New Delhi: Three weeks after the Indian Air Force’s missiles punched holes in Jaish-e-Muhammad’s seminary complex outside Bahawalpur, destroying mosque domes and logistical spaces, leaders of the banned terrorist group have vowed vengeance against India, through articles published in the in-house digital magazine, ‘Medina, Medina’.
Videos of the speeches made by Jaish leaders have also been republished, together with speeches made during the burial of the kin of the jihadists killed in the air strike on 7 May.
The permission given by the Pakistan military authorities to the Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) to hold such a large mobilisation—in the face of official claims that the seminary had been taken into state receivership in 2019—marks a turning point for the terrorist group, with its leadership gaining more public space than they have been granted in over a decade.
Abdul Rauf Asghar, brother of JeM founder Masood Azhar and in-charge of the outfit’s military operations, says: “We never target the innocent, and have never hit inhabited areas of cities. But [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi, listen, if you do not stop the massacres of ordinary Muslims, the Fidayeen of the Jaish will raid your streets and lanes, and unleash rivers of blood. For every dead Muslim, we will leave behind the bodies of ten dead Hindus.”
Talha Al-Saif Alvi, the youngest brother of Masood Azhar, used his article to mount pressure on Pakistani authorities to allow full-scale jihadist operations on the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC), which had been clamped down soon after the 2019 military crisis.
Even though all jihad is of equal significance, Talha explains, “certain jihad is more beloved to us, and holds a greater significance than others. The Ghazwa-e-Hind is one such special jihad, in which it is promised that even those participants destined for the depths of hell can raise themselves to the heights of Paradise through their martyrdom. Everything that is done to impose the rule of Islam on the land of Hind is part of the Ghazwa-e-Hind.”
Talha, interestingly, is believed to a British national, as is his sister Safeya Bibi. Safeya’s husband Mohammed Anas handles the stores at the Markaz in Bahawalpur. The family’s connections in the UK were built during Masood Azhar’s fundraising and recruitment visit to that country in 1993.
In the years before it was reined-in by Pakistani authorities, under pressure from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the multinational terror-funding watchdog, the Jaish was responsible for a succession of the largest terrorist attacks in India. The attacks included the storming of the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly in 2001, and an attack on Parliament House in New Delhi the same year. It also carried out a suicide-bombing outside the Army’s XV Corps headquarters in Srinagar in 2000.
There are threats, too, for elements in the Pakistani state, who may seek to silence the operations of the Jaish-e-Muhammad. “We are hurt, we are bleeding, we are covered in the blood of our dead and mad with our grief. If you seek to stand in our way now, you will be wiped from the face of the earth,” Talha warns.
The videos released together with ‘Medina, Medina’ seek donations, in the form of livestock for Eid sacrifices, which the organisation can then sell on.
The organisation seeks (Pakistani rupees) Rs 1,47,000 for an entire cow, to Rs 21,000 for part of a sheep. These fundraising opportunities often provided jihadist groups with a solid corpus of cash in the past, made from selling the hides of the animals.
A poster released on one jihadist feed requests cadres to volunteer for instruction courses for maritime jihad training, led by Maulana Masood Azhar.
The obituary articles by Talha mainly focus on the losses of May 7, though.
“How painful it is for me to record those we lost: my wife, my old uncle, Hamza Jameel, our trusted caretaker. I can only pray that the families of those whose loved ones lie in pieces find consolation. But this is war, and there is another day in war, when the blood of the martyrs will exact its revenge on the polytheists,” he writes.
“Even children were martyred,” he goes on, but “but I can say with confidence that no power on earth can defeat the birds of paradise that will rise from their graves, and set out to torment the Hindus and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.”
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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Seriously? By selling goats and cows on eid which comes once in a year! These so called few hundreds terrorists manage to execute sophisticated planning and training to enter foreign territory and attack parliament, army posts?
You can do better then this Sir, with respect!