Harakat ul-Mujahidin

A large militant Sunni Muslim group that throughout the 1990s operated largely in the disputed states of Jammu and Kashmir on the India-Pakistan border, Harakat ul-Mujahidin once reportedly had troops in such far-flung locales as Bosnia, Tajikistan, Algeria, the Middle East, Chechnya, and the Philippines. The group, headquartered in Pakistan, has recently seen its operations curtailed because of a crackdown on militant groups by Pakistan's government following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. It has been speculated that Harakat ul-Mujahidin may alter the focus of its attacks to the now-hostile Pakistani regime. Before September 11, Harakat ul-Mujahidin had several training camps in Afghanistan, as well as close ties to the Taliban government of that country and the Saudi radical Osama bin Laden. Indeed, links among the three were so well established that the “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, a U.S. ...