Source of this article:
Center for Defense Information (CDI)
The World Security Institute/CDI
1779 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036-2109
http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?documentid=1158
Authors: Jessica Ashooh , Mark Burgess
Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) is a Kashmir-based
organization with separatist goals that have recently become the
focus of international attention because of the role that it may
have played in the disrupted British airliner plot of August 2006.
As detailed below, at least one of those arrested in the plot has
close personal ties to the group’s founder, Maulana Massod Azhar,
who in turn has links to Osama bin Laden.
The objective of Jaish-e-Mohammed is to restore Kashmir to Pakistani
rule. The group, whose name translates as Army of Mohammed, evolved
out of the Harakat ul-Mujahidin (HUM) organization and was founded
in its current incarnation in Pakistan in March 2000 by Maulana
Masood Azhar, the former leader of HUM, shortly after his release
from prison in India. Azhar had been incarcerated there since 1994,
and was one of four prisoners set free on
New Year's Eve 1999 in
exchange for 155 hostages aboard an Indian Airlines plane that had
been hijacked and flown to Kandahar, Afghanistan. The JEM is mostly
made up of former members of HUM and is well networked; Azhar has
reportedly met with Osama bin Laden, who is thought to have provided
extensive funding for the JEM. Azhar also organized national
recruiting drives to collect fighters to go to Kashmir; some of
these efforts have been broadcast on state-owned Pakistani
television networks. When Pakistani President General Pervez
Musharraf banned the group in December 2002, Azhar was placed under
house arrest.
Another leading JEM member is Sheikh Omar Saeed, who was freed along
with Azhar. Saeed was born and raised in Britain and attended the
London School of Economics, a part of the disturbing trend of
radicalized young British Muslims of Pakistani heritage. At the time
of his release in 1999, Saeed was serving a prison sentence for the
1994 kidnapping of an American and three Britons in India. More
recently in 2003, Saeed was convicted and sentenced to death in
Pakistan for masterminding the 2002 murder of American journalist
Daniel Pearl, the South Asia bureau chief for the Wall Street
Journal.
Convicted along with Saeed in the Pearl case are Sheikh Mohammed
Adeel, Fahad Naseem and Salman Saqib; the three were sentenced to
life in prison. However, none of these four are believed to be those
who actually carried out the Pearl murder, and authorities doubt
that they ever actually held Pearl. Three other suspects believed to
have been among Pearl’s captors, Fazal Karim, Naeem Bukhari and
Zubair Chishti, were detained after leading police to Pearl’s
remains in May 2002, but were not formally charged as part of the
conditions for leading to the body’s recovery. The three are all
members of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group. Hashim Qadeer, who is
suspected of being one of Pearl’s actual killers, was arrested in
August 2005 and has notable al-Qaida links. Another suspect in the
case, Asif Ramzi, was killed while apparently attempting to assemble
a bomb, although the circumstances of his death are disputed.
Another, Saud Memon, remains at large.
The JEM has grown rapidly since its inception. It is now thought to
number several hundred and be located mainly in Azad Kashmir,
Pakistan, and India's Doda and southern Kashmir regions. The group's
supporters are mostly Pakistanis and Kashmiris, although it also
includes Afghan and Arab veterans of the conflict in Afghanistan. As
well as the Pearl murder, the JEM has been implicated in a series of
terrorist incidents in Kashmir and India. The majority of its
attacks are carried out against police and other government
installations of India. Some past attacks include:
May 2000: An attack on Kashmir's state secretariat building. Sixteen
rifle grenades were fired at the complex, but missed, killing a
civilian and wounding two other people, one of them a policeman.
June 2000: The killing of five people, three of them policemen, and
wounding of three in three separate attacks in Srinagar.
February 2001: A grenade attack killing one member of India's Border
Security Force and injuring five others.
March 2001: The killing of one policeman and wounding of 6
paramilitaries in a gun attack in Srinagar.
March 2003: A bomb explodes on the Mumbair commuter rail, killing 11
and injuring 70.
October 2004: A gun ambush upon a Kashmiri government official’s
motorcade takes place in Sriniagar, injuring one.
April 2006: A series of six coordinated grenade attacks in one day
kill five and injure 41 throughout Kashmir. All but one of the
grenades were launched at police installations.
May 2006: Three grenade attacks in a single day targeting police in
Srinagar injure a total of 34 people.
The incident which brought the JEM under the scrutiny of the United
States and saw the group targeted as part of the wider war against
terrorism provoked by the Sept. 11 atrocities in America took place
in Oct. 1, 2001. The attack occurred in Kashmir's summer capital,
Srinagar, where a suicide bomber exploded a hijacked government jeep
laden with explosives outside the state assembly building, while at
least two accomplices wearing police uniforms seized a building in
the complex. The ensuing gun battle left 38 people dead, and caused
the chief minister of the region to demand that the Indian federal
government attack Kashmiri-separatist terrorist bases in Pakistan.
The U.S. Department of State added the JEM to its list of foreign
terrorist organizations in November 2001. The following month, a
suicide attack on the Indian parliament killed 13 people. The JEM is
thought to have carried out the assault along with another
Pakistani-based terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Tobia (LET). Combined
with the changed geopolitical environment that had developed since
Sept.11, this put Musharraf under immense pressure to move against
groups such as the JEM and LET. He responded by banning both
organizations, although he ruled out handing over Pakistani
nationals on a list of militants drawn up by Delhi to the Indian
authorities. A wave of police detentions followed in Pakistan, and
included members of both the JEM and LET.
Like other Kashmiri separatist groups, the JEM has enjoyed the
support of a large number of madrassas (Muslim seminaries) in
Pakistan and may enjoy tacit support from individuals in the
Pakistani government sympathetic to their cause. Indeed, India has
claimed that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) conducts
the insurgency in Kashmir, recruiting and training terrorist groups
such as the JEM before dispatching them across the line of control
(LOC) dividing the state between the two countries. It is alleged
that the ISI pays militants, with foreign recruits paid
approximately Rs400,000- Rs5,000,000 ($8,500 - $10,630) over a
two-year period, half of which is paid in advance to a recruit's
family, with the rest collected upon completion of contract.
Pakistan denies such charges.
According to Indian estimates, over 13,000 terrorists have been
killed since 1989, when the insurgency began. More than 3,140
members of India's security forces have also died the Kashmir
conflict, which has often threatened to erupt into full-scale war
between India and Pakistan. The JEM is not the only player in this
conflict, but it has become a major one. Moves by Islamabad to
counter it and similar groups that have enjoyed Pakistani support
over the years, official or unofficial, are therefore welcome.
However, Musharraf must tread carefully lest he provoke domestic
unrest and threats to his life and tenuous leadership.
The JEM has most recently been linked to the August 2006 terror plot
involving the destruction of up to ten airliners traveling from
Britain to America using liquid explosive devices. One of those
arrested in Pakistan in the plot, Rashid Rauf, is the brother-in-law
of JEM founder Maulana Massod Azhar. Rauf’s father-in-law also runs
Darul Uloom Madina, a famously large and radical madrassa in Azhar’s
hometown in Pakistan. While it is not known whether Azhar or the JEM
had any direct involvement in the planning of the plot, the
connections it may indicate heightened contact or ideological
cooperation between established south Asian terror groups, like the
JEM and al-Qaida, and the homegrown cells in Britain that have been
instrumental in plots like this one and the July 7, 2005, London
Underground attacks.
Sources:
April 2001, "Patterns of Global Terrorism, 2000," United States
Department of State.
“Daniel Perl’s Killers Still on Loose,” Associated Press, January
22, 2003
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/21/world/main579223.shtml
B. Raman, "The Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM)," South Asia Analysis Group,
Paper no. 376. Carsen, Jessica, “A Kashmiri Tie to the Terror Plot,”
Time Online, August 16, 2006.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1227651,00.html?cnn=yes
“Group Profile: Jaish-e-Mohammad,” Terrorism Knowledge Base,
17 August 2006. http://www.tkb.org/Group.jsp?groupID=58
M. Ehsan Ahrari, "Jihadi Groups, Nuclear Pakistan, and the Great
Game," Srategic Studies Institute: U.S. Army War College, August
2001.
"Pakistan: Not a Pariah, A Friend," The Economist, March 7, 2002.
Rahul Bedi, "Kashmir Insurgency is Being 'Talibanised,'"
www.janes.com, October 5, 2001.
Umer Farooq, "Pakistan to Reorganize Intelligence Services," Jane's
Defense Weekly, April 3, 2002.
Various articles from BBC Online and the New York Times.
Additional reference:
CRS Report for Congress, Foreign Terrorist Organizations, February
6, 2004, pg. 43
http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/29722.pdf
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