Samikhsya Bureau
Since a suicide bomber rammed his SUV into a convoy of Central Reserve Police Force in Pulwama district of Kashmir on February 14 killing 40 security personnel, the name of Masood Azhar has come to the forefront of every discourse on terror.
Azhar is the head of UN proscribed terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed, which has owned up the responsibility for the attack. Based in Pakistan, Azhar has always targeted India with his terror plans. After the Pulwama attack, India is trying all means diplomatically to ban him and blacklist Pakistan, which has always extended full support to him. Sources said on Tuesday that France has already moved the UN to ban Azhar and declare him as a global terrorist, in spite of the fact that he has China’s backing.
Who exactly is Masood Azhar? Here are few things one would like to know about him.
- Masood Azhar was born in Bahabalpur in Punjab on Pakistan side in 1968. He was the third of 11 children of a government school teacher who was also a cleric with Deobandi leaning. The Deobandi movement was founded in Deoband in Uttar Pradesh in 1867 in the aftermath of failed Sepoy Rebellion – India’s first struggle for freedom. At the time of India’s Independence, Deobandis stressed on composite nationalism, which meant that Hindus and Muslims were one nation and should fight the British unitedly.
- Azhar dropped out of regular school after class 8 and joined a Jamia Uloom Islam school. He graduated from there as an ‘alim’ (servant of God) and got the job of a teacher in a madrasa. As the madrasa was involved with Pakistan based militant outfit Harkat-ul-Ansar, Azhar joined it and underwent jihadi training in neighbouring Afghanistan. He also joined the Soviet-Afghan war but retired after getting injured. He was then asked to head the ‘department of motivation’ of HuL that managed its publications to attract youth to the outfit. Later he became the general secretary of HuL and travelled around the world to raise fund and recruit jehadis.
- In 1994, Azhar travelled to Kashmir under a fake identity to sort out difference between two HuL factions – Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islami and Harkat-ul-Mujaheedin. However, he was arrested from Khanabal near Anantnag and jailed for his terrorist activities.
- In 1999, some HuL terrorists hijacked an Indian Airline plane, which was coming from Kathmandu to New Delhi. They took the plane having 176 passengers to various locations, released some passengers in Dubai and finally flew to Kandhar in Afghanistan. Azhar’s release was one of the main demands of the hijackers in exchange of hostages in the plane. The hijackers were headed by his younger brother Ibrahim Athar
- The BJP government headed by the then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had to release Azhar. National security advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval was among the three negotiators who negotiated with the terrorists. The forced release of Azhar was seen as a “diplomatic failure” of Doval.
- After his release, Azhar and his fellow terrorists fled to Pakistani territory where he was accorded a hero’s welcome. Speaking to over 10,000 people, he reportedly vowed to destroy India and liberate Kashmir.
- Later Azhar headed JeM, which was formed reportedly with the blessings of Pakistan’s dreaded intelligence agency ISI. Under his leadership, JeM has carried out several terrorist attacks on India since then including the attack on Indian Parliament in 2001 and on Mumbai in 2008 and Pathankot in 2016.
- Following the attack on Mumbai, Azhar was reportedly into custody following a raid on a terrorist camp in Mujaffarabad in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. But the Pakistani government later denied that it had arrested Azhar.
- In 2017, the United States, with support from UK and France, moved a proposal at the UN Sanction Committee to ban Azhar. But the proposal was blocked by China.
