Ikhwan force, popularly referred to as the Ikhwan and locally known as naabedh, was a pro-government militia in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, composed of surrendered Kashmiri militants active in the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir. [1]
By 1994, a section of militants who felt marginalized by the Inter-Services Intelligence's favoring of the Hizbul Mujahideen over other groups sought alternate avenues. The Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen was formed by Mohammad Yusuf Parray, better known as Kuka Parray and by early 1994, the group sided with the Indian forces to fight the militants backed by the Pakistani government. Besides Ikhwan, other groups operated by Javed Ahmad Shah (who had the backing of the state police's Special Operations Group) and Liaqat Khan (who operated in Kashmir's Anantnag district). By the end of 1994, all three groups had merged into one entity known as Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen. [1]
Many prominent fighters for the Ikhwan contested the 1996 elections. Kuka Parray founded the Jammu and Kashmir Awami League and won. Javed Ahmad Shah joined the National Conference. [1]
After the 1996 assembly elections, due to the public's detestation of their ruthless tactics and several publicity campaigns by pro-secession organisations, the Ikhwan quickly found themselves ostracised by the political establishment. The official cover for the armed group was stripped soon after by the Indian government which led to a huge spike in casualties. Ikhwan is expected to have lost over 150 members. According to a 2003 report by The Hindu, nearly 350 to 500 members of Ikhwan remained on active duty with the Jammu and Kashmir Police and the Indian Army and were paid a regular stipend. [1]
Kuka Parray was killed by Kashmiri militants in 2003 while he was on his way to inaugurate a cricket match in Sonawari, Bandipore district. [2] Javed Ahmad Shah was also killed a month earlier by Kashmiri militants at the Greenway Hotel in Srinagar. [3] Liaqat Khan continues to live in Kashmir. [4]
The history of Kashmir is intertwined with the history of the broader Indian subcontinent in South Asia with influences from the surrounding regions of Central, and East Asia. Historically, Kashmir referred to only the Kashmir Valley of the western Himalayas. Today, it denotes a larger area that includes the Indian-administered union territories of Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, the Pakistan-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and the Chinese-administered regions of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract.
All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) is an alliance of 26 political, social and religious organizations formed on 9 March 1993, as a united political front to raise the cause of Kashmiri independence in the Kashmir conflict. Mehmood Ahmed Saghar was the first convener of the APHC-PAK chapter when the alliance was established in 1993. The alliance has historically been viewed positively by Pakistan as it contests the claim of the Indian government over the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The organisation is split into two main factions, those being the Mirwaiz and Geelani factions. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq is the founder and chairman of Mirwaiz faction and Masarat Alam Bhat is the interim chairman of Geelani faction, who succeeded Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the founder of the faction after his death.
Hizbul Mujahideen, also spelled Hizb-ul-Mujahidin, is a Pakistan-affiliated Islamist militant organisation that has been engaged in the Kashmir insurgency since 1989. It aims to separate Kashmir from India and merge it with Pakistan, and is thus one of the most important players in the region as it evolved the narrative of the Kashmir conflict by steering the struggle away from nationalism and towards jihadism.
The insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, also known as the Kashmir insurgency, is an ongoing separatist militant insurgency against the Indian administration in Jammu and Kashmir, a territory constituting the southwestern portion of the larger geographical region of Kashmir, which has been the subject of a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947.
The Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) is a formerly armed, political separatist organisation active in both the Indian-administered and Pakistani-administered territories of Kashmir. It was founded by Amanullah Khan, with Maqbool Bhat also credited as a co-founder. Originally a militant wing of the Azad Kashmir Plebiscite Front, the organization officially changed its name to the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front in Birmingham, England on 29 May 1977; from then until 1994 it was an active Kashmiri militant organization. The JKLF first established branches in several cities and towns of the United Kingdom and other countries in Europe, as well as in the United States and across the Middle East. In 1982, it established a branch in the Pakistani-administered territory of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and by 1987, it had established a branch in the Indian-administered Kashmir Valley.
The Kashmir conflict is a territorial conflict over the Kashmir region, primarily between India and Pakistan, and also between China and India in the northeastern portion of the region. The conflict started after the partition of India in 1947 as both India and Pakistan claimed the entirety of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. It is a dispute over the region that escalated into three wars between India and Pakistan and several other armed skirmishes. India controls approximately 55% of the land area of the region that includes Jammu, the Kashmir Valley, most of Ladakh, the Siachen Glacier, and 70% of its population; Pakistan controls approximately 30% of the land area that includes Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan; and China controls the remaining 15% of the land area that includes the Aksai Chin region, the mostly uninhabited Trans-Karakoram Tract, and part of the Demchok sector.
Kashmiris are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group speaking the Kashmiri language and originating from the Kashmir Valley, which is today located in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.
The following is a timeline of the Kashmir conflict, a territorial conflict between India, Pakistan and, to a lesser degree, China. India and Pakistan have been involved in four wars and several border skirmishes over the issue.
Yasin Malik is a Kashmiri separatist leader and former militant who advocates the separation of Kashmir from both India and Pakistan. He is the chairman of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, which originally spearheaded armed militancy in the Kashmir Valley. Malik renounced violence in 1994 and adopted peaceful methods to come to a settlement of the Kashmir conflict. In May 2022, Malik pleaded guilty to charges of criminal conspiracy and waging war against the state, and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Mohammad Yusuf Shah, commonly known as Syed Salahuddin, is the head of Hizbul Mujahideen, a terrorist organization operating in Kashmir. He also heads the United Jihad Council, a Pakistan-based conglomeration of jihadist militant groups sponsored by the ISI, with the goal of merging Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan.
Sardar Farooq Khan is an Indian politician and former police officer who served with the Indian Police Service (IPS). He retired in 2013 as Inspector General of Police (IGP), Jammu and head of the Sher-I-Kashmir Police Academy at Udhampur. Khan is known for the creation of the Jammu and Kashmir Police (JKP) Special Task Force (STF) as well as being its first head in 1995; STF would later go on to be renamed as the Special Operations Group (SOG).
The 2010 Kashmir unrest was a series of violent protests and riots in the Kashmir Division and Chenab Valley and Pir Panjal regions of Northern Jammu division of Jammu and Kashmir, India which started in June 2010 after the Indian Army claimed to have killed three Pakistani infiltrators in which a soldier of the Territorial Army, a counter-insurgent and a former special police officer had found three young men from their Nadihal village in Baramulla district and killed them in a "staged" encounter at Sona Pindi. The protests occurred in a movement launched by Hurriyat Conference led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir in June 2010, who called for the complete demilitarisation of Jammu and Kashmir. The All Parties Hurriyat Conference made this call to a strike, citing human rights abuses by security forces. Rioters shouting pro-independence slogans, defied curfew, attacked riot police with stones and burnt vehicles and buildings. The protests started out as anti India protests but later were also targeted against the United States following the 2010 Qur'an-burning controversy. The riot police consisting of Jammu and Kashmir Police and Indian Para-military forces fired teargas shells rubber bullets and also live ammunition on the protesters, resulting in 112 deaths, including many teenagers and an 11-year-old boy. The protests subsided after the Indian government announced a package of measures aimed at defusing the tensions in September 2010.
Amanullah Khan was the founder of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), a Kashmiri militant activist group that advocates independence for the entire Kashmir region. Khan's JKLF initiated the ongoing armed insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir with backing from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, which lasted until Pakistan dropped its support of secular Kashmiri separatists in favour of pro-Pakistan Islamist groups, such as the Hizbul Mujahideen. In 1994, the JKLF in the Kashmir Valley, under the leadership of Yasin Malik, renounced militancy in favour of a political struggle. Amanullah Khan disagreed with the strategy, causing a split in the JKLF.
Mohammad Yusuf Parray, better known as Kuka Parray,also known as Jamsheed Shirazi, was an Indian former MLA from Kashmir and the founder of the Jammu & Kashmir Awami League. He was a Kashmiri folk singer, before he founded the pro-government militia, Ikhwan-ul-Muslemoon, that targeted militants. His death was considered a major blow to the Indian forces in their fight against the terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. The then Chief Minister, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, described his murder as "a setback to the peace process".
The Jammu and Kashmir Awami League is a political party in the Indian-administered union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The party was founded by members of different counter-insurgent groups in November 1995. It supports article 370 of the Indian constitution, granting special status to Jammu and Kashmir. The party argues that the people of Jammu and Kashmir have the right to self-determination within the Indian constitutional framework, but not accession to Pakistan nor independence.
The Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus, or Pandits, is their early-1990 migration, or flight, from the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley in Indian-administered Kashmir following rising violence in an insurgency. Of a total Pandit population of 120,000–140,000 some 90,000–100,000 left the valley or felt compelled to leave by the middle of 1990, by which time about 30–80 of them are said to have been killed by militants.
Burhan Wani was the leader of Hizbul Mujahideen, an Islamist militant organization and terrorist group of the Kashmir conflict. He had become a popular figure amongst the local Kashmiri populace, having done so primarily through a strong social media presence, and was responsible for moulding the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir into a youth-oriented movement. Wani was a militant leader and had reportedly recruited numerous foot-soldiers through his personal efforts.
Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind is an al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist jihadist militant group active in Kashmir. The group's stated objective is to create Kashmir as an independent Islamic state under Sharia law and to fought jihad against Indian administration of Jammu and Kashmir.
Lance Naik Nazir Ahmad Wani, AC, SM & Bar was an Indian Army soldier and a recipient of the Ashoka Chakra, India's highest peacetime military decoration. At the time of his death, he was serving with an auxiliary battalion of the army's Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry Regiment, the 162nd Infantry Battalion of the Territorial Army. He was posthumously awarded the Ashoka Chakra for his actions during a counterterrorism operation in which his unit was attached with the 34th Rashtriya Rifles battalion. He was the first recipient of the Ashok Chakra from Jammu and Kashmir.
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