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COVER STORY: TERRORISM
Vast Network
With
Azhar as supreme commander and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar alias Latrum, a Kashmiri
militant who too was freed under the Kandahar deal, as his deputy, JeM
remains a shadowy but close-knit outfit, next only to the Hizbul Mujahideen
and the Lashkar-e-Toiba in manpower and fire power. The estimated strength
of its active militants in Kashmir is between 500 and 600. And much of
its fighters are the former cadres of Harkat-ul-Jehadi (one of the groups
recently blacklisted by the US), Al-Umar and Jamait-ul-Mujahideen. The
command headquarters of JeM's Kashmir operations is at Muzaffarabad (PoK).
An Urdu fortnightly published by the JeM from Karachi has been collecting
donations in the name of jehad in Kashmir under the account number 1697
in Allied Bank, Binori Town branch, Karachi. The JeM has publicity offices
in seven cities in Pakistan.
Security officials say that Azhar's success lies
in his vast network and ability to raise funds from different countries.
His interrogation reports, accessed by India Today, are replete with references
to his frequent foreign trips between 1990 and 1993, the period during
which he raised about Rs 1 crore for his parent organisation Harkat-ul-Ansar,
which was banned by the US in 1996.
Born in 1968 to a middle class Punjabi family
in Bahawalpur, Azhar was the third among 12 children of a school headmaster.
A school dropout, he enrolled in a madarsa in Karachi and completed his
Alimia (post-graduation) in religious studies in 1989 "with distinction".
A protege of Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman Khalil, the then chief of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen,
he was sent to Afghanistan for weapons training. During his interrogation,
Azhar had graphically described his days at the Yawar Camp in Khost province
in April 1989. He was a frequent visitor to the Taliban-run arms training
camps to deliver religious lectures to apprentice jehadis. (These camps
came under the US missile attacks in 1998 for being hideouts of bin Laden.)
Later, Azhar joined the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and visited countries like
South Africa, Somalia, Albania, Bosnia, Zambia, Bangladesh and Lebanon
for raising funds. In October 1992, he visited the UK and procured a Portuguese
passport with which he entered India in 1994 with the mission to form
the Harkat-ul-Ansar by merging the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and Harkat-ul-Jehad-Islami
in Kashmir.
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SUPER TERRORIST: Osama bin Laden has close ties with Azhar who
has helped raise funds for various Islamic terrorist organizations
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The intelligence assessment is that the JeM strike
at the assembly complex was undertaken by Azhar to embarrass Musharraf
and complicate the emerging relationship between Islamabad and Washington.
This theory gains credence from the fact that JeM was eager to own responsibility
for the attack. It even identified the suicide bomber as Wajahat Hussain
from Peshawar. The other terrorists involved in the suicide attack were
identified as Mohammad Irfan Zaman and Tariq Ahmed of Karachi and Abdul
Rauf Ahsan of Sahiwal.
Government sources point out that Azhar may
have planned the assembly bombing to protest against Pakistan aligning
with the US against the Taliban. That means: the attack was planned in
collusion with some ISI elements unhappy with the role reversal of General
Musharraf.
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LABOURED DEFENCE: Jaswant
meets the media after his talks with Bush
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JASWANT SPEAK IN THE AFTERMATH OF OCTOBER 1
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"We do not wish to do
anything to further complicate the challenge the US has to meet."
Interview to CNN, October 2
"The Taliban is a product
of the machinery of Pakistan."
Interview to PBS Newshour, October 1
"A country that is
a part of the problem is now being attempted to be used by the US
towards a solution. Good luck."
Interview to CNN, October 2
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In India's perception, there could only be two
other plausible theories to explain October 1. First, the terrorists are
still under Musharraf's control and the attack was a sop to the general's
domestic constituency, which is unhappy with the Islamabad-Washington
alliance against the Taliban brethren.
The other theory is that differences have cropped
up between Islamabad and the terrorists operating in Kashmir. And groups
like the JeM and the Lashkar-e-Toiba are no longer sure of Pakistani support
to the cause of jehad. Lt-General Vijay Oberoi, who retired as vice-chief
of army staff on September 30, says that there is no doubt that Pakistan
controls all the terrorist groups in Kashmir but the Srinagar incident
highlights that "every action cannot be controlled". "India
is fully aware that Islamabad holds the levers of all terrorist outfits
but then each group has a degree of autonomy. I fear that terrorist incidents
in Kashmir may increase with the US action in Afghanistan," he says.
Quite logical considering the links between
Deobandi outfits such as the JeM, bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah
Omar. Azhar and Omar have a common patron in Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai,
cleric of the Binori mosque in Karachi. Mufti Shamzai was also part of
the 10-member Ulema delegation headed by ISI chief Lt-General Mehmood
Ahmed that went to Kandahar last month to convince Omar for the second
time to accept the demands of the international community. And Azhar,
following his marriage on January 17 last year, visited Kandahar to meet
Omar and held consultations with bin Laden in May. He founded JeM as an
umbrella terrorist organisation in February 2000.
Azhar is not only a friend of the Taliban. He
has been a darling of Islamabad as well. On two occasions, Islamabad wrote
to Delhi for the release of Azhar on humanitarian grounds. In a letter
to the Indian high commissioner in 1996, Pakistan interior minister Nasrullah
Khan Babar urged Delhi to release Azhar, as he was only a "journalist".
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