Harakat ul-Mujahedin, whose assets have been ordered frozen by US President George W. Bush along with those of 26 other groups or individuals, is a shadowy Muslim militant organization battling Indian rule in Kashmir.
Designated a "foreign terrorist organization" by the United States the group has previously been linked by Washington to Saudi-born Islamic militant Osama bin Laden, accused of masterminding the September 11 kamikaze plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Formerly known as Harakat ul-Ansar, the group changed its name after it was placed on the October 1997 list of terrorist organizations of the US State Department's Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism.
Harakat ul-Mujahedin has claimed credit for a number of attacks on Indian troops in the Himalayan state of Kashmir, where Muslim militants have been waging a bloody campaign to end Indian rule over the country's only Muslim majority state.
But the Pakistani-based group remains more circumspect when it comes to other operations, and has rejected Indian accusations that it was behind the December 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.
One passenger was killed during the eight-day hijacking. The remaining 160 passengers and crew were released after India freed three pro-Kashmiri Muslim militants. The five hijackers fled into the Afghan desert.
Among the most notorious actions attributed to the Harakat was the July 1995 kidnapping of six western trekkers in Indian Kashmir, an operation conducted under the alias of Al-Faran. The group has denied involvement.
An American hostage escaped, but a Norwegian was beheaded by the kidnappers in August 1995 and the four other hostages -- a German, an American and two Britons -- are missing presumed dead.
The US State Department's 1999 report on terrorist organizations describes Harakat ul-Mujahedin as an "Islamic militant group based in Pakistan that operates primarily in Kashmir."
The report alleges that the Harakat leader, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, "has been linked to Bin Laden and signed his fatwa in February 1998 calling for attacks on US and western interests."
Harakat ul-Mujahedin acknowledged suffering casualties when the United States launched a barrage of missiles against Bin Laden-linked training camps in Khost, eastern Afghanistan, in August 1998 following the bombing of two US embassies in East Africa.
According to US estimates, Harakat al-Mujahedin has "several thousand armed supporters" in its ranks, mostly Pakistanis, Kashmiris, Afghans and Arab veterans of the decade-long Afghan conflict with the Soviet Union -- ISLAMABAD (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
