Jaish-E-Mohammed

Jaish-e-Mohammed (Mohammed's Army; JEM) is a militant Islamist group based in Pakistan. JEM was founded in the late 1990s by Maulana Masood Azhar, a former leader of the ultra-fundamentalist Islamist group Harakat ul-Mujahidin.

Azhar was active in the Harakat ul-Mujahidin throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He spent time training with Al Qaeda and fighting in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation and organized groups that fought alongside Al Qaeda against U.S. troops in Somalia and Yemen.

The main aim of Harakat ul-Mujahidin, however, was to reunite Kashmir with Pakistan, and the group was responsible for numerous attacks on Hindus and Indian Army troops in Kashmir. Pakistan's intelligence service is believed to have supported both Harakat ul-Mujahidin and other terrorist groups in their operations in Kashmir. Azhar was arrested by Indian authorities in 1994 in connection with several attacks and held in a Jammu jail.

Azhar's supporters ...