Harkat-ul-Mujahideen
Encyclopedia
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
-based Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
ic militant group operating primarily in Kashmir. In 1997, the United States designated Harakat al-Ansar a foreign terrorist organization for links to Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
and al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
, and in response the organization changed its name to Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. The group splintered from Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami is an Islamic fundamentalist organization most active in South Asian countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and India since the early 1990s. It was banned in Bangladesh in 2005. The operational commander of HuJI, Ilyas Kashmiri, was reportedly killed in a U.S. Predator drone...
(HuJI), a Pakistani group formed in 1980 to fight the Soviet military in Afghanistan. It is also believed that the organization has retained close ties with the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI
Inter-Services Intelligence
The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence , is Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, responsible for providing critical national security intelligence assessment to the Government of Pakistan...
.
Post Soviet - Afghan War
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen was originally formed as a splinter group of Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami in 1985. In 1989, at the end of Soviet-Afghan war, the group entered KashmirKashmir
Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...
i politics by use of militants under the leadership of Sajjad Afghani
Sajjad Afghani
Sajjad Afghani was a leader of the Pakistan-based jihadi organization Jaish e Mohammed.After the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Afghani became the leader of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. After the end of his leadership, he became one of the founders of the Jaish e Mohammed, eventually becoming their...
. In 1993 the group merged with Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami to form Harkat-ul-Ansar
Harkat-ul-Ansar
Harkat ul-Ansar was an Islamic militant organization founded by Abdelkader Mokhtari in 1993. It was the result of a merger between the groups Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami . Many of its operations were conducted in Jammu and Kashmir.Soon after its founding, several members of...
.
Immediately following the merger India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
arrested three senior members: Nasrullah Mansur Langaryal, chief of the former Harkat-ul Mujahideen in November 1993; Maulana Masood Azhar, General Secretary in February 1994, and Sajjad Afghani (Sajjad Sajid) in the same month in Srinagar
Srinagar
Srinagar is the summer seasonal capital of Jammu and Kashmir. It is situated in Kashmir Valley and lies on the banks of the Jhelum River, a tributary of the Indus. It is one of the largest cities in India not to have a Hindu majority. The city is famous for its gardens, lakes and houseboats...
.
As a response the group carried out several kidnapping
Kidnapping
In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...
s in an attempt to free their leaders, all of which failed. Linked to the Kashmiri group al-Faran that kidnapped five Western tourists in Kashmir in July 1995; one, Hans Christian Ostrø, was killed in August 1995 and the other four reportedly were killed in December of the same year.
In 1997 the group renamed itself to the original Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, in a response to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
defining Harkat-ul-Ansar as terrorist organization.
In 1999 Sajjad was killed during a jailbreak which lead to the hijacking, by the group, of Indian Airlines Flight 814
Indian Airlines Flight 814
Indian Airlines Flight 814 commonly known as IC 814 was an Indian Airlines Airbus A300 en route from Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal to Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, India on Friday, December 24, 1999, when it was hijacked...
in December, which caused the release of Maulana Masood Azhar
Maulana Masood Azhar
Maulana Masood Azhar is a Pakistani mujaheddin leader and the founder of the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, based mainly in the Pakistan-administered portion of the state of Kashmir....
, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh
Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh
Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh is a British-born militant of Pakistani descent with links to various Islamist militant organisations, including Jaish-e-Mohammed, al-Qaeda, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and the Taliban.He was arrested and served time in prison for...
and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar
Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar
Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar was born in 1967 and grew up in the Jama Masjid area of Srinagar in Kashmir Valley. His father was a postman. Zargar was motivated to militancy at the age of 17 in 1984 and became a member of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front when he was arrested for the first time.On...
. Azhar did not, however, return to the HUM, choosing instead to form the Jaish-e-Mohammed
Jaish-e-Mohammed
Jaish-e-Mohammed is a Pakistani-based, militant Islamic group established by Maulana Masood Azhar in March 2000...
(JEM), a rival militant group expressing a more radical line than the HUM, in early 2000.
Post 9/11 Attacks
The group again came to the attention of the US after the 9/11 attacksSeptember 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
, leading President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
to ban the group, this time under its Harkat-ul-Mujahideen moniker, on September 25, 2001.
Long-time leader of the group, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, in mid-February 2000 stepped down as HUM emir, turning the reins over to the popular Kashmiri commander and his second-in-command, Farooq Kashmiri. Khalil assumed the position of HUM Secretary General.
HUM is thought to have several thousand armed supporters located in Pakistani Kashmir, and India's southern Kashmir and Doda regions. It uses light and heavy machineguns, assault rifles, mortars, explosives, and rockets. HUM has lost some of its membership due to defections to the JEM.
The group is based in Muzaffarabad
Muzaffarabad
Muzaffarabad is the capital of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, Pakistan. It is located in Muzaffarabad District on the banks of the Jhelum and Neelum rivers...
, Rawalpindi
Rawalpindi
Rawalpindi , locally known as Pindi, is a city in the Pothohar region of Pakistan near Pakistan's capital city of Islamabad, in the province of Punjab. Rawalpindi is the fourth largest city in Pakistan after Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad...
, and several other towns in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but members conduct insurgent and militant activities primarily in Kashmir.
The group's current leader, Fazle-ur-Rahman Khalil, lives openly in the Islamabad
Islamabad
Islamabad is the capital of Pakistan and the tenth largest city in the country. Located within the Islamabad Capital Territory , the population of the city has grown from 100,000 in 1951 to 1.7 million in 2011...
suburb of Golra Sharif
Golra Sharif
Golra Sharif is a town situated near the Margalla Hills, in the Islamabad Capital Territory, Pakistan, at about above sea level, from the ancient city of Taxila.Golra Sharif is a shrine of the Sufi Mystic Pir Meher Ali Shah in Islamabad, Pakistan....
. He has denied having any contact with Osama bin Laden.
According to The New York Times, Osama bin-Laden's seized cellphones attest Harkat-ul-Mujahideen's continued contact with Osama bin-Laden and its bases and fighters shared with the Taliban over the years following the war in Afghanistan.