Harkat-ul-Mujahideen- al-Islami ( ur, ; HUM) is a

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

-based Islamic jihad group operating primarily in

Kashmir Kashmir () is the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term "Kashmir" denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal Range. Today, the term encompas ...

.Indictment of John Walker Lindh
''American Rhetoric'' February, 2002 The group have been considered as having links to

Osama bin Laden Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi-born extremist militant who founded al-Qaeda and served as its leader from 1988 until his death in 2011. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, his group is designated ...

and

Al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military targets in various countr ...

.
the group has been designated as a

terrorist organization A number of national governments and two international organizations have created lists of organizations that they designate as terrorist. The following list of designated terrorist groups lists groups designated as terrorist by current and fo ...

by Bahrain, the United Nations, the United Kingdom and the United States. In response the organization changed its name to Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. The group splintered from Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI), a Pakistani group formed in 1980 to fight the Soviet military in Afghanistan. The

Government of India The Government of India ( ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...

has declared and banned HuM as a jihad organisation.

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 Soviet–Afghan War was a protracted armed conflict fought in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. It saw extensive fighting between the Soviet Union and the Afghan mujahideen (alongside smaller groups of anti-Soviet ...

, the group entered

i politics by use of militants under the leadership of Sajjad Afghani and Muzaffar Ahmad Baba Alias Mukhtar. In 1993 the group

merged Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations, or their operating units are transferred to or consolidated with another company or business organization. As an aspect ...

with Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami to form

Harkat-ul-Ansar Harkat-ul-Mujahideen- al-Islami ( ur, ; HUM) is a Pakistan-based Islamic jihad group operating primarily in Kashmir.

. Immediately following the merger

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

arrested three senior members:

Nasrullah Mansur Langaryal Nasrullah may refer to: * Nasrullah (horse) (1940–1959), British Thoroughbred racehorse * Nasrullah (name), a name (including a list of people with the name) * Nasrullah Bridge, a 16th-century bridge in Kastamonu, Turkey * Nasrullah Mosque, a 16 ...

, 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 (English: , ) is the largest city and the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, India. It lies in the Kashmir Valley on the banks of the Jhelum River, a tributary of the Indus, and Dal and Anchar lakes. The city is known for its ...

. Muzaffar Ahmad Baba was killed in an encounter at Pandan Nowhatta with the BSF in January 1994. As a response the group carried out several

kidnapping In criminal law, kidnapping is the unlawful confinement of a person against their will, often including transportation/asportation. The asportation and abduction element is typically but not necessarily conducted by means of force or fear: the p ...

s in an attempt to free their leaders, all of which failed. It was 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

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

designated Harkat-ul-Ansar as a terrorist organization, and in response it renamed itself to Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. In 1999, Sajjad was killed during a jailbreak which led to the hijacking, by the group, of Indian Airlines Flight 814 in December, which led to the release of Maulana Masood Azhar,

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh ( ur, احمد عمر سعید شیخ; sometimes known as Umar Sheikh, Sheikh Omar,Note that this term is more commonly used in reference to Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman Sheik Syed or by the alias Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad;''CNN ...

and

Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar (born 1967, also known as Mushtaq Latram) is a Kashmiri militant active in the Kashmiri insurgency, and founder of the militant outfit Al-Umar Mujahedeen. He spent considerable time in an Indian prison and was released in t ...

by the Indian Government. Azhar did not, however, return to the HUM, choosing instead to form the Jaish-e-Mohammed (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 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerci ...

, leading President George W. Bush to ban the group, this time under its Harkat-ul-Mujahideen moniker, on 25 September 2001. The 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 machine guns, assault rifles, mortars, explosives, and rockets. HUM lost some of its membership due to defections to the Jaish-e-Mohammed. The group is based in Muzaffarabad,

Rawalpindi Rawalpindi ( or ; Urdu, ) is a city in the Punjab province of Pakistan. It is the fourth largest city in Pakistan after Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad, and third largest in Punjab after Lahore and Faisalabad. Rawalpindi is next to Pakistan ...

, and several other towns in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but members conduct insurgent and terrorist activities primarily in Kashmir. The group's current leader, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, lives openly in the

Islamabad Islamabad (; ur, , ) is the capital city of Pakistan. It is the country's ninth-most populous city, with a population of over 1.2 million people, and is federally administered by the Pakistani government as part of the Islamabad Capital ...

suburb of Golra Sharif. 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 The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, m ...

over the years following the

war in Afghanistan War in Afghanistan, Afghan war, or Afghan civil war may refer to: *Conquest of Afghanistan by Alexander the Great (330 BC – 327 BC) * Muslim conquests of Afghanistan (637–709) *Conquest of Afghanistan by the Mongol Empire (13th century), see al ...

Designation as terrorist organization

The countries and organizations below have officially listed the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) as a terrorist organization.

Harkat ul-Ansar

Harkat ul-Ansar (HuA) was an

Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the ...

ic terrorist organization founded by

Abdelkader Mokhtari Abdelkader Mokhtari ( kunya: ''Abu el-Ma'ali'', ''The Gendarme'') was an Algerian commander who became a "sacred legend" for the Bosnian mujahideen in the Bosnian War. Bosnia Evan Kohlmann claimed that Mokhtari, an Algerian, came to Bosnia with ...

in 1993. It was the result of a merger between Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI). Many of its operations were conducted in

Jammu and Kashmir Jammu and Kashmir may refer to: * Kashmir, the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent * Jammu and Kashmir (union territory), a region administered by India as a union territory * Jammu and Kashmir (state), a region administered ...

. Soon after its founding, several members of its leadership were arrested by Indian Security Forces. In November 1993, the former head of HuM, Nasrullah Mansur Langrayal, was arrested. In February 1994, the HuA general secretary, Maulana Masood Azhar and chief commander, Sajjad Afghani, were captured in the Chattargul area of

Anantnag district Anantnag district is a district in the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. It is one of ten districts which make up the Kashmir Valley. The district headquarters is Anantnag city. As of 2011, it was the third most populous district ...

. It was labeled a terrorist organization in 1997 by the

because of its connections with Saudi terrorist

. The ban severely limited the funding of the group, and as a result HuA was reorganized as a reincarnated Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. At the time, Azhar split from the group to form Jaish-e-Mohammed. In 1998, U.S.'s

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

(CIA) in its report stated, "HuA, an Islamic terrorist organisation that Pakistan supports in its proxy war against Indian forces in Kashmir, increasingly is using terrorist tactics against Westerners and random attacks on civilians that could involve Westerners to promote its pan-Islamic agenda." CIA also stated that Hua had abducted at least 13 persons, of which 12 were from western countries in the period from early 1994 to 1998.

References

{{Terror outfits Jihadist groups in Jammu and Kashmir Jihadist groups in Pakistan Organizations based in Asia designated as terrorist Organisations designated as terrorist by India Organisations designated as terrorist by the United Kingdom Organizations designated as terrorist by the United States Groups affiliated with al-Qaeda 1985 establishments in Pakistan Organizations designated as terrorist by Canada Organizations designated as terrorist by Bahrain

Post Soviet–Afghan War

Post 9/11 attacks

Designation as terrorist organization

Harkat ul-Ansar

See also

References