaffarabad, in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and formed, first, the Kashmir Independence Committee (which he merged into Sheikh Abdullah's Plebiscite Front) and then the National Liberation Front. In 1965, Bhat returned to India with a group of Front activists. But they ran into an army patrol. In the encounter that followed, an army officer was killed and Maqbool Bhat arrested. He was tried for murder and sentenced to death in Srinagar. Two weeks later, he escaped and returned to Pakistan occupied Kashmir -- only to be arrested there. He was dubbed an 'Indian agent' and tortured. Bhat was later released on the orders of Pakistan's supreme court. But that incident, as he wrote in a letter to a friend, made him see the other side of Pakistan: 'I was happy to be safe in my home but this happiness was short-lived... What happened in the Black Fort [where he was tortured] has shaken me and forced me to rethink on who was a friend and who was a foe.' Bhat returned to India and was arrested. He was shifted to Delhi's Tihar jail to wait for his sentence. His sympathisers, who had by then set up the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, kidnapped Ravindra Mhatre, an Indian diplomat in Birmingham, United Kingdom, in January 1984 to secure Bhat's release. The move backfired. Mhatre was killed and Bhat was executed hurriedly on February 11, 1984.
Harkat-ul-Ansar/Harkat-ul-MujahideenIt started out in the early 1990s in Karachi as the Harkat-ul-Ansar, 'to defend the rights of Muslims the world over.' It is more or less a Sunni organisation, theologically close to the Deoband school of thought. The United States and Israel were designated its main enemies. Once the US declared it a terrorist organisation in 1997, it changed its name to Harkat-ul Mujahideen. Harkat members were initially Afghans trained by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate and the American Central Intelligence Agency to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Later, it became a pan Islamic force and Harkat members were sent to other parts of the Islamic world, from Algeria to Bosnia to Kashmir. Of an estimated 5,000 volunteers, around 350 terrorists are fighting in Kashmir. The Harkat's agenda is not limited to Kashmir. For it, Kashmir is just a stepping stone, a gateway to establish the 'rule of Allah throughout the world.' It wants 'to unite Muslims through jihad to win back the last glory of the Muslim world.' Today the Harkat, though active in Kashmir, has been overshadowed by terrorist outfits like the Laskhar-e-Tayiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad.
Hizbul MujahideenIn the late 1980s, Pakistan was looking for an alternative to the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front which was a secular, militant outfit that was pro-independence rather than pro-Pakistan. In 1988, Master Ahsan Dar of Pattan in the Kashmir valley crossed the border into Pakistan, for intensive training. He returned to Kashmir with detailed instructions that led to the founding of what was billed as a 'hard-hitting fighting organisation' to spearhead the struggle. He was joined by another veteran, Mohammed Abdullah Bangroo. The duo's efforts led to the creation of the Hizbul Mujahideen in April 1990. Bangroo was named military advisor while Dar was made chief of operations. With Pakistan backing it fully, the Hizb had no problems finding funds and recruits, with the result that within a year of its founding, the outfit could field 10,000 armed and trained cadres in the valley. A supreme advisory council was established in 1991, as the Hizb's ultimate decision-making body. The council replaced Ahsan Dar with Syed Salahuddin. The Hizb was divided into an administrative and a military wing, and the Jamaat-e-Islami, a fundamentalist political party operational in both Kashmir and Pakistan, controlled both. The Hizb has as its stated aims the Islamisation of Kashmir and its merger with Pakistan. Salahuddin also set up a youth wing, the Jamait-ul-Mujahideen, with Nasir-ul-Islam as its first chief. A woman's wing, the Binatul Islam, was also created. In its early years, the fact that the Jamaat-i-Islami and its chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed was close to both the ISI and then Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif combined to give the Hizb a position of prominence in the valley. The outfit's decline began with the emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Jamaat supported opponents of the Taliban, and once the ISI put itself behind the Taliban, the Jamaat's influence, as also that of the Hizb, began to wane. Simultaneously, Pakistan's growing disenchantment with Kashmir-based militants and its decision to back foreign terrorists reduced the Hizb to playing the roles of couriers and porters for the foreigners. Hizb in its glory days had its training camps in Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Once the Taliban captured power, most of the training activities shifted to Afghanistan, where the Hizb was persona non grata. Ideological differences between the Hizb and organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Harkat-ul Ansar accelerated the Hizb's alienation from the Pakistan establishment. Attrition also played a hand, as Hizb cadres were killed by Indian security forces and by other counterinsurgents, known as the Ikhwan. An estimated 2,000 Hizb militants have been reported killed by Ikhwan members alone. In September 1996, the Jammu and Kashmir government declared the Hizb an unlawful association, and banned it under the provisions of the Jammu and Kashmir Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1983.
The cumulative effect of all this was that funds began to dry up, new recruits became increasingly harder to come by, and Hizb's influence in the valley began to wane.
In the late 1990s and into the new century, when first the
Laskhar-e-Tayiba and then the Jaish-e-Mohammad started operating in the valley, Hizb was pushed to the sidelines. Its call for ceasefire in 2000 further alienated it among the hawks in Pakistan.
The Hizb's eclipse was complete when differences of opinion developed between Salahuddin and his deputy Abdul
Majid Dhar, which led to Dhar's dismissal as chief
commander. Despite all these, Hizb is still the largest militant outfit in the
valley in terms of manpower.
The end of the Indian
Airlines hijacking drama on December 31, 1999 saw the birth of
Jaish-e-Mohammad, the deadliest militant outfit in Kashmir today.
It was founded by Maulana Masood Azhar, one of the three militants
India released in return for the crew and passengers of Flight 814. An ultra-fundamentalist, known more for his organisational than military skills, he was part of the Harkat-ul Ansar when he was arrested in Kashmir.
Since it began in February 2000, the Jaish has overshadowed other terrorist groups in Kashmir, including the Lashkar-e-Tayiba. It brought the concept of fidayeen to India, with the April 19, 2000 suicide attack on the Indian army headquarters in Badami Bagh, Srinagar.
Two of its most infamous attacks were the blast at the Jammu and Kashmir assembly in Srinagar and the attempt on Parliament, for which it had joined hands with the Lashkar-e-Tayiba.
Most of Jaish's cadres and material resources have been drawn from the militant groups Harakat ul-Jihad al-Islami (and the Harakat-ul Mujahideen. Osama bin Laden is said to have financed the Jaish.
With several hundred armed supporters in Pakistan-occupied
Kashmir, Pakistan and Kashmir, it is one of the fastest growing terrorist
organisations. Most of its members are drawn from the ranks of the
Harkat, mostly from Pakistan and Afghanistan, and are highly motivated. They believe in jihad, which they are taught would win them a place in heaven.
Jaish terrorists include veterans of the Afghan war, well-versed in light and heavy machineguns, assault rifles, mortars, improvised explosive devices, and rocket-propelled grenades.
It was in the 1980s that Osama bin Laden put finishing touches to the organization that goes by the name of International
Islamic Front For Jihad Against the US and Israel.
One small component of bin Laden's larger game plan was the
founding in 1987 of the Markaz-e-Dawat-ul-Arshad, by Zafar Iqbal and
Hafiz Mohammad Saeed of the University of Engineering and Technology of
Lahore and Abdullah Azam of the International Islamic
University.
Azam was killed in an explosion in Peshawar in 1989.
Following his death, Iqbal and Saeed have led the
Markaz while continuing to teach at the university.
The Lashkar-e-Tayiba -- Army of the Pure -- is Markaz's
militant wing. The stated goal of Markaz and its armed wing, the
Lashkar, is the establishment of a pure Islamic order, starting with
Kashmir.
Its 190-acre fortified campus in Muridke, 35 kilometres from
Lahore, houses six mosques, a hospital and specialised training camps
for Lashkar cadres.
Interrogation of Lashkar cadres captured over a period of
time -- including Ramzi Yousef, who bombed the World Trade Centre in February 1993 -- has indicated that the in-house academies provide two kinds of training: A 21-day basic course called 'Daura Aam,' and a three-month advanced course called the 'Daura Khas.'
The advanced -- and highly specialised -- course deals with guerrilla warfare, the use of high-end arms and ammunition, ambush, and survival techniques. Yousef revealed that select cadres receive specific training in aircraft-hijack techniques.
The group, thanks to its base in Pakistan and its position within the bin Laden umbrella, contains a high proportion of non-Kashmiris -- a fact that gives the outfit its hard, take-no-prisoners core. Lashkar terrorists are demonstrably more ready to die at the hands of Indian security forces than to be captured by them.
The Lashkar has in the latter part of the last decade taken over from the Hizb as the most visible, and active, terrorist outfit in Kashmir.
On November 3, 1999, it attacked the Indian army's 15th Corps Command headquarters, which oversees all military operations in Kashmir. Seven Indian soldiers and at least two terrorists were killed in this first-ever attack by terrorists on an army headquarters.
Though the Lashkar has been high profile for several years now, it was only in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks that it came under international spotlight. Accused by India of being responsible for the attack on the Jammu and Kashmir assembly in October and on Parliament in December, the United States finally moved on December 20, 2001, when President George W Bush announced the blocking of its assets. Lashkar leaders were taken into custody in Pakistan soon after President Pervez Musharraf's January 12, 2002 speech.
The Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front was formed in Birmingham,
United Kingdom on May 29, 1977. But it was much later, in 1989, that the
Indian government began to view it as a threat.
That year, on December 8, the JKLF kidnapped Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of then Union home minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed. It demanded the release of five arrested JKLF militants as ransom -- to which the Indian government gave in.
A few months on, JKLF terrorists kidnapped the Kashmir University vice-chancellor and his secretary. Both men were killed.
On April 16, 1990, then Jammu and Kashmir governor Jagmohan outlawed the JKLF.
On August 6, 1990, security forces arrested from Srinagar three JKLF leaders -- Mohammed Yasin Malik, Abdul Hamid Sheikh and Kaka Hussain. From jail, Malik submitted to New Delhi a statement refuting the many charges against his organisation. The government, meantime, had not bothered to extend the ban on the JKLF after its first notification ran out. On January 12, 1992, the JKLF was declared a 'lawful organisation.'
Three years on, the JKLF faced a crisis. The faction headed by Yasin Malik announced a unilateral ceasefire with the Indian security forces. JKLF chairman Amanullah Khan, who lives in Pakistan, responded by expelling him from the outfit, which led to a vertical split in the organisation.
The JKLF claims to have offices in 87 locations in different countries. It has, since 1995, quit the path of violence, and is trying to carve a role for itself in Kashmir politics.
Besides the above, Jammu and Kashmir has seen the rise and fall of many militant and terrorist organisations. Some like Al-Faran came into being for a single mission; but most came for a broader cause, the 'fight for independence.' Some of them:
Tehrik-ul-Mujahideen
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