Bhubaneswar: December 6, 2024: India asked Pakistan to take strong action against Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar after reports of him delivering a speech addressing his JeM cadres, where he was heard taking vow to send his men to wage jihad in Kashmir and hinted at operations against Israel.
He then sent a threatening message to “liberate” the Babri Masjid and attack the Ram Janambhoomi temple in Ayodhya.
Such an outrageous and open terror threat speech by Masood Azhar from Pakistan soil coming after 21 –long years hints big, thinks strategic experts like Sushant Sareen.
Writing for Observer Research Foundation, he said, “this gives a clear sign that JeM is now emerging from the shadows and will operate relatively openly, especially against India.”
WHY MASOOD AZGAR IN NEWS?
December 26, 2024: Masood Azhar was in Afghanistan for imparting training to jehadis/terrorist, where he suffered heart stroke and rushed in to Karachi hospital for treatment.
Earlier, Bilawal Bhutto, who was foreign affairs minister between Apr 27,2022 and Aug 10, 2023, had stated that Masood Azhar was in Afghanistan in the year 2022.
The statement of Bilawal Bhutto, therefore, supports the news story doing around that Masood was in Afghnaistan imparting training to jihadi’s
WHAT MASOOD AZHAR IN ACTION CONVEY?
From Pakistan to Afghanistan, the fast paced activities of JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar suggest something heinous cooking. Because, he figures at No 1 in the top -10 terrosist list preapred by MEA, govt of India.
As per strategic expert Sushant Sareen, “it seems UN Security Council designated terrorist Masood Azhar and his organisation Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) are once again emerging as Pakistan’s go-to non-state instrument for advancing its foreign and security policy agenda, not just against India but also against the Taliban-run Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”
WHY PAKISTAN NEEDS MASOOD AZHAR?
Strategic expert Sushant Sareen explains.
- Over the last few years, Pakistan has steadily replaced the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) as its favoured jihadist instrument.
- Many of the top leadership of the JuD were imprisoned (mostly on charges of money laundering and terror finance), and its cadres demobilized, at least for the time being.
- Pak did so as JuD had become a liability because of the international opprobrium directed at Pakistan’s use of jihadist terrorism to pursue its foreign and security objectives.
- There was also a lot of pressure on Pakistan because of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) ‘greylisting’, which forced verifiable action against internationally proscribed terror groups.
As JuD has been emasculated, Sushant Sareen writes,
- This was the time when the JuD was replaced by JeM, which has been rehabilitated and rejuvenated, and has steadily ramped up its activities, albeit silently and without any publicity.
- While the JuD wasn’t entirely put out of business, the reliance on the JeM has since grown significantly.
- This was despite the fact that the JeM and Masood Azhar were also proscribed by the UNSC.
- The FATF had made Azhar one of the test cases for Pakistan to demonstrate investigation and prosecution targeted against him.
- Apart from Masood Azhar, the mastermind of the 26/11 attacks, Sajid Mir of the Lashkar-e-Taiba was another test case.
As per Sushant Sareen, “The Pakistanis seemed to have decided to sacrificeSajid Mir and save Azhar.
HOW?
He writes, this is evident from the fact that in 2022:
- In its progress report to the Asia-Pacific Joint Group on its 2018 action plan, Pakistan made the plea that it was unaware of Azhar’s whereabouts.
- According to Pakistan, it had not kept track of his movements since he was not designated a terrorist by the UN until May 2019.
- Just a few weeks before Masood Azhar was designated as a terrorist by the UNSC, the then-foreign minister of Pakistan, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, had claimed that Azhar was extremely sick and was confined to his home.
- Miraculously, Azhar recovered just in time to supposedly ‘disappear’ as soon as he was listed by the UNSC and has not been traced since!
- Pakistanis claimed later that they had convicted Masood Azhar in absentia for nine years in August 2021 and had also approached the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan to get their cooperation to apprehend him.
- In September 2022, on the eve of being taken off the FATF grey list, the Pakistanis claimed Azhar was hiding in Afghanistan, inviting an angry response from the Taliban, who not only denied his presence but went on to say that such “terrorist organisations” can operate on Pakistani soil under “official patronage”.
- After Pakistan was taken off the FATF “grey list” in October 2022, some of the constraints imposed by Pakistan on JeM were lifted.
- Since then, there has been a steady uptick in violence in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), with some high profile ambushes of military convoys.
HOW MASOOD AZHAR OPERATES IN KASHMIR?
As per security agencies, JeM has been operating in the valley through front organisations like the
- Peoples Anti Fascist Front (PAFF) (PAFF) and
- The Kashmir Tigers
- Security agencies reveal that these front organisations of JeM were involved in target killings of soft targets—
- migrant workers,
- minority community members,
- tourists and locals.
WHY MASOOD AZHAR BLUE EYED BOY OF PAKISTAN?
As per stragic expert Sushant Sareen, here are the reasons.
- The Jaish, a Deobandi jihadist group,had close links with the Taliban (both Afghan and Pakistani)
- It has also close links with other ultra-radical Sunni Deobandi terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and its political fount, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan or its newest avatar Ahle Sunnat wal Jamaat (ASwJ).
- For Pakistan, which is trying to fight the onslaught of the TTP (Tehreek Taliban Pakistan), the JeM can play a role for it by weaning away the Punjabi Taliban and
- Redirecting them to the eastern front with India.
WHO IS MASOOD AZHAR?
He is India’s Terroist NUMBER ONE (View the images below)
- The infamous hijacking Indian Airlines aircraft on a routine flight from Kathmandu (Nepal) to New Delhi on December 24, 1999 to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan was done demanding release of Mohammad Masood Azhar from jail in India.
- He was then released from Indian jails to secure safe return of 160 passengers.
- He was then the General Secretary and ideologue of the Harakat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), an organization based in Pakistan which was in October 1997 designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation by the United States Department of State.
- His original name has been Azhar Alvi
- As per Office of Counterterrorism of the US Department of State’s ‘Background Information on Foreign Terrorist Organisations’ released on October 8 1999,
- Described the Harakat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), a.k.a. Harakat-ul-Ansar, HUA, Al Hadid, Al Hadith, Al Faran as an “Islamic militant group based in Pakistan” … whose “leader Fazlur Rehman Khalil has been linked to Bin Laden and signed his fatwa in February 1998, calling for attacks on US and Western interests”.
HOW HE COME TO INDIA
- As per US State Dept, Masood Azhar, the General Secretary of the organisation, who hails from Bahawalpur in Pakistan, entered the state of Jammu & Kashmir in India in January 1994 on a false Portuguese passport and was arrested by the Indian police the following month because of his involvement in terrorist activities.
NIA ON MASOOD AZHAR?
As per the NIA Red corner notice, he is a resident of Pakistan. Here are the grave cases on him in India. Take a glance at the Red corner notice issue by NIA in 2016.
