Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

Inside Jihad
demand as ransom the release of Azhar and some other militant leaders.
Sheikh succeeded in kidnapping one American and three British
nationals from a hotel in New Delhi, but the hostages were rescued by
the police from a house in Sharanpur town in Uttar Pradesh. Sheikh
was captured after a shoot-out in which one policeman was killed. It
took another five years and the hijacking of an Indian Airlines jet to
earn his and his mentor’s freedom. The two probably met face to face
for the first time in the plane which took them to Kandahar.
The son of a wealthy Pakistani businessman who had migrated
to Britain for a better economic future, Sheikh fitted the profile of
a classic politically aware Islamic militant. His passage to militancy
started in 1992 when he watched a series of documentary films about
the oppression of Muslims following the break up of the former
Yugoslavia. In the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s, thousands of
Muslims were brutally murdered in scenes of violence not seen in
Europe since the Second World War. 38
A story gained prominence regarding Sheikh’s path to extremism:
moved by the plight of Muslims, it said that Sheikh travelled to Bosnia
with an organization known as ‘Convoy of Mercy‘. The purpose of
the visit was to provide humanitarian help to the victims of ethnic
cleansing. But the people he had met and the things he saw during the
trip radicalized him. 39 After his return, he dropped out of the LSE and
headed to a training camp in Afghanistan where he established links
with HuM. Equally important in terms of what happened next, he was
recruited by the ISI in London before leaving for India.
On returning home, Azhar broke away from HuM and decided to
form his own group. On 30 January 2000, flanked by his teacher and
mentor, Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, and some other senior clerics of
the Jamia Binoria, Azhar announced the formation of a new militant
outfit, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). The decision shocked Pakistani
jihadist circles. Backing for the new party by Shamzai and other
Deobandi clerics, who were considered to be very close to Pakistan’s
military establishment, raised many questions. Jamia Binoria had
played a key role in promoting a state-sponsored jihadist culture and
their support for the new militant outfit led to speculation that it was
done at the behest of the ISI.
The new guerrilla group was more ambitious than any seen before,
and heralded its emergence on the jihadist scene by launching a
number of spectacular attacks against the Indian forces in Kashmir in
mid 2000. Most of its cadres came from rural areas, small towns and