Jaish-e-Mohammed

Jaish-e-Mohammed
جيش محمد
The flag of Jaish-e-Mohammed
Leaders	Masood Azhar
Dates of operation	2000–present
Ideology	End Indian rule in disputed Jammu and Kashmir
Headquarters	Bahawalpur, Punjab, Pakistan
Designated as a terrorist group by
Australia, Canada, India, the UK and the US

Jaish-e-Mohammed (Urdu: جيش محمد‎, literally "The Army of Muhammad", abbreviated as JeM) is active in Kashmir. The group's primary motive is to end Indian rule in disputed Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), expel Indian security forces from the region, and unite J&K with Pakistan. It has carried out several attacks primarily in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. It also maintained close relations with Taliban in Afghanistan and continues to be allied to them.

It has been banned in Pakistan since 2002. It has reportedly resurfaced under other names. It continues to openly operate several facilities in the country.

According to B. Raman, Jaish-e-Mohammed is viewed as the "deadliest" and "the principal terrorist organisation in Jammu and Kashmir". The group has been designated as a terrorist organisation by Pakistan, Australia, Canada, India, the United Kingdom and the United States.

In 2016, Jaish was suspected of being responsible for an attack on the Pathankot airbase in India. The Indian government, and some other sources, accused Pakistan of assisting Jaish in conducting the attack. Pakistan denied assisting Jaish, and arrested several members of Jaish in connection with the attack, who were then released by the security establishment according to a report in Dawn. Pakistan called the report a "fabrication".

Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is said to have created Jaish-e-Mohammed by working with several Deobandi terrorists associated with Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. By the late 1990s, states Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistani military justified jihad in Kashmir as a legitimate part of its foreign policy. Harkat had been set up in mid-1990s with ISI support to carry out "spectacular acts of terrorism". The United States declared it a terrorist group in 1998 and bombed its training camps in Afghanistan.