MLM: "Evading Scrutiny, Spreading Mayhem: How Jaish-e- Muhammad Chief Maulana Masood Azhar is Crafting Chaos in Kashmir"

Maulana Masood Azhar, the founding leader of Jaish-e-Muhammad (Army of Muhammad—JeM), a Pakistan-based terrorist group blamed for violence against India over the past two decades—including the latest vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) attack in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) targeting a security convoy. On February 14, 42 paramilitary force personnel were killed on the Srinagar-Jammu highway near the town of Awantipora, Pulwama district when a Jaish-e- Muhammad fidayeen (suicide attacker) Adil Ahmed Dar (a.k.a Waqas Commando) ambushed the security convoy with an explosives-laden vehicle (The Tribune, February 15). The latest event led India to carry out air strikes targeting JeM’s terror training camps in Balakot (Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa province), Chakothi, and Muzaffarabad (Pakistan- Administered Kashmir) on February 26 (Times of India, February 26). 

In the aftermath of the Pathankot terror events in early 2016, a Pakistani commentator compared Azhar with Ratko Mladić, the former Bosnian Serb warlord and convicted war criminal, suggesting that the Pakistan government should stop protecting militant leaders on its own soil and hand them over to India as a friendly gesture in exchange for better bilateral ties. [2]. However, multiple attempts by India to get custody of Azhar or to designate him as a global terrorist in the past were thwarted by Pakistan and China, respectively. The government of Pakistan often tags India’s attempt to ban Masood Azhar at the UN as a “politically motivated proposal aimed at covering its (India’s) own subversive activities in Pakistan” (Daily Times, January 2, 2017). Intriguingly, amid heightened tensions between India and Pakistan in the aftermath of the February 14 Pulwama suicide event, there has been a renewed clamor again around the world to designate Azhar as a global terrorist under the United Nation Security Council.

Animesh Roul @sspconline, Papers on 'Masood Azhar, Jaish-e Muhammed, Pakistan are published in Militant Leadership Monitor (subscription), Jamestown Foundation, Sept.2013 & MLM, Feb 2019. https://jamestown.org/programs/mlm/

1- "Evading Scrutiny, Spreading Mayhem: How Jaish-e- Muhammad Chief Maulana Masood Azhar is Crafting Chaos in Kashmir", Read it here: http://ow.ly/5cFg30nWCM5 ; 

2- "The Jihadi Demagogue: A Profile of Maulana Masood Azhar of Pakistan", September 2013; Read it here: http://ow.ly/FGjw30nWCNr