The re-emergence of JeM and its leader Masood Azhar’s recent threats call for an active response from India
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The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) 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. In Azhar’s recent speech to his JeM terrorist cadre, he vowed to send his men to wage jihad in Kashmir and hinted at operations against Israel. This was followed by a message threatening to “liberate” the Babri Masjid and attack the Ram Janambhoomi temple in Ayodhya. This serves as a clear sign that JeM is now emerging from the shadows and will operate relatively openly, especially against India. Although India's Ministry of External Affairs has called out Pakistan’s “duplicity” in fighting terrorism and has demanded strong action against Masood Azhar and JeM, it is unlikely that Pakistan’s military establishment will change its decision to redeploy its terror auxiliaries against its adversaries.
Although India's Ministry of External Affairs has called out Pakistan’s “duplicity” in fighting terrorism and has demanded strong action against Masood Azhar and JeM, it is unlikely that Pakistan’s military establishment will change its decision to redeploy its terror auxiliaries against its adversaries.
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 demobilised, at least for the time being. The 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. 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. The Pakistanis seemed to have decided to sacrifice Sajid Mir and save Azhar. 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! Even so, the 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”.
The FATF had made Azhar one of the test cases for Pakistan to demonstrate investigation and prosecution targeted against him.
By 2022, with relations between Pakistan and the Taliban going into a tailspin, the Pakistanis tried to throw the Afghans under the bus and pin Masood Azhar on them. Something similar happened during the latest address of Azhar when he tried to highlight his close relationship with the Taliban Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani. Haqqani, however, distanced himself from Azhar and refuted his claims. After Pakistan was taken off the FATF “grey list” in October 2022, some of the constraints imposed by Pakistan on JeM were lifted. Since around that time, there has been a steady uptick in violence in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), with some high-profile ambushes of military convoys.
Although the JeM has been operating through front organisations like the Peoples Anti Fascist Front (PAFF) and the Kashmir Tigers for some years now, there has been a spurt in their activities since the FATF noose was taken off Pakistan's neck. Notably, the front organisations of JeM have generally been involved in target killings of soft targets—migrant workers, minority community members, tourists and locals. The more professional ambushes of military convoys are believed to have been carried out by battle-hardened Jaish cadres who have preferred not to take responsibility for the attacks, lest the heat comes on Pakistan, as it did after the Pulwama suicide bombing in 2019. Masood Azhar’s latest rants indicate that Jaish will now spearhead the export of Jihadist terrorism into Kashmir, something that has once again become the policy of the Pakistan military establishment under the current Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir.
Although the JeM has, for the most part, continued to operate under the radar, it probably has both an organisational and leadership compulsion to occasionally come out in the open. In part, this is to rouse the cadre, attract more recruits with fiery and passionate rhetoric, and infuse in the fighters the jihadist fervour to undertake suicidal missions. This is also to push the envelope with the minders from the military establishment and, in the process, increase the space of operation and gain greater autonomy of action. In addition, it is to send a signal to the enemy (read India) that the jihadist option remains available to Pakistan and that there is an endless supply of jihadist cannon fodder it can deploy against India to keep the fire burning under the pot of terrorism.
Masood Azhar’s latest rants indicate that Jaish will now spearhead the export of Jihadist terrorism into Kashmir, something that has once again become the policy of the Pakistan military establishment under the current Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir.
The purpose of this signalling is to disabuse India of any notion that Pakistan is no longer in the fray and that it can be ignored in trying to settle Kashmir. The speech and message of Masood Azhar is also to apprise India that actions will not just remain limited to J&K but will also extend to exploit both the real and manufactured grievances of Muslims across India. This is also a sort of payback for what Pakistan alleges (one daresay without any shred of evidence) is Indian support for the Baloch and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) insurgencies ravaging through the trans-Indus regions of Pakistan.
The Jaish’s utility is not limited to India alone; as a Deobandi jihadist group, the Jaish has had close links with not just the Taliban (both Afghan and Pakistani) but also 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, the JeM can play a role in weaning away the Punjabi Taliban and redirecting them to the eastern front with India. This is an effort that has been underway for over a decade but has probably gained even more urgency now. Even if the Punjabi Taliban and the Deobandi mullahs are no longer in a position to intercede with the Pashtun Taliban on behalf of the Pakistani state, separating them from the TTP can at least deny them the use of their networks and operational capabilities in Punjab and Sindh.
The security agencies need to rejig their protocols and grids to factor in new, more lethal tactics that battle-hardened terrorists will bring to bear in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of India.
India, of course, cannot afford to be complacent. While the statement by the MEA spokesman does well to flag the issue, India needs to agitate this matter not just before the FATF and other international organisations but also with its partners in the international community. At the same time, the security agencies need to rejig their protocols and grids to factor in new, more lethal tactics that battle-hardened terrorists will bring to bear in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of India. The developments in Bangladesh, where Deobandi terror groups with links to Pakistani jihadist terror organisations like JeM are re-emerging and re-energising under a climate of impunity, add to the threat matrix confronting India, more so given the nexus that the interim regime in Dhaka is trying to develop with Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
Sushant Sareen is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation
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Sushant Sareen is Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation. His published works include: Balochistan: Forgotten War, Forsaken People (Monograph, 2017) Corridor Calculus: China-Pakistan Economic Corridor & China’s comprador ...
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