The Indian government claimed that Abdul Rauf Azhar, a senior leader of the Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad and a brother of the group’s founder, Masood Azhar, was killed during India’s retaliatory airstrikes on Pakistan on May 7.
Abdul Azhar is listed by the US government as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, and Jaish-e-Mohammad has been implicated in numerous terror attacks in the region, including the kidnapping, murder, and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Abdul was purportedly killed in the strike that targeted a religious school in the city of Bahawalpur that is run by Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM). The terror group’s headquarters is known to be based in Bahawalpur.
Masood Azhar, the JeM chief, admitted on May 7 that “10 members of his family and four close associates were killed in India’s missile attack,” according to the Deccan Herald. However, Masood did not name his brother as one of those killed.
India said it struck Pakistani-state-sponsored terrorist camps and headquarters in six different cities in Pakistan and Azad Kashmir, the Pakistan-administered region of the disputed territory of Kashmir. India launched the strikes as part of Operation Sindhoor, the country’s response to the April 22 terrorist attack in the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir that killed 26 tourists.
Abdul was added to the US list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists in December 2010. In its designation, the US Treasury Department noted that he was “a senior leader” of JeM who “has urged Pakistanis to engage in militant activities.” Abdul served as a senior military commander in India and as JeM’s “intelligence coordinator.” He was assigned to organize suicide attacks in India, was involved with JeM’s training camps, and participated in the group’s “political wing.”
Abdul took over for his brother, Masood, as the overall leader of Jaish-e-Mohammad for a short period in 2007 after Masood went underground due to international pressure on Pakistan. Masood reassumed his leadership role that same year.
Background on Jaish-e-Mohammed
The US government listed JeM as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in December 2001. Masood Azhar, JeM’s founder, was listed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in November 2010 for his involvement in terror attacks and his ties to Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups.
Masood is a veteran jihadist who trained at the same religious seminary as Afghan Taliban founder and former emir Mullah Omar. Masood was captured by the Indian government in 1994 and imprisoned for terrorist activities. He was released from an Indian jail along with Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh in exchange for hostages held in an Indian Airlines flight hijacking in December 1999 in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Masood formed JeM after his release from prison.
JeM is supported by Pakistan’s military and Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate because it is hostile to India and wages jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan. In its 2010 designation of Masood, the US Treasury Department said that “JeM recruitment posters in Pakistan contained a call from Azhar for volunteers to join the fight in Afghanistan against Western forces.”
JeM was implicated along with the Lashkar-e-Taiba as being behind the December 13, 2001, attack on the Indian Parliament building in New Delhi that killed nine people. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a close associate of the Azhar brothers and a JeM member, was behind the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Pearl was later brutally murdered and beheaded.
JeM has been responsible for numerous terror attacks in India, including the January 2016 assault on Pathankot Air Force Base in India that killed 17 soldiers and the February 2019 suicide attack in Jammu and Kashmir that killed 40 Indian Central Reserve Police Force troops.
Some of JeM’s top leaders have joined Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, the global jihadist group’s regional branch, which was formed by Al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri in September 2014. Despite JeM’s terrorist activities and close ties to global terrorist organizations, Pakistan has not acted against the group.
