Heat is on, Jaish-e-Mohammed will take on its original avatar, Harkat

Bengaluru: In a move that underscores Pakistan's unwillingness to wind down the terror machine that targets India, and running contrary to repeated claims by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's government, that a crackdown on terror groups is underway, intelligence sources said Pakistan's deep state is preparing to breathe new life into the original terror group, Harkat ul Ansar even as it phases out the Jaish-e-Mohammed, which has become too hot to handle.

The Harkat was the umbrella group that had worked closely with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda in the Afghan jihad and had hundreds of Pakistanis and Afghans in its ranks. To avoid sanctions for its involvement in the Afghan jihad which would affect funding in the wake of bomb attacks in Bosnia and Jammu & Kashmir, it had re-invented itself in 1998 as the Harkat ul Mujahideen and Harkat ul Jihad e Islami, with many of its cadres joining the Jaish e Mohammed when it was launched to destabilize J&K two years later.

This comes in the wake of unconfirmed reports of the poor health of the Jaish leader Masood Azhar, whom India is pushing the UNSC to designate as a global terrorist.

“With Azhar on his death-bed, it will make little difference to Pakistan if he is designated a global terrorist,” top intelligence sources said, pointing to the deliberate attempt to sow confusion over Azhar’s presence in Pakistan and his health, with Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi saying one thing and the jihadi network, another.

Azhar, the Harkat’s top ideologue in J&K, had been captured and jailed by security forces until he was freed in a swap deal in the Kandahar hijacking of December 1999 and went on to launch JeM.

He had, in recent months, ceded the decision making on militant operations to his brother Abdul Raoof (one of the Kandahar hijackers),  and son,  Hamad Azhar. Both men were recently detained by Pakistani authorities, in the wake of the heat generated by JeM claiming responsibility for the Pulwama terror attack which claimed the lives of 44 CRPF personnel, and provoked India’s air strike on a JeM madrassa in Jaba Top, near Balakot.

Now that it has attracted the world's attention, including that of an increasingly nervous China, the JeM, which operates under the aegis of the deep state is set to be phased out. With Imran Khan's government in very real danger of facing global isolation, Pakistan has resorted to its old tactic of shutting down one terror pipeline, while quietly opening another, sources said.