HARAKAT UL-MUJAHIDIN / HUM

Harakat Ul-Mujahidin / HUM is based in Muzaffarabad, Rawalpindi, and several other towns in Pakistan. Its members conduct insurgent and terrorist acts primarily in Kashmir. HUM trains its militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In mid-February 2000, long-time leader Fazlur Rehman Khalil stepped down as HUM emir, handing over the leadership to the second-in-command, Farooq Kashmiri. Khalil was linked to Usama bin Laden (deceased) and signed a decree in February 1998 calling for attacks on Untied States and other Western interests. HUM operated terrorist training camps in eastern Afghanistan until they were destroyed in 2001.

HUM has conducted a number of operations against Indian troops and civilian targets in Kashmir. The group is linked to the Kashmiri militant group Al-Faran which kidnapped five tourists in Kashmir in July 1995; one was killed in August 1995 and the other four were reportedly killed in December of the same year. HUM was responsible for the hijacking of an Indian airliner on 24 December 1999, which resulted in the release of Masood Azhar, an important leader in the former Harakat ul-Ansar, an a.k.a. of HUM, who had been imprisoned by the Indian authorities in 1994. Ahmad Omar Sheikh, who was later arrested for the abduction/murder in January-February 2002 of American journalist Daniel Pearl, was also released at the same time.

In addition, HUM has been involved in a number of terrorist activities, including hijacking, bombings, abductions, and training. Terrorist activities for which responsibility has been claimed by or reliably attributed to HUM over the past ten years include:

• November 2000: 30 Indian soldiers killed at two army posts in Kashmir;
• January 2002: The abduction and subsequent murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl. Four people, including HUM member Ahmed Omar Sheikh, were convicted for Pearl’s murder;
• June 2002: A suicide car-bomb attack outside the United States Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, which killed 11 persons;
• June 2005: The arrest, in Afghanistan, of several HUM trained individuals preparing to carry out acts of terrorism;
• June 2005: The arrest of two American citizens for suspected participation in an Al-Qaida plot to attack the United States. Both claimed to have attended a terrorist training camp run by HUM leader Fazlur Rehman Khalil;
• November 2006: The shooting of a former Special Police Officer in Kashmir accused by HUM of collaborating with a police operations group;
• February 2007: The kidnapping and subsequent beheading of a Hindu businessman in Pakistan’s Sindh Province.

HUM has several thousand armed supporters located in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan, and India's southern Kashmir and Doda regions. Its members are mostly Pakistanis and Kashmiris, but also include Afghans and Arab veterans of the Afghan war. They use light and heavy machine guns, assault rifles, mortars, explosives and rockets. HUM has lost a significant number of its members in defections to Jaish-i-Mohammed (QDe.019).

HUM has collected donations from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf and Islamic states as well as from Pakistan and India. HUM's financial collection methods include soliciting donations through magazines and pamphlets. The sources and amounts of HUM’s military funding are unknown. In anticipation of asset seizures by the Pakistani Government, HUM withdrew funds from bank accounts and invested in legal businesses, such as commodity trading, real estate and production of consumer goods. Its fundraising in Pakistan has been constrained since the government clampdown on extremist groups and freezing of terrorist assets.

HUM has cooperated with other listed militant groups operating in Afghanistan, Kashmir and Pakistan such as Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (QDe.118) and Jaish-i-Mohammed. On 16 December 2006, leaders of HUM and Lashkar i Jhangvi (LJ) (QDe.096) called for a joint strategy and pledged to cooperate with Afghan insurgents to target the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.