Tensions are greater between India and Pakistan than they’ve been in many years as the 2 international locations commerce blame for drone attacks on one another’s territory over the previous few days. On the coronary heart of the dispute is what India claims is Pakistan’s assist for armed separatist teams working in Kashmir, a region disputed between the 2 international locations.
An armed group known as The Resistance Front (TRF) claimed accountability for the Pahalgam attack in Indian-administered Kashmir final month by which 26 folks had been killed. India alleges that TRF is an offshoot of one other Pakistan-based armed group, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and has blamed Pakistan for supporting such teams.
Pakistan has denied this. It condemned the assault in April and known as for an impartial investigation.
Right here is extra about who the armed teams are and the foremost assaults they’ve claimed or been blamed for.
The TRF emerged in 2019 following the Indian authorities’s suspension of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, stripping Indian-administered Kashmir of its semi-autonomous status.
Nonetheless, the group was not extensively identified earlier than the Pahalgam assault, which it took accountability for in April by way of the Telegram messaging app, on which it stated it was against the granting of residency permits to “outsiders”.
For the reason that repeal of Article 370, non-Kashmiris have been granted residency permits to settle in Indian-administered Kashmir. This has stoked fears that the Indian authorities is making an attempt to vary the demographics of Kashmir, whose inhabitants is almost all Muslim.
Not like different armed insurgent teams in Kashmir, the TRF doesn’t have an Islamic title.
Nonetheless, the Indian authorities maintains that it’s an offshoot of, or a entrance for, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based armed group whose title means “Military of the Pure”.
In 2020, TRF began claiming accountability for minor assaults, together with some focused killings. TRF recruits included rebels from totally different splinter insurgent teams. Indian safety brokers say they’ve arrested a number of TRF members since then.
In keeping with Indian authorities data, most armed fighters killed in gunfights in Kashmir had been affiliated with the TRF in 2022.
The LeT, which requires the “liberation” of Indian-administered Kashmir, was based round 1990 by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, who’s often known as Hafiz Saeed.
In 2008, armed gunmen opened fireplace on civilians at a number of websites in Mumbai, India, killing 166 folks. Ajmal Kasab, the one attacker captured alive, stated the attackers had been members of LeT. Saeed denied any involvement in that assault, nevertheless. Kasab was executed by India in 2012.
India additionally blamed Pakistani intelligence businesses for the assault. Whereas Pakistan conceded that the assault might have been partly deliberate on Pakistani soil, it maintained that its authorities and intelligence businesses weren’t concerned.
In keeping with the United Nations, LeT was additionally concerned in a 2001 assault on India’s parliament and a 2006 assault on Mumbai commuter trains that killed 189 folks.
On Might 7, India launched missile attacks on several cities in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Certainly one of these cities was Muridke within the Punjab province. India claims that Muridke was the situation of the headquarters of the Jamat-ud-Dawa, a charity organisation that New Delhi insists is a entrance for the LeT.
Final week, the Indian military claimed it had struck LeT’s Markaz Taiba camp in Muridke. The military additionally claimed Kasab had been skilled at this camp.
Pakistan says LeT has been banned, nevertheless. Following an assault on Indian-administered Kashmir’s Pulwama in 2019, Pakistan additionally reimposed a lapsed ban on Jamat-ud-Dawa. Saeed was arrested in 2019 and is within the custody of the Pakistani authorities, serving a 31-year jail sentence after being convicted in two “terror financing” circumstances.
Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), or “The Military of Muhammad”, was shaped round 2000 by Masood Azhar, who had been launched from Indian jail in 1999.
Azhar, who had been arrested on “terrorism” fees, was launched in trade for 155 hostages being held by hijackers of an Indian Airways aircraft.
Azhar beforehand fought underneath the banner of a gaggle known as Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, which requires Kashmir to be united with Pakistan, and has been linked to al-Qaeda.
In keeping with the UN Safety Council, JeM has additionally had hyperlinks with al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
Pakistan banned JeM in 2002 after the group, alongside LeT, was blamed for an assault on the Indian parliament in 2001.
The British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was convicted of killing US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002, was additionally a member of JeM. Pearl was the Wall Avenue Journal’s South Asia bureau chief. Nonetheless, a 2011 report launched by the Pearl Mission at Georgetown College following its personal investigation claimed that Pearl had not been murdered by Sheikh. The report as a substitute alleged that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001 assaults, was accountable. In 2021, a panel of three judges at Pakistan’s Supreme Court docket ordered Sheikh’s launch.
Regardless of the ban, Indian authorities declare the group continues to function in Bahawalpur, in Pakistan’s Punjab province. On Might 7, the Indian military claimed its strikes had additionally focused the headquarters of JeM there.
In 2019, JeM claimed a suicide bomb assault that killed 40 Indian paramilitary troopers in Pulwama in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Azhar has been arrested by Pakistani authorities twice, however was launched and has by no means been charged. He has since disappeared from the general public eye and his present whereabouts should not identified.
Hizbul-ul-Mujahideen
Hizbul-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), or “Occasion of Holy Fighters” was shaped in 1989 by Kashmiri separatist chief Muhammad Ahsan Dar.
The group emerged out of the 1988 protests in Kashmir in opposition to the Indian authorities. The group, additionally known as Hizb, has turn out to be the biggest Indigenous insurgent group based mostly in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Somewhat than calling for independence, HuM requires the entire of Kashmir to be allowed to accede to Pakistan.
The group has an enormous community of fighters in Shopian, Kulgam and Pulwama districts within the south of Indian-administered Kashmir.
In 2016, the killing of standard HuM commander Burhan Wani triggered widespread protests in Indian-administered Kashmir, leading to a crackdown by Indian safety forces.
The next yr, the US designated HuM as a “overseas terrorist organisation” and positioned sanctions on the group.
HuM chief Riyaz Naikoo spoke to Al Jazeera in 2018. “It’s the nature of the occupying Indian state that has compelled us to resort to violent strategies of resistance,” he stated.
When requested what the group’s calls for had been, Naikoo stated: “Our demand may be very easy – freedom. Freedom, for us, means the whole dismantling of India’s unlawful occupation of Kashmir and all of the constructions that assist it, be they navy or financial.”
He added that the group considers Pakistan an “ideological and ethical pal” as a result of “Pakistan is the one nation which has persistently supported our trigger and raised the issues of Kashmiri freedom wrestle at worldwide boards”.
