The latest terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam has once again brought the spotlight on Pakistan-based terror groups fomenting trouble in India.
While Pakistan has over two dozen terror groups, many of them proscribed internationally and even by the United Nations, two of the deadliest terrorist outfits that have executed many major terror attacks in India over the years are Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT).
Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM)
Founded in 2000 by Masud Azhar after his release from Kashmir prison, JEM aims to unite Kashmir with Pakistan and expel foreign troops from Afghanistan. JEM has openly declared war against the United States.
Pakistan outlawed it in 2002, and by 2003, JeM had splintered into Khuddam ul-Islam (KuI), headed by Azhar, and Jamaat ul-Furqan (JuF), led by Abdul Jabbar. Pakistan banned KuI and JuF in November 2003.
JeM continues to operate openly in parts of Pakistan despite the 2002 ban on its activities. Since JeM founder Masood Azhar’s release in 2000, the organization has conducted many lethal attacks, including the suicide bombing on the Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly building in Srinagar in October 2001 that killed more than 30 people.
In July 2004, Pakistani authorities arrested a JeM member in connection with the 2002 abduction and murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl. In 2006, JeM claimed responsibility for several attacks, including the killing of several Indian police officials in Srinagar.
Its activists were also involved in the 2007 Red Mosque uprising in Islamabad. Asmatullah Moravia, a militant currently associated with Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan, split from the group after the Red Mosque incident because of disagreements over how to react to it.
In 2009, Pakistani authorities detained several JeM members suspected of taking part in the March 3 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore.
In June 2008, JeM shifted its focus from Kashmir to Afghanistan to step up attacks against US and Coalition forces. Rogue factions of JeM, in conjunction with other regional groups, also conducted attacks against Western interests in Pakistan, as well as Pakistani government institutions. That is what haunts the Pakistan authorities.
JeM has at least several hundred armed supporters located in Pakistan, India’s southern Kashmir, its Doda region, and the Kashmir Valley. Supporters are mostly Pakistanis and Kashmiris, but also include Afghans and Arab veterans of the Afghan war against the Soviets. The group uses light and heavy machine guns, assault rifles, mortars, improvised explosive devices, and rocket-propelled grenades in its attacks. The US State Department designated JeM as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2001.
Lashkar-e-Tayyaba
The second-deadliest terrorist organization in Pakistan is Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. Affiliated organizations sharing the group’s “ideological inclinations and motivations” include the Milli Muslim League, a Pakistan-based political party, and Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD), the group’s “charity wing.”
The group differs from most other militant organizations in Pakistan in following the Islamic interpretation of Ahl-i Hadith (which is similar to Wahhabism and Salafism) and in forsaking attacks on the government of Pakistan.
The regions where it has been operating are Pakistan, India (particularly Kashmir), Afghanistan, Australia, the United States, Bangladesh, and Nepal.
LeT has been involved in the active fighting in the Afghan Civil War (1989–1992), attacks in Kashmir, active support of the Kashmir insurgency, and the Afghan War 2001 – 2021.
LeT terrorists have conducted numerous attacks ever since their inception in 1985-86. Notable attacks are those executed in Kashmir, the Red Fort in Delhi in December 2000, the Indian Parliament in 2001, the Delhi bombings in 2005, the Hyderabad bombing in 2007, the Mumbai attack on 26/11 in 2008, and the Pune attack in 2010.
Its exact size is unknown, but the group probably has several thousand members, predominantly Pakistani nationals seeking a united Kashmir under Pakistani rule. The group recruits internationally, as evidenced by the arrest in the United States of Jubair Ahmed in 2011, Headley’s arrest in 2009, and the indictment in 2003 of 11 LeT terrorists in Virginia.
In 2003, authorities also disrupted a LeT plot to attack Australia, and in 2009, LeT put on hold a plot to attack Denmark in retaliation for controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
LeT maintains facilities in Pakistan, including terrorist training camps, schools, and medical clinics. LeT coordinates its charitable activities through its front organization, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), which spearheaded humanitarian relief efforts for the victims of the October 2005 earthquake in Kashmir. JuD activities, however, have been limited since December 2008 by the UN’s designation of the group as an alias for LeT.
Objectives
While the primary area of operations of LeT’s jihadist activities is the Kashmir Valley, their professed goal is not limited to challenging India’s sovereignty over Jammu and Kashmir. LeT sees the issue of Kashmir as part of a broader global struggle.
Once Kashmir is liberated, LeT seeks to use it “as a base of operations to conquer India and force Muslim rule to the Indian subcontinent,” writes Stephen Tankel in his monograph ‘Lashkar-e-Taiba: Past Operations and Future Prospects.’
LeT’s ideology is fundamentally anti-Western. It holds the British Raj responsible for the decline of the Mughal Empire in India. Consequently, LeT opposes any form of Western or British influence in Pakistan and the broader South Asian region.
In its publications and on various platforms, the organization has consistently articulated its primary political goals, which include the destruction of India, Hinduism, and Judaism. The organization considers jihad a religious duty for all Muslims, with the establishment of a caliphate as its central religious and political objective.
Christine Fair, who has analyzed LeT propaganda since 1995, notes that the militant organization has consistently condemned what it describes as a “Brahmanic-Talmudic-Crusader” alliance of Hindus, Jews, and Christians, whom it accuses of collaborating to undermine the ummah.
In the pamphlet “Why Are We Waging Jihad?” the group states that all of India, along with many other countries, were once ruled by the Muslims and were Muslim lands, which is why it is their duty to take back these lands from the non-Muslims.
It has declared the United States, India, and Israel as “existential enemies of Islam”.
LeT believes that jihad is the duty of all Muslims and must be waged until six objectives are met: Establishing Islam as the dominant way of life in the world, forcing disbelievers to pay jizya, exacting revenge for killed Muslims, punishing enemies for violating oaths and treaties, defending all Muslim states, and recapturing occupied Muslim territory.
Pahalgam Attack
Islamic jihadists in tens of thousands undergo sustained brainwashing in hundreds of jihadist seminaries spread all over Pakistan, manned by rabid fundamentalists.
According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a Delhi-based think tank, the Resistance Front (TRF), an offshoot of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, emerged in the region in 2019. In the Pahalgam attack, jihadists gunned down 26 tourists after ascertaining their nationality and religion. About a dozen have been wounded, some of them critically.
In a message posted on Telegram, TRF stated that it opposed the issuance of residency permits to “outsiders” who could potentially alter the demographic composition of the disputed region. Consequently, violence will be directed toward those attempting to settle illegally, it said.
TRF became active after the Indian Parliament passed the State Reorganization Act of 2019. But there was no scope at all to subvert the Domicile rule and create space for non-state residents to obtain PR certificates.
Around 2021-22, the TRF activists were using small weapons like pistols and hand grenades to perpetrate mayhem in Kashmir.
“This is basically a front of the LeT. These are groups which have been created in recent years, particularly when Pakistan was under pressure from the Financial Action Task Force and they were trying to create a pattern of denial that they were involved in terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir,” said Ajai Sahni, head of the South Asia Terrorism Portal.
“All TRF operations are essentially LeT operations. There will be some measure of operational freedom as to where they hit on the ground, but the sanction would have come from the LeT,” Sahni said.
Conclusion
The religious-historical background of the Islamic concept of jihad, the identified targets of jihadism, the worldwide network of the jihadist movement, and the ideological support provided by the self-styled theologians of conservative Islam are all a potential threat to the democratic world.
This phenomenon is also posing an existential threat to moderate and rational segments of the Islamic ummah. Democracy is pitted in an eyeball-to-eyeball stance against antiquated theocracy. Nobody can predict the outcome of this complicated phenomenon.
Nevertheless, the tragedy is an eye-opener for the Indian authorities to understand the dangers of handling Islamic jihad with kid gloves. It is a stark warning that misleading the people by selling the falsehood that peace has returned to Kashmir and taking credit for it is a game of self-destruction.
By “authorities,” we explicitly mean all four organs of the state, not any particular one.
- Prof. KN Pandita (Padma Shri) is the former director of the Center of Central Asian Studies at Kashmir University.
- This article contains the author’s personal views and does not represent EurAsian Times’ policies/views/opinions in any way.
- The author can be reached at knp627 (at) gmail.com
