Ansarul Sharia Pakistan

Last updated
Ansarul Sharia Pakistan
FounderSheheryar aka Abdullah Hashmi (POW)
Dates of operationFebruary 2017 - present
Allegiance Al-Qaeda (Alleged)
Active regions Karachi
Ideology Islamism
Islamic extremism
Qutbism
Anti-Secularism [1]
Anti-Liberalism [1]
Allies al-Qaeda
Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami
Pakistani Taliban [2]
Battles and wars War on Terror
Designated as a terrorist group byFlag of Pakistan.svg  Pakistan


Ansarul Sharia Pakistan (ASP) is a Pakistani Alleged Al-Qaeda linked militant group based in Karachi, Pakistan. [1] [3] The organization was founded in February 2017. [4] The group was known for committing many attacks, at one point they performed attacks on a weekly basis. [1] The group claimed, through their Twitter page, that they recruited members from South Punjab, Balochistan, and Waziristan. [1] The group has also claimed to have ties to Al-Qaeda. [1]

Contents

History

The group was founded in February 2017 and originates from the Punjab region in Pakistan. [1] The leaders of the group are claimed to have derived their ideology and tactical methodologies from Osama Bin Laden and his organization, Al-Qaeda. [4] Members of the group allegedly fought for the Islamic State Khurasan, but the organization's brutal tactics drove its members into creating Ansural Sharia Pakistan. [4] The Ansarul Sharia Pakistan group is also known for being the group that the mujahideen group started with, they later splintered off because they were unimpressed with the Ansarul Sharia Pakistan's actions. [4]

The group originally consisted of roughly ten to twelve young men who attended various universities in Karachi, Pakistan. [5] The group was known to communicate using smartphone apps and were known to be wearing medallions that held small memory cards that carried important information about the group. [5] Law enforcement has claimed that the group receives a list of targeted killing tasks from abroad.

Eight members of the group were killed during a counter-terrorism operation in Karachi. [6] The encounter claimed the life of the group's leader Chief Sheheryar who goes by the alias Dr. Abdullah Hashmi. [6] Another identified from the dead was Arsalan Baig who was known for his activity in the group's targeted killings. [6] After this attack, five people in the group died immediately and three others died while en route to the hospital. [6]

Leadership

The leader of Ansarul Shariah (Pakistan) was Chief Sheheryar. [5] He received his master's degree in applied physics from the University of Karachi. [5] He worked as an information technology expert for the computer department at NED University of Engineering and Technology. [5]

Chief Sheheryar was claimed to have been arrested in September 2017. [7]

Abdul Karim Sarosh Siddiqui and muzammil ali junaidi is claimed to have been the masterminds behind the attacks on Khwaja Izhar. [1] He was also a student of applied physics at University of Karachi while muzammil was the student of NED university final year . [5] Siddiqui was suspected of being close friends with the suspected militant Hassan who died during the attempted assassination of Izharul Hassan. [1]

Khwaja Izharul Hassan was the leader of the opposition in the Sindh Assembly. [1]

Claimed Attacks

  1. In Karachi, the group claimed responsibility for the killing of retired colonel Tahir Zia Nagi around the Baloch Colony area. [1]
  2. The organization attempted an assassination on Khwaja Izharul Hassan, the Pakistan politician who was leading to opposition to the group. [1] During this attack the police were able to chase down and identify one of the attackers. [1] This eventually led to the downfall of the Ansarul Sharia (Pakistan) terrorist organization. [1]
  3. The group has claimed responsibility for the killing of a security guard in Gulistan-i-Jauhar. [1]
  4. The terrorist organization used motorcycles to shoot dead four police officers in Karachi. [8] The attackers left the scene without confrontation. The group left behind pamphlets that stated that they were targeting security forces in the area and claimed responsibility for the attacks. [8] This also led police to determine that the organization was behind the shooting. [8]
  5. Hassan was the leader of the opposition in the Sindh Assembly. [1] This opposition lead to the creation of new record keeping laws in order to track terrorist activity in Karachi. [1]

Culpability for Attacks

  1. The group was tied to the attack of two New Town policemen. [1]
  2. They are suspected of being responsible for the killing of DSP Traffic and his constable driver in Azizabad. [1]
  3. The organization has been tied to the murder of two employees of the Federal Board of Revenue in Gulistan-i-Jauhar. [1] The employees were sought out because the group suspected them of being policemen. [1]
  4. The group was accused of being responsible for the murder of Qaumi Razakar a police officer who was on the Northern Bypass. [1]

Related Research Articles

Qari Saifullah Akhtar was an alleged member of Al-Qaeda who was in Pakistani custody a few times prior to his death. Akhtar, a graduate of Jamia Uloom-ul-Islamia in Karachi, had been the leader of Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), a jihadi organization. He was a key figure and founder of HUJI and was involved in jihadi groups since the early 1980s. He was appointed the head of HUJI following the killing of Mawlana Irshad Ahmed at Sharana during clashes with Soviet forces in June 1985. He was reportedly involved in the 1995 coup attempt to topple the Pakistani government led by Benazir Bhutto. When HUJI merged with Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) around 1990 to form Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA), Akhtar acted as deputy to former HUM leader and then amir Maulana Fazalur Rehman Khalil. HUA dissolved back into two separate groups in 1997, allowing Akhtar to become amir of HUJI. Since 1998 when Osama bin Laden released a fatwa under the banner World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders, segments of HUJI have joined al-Qaeda. It has been reported that Akhtar was running a training camp at Rishkhor, Afghanistan before the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and had trained 3,500 persons in conventional and unconventional combat. He disappeared from Afghanistan but was apprehended in August 2004 in the United Arab Emirates. He was then handed over to Pakistan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami</span> Pakistani Islamic fundamentalist Jihadist organisation

Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami is a Pakistani Islamic fundamentalist Jihadist organisation affiliated with Al-Qaeda and Taliban. Which aims to spread Radical Islamist ideology to liberate the rest of Islamic lands from the clutches of the enemies of Islam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh</span> British Islamist (born 1973)

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh is a British Pakistani terrorist. He became a member of the Islamist jihadist group Harkat-ul-Ansar or Harkat-ul-Mujahideen in the 1990s, and later of Jaish-e-Mohammed and was closely associated with Al-Qaeda.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pakistani Taliban</span> Islamist militant organization operating along the Durand Line

The Pakistani Taliban, formally called the Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan, is an umbrella organization of various Islamist armed militant groups operating along the Afghan–Pakistani border. Formed in 2007 by Baitullah Mehsud, its current leader is Noor Wali Mehsud, who has publicly pledged allegiance to the Afghan Taliban. The Pakistani Taliban share a common ideology with the Afghan Taliban and have assisted them in the 2001–2021 war, but the two groups have separate operation and command structures.

In 2007, 34 terrorist attacks and clashes, including suicide attacks, killings, and assassinations, resulted in 134 casualties and 245 injuries, according to the PIPS security report. The report states that Pakistan faced 20 suicide attacks during 2007, which killed at least 111, besides injuring another 234 people. The PIPS report shows visible increase in suicide attacks after the siege of Lal Masjid.

This is a list of terrorist attacks in Pakistan in the calendar year 2011.

This is a list of terrorist incidents in Pakistan in 2004.

Ansar al-Sharia or Ansar al-Shariah is a name used by a collection of radical or militant Islamist groups or militias, in at least eight countries. While they share names and ideology, they lack a unified command structure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ansar al-Sharia (Yemen)</span> Militant salafist jihadist organization in Yemen

Jama'at Ansar al-Shari'a, also known as Ansar al-Shari'a, is a Yemen-based umbrella organization which includes units from several militant Islamic groups of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). In 2011, AQAP created Ansar Al-Sharia as a Yemen-based affiliate focused on waging an insurgency rather than international attacks on the West. In the view of the International Crisis Group, AQAP is "an internally diverse organisation with varying layers of support among the local population" and many AAS members and allies are not committed to AQAP's international agenda.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ansar al-Sharia (Libya)</span> Salafist jihadist group in Libya

Ansar al-Sharia in Libya was a Salafist Islamist militia and Al-Qaeda-aligned group that advocated the implementation of Sharia law across Libya. Ansar al-Sharia came into being in 2011, during the Libyan Civil War. Until January 2015, it was led by its "Amir", Muhammad al-Zahawi. As part of its strategy, the organization targeted specific Libyan and American civilians for death and took part in the 2012 Benghazi attack. The group was designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations, Iraq, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Events in the year 2014 in Pakistan.

al-Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent Islamist militant organization

Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent usually abbreviated as AQIS, is an Islamist militant organization which aims to fight the governments of Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Myanmar and Bangladesh in order to establish an Islamic state and seeks to establish an Islamic caliphate in Indian Subcontinent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lahore church bombings</span>

On 15 March 2015, two explosions took place at Roman Catholic Church and Christ Church during Sunday service in Youhanabad, Lahore, Pakistan. At least 15 people were killed and seventy were wounded in the attacks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Al-Qaeda in the Sinai Peninsula</span> Militant jihadist organization

Al-Qaeda in the Sinai Peninsula, or AQSP, was an Egyptian militant jihadist organization possibly formed by a merger between al-Qaeda operatives in Sinai and Ansar al Jihad. It was Al-Qaeda's branch in the Sinai peninsula, and is composed of many Al-Qaeda factions in the area. AQSP made international headlines in November 2014 when the organization pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) in a nine-minute audio speech released on Twitter.

Zakir Rashid Bhat was a Kashmiri separatist who became the commander of Hizbul Mujahideen after the killing of Burhan Wani and Sabzar Bhat, who were the former commanders of the same outfit. He later became the chief of Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind.

Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad is a codename of a combined military operation by the Pakistani military in support of local law enforcement agencies to disarm and eliminate the terrorist sleeper cells across all states of Pakistan, started on 22 February 2017. The operation is aimed to eliminate the threat of terrorism, and consolidating the gains of Operation Zarb-e-Azb which was launched in 2014 as a joint military offensive. It is further aimed at ensuring the security of Pakistan's borders. The operation is ongoing active participation from Pakistan Army, Pakistan Air Force, Pakistan Navy, Pakistan Police and other Warfare and Civil Armed Forces managed under the Government of Pakistan. More than 375,000 operations have been carried out against terrorists so far. This Operation has been mostly acknowledged after Operation Zarb e Azb.

On 23 June 2017, a series of terrorist attacks took place in Pakistan resulting in 96 dead and over 200 wounded. They included a suicide bombing in Quetta targeting policemen, followed by a double bombing at a market in Parachinar, and the targeted killing of four policemen in Karachi.

Khawaja Izharul Hassan is a Pakistani politician from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM) and was the leader of the opposition in the 12th Sindh Assembly. He was also a member of the Provincial Assembly of Sindh from August 2018 to August 2024.

Darsgah-Jihad-O-Shahadat is an Islamist group based in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, with branches in the state of Kerala. The group claims to have trained about 50,000 people in self-defence techniques at its training camps in Hazrat Ujale Shah Idgah grounds at Saidabad and Purani Haveli.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind</span> Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist militant group in Kashmir

Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind is an Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist militant group active in Kashmir. The group's stated objective is to create Kashmir as an independent Islamic state under Sharia law and jihad against India.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 "The rise and 'fall' of Ansarul Sharia Pakistan". Dawn . 9 September 2017. Retrieved 14 September 2017.
  2. ↑ Pakistan. Mapping Militants. Stanford University.
  3. ↑ Ahmed, Roohan (9 September 2017). "What we know about Ansar-ul-Shariah Pakistan". Samaa TV . Retrieved 14 September 2017.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Ansar ul-Sharia Pakistan / Jamaat-ul-Ansar Al-Sharia Pakistan (ASP)". Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium. Archived from the original on 7 April 2020. Retrieved 14 September 2017.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Arfeen, Syed (September 6, 2017). "Ansarul Shariah Pakistan Chief Arrested by Security Forces". geo. Retrieved April 10, 2019.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Shah, Zeeshan (October 22, 2017). "Ansarul Shariah chief among eight terrorist killed: Sindh Rangers". geo.tv. Retrieved May 5, 2019.
  7. ↑ Shah, Zeeshan (September 8, 2017). "Ansarul Shariah Pakistan chief was in contact with Al-Qaeda member: sources". geo.tv. Retrieved May 10, 2019.
  8. 1 2 3 Khan, Faraz (June 23, 2017). "Four Policemen Martyred in Karachi Gun Attack". Tribune. Retrieved April 10, 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.