Jamaat-ul-Ahrar: Terrorist group splinters from Taliban, more violent than the movement
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar is one of the factions that split from the
Pakistani Taliban movement. It is active on the border with Afghanistan and is considered
more violent than the movement, as it launched hundreds of operations inside
Pakistan. It considers itself to be the real Taliban movement, and it was
classified by the United States as a terrorist organization.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) was founded in August 2014 by Qasim
Omar Khorasani (aka Abdul Maula), who was killed by a roadside bomb in Paktika
province, eastern Afghanistan, in August 2022. The split happened when
prominent terrorist leaders, led by Khorasani, announced their defection from
the Pakistani Taliban and the formation of an armed faction with more rigid
ideological goals and premises. The group promised at that time to give a
strong impetus to jihad.
The group formed a Shura Council comprising leaders who were
prominent in the Pakistani Taliban, including Khalid Khorasani, Ehsanullah
Ehsan, Mufti Misbah, Qari Shakil and Maulana Yasin.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar now considers itself the real Taliban,
affirming its rejection of the strategy of negotiations with the government
that the Pakistani Taliban has pursued since 2014.
Along with the Pakistani Taliban and the mother Taliban
movement in Afghanistan, JuA adopts what is called the Salafist-jihadist
ideology, rejecting governance by other than God and disbelieving in democracy.
The group is considered more intransigent than the Taliban of Pakistan and the
Taliban of Afghanistan, and it has declared war on non-Muslim countries, while
its statements confirmed that there is no alternative to the application of
Islamic law from their perspective.
The group aims to implement Islamic law in Pakistan and the
world, and from time to time it adopts bloody attacks against religious
minorities, officials and government institutions.
According to the US Rewards for Justice program, the group has
been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States.
In August 2016, the US State Department specifically
designated Jamaat-ul-Ahrar as a global terrorist entity pursuant to Executive
Order 13224, as amended. As a result of this designation, all property and
interests of the terrorist group that are under US jurisdiction are blocked,
and Americans are generally prohibited from conducting any transactions with
JuA.
JuA’s terrorism
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar is active on the border between Pakistan and
Afghanistan, where it has claimed many bloody attacks.
JuA launched a series of attacks in Pakistan, targeting
civilians, religious minorities, military personnel, and law enforcement forces
in its operations.
In November 2014, a person blew himself up at the most
prominent border crossing between Pakistan and India, leaving 55 dead. JuA
claimed responsibility for the operation.
In August 2015, JuA claimed responsibility for the suicide
bombing in Punjab, Pakistan, that killed Punjabi Home Minister Shuja Khanzada
and 18 of his support personnel.
In September 2015, JuA attacked the offices of the National
Database & Registration Authority (NADRA) in the northwestern town of
Mardan, killing 21 people and wounding 63.
JuA was also responsible for the killing of two Pakistani
employees working for the US consulate in Peshawar in early March 2016. At the
end of the same month, the group carried out a suicide attack in the
Gulshan-e-Iqbal amusement park in Lahore, Pakistan, killing more than 70 people
(almost half of them women and children) and injuring hundreds of others.
Before the group's leader, Omar Khaled Khorasani, was
killed, the Rewards for Justice Program offered a reward of up to $3 million
for a tip on him.
Hudhayfa Farid, a strategic analyst and researcher on
Pakistani affairs, confirmed that JuA is more violent and terrorist than the
Pakistani Taliban movement it had splintered from, as most of the operations
carried out inside Pakistani territory are attributed to JuA.
Farid explained in exclusive statements to the Reference
that immediately after carrying out and adopting terrorist operations inside
Pakistan in the past, JuA was classified by the United States as a terrorist
organization and placed on the blacklist of the US Rewards for Justice program.
The group recently issued a statement attacking the
leadership of the Pakistani Taliban, accusing it of causing the killing of its
leaders, and vowing revenge, Farid pointed out, adding that the terrorist
group's demand for Afghanistan to protect it or not stand in its way if it
begins its operations will not happen in light of the restoration of relations
between the two countries.
