India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party announced Thursday that its recent airstrikes under the banner of “Operation Sindhoor” successfully targeted and killed Abdul Rauf Azhar, a top commander in the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terror network. Rauf was known for orchestrating several deadly plots, including the 2002 abduction and execution of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl.
Rauf Azhar, who played a central role in JeM’s terror activities, was the younger sibling of the group’s founder, Masood Azhar. Indian forces also targeted Masood in Tuesday night’s operation, which reportedly claimed the lives of ten of his relatives, though Rauf was not among those initially named as dead.
Masood Azhar created JeM in 2000 after being freed from an Indian prison where he was jailed for terror offenses. Before founding JeM, he held a leadership position in the Harakat-ul-Mujahideen organization, another Pakistani jihadist group.
Masood’s release came after Harakat-ul-Mujahideen hijacked an Indian passenger plane, forcing India to meet the group’s demands. Indian intelligence later identified Rauf Azhar as a key player in planning that hijacking, further linking him to JeM’s early formation.
Following disputes within Harakat-ul-Mujahideen, Masood Azhar established JeM, which quickly gained infamy for launching large-scale and lethal terrorist strikes in India, Kashmir, Pakistan, and elsewhere. The group became known for its unrelenting extremism.
Despite its splinter origins, JeM has maintained connections to both al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In 2008, JeM reportedly partnered with the Taliban to assist in attacks against U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan. The infamous 1999 hijacked flight that freed Masood was diverted to Kandahar, then governed by the Taliban.
Though Pakistan officially banned JeM in 2002, India has long accused Islamabad of enabling the organization’s continued activity. Tensions rose further in November 2024 when Masood Azhar surfaced publicly at a madrassa in Bahawalpur, delivering a fiery sermon in which he threatened more violence against India. That same madrassa was among the locations bombed by Indian aircraft during Tuesday’s operation.
Beijing has also acted as a shield for JeM at the international level. In 2022, China used procedural means at the United Nations to block a U.S.- and India-backed proposal to sanction Rauf Azhar.
JeM’s role in the kidnapping and killing of Daniel Pearl is one of its most notorious crimes. Pearl, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, was abducted in January 2002 while staying in Karachi. He had traveled from India to Pakistan to investigate terrorism links following the September 11 attacks.
Rauf Azhar was implicated in the plot and worked alongside a group calling themselves “The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty.” The kidnappers falsely accused Pearl of being an Israeli intelligence agent and sent a list of demands to the U.S. When their demands were ignored, they forced Pearl to declare in a recorded statement that he was a “Jewish American,” after which they brutally murdered him.
The terrorists circulated the execution video under the chilling title, “The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl,” and disposed of his remains in a makeshift grave near Karachi.
In 2021, outrage erupted in both America and Pearl’s family when Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered the release of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the prime suspect in the case. Though a lower court had convicted him of abduction, it cleared him of murder charges and declared the sentence already served was adequate.
By 2007, with his brother lying low, Rauf Azhar assumed greater control within JeM. The U.S. Treasury officially designated him a global terrorist in 2010, citing his role in “recruiting operatives and planning attacks in India and Afghanistan.”
{Matzav.com}