Harkat-ul Mujahideen

HUM

12/12/2006

Harkat-ul Mujahideen, known as the Order of Holy Warriors, was formed in 1985. They were a faction of Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami (the Order of Islamic Jihadists), an Islamic group of mujahideen militants launched in 1980. Since we know much more about them, we'll focus on that group. They participated in the Great Jihad against the Soviets when the USSR tried unsuccessfully to protect the Marxist Muslim regime in control of Afghanistan at the time. When Soviet forces withdrew in 1989, the Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami turned its attention to terrorist activity in Jammu, Kashmir, India, and Bangladesh with the support of the Pakistani government.

Two Pakistani Deobandi (Salafist Islamic sects similar to Wahhabism) religious bodies, the Jamaat-ul-Ulema-e-Islami and the Tabligh-i-Jamaat, set up the Harkat-ul Jihad i-Islami. It was first formed to run relief camps for the Muslim mujahideen and was led by Maulvi Irshad Ahmed.

The primary support base for the group was initially in the Pakistani Punjabi business and religious communities, especially those affiliated with Jamaat-ul-Ulema-e-Islami and the Tabligh-i-Jamaat. As the Afghan resistance developed, the Harkat ul-Jihad e-Islami developed links with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and was subcontracted to recruit and train the mujahids.

It was at this time that Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami developed links with Hezb-e-Islami-Yunus Khalis - another Pakistani based Muslim militant organization. As is common, a power-struggle developed after the death of Maulana Irshad Ahmed, in 1985 during the Great Afghan Jihad. Fazal-ur-Rehman Khalil, the group's "commander-in-chief" split with the new Emir (chief or commander), Qazi Saifullah Akhtar and formed the Harkat-ul Mujahideen, while retaining his ties to Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami. (Yes, I know that I am spelling and punctuating the transliterated name differently each time. They are all correct and the variations may assist people who are deploying a search engine to learn more about them.).

Saifullah Akhtar stayed on to lead the Harkat ul Jihad al Islami (Order of Islamic Jihadists), but it soon split again, with Maulana Masood Kashmiri starting a third splinter group, the Jamait-ul Mujahideen. Later, in 1991, the Deobandi ulemas (fundamentalist Islamic religious leaders) in Karachi, Pakistan in consort with the Pakistani government in Islamabad, asked the three splinter factions to reunite in order to increase the effectiveness of their participation in Kashmir and Bangladesh terrorist missions. This reunited incarnation was named the Harkat-ul-Ansar.

While the Harak ul Ansar (the Order of Supporters) was formed in Pakistan, the merger of the three factions was achieved in the field when Harkat-ul Ansar General Secretary Maulana Masood Azhar arrived in India on a false Portuguese passport and reached Srinagar in February 1994. He convened a meeting, on February 10th, of 19 leaders of the HJI, HM and the JM at Matigund in the Anantnag District to discuss the merger.

But while returning from the meeting, Masood Azhar and Sajjad Afghani, the HA's military chief, were arrested in Srinagar. And earlier, in November 1993, Nasrullah Mansur Langrayal, HM's chief Commander was arrested in Doda. With these arrests, the move to reunite the three HJI factions into the HA was unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, a Bangladesh unit of these affiliated outfits was set up with Osama bin Laden's aid in conjunction with Pakistan's central intelligence agency, the ISI, in 1992, under the leadership of Shawkat Osman alias Sheikh Farid. Imtiaz Quddus was named General Secretary. The ISI's involvement was confirmed in September 1998, when they floated a new outfit, Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami Tanzeem. We will examine the Bangladesh branch of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami in a moment.

The Order of Islamic Jihadists, like other Pakistan-based and supported Islamic terrorist outfits, functions under the patronage of the Inter Services Intelligence. While in Jammu and Kashmir, it strives to ensure the secession of the State from India and forced merger into Pakistan through terrorist activities. In other parts of India, their aim is to use terror as a means of influencing the civilian population into accepting peace offers which serve the terrorist's agenda.

The Harkat-ul Jihad i-Islami has successfully recruited many jihadists from the Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and other Salafi Islamist groups, and deployed these terrorists in India. Alliances with Bangladesh Islamic organizations have achieved the same result.

In 1993, under the guidance of Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's external intelligence agency, the Harkat-ul Mujahideen (Order of the Holy Warriors) faction finally reunited with Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami (Order of the Islamic Jihadists) to form: Harkat-ul-Ansar (the Order of the Friends and Supporters). In 1997, the United States identified Harkat-ul Ansar as a Foreign Terrorist Organization but did not have the good judgment to label the Pakistani government as such even though they were responsible for them. Hypocrisy is the byword of the American State Department, Department of Defense, and the White House (regardless of occupant). So to fool the Americans and to avoid the sanctions connected with this designation, the Hakat ul Ansar changed its name back to Harakat ul-Mujahideen (the Order of the Holy Warriors).

Initially, the Order of Holy Warriors's objective was the provision of food and shelter to the Afghan refugees in the North-West Frontier Province in Pakistan. Since the end of the Afghan war, Harkat ul-Mujahideen has continued to wage Jihad against secular Muslim governments and the West. The group's main objective today is to continue the armed struggle against non-believers and anti-Islamic forces. The organization seeks Kashmir's secession from India and accession to Pakistan to create a pan-Islamic entity.

Fazlur Rehman Khalil, former leader of Harakat ul-Mujahideen, remains one of the most important and prominent terrorists in Pakistan. That is why Khalil became one of the leaders of Harakat ul-Ansar when the organization was reassembled. He was a student of the fundamentalist Binori madrassah in Karachi, Pakistan, the same madrassah that educated Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban. For this and other reasons, Khalil retains strong ties to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. He is one of five signatories of Osama bin Laden's famous 1998 fatwa which attempted to induce Muslims worldwide to kill Americans whenever the opportunity arose. He continues to be a mentor to many members of Pakistan's wide array of terrorist groups including the Taliban.

Khalil was arrested in May 2004 by the Pakistani government due to his role in transporting Pakistani militants into Afghanistan in order to assist the Taliban during America's post-9/11 operations in the country. In actuality, he was treated like royalty for six months in an ISI safe house before being released under the pretense of a lack of evidence. Of course, since the Pakistani government established the Taliban and was now harboring al-Qaeda, the Pakistani government had ulterior motives in releasing him.

In June 2005 two American citizens residing in California, Hamid Hayat and Umer Hayat, were arrested for suspected participation in an al-Qaeda plot against the United States. Both men told the F.B.I. that they had received extensive training in a Harakat ul-Mujahideen camp run by Khalil. This revived interest in recapturing Khalil and so Pakistani security services are now "attempting to locate him." In 2005, shortly after the 7/7 Islamic bombings in London which were associated with Harakat ul-Mujahideen, some news sources announced that Khalil had given up the leadership of the organization.

The Harak-ul Jihad al-Islami terrorist group opened a branch office in Bangladesh in 1992. It was a joint enterprise between Pakistan's ISI and al-Qaeda's International Islamic Front. The fundamentalist/salafi The Harak-ul Jihad al-Islami-Bangladeah announced their presence at a press conference at the Jatiya Press Club in Dhaka. They demanded that Bangladesh be converted into an Islamic theocracy or Islami Hukumat. Their slogan was "We will all become Taliban and we will turn Bangladesh into Afghanistan.

The branch office maintains a score of Muslim militant training camps throughout Islamic Bangladesh. They are thought to have 15,000 members in that country alone, most of whom were recruited from Islamic Madrassas. They receive their funding from Islamic charities in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan which are channeled through Muslim Non-Governmental Organisations in Bangladesh, including the Adarsa Kutir, Al Faruk Islamic Foundation and Hataddin. Harak-ul Jihad al-Islami jihadists have been deployed on missions in Myanmar, India, Jammu, Kashmir, Pakistan, Chechnya, and Afghanistan in addition to Bangladesh.

The affiliate's operations commander, and a key suspect in the plot to assassinate the then Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, in July 2000, Mufti Abdul Hannan, after his arrest in October 2005 admitted to having dropped out of the Gouhardanga Madrassa in Pakistan. Police records in the Gopalganj District confirm that Hannan was trained as a terrorist in the Pakistani city of Peshawar. The HJI's Pakistani link was further established with the recovery of a diary from Hannan's brother Matiur Rehman, who was also arrested in connection with the assassination plot. Entries in the diary revealed that he was in touch with Pakistan's diplomatic mission in Bangladesh on a regular basis.

Reports indicate that agents of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's external intelligence agency, under the guise of Harak-ul Jihad i-Islami cadres imparted military training to Muslim young men from Bangladesh and India in bases in the Kurigram and Rangpur areas of Bangladesh. Similar Pakistani government training camps were established in Rangmari, Sundermari, Masaldanga and in other villages, where specific training was imparted in the use of sophisticated weaponry and bomb making techniques. After training, the young jihadist was infiltrated into India and dispursed to various locations in West Bengal and states in the Northeast region, including Assam to conduct terrorist operations at the direction of Pakistan's ISI.

Harak-ul Jihad al-Islami is also linked to the Asif Reza Commando Force which claimed responsibility for the January 22, 2002 attack on the American Information Services Center in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal. The arrest of Aftab Ansari alias Aftab Ahmed alias Farhan Malik, the prime suspect in the attack, led to further information on the linkages between the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JM), Lashkar-e-Toiba (LT) and the HJI - which were all Pakistani ISI affiliated Islamic terrorist organizations based out of Pakistan. Ansari was linked to the ISI and to JM terrorist Omar Shiekh, who was convicted for the abduction and murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl, in Pakistan. Ansari was asked in August 2001 in Islamabad by Omar Sheikh to provide cover and logistics support for terrorist operations from Bangladesh.

It's all one big unhappy family. The father is Islam. The mother is Pakistan. And the children are the world's most ruthless and aggressive terrorists. The government of Pakistan has replaced Saudi Arabia as the nation most responsible for state sponsored terrorism.

In Bangladesh, the HuJI was also known to have enjoyed the patronage of mainstream political parties such as the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Jamaat-e-Islami. Harak-ul Jihad al-Islami's operations commander, Mufti Hannan, subsequent to his arrest on October 1, 2005 confessed that Bangladesh's former Homeland Minister and current Commerce Minister, Altaf Hossain Choudhury, had assured him of protection and guaranteed his freedom following his involvement in the assassination attempt of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in July 2000.

As an example of such favoritism toward terrorists, in February 1996, 41 Order of Islamic Jihadists militants were arrested with firearms in Cox's Bazaar. The arrested jihadists were sentenced to life imprisonment by a court, but all of them were released on bail by the High Court after a more fundamentalist Islamic four-party alliance assumed power in October 2001.