Washington DC: Fugitive jihad commander Masood Azhar has given his first address in more than two decades to the cadre of the Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), an online digital forum operated by the terrorist organisation announced Tuesday.
Timed to mark the centennial of the dissolution of the Turkish caliphate in 1924—which laid spiritual and temporal authority over all Muslims—Azhar’s speech vows renewed jihadist operations against India and Israel that will lead to the establishment of a new, worldwide Islamic order.
The Jaish-e-Muhammad did not release the date when the speech was made or the location where it was delivered. Even though Jaish-linked digital platforms have released old speeches by Masood Azhar periodically, this is the first that can conclusively be dated because of its references to the ongoing Gaza war.
An Indian intelligence officer familiar with the JeM told ThePrint that it was likely held late last month at the 1,000-acre Umm-ul-Qura seminary and mosque complex outside Bahawalpur in Pakistan. The building includes an administrative block, and several housing blocks.
Loud applause breaks out repeatedly as Azhar exhorts his audience to join the internationally proscribed terrorist group for what he describes as a long battle to restore the caliphate. “India, your death is coming,” the terror commander shouts repeatedly.
Even though Pakistani authorities had announced they had taken administrative control of the complex in 2019, the Jaish-e-Muhammad has erected new buildings since then and posts armed guards to prevent unauthorised entry, a local resident told ThePrint.
Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto announced in 2022 that Azhar had escaped to Afghanistan, ahead of an attempt by Pakistani authorities to declare him a proclaimed offender. The declaration was made even as Pakistan mounted a successful effort to be removed from a terror finance watchlist maintained by the multinational Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
Azhar had been restricted from making public appearances ever since a breakaway group of the Jaish attempted the life of Pakistan’s former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf in 2003. Earlier, he had been imprisoned in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attack on Indian Parliament, but was never prosecuted. Later, in 2016, he was taken into what Pakistani authorities described as “protective custody”.
There has never been an official statement on when he was released from protective custody, and the circumstances around his purported trip to Afghanistan.
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Calls for violence
“Fearful rulers who do not believe in the word of Allah and jihad have led us to defeat in Kashmir, Palestine and other Muslim lands,” Azhar says in the new speech, which includes several explicit calls for transnational violence. “They say nothing can change, and America will rule the world.”
“Three hundred and nine years may pass before things change, according to the Quran,” the jihadist commander goes on. “God may will that things change only after a thousand years, and sometimes in minutes.”
“I am ashamed that a weakling like (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi challenges us, or a mouse like (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu dances on our graves,” he says. “Tell me, are there not even 300 people who can fight to reclaim my Babri Masjid?”
“We will send you all to Kashmir with such powerful guns that all the television anchors will quiver…, and ask where these weapons have come from.”
“The great Afghan leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is wanted by the United States, told me he had a dream recently, where he saw his army marching to Palestine. When he arrived there, he saw the Jaish-e-Muhammad was already there.”
Like now-Afghanistan minister for internal affairs Haqqani, Azhar was closely linked to al-Qaeda’s operations in Afghanistan. Azhar, the counter-terrorism expert Don Rassler points out, served in Somalia in 1993, alongside al-Qaeda commanders assisting Somali jihadists.
According to the Pakistani scholar Muhammad Amir Rana, Bin Laden and Azhar also held two personal meetings during this period, one in Kenya and the other in Saudi Arabia.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents reveal that the Harkat-ul-Ansar, the first jihadist group Azhar served, also received direct financial assistance between $30,000 and $60,000 a month from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate.
Pakistan creating ‘crisis atmospherics’?
Azhar’s speech was just days after a closed-door India-Pakistan conference hosted by the prestigious International Institute of Strategic Studies in Muscat last month to discuss diplomatic engagement between the two countries.
The meeting, highly-placed diplomatic sources said, was attended by representatives of the foreign ministries of the two countries, representatives of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress, as well as observers from the US Department of State and China.
“A new government is about to take power in the United States, and Islamabad could be trying to draw it into a country that has been largely ignored for the last four years, by creating crisis atmospherics,” a senior Indian intelligence officer told ThePrint.
Little progress was made in the discussions, the sources said, with India’s representatives saying the Modi government saw little hope of resuming serious dialogue at a time when Pakistan is mired in internal power struggles.
The Indian representatives also made clear the government would be unlikely to consider concessions Pakistan has been seeking on Kashmir, like the restoration of constitutional special status to the Union Territory.
Prominent participants in the meeting included MEA Joint Secretary J.P.Singh, his Pakistani counterpart Mehmood Nizami, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader Ram Madhav, Congress MP Manish Tewari, and Pakistan People’s Party vice-president Sherry Rehman.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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He should himself come and face the Indian Army He is bujhdil kayar can only sacrifice others