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India-Pakistan

Jaish-e-Mohammed Joins Hands with Al Qaeda

2007-09-03

The militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, which is active in Jammu and Kashmir, and its two splinter groups have joined hands with international terror group al Qaeda to fight Pakistani forces. The Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Jangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba joined al Qaeda to increase terrorist activities targeting the Pakistan Army, government personalities and installations, a media report from Pakistan said. Militants of these groups are being led by Abu Ali Tunisi, a terrorist from Tunisia. Tunisi, based in North Waziristan, is coordinating with the groups and individuals who believe in bringing about a revolution through terrorism, Pakistani daily The News reported. The Jaish-e-Mohammed was formed by Masood Azhar following his release on December 31, 1999 with two other terrorists in exchange for the passengers of an Indian Airlines plane hijacked from Kathmandu to Afghanistan. The JeM, banned in India for fomenting trouble, has been declared a foreign terrorist organisation by the US. In 2003, the JeM splintered into Khuddam ul-Islam (KUI) and Jamaat ul-Furqan (JUF). Pakistan banned the KUA and JUF in November 2003. The Jaish was an offshoot of the Harkat-ul-Ansar, which kidnapped five foreign tourists in Kashmir in 1995. Lashkar-e-Jangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba are considered as off-shoots of the Jaish and are mainly involved in targeting Shias in Pakistan.

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Militant leader Ilyas Kashmiri released

2004-02-22

Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri, the Muzaffarabad-based chief of Harkatul Jihad Islami, was released on Saturday after a one-month detention for suspected links with suicide attackers who rammed their vehicles into President Pervez Musharraf’s convoy on December 25. The government arrested Mr Kashmiri in the first week of January. Looks like the heat's letting up... Sources said suicide bomber Sardar Jamil had first joined Mr Kashmiri’s outfit and defected to Jaish e-Mohammad later. Sources said the Muttahida Jihad Council (MJC) was instrumental in getting the authorities to release Kashmiri. “The MJC held many meetings with the authorities and finally convinced them that Mr Kashmiri had no links with the suicide attackers,” sources said. They said Mr Kashmiri was a prominent leader of the Harkatul Jihad Islami (Qari Saifullah Akhtar group) before forming his own faction. He had previously spent two years in jail in Held Kashmir. Ilyas Kashmiri was arrested in Kotli along with 130 members of his outfit. Sources said Jamil was the nephew of Jamiat ul Ansar head Farooq Kashmiri, but not a member of his uncle’s militant outfit. “The news of Mr Kashmiri’s release came as a surprise,” said a leader from a Azad Kashmir-based militant outfit who recalled MJC head Syed Salahudin meeting with President Musharraf in January. “Syed Salahudin requested that commander Ilyas be allowed to meet his family on Eidul Azha but the president’s response was stern and he was not prepared to listen to the MJC head,” he said. The authorities have also released Maulana Abdul Rauf, the younger brother of Tehrik-e-Khuddam ul Islam (TKI) head Maulana Masood Azhar and Haji Abdul Jabbar, head of the defunct Jamaat ul Furqan. Sources said Mr Jabbar, former commander of the defunct Jaish Mohammad was seen in Azad Kashmir some time ago. He was arrested in Midhranjha, a town near Sargodha, in July 2003 in connection with the Taxila church blast and an attack on a missionary school in Murree in 2002. Mr Azhar had expelled Mr Jabbar and 12 other members of his outfit for their alleged involvement in sectarian killings. Mr Jabbar formed Jamaat-ul-Furqan after his expulsion but his organisation was banned in November 2003. Sources said the suicide attackers had links with Jamaat ul Furqan. “Jabbar was in custody at the time of the suicide attacks but he gave important information to the intelligence agencies about the militants who could have planned the attacks on President Musharraf,” sources said. Intelligence agencies had also suspected the TKI’s involvement in suicide attacks and therefore detained Mr Azhar’s brother for questioning. Bargained his way out, did he? I hope what he traded was worth the eventual cost of his release...

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Afghanistan/South Asia

Money flow to jihadis continues despite ban

2004-02-20

Despite an official ban on the collection of sacrificial hides by jihadi outfits – banned as well as those put on the watch list – the groups have managed to collect hides by changing their tactic. Hide collection has been a major source of revenue for various parties and groups in the past and only in Karachi the leather industry purchases hides worth millions of rupees during and after the three days of Eid-ul Adha. This year was no different, only the bulk of these hides was collected and sold this year by seminaries and Islamic charities. This time round the groups did not advertise their hide collection drive and instead stayed in the background. Most of the work was done by students from various seminaries, many of whom are ideologically affiliated with one or the other group. The majority of the seminaries are Deobandi, as are the jihadi groups. A police officer TFT spoke with confirmed this finding. According to him, thousands of Karachi seminaries, majority of whom belong to the Deobandi/Salafi schools, mobilised their students to collect hides. These students were supervised in the field by activists of the banned outfits who moved about in the city posing as officials from the seminaries. The groups that made the biggest collections included the banned Jamiat al-Furqan and Khuddam ul Islam and the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which the government has put on the watch list since last November. Investigators say it is difficult to estimate how much money the groups must have made through hide collection but it is safe to guess that countrywide this must run into a few billion. Not a bad racquet Reports published last year suggested al-Dawa alone had raised some Rs 710 million by collecting 1.2 million hides of animals sacrificed on Eid across the country. Sources said 40 per cent of the total hides of the animals sacrificed on Eid had gone to the collection centres of al-Dawa. At the time it was easier to estimate the money made since these figures were put on the al-Dawa website. This year the group remains quiet on its hide collection activity. However, an al-Dawa spokesman based in Lahore told TFT the people’s response was “beyond expectations”. “We have collected more hides than we had collected last year,” Abu Mujahid Nadeem of al-Dawa says.

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