pakistan’s

Pakistan’s Jihad in India
In India, Pakistan has employed nonstate actors to achieve policy goals since 1947 when a
mid-level army officer, Colonel Akbar Khan (who was the director of weapons and equipment at
the nascent Pakistan Army’s general headquarters), helped coordinate invaders from the tribal
areas and what was then known as the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) to seize Kashmir.
The incursion enjoyed support from the provincial governments of the NWFP and Punjab and
eventually enjoyed the highest support of the new government. 31 As Pakistani “marauders”
streamed into Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh—the then sovereign of Kashmir—requested India’s
assistance. India agreed, provided that Kashmir become incorporated into the new country.
Once the accession papers were signed, India airlited troops to protect what had become Indian
territory. The conflict became known as the first Indo-Pakistani War. When the war ended, about
one-third of Kashmir was administered by Pakistan and the remainder by India. The conflict
bequeathed a security competition that exists to date. 32
Pakistan continued to use nonstate actors for operations in Kashmir intermittently. 33 When
Kashmir burst into a full-fledged insurgency in 1989 as a result of Indian malfeasance in managing
Kashmiri political grievances and gross electoral manipulations, Pakistan swung battle-hardened
mujahideen from Afghanistan to Kashmir. The timing coincided with the Soviet withdrawal from
Afghanistan, the demise of the Soviet Union, and the emergence of Pakistan’s “nuclear umbrella.” 34
Pakistan cultivated several kinds of militant groups for operations in Kashmir and beyond. These
groups vary by sectarian orientation, the types of operations they employ, the ethnic background
of their recruits, and even their means of recruitment and deployment. 35
Analysts typically call these militant organizations “Kashmiri groups” or Kashmiri tanzeems.
This is a misnomer, however, because these organizations include few ethnic Kashmiris among
their ranks, and most do not operate exclusively in Kashmir. They include the Deobandi groups
of Jaish-e-Mohammad and Harkat-ul-Ansar/Harkat-ul-Mujahideen; Ahl-e-Hadith organizations,
such as the Punjab-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT); and groups influenced by the Jamaat-e-Islami
(JI), such as Hizbul Mujahideen and al Badr. 36
The Pakistani Taliban Emerges: Realignment of Deobandi Militant Groups
after September 11
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11 and President Pervez Musharraf’s decision (albeit
coerced) to support the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, several of Pakistan’s militant organizations
began significant reorganizations. First, Jaish-e-Mohammad had a serious split over Musharraf’s
decision to facilitate U.S. operations in Afghanistan to overthrow the Afghan Taliban, which
for most intents and purposes was a Deobandi-inspired Islamist government. Masood Azhar,
Jaish-e-Mohammad’s amir (commander), remained loyal to the state while Jamaat-ul-Furqan
began undertaking suicide operations against government installations. 37
31 Shuja Nawaz, “The First Kashmir War Revisited,” India Review 7, no. 2 (2008): 115–54.
32 Andrew Whitehead, A Mission in Kashmir (London: Penguin Books, 2007).
33 Praveen Swami, India, Pakistan and the Secret Jihad: The Covert War in Kashmir, 1947–2004 (London: Routledge, 2007), 49–75.
34 Fair, Fighting to the End.
35 Fair, “The Militant Challenge.”
36 Many of these groups have been proscribed numerous times only to re-emerge and operate under new names. Rather than employing the
most current names under which they operate, I use the names that are likely to be most familiar to readers.
37 Amir Mir, The True Face of Jehadis (Lahore: Mashal Books, 2004); and Qazi, “Rebels of the Frontier.”
PAKISTAN’S INTERNAL SECURITY ENVIRONMENT u FAIR
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