Syed Ali Shah Geelani (1929–2021) was an Islamist, pro-Pakistani, Jihadist, Kashmiri-separatist leader in the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, regarded as the father of the Kashmiri jihad.
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 separatism 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 factions, with Mirwaiz Umar Farooq as chairman of one faction and Masarat Alam Bhat the chairman of the faction founded by Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen- al-Islami is a Pakistan-based Islamic jihadist group operating primarily in Kashmir. The group have been considered as having links to Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar.
Hizbul Mujahideen, also spelled Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, is an Islamist militant organization operating in the Kashmir region. Its goal is to separate Kashmir from India and merge it with Pakistan. It is one of the most important players that evolved the narrative of the Kashmir conflict from nationalism to radical jihad.
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 militant separatist organization 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.
Operation Tupac is the codename of an ongoing military-intelligence contingency program that has been active since the 1980s and run by Pakistan's main intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). It has a three-part action plan to provide covert support to anti-India separatists and militants in Indian-administered Kashmir. The program was authorized and initiated in 1988 by the order of the then-President of Pakistan, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.
The Kashmir conflict is a territorial conflict over the Kashmir region, primarily between India and Pakistan and also between China and India in 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.
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.
Maqbool Bhat also spelt Maqbool Butt was a Kashmiri separatist leader who migrated to Pakistan and founded the militant group National Liberation Front (NLF), which was a precursor to the present day Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). Bhat carried out multiple attacks in Jammu and Kashmir (state). He was captured, tried and convicted, receiving double death sentence. He was hanged on 11 February 1984 in Tihar Jail in Delhi.
The Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir or Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir (JIJK) is an Islamic political party based in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India. It is distinct from the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. The organisation's stated position on the Kashmir conflict is that Kashmir is a disputed territory and the issue must be sorted as per UN or through tripartite talks between India, Pakistan and representatives of Kashmir.
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". At least 50 people were killed. According to survivors, the actual death toll may have been as high as 280. 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.
Muhammad Ahsan Dar is an Indian Islamist militant separatist leader from Jammu and Kashmir. He was the founder of an Islamist militant group called Ansarul Islam in mid-1980s, which later became the core of Hizbul Mujahideen. Formed in September 1989, Hizbul Mujahideen was an umbrella group of a dozen Islamist groups in the Kashmir Valley and was sponsored by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and Jamaat-e-Islami. Ahsan Dar served as the head of the united group for a few years, but was marginalised the Jamaat-e-Islami patron Syed Salahuddin. He later founded a new group called Muslim Mujahideen in 1992, which operated for a few years. It was eventually neutralised by Hizbul Mujahideen and Indian security forces, and Ahsan Dar retired from militancy.
Shabir Ahmad Shah popularly known as Shabir Shah, in Kadipora, Anantnag, Kashmir is the founder and president of the Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party (JKDFP), one of the main separatist political organizations seeking "right of self-determination" to Jammu and Kashmir. Having spent 32 years of his life in jails, he is known as the "Jail Bird", "Nelson Mandela of Kashmir" and recognised by Amnesty International as "The Prisoner of Conscience."
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.
Human rights abuses in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan, have been a partial issue, ranging from forced disappearances, claimed torture to political repression and electoral fraud and suppression of freedom of speech. According to the human rights commission of Pakistan, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) carries out extensive surveillance operations on the press and pro-independence groups, they have carried out arbitrary arrests in which people have been tortured and several have died. Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) is cited to indicate that dozens have disappeared after their arrests in Pakistan-held Kashmir. A significant number of cases point to the Inter-Services Intelligence’s involvement in these disappearances".
Ashfaq Majeed Wani was the first Commander in Chief of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, a militant Kashmiri-separatist group in Jammu and Kashmir, India. He was killed by Indian Paramilitary Forces in 1990 at the age of 24. He was allegedly involved in the kidnapping of Rubiya Sayed, daughter of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, the then Home Minister of India.
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.
Farooq Ahmed Dar known by his nom de guerre Bitta Karate, is a Kashmiri-separatist militant, who currently serves as the chairman of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (R) in the Kashmir Valley of Jammu and Kashmir, India.
The 2019–2021 Jammu and Kashmir lockdown was a preventive security lockdown and communications blackout that had been imposed throughout the Indian-administered union territory of Jammu and Kashmir following the revocation of Article 370 which lasted until February 2021, with the goal of preemptively curbing unrest, violence and protests. Most separatist leaders had and have been detained in the crackdown. The Indian government had stated that the tough lockdown measures and substantially increased deployment of security forces had been aimed at curbing terrorism. The government did not want a repeat of the death and injuries seen during the 2016–2017 Kashmir unrest.
