Terror Outfits in Kashmir: A Comprehensive Analysis of Origin, Objectives, and Impact
The region of Kashmir has had a problem of terrorist organisations and extremism in the past and continues to be a hotspot for violence. Pakistani terror financing and the dispute over Kashmir has severed relations between India and Pakistan since independence and is still a point of contention between the two countries. Among the terror outfits operating in the region, many seem to have originated in Pakistan and allegedly with the help of the Pakistani state. The threat of these terrorist organisations has also decreased overtime and the Indian response to Pakistan and its governance over Kashmir has been dynamic and ever changing in nature. It is important to understand what organisations operate in the region, what their capabilities and tactics are and how the Indian state plans on neutralising these threats. This article aims to assess the history, present day operations and overall threat posed by major terror outfits that operate (or used to operate) in Kashmir.
Introduction
Since the early 90s, a plethora of terrorist groups have operated in the region of Kashmir. These groups have either the separation of Kashmir from India, or it’s ascension into Pakistan as their agenda, with the latter being more influential and popular. These terror groups are reported to have had close relations to the State of Pakistan and the ISI (Pakistan’s intelligence organisation). The Pakistani state tends to increase support for terror groups that align their agendas in the interest of Pakistan instead of terror outfits that plan to make Kashmir a separate state that isn’t a part of Pakistan. To understand the history of Kashmir as a zone of conflict between India and Pakistan is very convoluted and subjective in nature, but to study the history and activities of the major terror outfits operating in the area is relatively less complicated but equally important. The insurgency in Kashmir has been mostly for a separatist Kashmir or one that is part of Pakistan, since India’s interests have been carried out in the region by the Indian Armed Forces. This has led to a high amount of allegations and reports against Pakistan for terror financing in the region, which has plenty of evidence and proof. There is a plethora of terror groups that operate in the region; however, some have been particularly dangerous and destructive such as the Hizbul-Mujahideen, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, and the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). This paper will study these three organisations in detail and will contain an overview of other organisations as well.
The Hizbul Mujahideen
The Hizbul Mujahideen was one of the first terror outfits in the Kashmir region, started by Ahsan Dar and Mohammad Abdullah Bangroo with the help of Pakistan. In the 1990s, the Hizbul Mujahideen was one of, if not the most, powerful, and influential terror outfit in the region. At the time, Pakistan was looking for an alternative to the Jammu and Kashmir liberation Force (JKLF), which was not preferred since it was a pro independent Kashmir group, and was also secular, to which the Hizbul Mujahideen was preferred due to it supporting a Kashmir that was a part of Pakistan and also supported the Islamisation of Kashmir (Chandran, 2000).
While in the 90s the group carried out high level attacks in the Indian side of Kashmir, in recent times the group has become severely weak. Fighting the Indian Armed forces has weakened the group, as well as the group’s relations with other terror outfits (such as its relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan). One important split of the group occurred in 2001, when the commander at the Indian side of Kashmir, Majeed Dar, announced a unilateral ceasefire against the Indian Armed Forces which took Syed Salahuddin by surprise. This infighting in the group later led to an assassination of Mr Dar (BBC, 2012). When the group had just begun as a terror outfit the number of fighters were estimated to be around 10000, which in recent years has come down to a few hundred (Jamal, 2010). The Hizbul Mujahideen has now lost most of its power and influence in the region and is mostly involved in smaller attacks in Kashmir. In a recent failed attack, a terrorist from the Hizbul Mujahideen was captured by the Police and the Indian Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Kishtwar in Kashmir, and was found with a Chinese grenade, which might point to foreign financing of these terror groups from the Chinese side as well (The Economic Times, 2023). In a similar fashion to other terror groups operating in the region, The Hizbul Mujahideen was once a big threat to the Indian state, and has now become mostly irrelevant, with a few small (and sometimes failed) attacks in Kashmir.
III. The Lashkar-e-Taiba
The Lashkar-e-Taiba was formed in the 1990s by Hafiz Saeed as the military wing of a group called Markaz-ad-Dawa-wal-Irshad, from which it split in 2003. At first, the group was focused on the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, from which it shifted focus to fighting the Indian Government in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Its agenda plans to make Kashmir a part of The State of Pakistan and to establish an Islamic Caliphate in the Indian Subcontinent (Centre for International Security and Cooperation, 2018). The group’s first attack was in 1990, where they ambushed a group of Indian Air Force personnel. The group was known to only target Indian military personnel, until January 5th, 1996, where 16 Hindus were massacred at Doda in Jammu and Kashmir. For the next three years, there were continuous attacks on minorities including 17 Hindus massacred in January 1997, 8 Hindus in June 1997, 27 Hindus in April 1998 and a very high level attack killing 35 Sikhs at Chattisinghpora on the eve of then US President Bill Clinton’s visit to India (South Asia Terrorism Portal, accessed 2023).
(Read blog: Human Security Challenges at the India-Bangladesh Border: An In-Depth Analysis)
The LeT focuses on the State of Jammu and Kashmir but also challenges the power of the Indian State in general. It has used Hindu-Muslim tensions in India to carry out attacks throughout the country. Some of these attacks include the attack on the Red Fort in Delhi in December 2000 and then the attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001, where nine people were killed in the attack (WION, 2021). Perhaps the most popular and large-scale attack was in November 2008, in Mumbai, where ten attackers killed 166 people over five landmarks in Mumbai, with a special focus towards westerners and Jews. The testimony of a surviving attacker and an arrested LeT operative confirmed the involvement of the Pakistani ISI in the 2008 attacks and LeT operations in general (Centre for International Security and Cooperation, 2018).
The LeT has been quite vocal about its goals regarding other issues as well, such as holding political rallies against NATO agreements and cooperation between Pakistan and the US. The LeT has been operating freely inside Pakistan with barely any action taken against it by the Pakistani state. While the US itself has placed the group in the list of foreign terrorist organisations the Pakistani State has used groups such as the LeT as a weapon against India. Currently the LeT is far less active than what it was in the 1990s and the 2000s. In recent times terrorism and insurgency in Kashmir has reduced significantly. In recent times the LeT carried out attacks in a military headquarter in Uri, Jammu and Kashmir in September 2016 (Global Terrorism Database, 2018). This incident led to the Indian military carrying out a surgical strike inside Pakistan two weeks later. However, the LeT has been one of the most dangerous terrorist organisations that has planned attacks outside Jammu and Kashmir and carried out the largest terror attack in India’s history in 2008. While many claim that the LeT is in a period of stagnation, the organisation is still well managed and is capable of planning major terror attacks. The international community has spoken up against these organisations and against Pakistani terror financing and yet these terror attacks have not been stopped.
The Jaish-e-Mohammed
The Jaish-e-Mohammed was formed in February 2004 and is a Sunni extremist organisation that is based inside Pakistan and its agenda is to annex the state of Jammu and Kashmir and make it a part of Pakistan. The JeM lists the removal of Hindus and other non-Muslims from the subcontinent, to ensure the establishment of Islamist rule in Pakistan and to drive out western influence out of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The group was founded by an Islamist scholar named Masood Azhar. At first Masood Azhar was a part of another group called the Harakat al-Mujahideen, but he was arrested by the Indian security forces. His release was negotiated when the group hijacked an Indian airlines plane that was carrying 155 passengers and negotiated for his release. Azhar then met Osama bin laden in Afghanistan, and decided to form a new militant organisation which was the JeM in Karachi. Members of the group carried out their first attack in April 2000 in a suicide bombing and then in October 2001 bombed a legislative building in the state of Jammu and Kashmir which in turn killed 30 people. 2 months later in December the group along with the LeT carried out an attack on the Indian parliament (as mentioned earlier) through which it gained notoriety for being a dangerous and lethal terrorist organisation in the region (Centre for International Security and Cooperation, 2018).
Pakistani authorities had arrest Azhar in 2001, however the high court in Lahore deemed this arrest unlawful after which the authorities released Azhar. At the time Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf had outlawed the JeM with other terrorist organisations, after which the JeM attempted to assassinate President Musharraf twice. This outlaw of the terror organisation did signal to some degree a withdrawal of the support of these groups by the Pakistani state.
The JeM was put on the US FTO list as a response to the high-level attacks it had practiced, to avoid which Azhar renamed the group to Tehrik-Ul-Furqan. However, the group suffered major setbacks due to a lot of arrests of high ranking JeM members by the government in Pakistan. Azhar then expelled 12 senior leaders, which led to two offshoots of the group being formed, named Khuddam ul-Islam, which was headed by Azhar, and the Jamaat Ul-Furqan which was led by Maulana Abdul Jabbar, which rejected the leadership of Azhar.
After an alleged meeting of high-level extremist organisations in Pakistan, the JeM focused more attacks on US outposts in Pakistan and Afghanistan but had not stopped its attacks on Indian territory. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit, the JeM launched attacks on the Pathankot Air Force Base in India and then the Indian consulate in Mazir-i-sharif in Afghanistan (Riedel, 2016). In September of 2016 the JeM attacked a Brigade headquarters in India, which ended up in the death of 19 Indian soldiers. The Indian government demanded the stopping of Pakistani Support to these terror groups however the Pakistani state has not stopped terror financing in the support of these groups. The group has been active in recent times, carrying out small scale attacks against India. The JeM is also a very close ally of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which means the current occupation of Afghanistan by the Taliban acts as an advantage for the group. In the context of foreign entanglement China has vetoed the move to list Azhar as a global terrorist, which shows the triangular cooperation between Pakistan, China and terror organisations acting against the Indian state. While the different stances on Kashmir as a part of India continue to be subjective, it is important to note that India has not practiced terror financing as a method of force against Pakistan or China.
The Harakat Ul-Mujahideen
The Harijan Ul Mujahideen was an organisation that was formed in 1985 after it split from another group called the Harkat-Ul-Jihad-Al-Islami. the group’s main goals were to establish an Islamic rule of Pakistan on the state of Jammu and Kashmir, to attack the Indian state and to carry out war against the US in Afghanistan. The HuM has carried out hijackings kidnapping and executions of government workers civilians and soldiers from India. It has also allegedly received support from the Pakistani ISI. The HuM is also one of the oldest allies of the Al Qaeda and has links to the LeT, the JeM and the Hizbul Mujahideen. The group is the only one till now that has actually been disbanded and is currently not active, with its last major attack being Carried out in 2015. A major portion of the resources allocated to the HuM were lost when it was disbanded to form the Jaish-e-Mohammed. the amount of soldiers that were loyal to the HuM have greatly decreased (Centre for International Security and Cooperation, 2019).
Much like others, the group was first formed to challenge to soviet occupancy of Afghanistan. The group then planned to establish a Pakistani rule on the state of Jammu and Kashmir and staged four hostage situations in 1994 to negotiate for the release of some leaders from the Indian government, to which the Indian government refused, and all four attempts were deemed unsuccessful. in December 1999 the group gained notoriety for an airplane hijacking, where the terrorists forced the plane to land in Kandahar in Afghanistan. The US listed the organisation as a terrorist organisation due to its close links with Osama bin Laden after the 2001 terror attacks in New York City, Pakistan also banned the group shortly after. In December 2015, the group carried out an attack in India in Poonch and Handwor, which was its last public attack. ever since, members have joined parties such as the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf to carry out their agenda in a less violent way.
Other active organisations
The terror financing the Pakistan carries out is perhaps the consistent activity the Pakistani government is capable of. Smaller organisations such as the People’s Anti-Fascist Front have carried out attacks in recent times such as the attack in May 2023 on an Indian Army truck travelling through the State of Jammu and Kashmir in Bhata Durian and a subsequent attack in May against five elite para commandos of the Army’s special forces. The attacks were carried out by the People’s Anti-fascist Front which is a front for the Jaish-e-Mohammed as it has been banned (Sharma, 2023).
Another organisation is the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation front which traces its origin back to the Jammu and Kashmir National Liberation Front, an organisation that has lobbied for an independent Kashmir. It asks for armed rebellion against the Indian Armed Forces but is still a secular organisation and does not want to make Kashmir a part of the Pakistani state, which has led to it losing the support it had from Pakistan.
VII. Conclusion
In Conclusion, there are many terror outfits that operate in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, that operate against the Indian administration of the region. Most of these organisations have an agenda that plans to make a Kashmir that is ruled by Islamic law and make the state of Jammu and Kashmir a part of Pakistan. These groups are mostly supported by the Pakistani government and the ISI which provide them with the sufficient resources that they need to combat the Indian military and state. While the Indian government has asked the Pakistani state to stop the terror financing that is going on in the region, these demands have been unsuccessful in stopping the terrorist organisations from carrying out attacks in India. What has been successful in stopping these terrorist organisations has been the continuous fight that the Indian military has put against these terror outfits to help the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and the whole of India be safe. While the threat of terror has certainly not disappeared, there is relatively a high amount of safety in comparison to the 1990s and the early 2000s thanks to the action by the Indian Armed Forces and Police. To expect Pakistan to stop terror financing might be unrealistic, action taken by Indian and International actors has helped curb the threat of terror in the region, and even though the future seems uncertain what is for sure is the effort put by the Indian government and other victims of terror to help stop these terror outfits from increasing influence.
Works Cited
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