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 United Jihad Council, also known as the Muttahida Jihad Council (MJC), is an Islamist Jihadist organisation formed by the Pakistan Army for unified command and control over the anti-Indian militant groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir. It was formed in the summer of 1994 and is currently headed by Syed Salahuddin, the leader of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. The organisation was created to unify and focus efforts of various armed militant groups fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir. This made distribution of resources like arms, ammunition, propaganda materials and communications more streamlined. It also made it easier to coordinate and pool resources of various militant groups to collect information, plan operations and strike at targets of military importance inside Indian administered Kashmir.
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, an 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.
Al-Badr is an Islamist militant group operating in the Kashmir region. The group was allegedly formed by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in June 1998. It is believed the group was encouraged by the ISI to operate independently from their previous umbrella group, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM). Prior to the group's separation from HM, they participated in the fighting in Afghanistan in 1990 as part of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-l-Islami (HIG) alongside other anti-Soviet Afghan mujihadeen. India and the United States have declared it a terrorist organisation and banned it. Pakistan has long been a difficult and disruptive neighbor of Afghanistan, increasing Afghanistan's instability by providing intelligence, weapons and security to the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network. But now Pakistan is facing strong backlash both domestically and internationally against its policy of militant sponsorship.
The Gawkadal massacre was named after the Gawkadal bridge in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India, where, on 21 January 1990, the Indian paramilitary troops of the Central Reserve Police Force opened fire on a group of Kashmiri protesters in what has been described by some authors as "the worst massacre in Kashmiri history". Between 50 and 100 people were killed, some from being shot and others from drowning. The massacre happened two days after the Government of India appointed Jagmohan as the Governor for a second time in a bid to control the mass protests by Kashmiris.
The 1998 Chapnari massacre was a massacre of 26 Hindu villagers in Chapnari village in Doda district of Jammu & Kashmir on 19 June 1998, by terrorists belonging to Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen.
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.
Zakir Rashid Bhat was 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.
There have been several attacks on Indian Armed Forces by militants in 2016.
Sabzar Ahmed Bhat was a Kashmiri militant, who was the area commander of the militant organisation Hizbul Mujahideen. He was killed in an encounter by the police on 26 May 2017 at Tral.
The 2017 Nowhatta mob lynching, was the lynch mob murder and mutilation of an on-duty undercover Indian Jammu and Kashmir Police officer Muhammad Ayub Pandith, on the Muslim holy night of Laylat al-Qadr on Thursday 22 June 2017 by a mob in Nowhatta after a crowd shouted slogans in favor of Pakistan as well as al-Qaida jihadist Zakir Musa. Sajjad Ahmad Gilkar, a Hizbul Mujahideen militant, had played a key role in the lynching according to the state police.
On 10 July 2017, the first Monday of the month of Shraavana, 8 Hindu civilian pilgrims on the way from Amarnath Temple in Kashmir Valley, in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, were killed in a terror attack. The pilgrims mostly belonged to the Indian state of Gujarat. Eight people were killed and at least 18 people were injured in the attack.
On 30 July and 6 August 2002, in the month of Shraavana, 11 people were killed and 30 injured in a terror attack by Islamic extremists from Lashkar-e-Taiba's front group of al-Mansuriyan, on Nunwan base camp at Pahalgam of the Amarnath Hindu pilgrimage (Yatra) to Amarnath Temple glacial cave shrine in Kashmir Valley in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. In the spate of attacks on Yatra in the third consecutive year, 2 pilgrims were killed and 3 injured on 30 July when terrorists threw grenades at a civilian taxi of pilgrims in Srinagar. Further, 9 people were killed and 27 injured on 6 August by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists' hail of bullets at Nunwan base camp at Pahalgam.
Indian Army operations in Jammu and Kashmir include security operations such as Operation Rakshak, which began in 1990, Operation Sarp Vinash in 2003 and Operation Randori Behak in 2020. Other operations include humanitarian missions such as Operation Megh Rahat and operations with a social aim such as Operation Goodwill and Operation Calm Down. The Indian Army works in tandem with the other arms of the Indian Armed Forces and security forces in Jammu and Kashmir such as during Mission Sahayata or joint operations.
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 jihad against India.
The 2019 Pulwama attack occurred on 14 February 2019, when a convoy of vehicles carrying Indian security personnel on the Jammu–Srinagar National Highway was attacked by a vehicle-borne suicide bomber at Lethapora in the Pulwama district of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. The attack killed 40 Indian Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel as well as the perpetrator—Adil Ahmad Dar—who was a local Kashmiri youth from the Pulwama district. The responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Pakistan-based Islamist terrorist group, Jaish-e-Mohammed. India blamed neighbouring Pakistan for the attack, while the latter condemned the attack and denied having any connections to it. The attack dealt a severe blow to India–Pakistan relations, consequently resulting in the 2019 India–Pakistan military standoff. Subsequently, Indian investigations identified 19 accused. By August 2021, the main accused along with six others had been killed, and seven had been arrested.
The Resistance Front (TRF) is a militant organisation actively engaged in insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, and designated as a terrorist organisation in India. Indian government and other experts believe that the organisation was founded by and is an offshoot of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based Jihadist terrorist group. The group is responsible for attacks on and killings of civilians, including those belonging to religious minority communities such as Kashmiri Hindus government employees, labourers and business owners, local politicians, and tourists, as well as for several attacks on Indian security forces including local policemen.
