Latest Articles about Pakistan
Pakistan’s JuA Commander Brushes With Death: A Look at Omar Khalid Khorasani
Few terrorist commanders in the Pakistani militant landscape are as ruthless, or notorious, as Omar Khalid Khorasani, the Emir of Jamaat ul Ahrar (JuA). JuA is part of the al-Qaeda-linked Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) network, which is made up of over 42 different Islamist militant groups.... MORE
Briefs
Pakistan: Government Losing Out to the Islamists Pakistan freed Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed from house arrest on November 24, one of a number of recent incidents that have shown the government’s increasing weakness when it comes to tackling the country’s Islamists. Saeed, the alleged... MORE
Al-Qaeda Joins the Kashmir Conflict
Militancy in Kashmir took on another complicating dimension on July 26, when al-Qaeda announced its entry into the strife-torn Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. In a statement issued by the Global Islamic Media Front, al-Qaeda’s propaganda wing, Zakir Rashid Bhat (a.k.a. Zakir Musa) was... MORE
Pakistan’s Tanzeem-e-Islami and Its Troublesome Extremist Links
A number of Pakistan’s Islamist organizations that agitate for the establishment of an Islamic caliphate but profess to be non-violent are finding renewed prominence, a concerning result of the surfacing of Islamic State’s (IS) local chapter, Wilayat-e-Khurasan. Islamist organizations such as Hizb ut Tahrir, Jamaat... MORE
Al-Qaeda’s New Hope on the Run: A Profile of Ansar al-Sharia Pakistan Emir Abdul Karim Saroush Siddiqui
A series of terrorist attacks swept Karachi this summer. At least six terrorist attacks — five in Karachi and one in the remote Mastung district of Baluchistan province — were claimed by Jamaat ul Ansar al-Shariah Pakistan, a new Islamist terrorist entity on Pakistan’s jihadist... MORE
Pakistan’s Jamaat-ud-Dawa Positions Itself for Politics
On August 7, 2017, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the chief of Pakistan’s banned Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist groups, launched a political party. The Milli Muslim League (MML) has yet to be recognized as a legitimate political party by Pakistan’s election commission, but it already has... MORE
Jamaat ul Ansar al-Sharia: The New al-Qaeda Threat in Pakistan
Recent months have seen the sudden emergence in Pakistan of an organization calling itself Jamaat ul Ansar al-Sharia Pakistan. The new entity has been reported to be behind a series of five terror attacks in Karachi and Baluchistan province (Geo News, July 22). Information about... MORE
Raising the Militant Flag in Kashmir: Asiya Andrabi’s Separatist Fight
Often labeled as a firebrand female Islamist by the media outlets in India and Pakistan, Asiya Andrabi, the founding leader of the now proscribed Kashmiri separatist women’s organization Dukhtaran-e-Milat (DeM, Daughters of the Nation), has been waging a pro-Pakistan secessionist movement since the early 1980s... MORE
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi’s Next Generation Commander: Yousaf Mansoor Khurasani
Few Islamist terrorist organizations in Pakistan are as resilient as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ). The violent sectarian outfit surfaced in 1990, after the assassination of Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, an anti-Shia, ultra-orthodox Deobandi cleric and founder of sectarian political party Sipah-e-Sahaba (Army of the Companions). And since the... MORE
Sanctioning Syed Salahuddin: Too Little, Too Late
On June 26, the U.S. State Department announced the designation of Mohammad Yusuf Shah (a.k.a. Syed Salahuddin) as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). The 71-year-old is “supreme commander” of the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), the largest Kashmiri militant group operating in the Kashmir Valley, and... MORE