Harkat-ul-Mujahideen

Harkat-ul-Mujahideen
حرکت المجاہدین الاسلامی
Flag of Harakat-ul-Mujahideen
Leaders	Fazlur Rehman Khalil
Dates of operation	1985-present
Headquarters	Pakistan

Harkat-ul-Mujahideen- al-Islami (Urdu: حرکت المجاہدین الاسلامی‎) (abbreviated HUM) is a Pakistan-based Islamic militant group operating primarily in Kashmir. The group have been considered as having links to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and the group has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations, the United Kingdom and the United States. In response the organization changed its name to Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. The group splintered from Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI), a Pakistani group formed in 1980 to fight the Soviet military in Afghanistan.

Harkat-ul-Mujahideen was originally formed as a splinter group of Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami in 1985. In 1989, at the end of Soviet-Afghan war, the group entered Kashmiri politics by use of militants under the leadership of Sajjad Afghani and Muzaffar Ahmad Baba Alias Mukhtar. In 1993 the group with Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami to form Harkat-ul-Ansar.

Immediately following the merger India arrested three senior members: Nasrullah Mansur Langaryal, chief of the former Harkat-ul Mujahideen in November 1993; Maulana Masood Azhar, General Secretary in February 1994, and Sajjad Afghani (Sajjad Sajid) in the same month in Srinagar. Muzaffar Ahmad Baba was killed in an encounter at Pandan Nowhatta with the BSF in January 1994.

As a response the group carried out several kidnappings in an attempt to free their leaders, all of which failed. It was linked to the Kashmiri group al-Faran that kidnapped five Western tourists in Kashmir in July 1995; one, Hans Christian Ostrø, was killed in August 1995 and the other four reportedly were killed in December of the same year.