Masood Azhar's mission is to 'destroy' India. With Operation Sindoor, he got a taste of his own medicine

medium nocaption120992844Maulana Masood Azhar, the notorious chief of terror group Jaish-e-Muhammed (JeM), on Wednesday (May 7 ) acknowledged the death of 10 of his family members and four aides in the Indian strike on Markaz Subhan Allah in Bahawalpur, a Deobandi seminary in Pakistan, in the early hours the same day.According to reports, Azhar's brother Abdul Rauf, operational head of JeM, also succumbed to his injuries later. Rauf was the mastermind of the IC-814 hijacking in 1999 that resulted in the release of his brother.The seminary is known as the breeding ground of terrorists that the country’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) deploys as part of its proxy war against India.“I wish I had also joined the lucky caravan,” Azhar according to report, said on Wednesday, in the aftermath of India’s precision strikes on nine targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. medium nocaption121004428A JeM statement said Azhar’s elder sister, her husband, a nephew and his wife and a niece were among those killed. “They have attained a higher calling and have now become the guests of Allah. I feel no disappointment. In fact, my heart keeps wishing I had joined this joyful group of 14 pilgrims. Their departure was destined, yet it was not God who killed them,” Azhar said.Member's of Azhar’s core group, including Abdul Rauf and other senior functionaries like brother-in-law Yusuf Azhar, had been operating out of Markaz Subhan Allah. The facility was under the superintendence of Mufti Asghar Khan Kashmiri, head of Jaish’s operations in PoK. Abdullah Jehadi alias Abdullah Kashmiri and Aashiq Nengroo (Indian fugitive) also operated from the centre. medium nocaption120991023Columnist Harinder Baweja wrote a chapter on Masood Azhar for a book titled “Profiles of Terror” and has reported on him for other publications. The piece below describes the man whose mission is to ‘destroy’ India.Azhar is the one global terrorist who has the dubious distinction of being able to bring countries to the brink of war. He can also lay claim to being a diplomatic thorn that can send relations between nations spiralling out of control.In December 2001, members of his terrorist group, Jaish-e-Mohammed (literally, army of the Prophet) – JeM – attacked the Indian Parliament. After the audacious attack, the then Atal Bihari Vajpayee government amassed an army at the border in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation that lasted several months. medium94227764In February 2019, the Narendra Modi government redrew its security response and conducted airstrikes into Pakistani territory in Balakot. The response was an answer to the Jaish’s suicide attack on a CRPF convoy in Pulwama that killed 40 soldiers.High priest of terrorJust who is this ‘maulana’ who Pakistan has always sheltered and China has protected, by blocking moves to declare him a designated terrorist by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC)?It would not be wrong to say that Azhar’s journey into jihad started in India in the early 1990s. In fact, he has always had his eyes set on India.The 1968-born terrorist, who was eventually designated by the UNSC, was born to a poultry farmer in Bahawalpur. He studied at the Jamia Islamia at the Binori mosque in Karachi. There, he met students who were under the influence of leaders of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), a terrorist organisation active in Afghanistan and Kashmir.Deeply influenced by the HuM, Azhar was 21, when he crossed over into Afghanistan to train as a terrorist.At Yuvar, a training camp in Afghanistan, Azhar found himself struggling. With a stodgy 5’3” frame, he could not complete the mandatory 40-day training programme, run obstacle races or handle weapons. He admitted – years later – to his interrogators in Srinagar, where he was arrested in 1994, that this was “because of his poor physique”.He returned from Yuvar to Karachi and his knowledge of Islam soon saw him bringing out a magazine called Sada-i-Mujahid (Knock of the Mujahideen), featuring articles on the HuM. The Harkat leaders discovered his oratory skills and decided to send him to Kashmir to motivate the mujahideen who had embarked on an insurgency that continues till today.In 1994, Azhar flew to Dhaka and onwards to Delhi on a Portuguese passport. Before going to Srinagar, he travelled to Ayodhya. He told his interrogators he needed to mourn the demolition of the Babri Masjid. He recorded his journey to Ayodhya and later to Kashmir and the cassettes were liberally distributed to motivate fresh recruits.Azhar described one such meeting he had in Kashmir. Transcribed by his interrogators in Kashmir, it reads, “About 25 armed mujahideen were gathered at a small house in the village. They greeted us warmly and soon a religious discourse began. The young men’s chests were decorated with magazines and within them burned the flame of courage and bravery. All of them were listening to me intently and their AK-47s lay cradled in their laps like children in their mother’s care. Some of them also had carbines and rocket launchers that they must have seized from the army. I picked up a Kalashnikov and after feeling the weapon in my hands, found that it was ready to talk to the mushrikeen [enemy]. The bullet was in the chamber and it was ready to fire and I felt ecstatic at the thought of enemy soldiers falling…my joy knew no bounds as I held the loaded gun in my hands.” medium94227953In the dragnetHis time in Kashmir was short. He was arrested within a few days of landing. His arrest in February 1994 came as a big blow to the HuM and the Pakistan establishment that had embarked on a new strategy of pushing foreign mercenaries into Kashmir to strengthen local militants.I [the writer] was in Kashmir when he was arrested and paraded before the media, his feet chained, his head lowered, as he sat, surrounded by security officials. He ignored the first question I put to him because, as the Taliban too believe, his religion forbade eye contact with women.Despite being in custody, he had no reservations in narrating what he had done in the Valley. He was fortunate, he said, that Allah had chosen him for what he called an Islamic duty and his only regret was that he had been captured and not killed. Had he been tortured? Driven by rage – he broke his own rule – and looking me straight in the eye, said sarcastically, “No, the Army has been showering me with petals.”His arrest was a big blow to Pakistan and it would not be incorrect to say that the hijacking of IC814 – from Kathmandu to Kandahar — was plotted with the specific aim of securing his release from an Indian prison. According to officials who tried to negotiate with the hijackers, the one name they were not willing to drop from a long list of terrorists they wanted in exchange for the passengers, was Azhar’s. medium94227728Spreading terrorFinally, on December 31, 1999, Jaswant Singh, the then foreign minister, flew him to Kandahar. Azhar has described that journey too in a recorded cassette.“ . . . The runway flashed by and I was a mixture of emotions. The land where the plane touched down, everything belonging to it was intensely dear to me. Mullah Omar, the person whose deep love filled my heart, lived here in Kandahar. He, whose presence is a true blessing for the Muslims, had made Islam proud. When I was in prison, I desperately yearned to behold this city and kiss the hand of Mullah Omar...As soon as my feet touched the ground, my heart was transformed...Taliban officials greeted us at the foot of the stairs. A storm of emotions washed over me and tears welled in my eyes...I couldn’t help thinking of one thing: the day my hands had been tied behind my back and I had been pushed into a truck was a Friday. Today was a Friday too. Both my hands were free and I was sitting in a Taliban car heading towards freedom…”Exactly a month after the touchdown in Kandahar, Azhar announced the formation of the JeM, on January 31, 2000.His cadre continue to operate in Kashmir. Pakistan tries to distance itself from the maulana they have nurtured, to avoid staying on the terror grey list, but when India tells Pakistan that talks and terror cannot go hand in hand, it’s Azhar they have in mind.The man who lies at heart of diplomatic freezes has another dubious distinction. He fathered the destructive art of using suicide squads to hit India.Inputs: Raj Shekhar Jha