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home >by publication type >backgrounder > Kashmir Militant Extremists
Updated: July 12, 2006
Yes. The disputed majority Muslim region has its own local terrorist groups, but most of the recent terrorism there has been conducted by Islamist outsiders who seek to claim Kashmir for Pakistan. A spate of Islamist cross-border attacks into Indian-held territory and the December 2001 storming of the Indian parliament in New Delhi have reinforced Kashmir’s standing as the key bone of contention between India and Pakistan. Both states have nuclear weapons, making Kashmir one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints.
Yes. Many terrorists active in Kashmir received training in the samemadrasas, or Muslim seminaries, where Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters studied, and some received military training at camps in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Moreover, the Kashmiri terrorists’ leadership has al-Qaeda connections. The leader of the Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen group, Farooq Kashmiri Khalil, signed al-Qaeda’s 1998 declaration of holy war, which called on Muslims to attack all Americans and their allies. Maulana Masood Azhar, who founded the Jaish-e-Muhammad organization, traveled to Afghanistan several times to meet Osama bin Laden. Azhar's group is suspected of receiving funding from al-Qaeda, U.S. and Indian officials say.
Yes, experts say. Pakistan, which used to back Islamist militants in Kashmir, changed course after September 11. After the December 2001 attack on India’s parliament, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf promised to crack down on terrorist groups active in Kashmir. In response, members of these extremist groups have gone underground, taken other names, and formed new, ad hoc configurations. Experts say some of these militants have branched out into attacks on Shiite and Christian minorities, American facilities, and other Western targets in Pakistan.
After Delhi and Islamabad agreed to launch a landmark bus service in February 2005 across the ceasefire line dividing Kashmir, militants vowed to target the service. In April of the same year, one bus survived a grenade attack.
India now holds about two-thirds of the disputed territory, which it calls Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan controls about one-third, which it calls Azad (meaning “free”) Kashmir. China also controls two small sections of northern Kashmir.
Kashmir been a constant source of tension since 1947, when the British partitioned their imperial holdings in South Asia into two new states, India and Pakistan. For Pakistan, incorporating the majority Muslim province of Kashmir is a basic national aspiration bound up in its identity as a Muslim state. Meanwhile, India sees the province as key to its identity as a secular, multiethnic state. India and Pakistan fought three wars over the region in 1947, 1965, and 1971. At least 35,000 people have died in political violence in Kashmir since 1990.
The State Department lists three Islamist groups active in Kashmir as foreign terrorist organizations: Harakat ul-Mujahedeen, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Jaish-e-Muhammad. The first group has been listed for years, and the other two were added after the December 2001 Indian parliament attack. All three groups have attracted Pakistani members as well as Afghan and Arab veterans who fought the 1980s Soviet occupation of nearby Afghanistan.
Since Pakistan outlawed these groups, attacks in Kashmir and Pakistan have been carried out under other guises. One group calling itself al-Qanoon or Lashkar-e-Omar is thought to be a coalition of members of Jaish-e-Muhammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and other Pakistan-based Islamist groups, including the anti-Shiite Lashkar-e-Jhangvi organization. Another new militant group reported to have emerged is the Save Kashmir Movement (SKM).
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