India fights the curse of Kandahar, Maulana Azhar

The security agencies believe the most worrying aspect of Azhar’s release was his emphasis on indigenising of the jehadi outfits here. “He is keen to make Jaish an indigenous outfit. In fact, he has conducted the largest recruitments in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and the Valley and has been successful in creating fidayeen (suicide squads) of the local militants as well,” the officer said.

The police claim 28 militants belonging to the Jaish have been killed in encounters with the security forces in the Valley since its inception last February. This includes three members of suicide squads. The group launched its activities with a suicide attack by a local militant, Afaq Ahmad Shah. He rammed into the main entrance of the Army’s 15 Corps headquarters in Srinagar with an explosive-laden Maruti car.

Maulana Masood Azhar had been an ideologue of the pan-Islamic Harkat-ul-Mujahideen outfit and was arrested in Anantnag in 1994, along with Sajjad Afghani. Harkat had made many unsuccessful bids to get him out of prison and finally managed to get him freed, along with two top militant leaders, in the IA hijack deal. Interestingly, one among the hijackers was later identified as his cousin.

After his release at Kandahar, Azhar surfaced in Karachi where he addressed a few rallies and vowed to work for intensifying the jehad against India and the US. Perturbed by his anti-America rhetoric, the Pakistani establishment kept him restricted to Bhawalpur, banning his entry into Karachi.

Azhar tried to form an umbrella group and bring all the pan-Islamic outfits, like Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Harkat-e-Jehadi Islami and Al Badr, under one command. However, he did not succeed in forming a conglomerate and thus launched the new outfit, Jaish-e-Mohammad.

In fact, the Jaish was launched as a new group with recruitments from Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and Harkat-e-Jihadi Islami at Masjid-e-Falal, Karachi, on February 3 last year. Sources in the security forces here claim that Azhar, who had been a top motivator and fund-collector for Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, had actually managed to gather 300 Afghan commandos. “These militants have been kept in two camps at Murri and Domana and are led by two militant commanders — Safdar Bhai and Kamran Ali,” the sources said.

Azhar was even arrested by the authorities, but soon after his release he organised a huge congregation on May 16 at his ancestral town of Bhawalpur. His 66-year-old father, Allah Bakhsh Shabir, and 58-year-old mother, Ruqua Bibi, live with 11 children in the town and run a dairy and a poultry farm. Azhar has six sisters and five brothers, amongst whom at least one — youngest Jehangir Akbar, 23 — is pursuing religious studies at a madrassa.

With the support of two top religious leaders — Moulana Mohammad Yousuf Ludhyanivi and Dr Mufti Nizam-ud-din Shamzai of Jamiat-ul-Aloom Alama Binoori, Karachi, Azhar’s group has come up as the most influential jehadi group.

Jaish secured a lot of support after Moulana Ludhyanivi travelled to Afghanistan to seek support from the Taliban with whom he wielded a lot of clout. But within two days of his return, Ludhyanvi, who was also the chief patron of Jaish, was killed by motorcycle-borne assassins inside his office in Karachi.