Jaish-e-Mohammad back with online magazine

Indian intelligence officials told The Indian Express that the resumption of Jaish’s online publication — it includes a column by its commander Maulana Masood Azhar, held by Pakistan — is the latest evidence that the organisation’s on-ground operations are continuing normally.

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Sources said Jaish’s 16-acre seminary in Bahawalpur has been holding religious discussions on “the virtues of armed jihad” each month, while vehicles carrying armed men have been sighted heading out of the town to their training base in the Cholistan desert.

Last week, flags bearing the Jaish’s black logo were hoisted on the bridge connecting Karachi with Hub Chowki, linking the city with the province of Balochistan.

In line with al-Qalam’s normal editorial practice, the magazine leads with a column by ‘Saadi’ – a pen-name used for the past several years by the Azhar, who top Pakistani diplomat Sartaj Aziz had said last month was in “protective custody”.

Azhar is believed to be living in an ISI-run safe house in Islamabad, though no charges have been filed against him.

Azhar’s article, ‘Mohabbat ka zamaana aa gaya hai’, calls on followers not to be disspirited by what he describes as the Pakistan government’s ongoing campaign against armed jihad. He writes of his suffering in Kot Bhawal jail, where he was held by former military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf’s government, in the wake of the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament.

In prison, Azhar writes, he was manacled to a bedstead, his clothes drenched with blood. It was then, he claims, that he invented the phrase ‘Mohabbat ka zamaana’ as an ironic take on the government’s policies.

The Jaish chief concludes the article by warning Pakistan’s government to beware of the course of action it has taken. The mujahideen, he writes, are defending Pakistan’s frontiers against “its eternal enemy India, and the enemy created by the government’s policies, the regime in Afghanistan”.

For the most part, the new issue of al-Qalam is devoted to religion — there are articles on good conduct and deeds, and warnings against adopting a western lifestyle. There are, however, four small sections devoted to covering the week’s news from Kashmir, Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq and Syria.

The magazine is, interestingly, free of the invective against India that characterised issues leading up to the Pathankot attacks. However, the website contains links to an old speech by Azhar, delivered in memory of Afzal Guru, who was hanged for his role in the Parliament attack.