LAHORE: Denying that Maulana Masood Azhar, the founder of the
pro-Kashmir jehadi group, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), has been arrested
from the Sialkot city of Punjab, the Pakistani authorities have said
his whereabouts are unknown and he might have fled to the
trouble-ridden Waziristan region. But some intelligence officials
believe that Masood Azhar, who had to be released by India following
the hijacking of an Air India plane in 2000, could be living under the
protection of the Inter-Services Intelligence in the garrison town of
Rawalpindi which also houses the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the
Pakistan Army and those of the ISI.
Following the June 17 arrest of five JeM activists from Punjab’s
Sialkot district, there were rumours that among them was Azhar, whom
the Indian government wants extradited. But Pakistani intelligence
sources say a consensus exists in the establishment that Masood Azhar
should not be handed over to India under any circumstances. The
sources said the official stance of the Pakistani government remains
that Azhar had abandoned his Bahawalpur headquarters following the
26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks and is still at large. However, some
intelligence sources did not rule out the possibility of the JeM
chief’s moving to some ISI safe house in the garrison town of
Rawalpindi, as had been the case with Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil,
the ameer of the Harkatul Mujahideen, already renamed as Jamiatul
Ansar,
The sources pointed out that earlier this month, the Indian
government’s efforts in the United Nations to place sanctions on
Maulana Masood Azhar received a major setback, after London
surprisingly joined hands with Beijing to block New Delhi’s request
for proscribing the JeM chief under the United Nations’ Al-Qaeda and
Taliban Sanctions resolution No 1267. The sources claimed that this
would not have been possible had Britain and China not been persuaded
by Pakistan government to do so. India had wanted Azhar to be included
in the sanctions list just as the Jamaatul Daawa and its head Hafiz
Mohammed Saeed along with other LeT operatives were proscribed after
26/11.
The Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) or “the Army of the Prophet Mohammad,” is
one of the deadliest militant groups operating from Pakistan and
waging ‘jehad’ against the Indian security forces in Jammu & Kashmir.
It was launched by Maulana Masood Azhar at the behest of the ISI in
February 2000, shortly after he was released from an Indian jail, in
exchange for hostages on board an Indian Airlines plane which was
hijacked by five armed Kashmiri militants and taken to Kandahar in
December 1999.
While resuming his activities in Pakistan almost immediately after his
release, Maulana Masood Azhar announced the formation of his own
militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammad, with the prime objective of fighting
out the Indian security forces in Kashmir. Masood Azhar was the
ideologue of another militant group, the Harkatul Ansar, which was
banned in 1997 by the US State Department, due to its alleged link
with Osama bin Laden. Therefore, the Jaish is ideologically an
extension of the Harkatul Ansar which rechristened itself as Harkatul
Mujahideen in 1998, a year after being banned.
In December 2008, almost a week after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks,
the Pakistani authorities placed restrictions on the movement of
Masood Azhar by confining him to his multi-storied concrete compound
in the Model Town area of Bahawalpur. The action was taken in the wake
of Indian government’s demand to hand over three persons to Delhi
–Masood Azhar, Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon. India had sought their
extradition by citing a 1989 agreement signed by Director General of
the Central Bureau of Investigation and Director General of the
Federal Investigation Agency which binds both the agencies to
collaborate with each other to trace out the most wanted terrorists
and criminals and hand them over to their respective counterpart. The
Indian demand said that Masood Azhar was wanted for his alleged
involvement in the 2001 attacks on the Indian parliament.
However, the Indian demand was followed by media reports that Masood
Azhar has abandoned his Jaish headquarters in the Model Town area of
Bahawalpur and temporarily shifted his base to the trouble-stricken
South Waziristan region in the wake the mounting Indian pressure for
his extradition. However, in the second week of April 2009, Masood
Azhar was declared ‘officially’ missing from Pakistan.
A 13 January 2009 new report in Daily Times quoted official sources in
Islamabad as having said that the Jaish chief has abandoned his
headquarters in Bahawalpur and was missing now. Pakistani Interior
Minister Rehman Malik officially declared that Masood Azhar and Dawood
Ibrahim were not in Pakistan adding that Islamabad would not provide
protection and refuge to any criminal. However, Indian External
Affairs Minister Paranab Mukherjee ridiculed Pakistan for denying the
‘obvious presence’ of the Jaish chief, saying: “India had several
times got different information from Pakistan on Masood Azhar and it
was not unusual to hear such denials from Pakistani officials”.
amir.mir1969@gmail.com