Ilyas Kashmiri

• 1. Introduction

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  A CNN headline once called Ilyas Kashmiri the "most dangerous man on Earth." The journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad went further. He said, "He is invariably described by the world intelligence agencies as the most effective, dangerous, and successful guerrilla leader in the world." Kashmiri was a Pakistani militant leader. He began as a soldier-trained fighter and ended as a name that intelligence services around the world kept on their lists. This documentary follows him from a village in Azad Kashmir to the mountain borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Along the way it asks how one man earned such a reputation. It asks what he was accused of planning, and why governments, rival militants and journalists spent years disagreeing about whether he was alive at all.

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• 2. A Village Beginning

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  Thathi village, in the Samahni area of Bhimber District in Pakistan-administered Azad Kashmir, is where Ilyas Kashmiri was born on the 10th of February 1964. One of his school teachers remembered him as "an obedient student, a good athlete and an excellent debater." He later spent a year studying communications at the Allama Iqbal Open University. He also studied for a time at Jamia Uloom-ul-Islamia in Karachi. There, together with two fellow students, he formed the nucleus of Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, known as HuJI. The source describes it as the first jihadist outfit in the country. The US Department of State later described him as approximately six feet tall and about 200 pounds. In adulthood he built a madrasa and a mosque in Thathi, and his wife and four children lived next to those buildings. The next war that shaped him lay across the border in Afghanistan.

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• 3. War and Captivity

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  Miranshah, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, is where Kashmiri taught Afghan mujahideen rebels how to handle explosives during the Soviet-Afghan War. He did this on behalf of Pakistan. The fighting cost him an eye and the index finger of one hand. He is also said to have served in the Pakistan Army's Special Services Group, its elite special forces. Kashmiri himself denied this in an interview with Shahzad. After the war he turned to Kashmir and joined HuJI in 1991. Several years later he disagreed with the group's leader, Qari Saifullah Akhtar. The quarrel led him to create his own unit inside HuJI, called the 313 Brigade. In the mid-1990s the Indian Army seized Kashmiri and Nasrullah Mansoor Langrial near Poonch. Kashmiri spent the next two years in prison, then escaped and returned to Pakistan, where he resumed operations against India. Reports claim that Pervez Musharraf, then Army Chief, personally rewarded him with Rs 1,00,000, about US$1,164.24. The reward was said to be for presenting the severed head of an Indian soldier, and some Pakistani newspapers published pictures of Kashmiri holding it. That standing with the military would not survive the next decade.

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• 4. Out of Favour

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  Maulana Masood Azhar was the founder of a newly formed jihadist organisation called Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Kashmiri refused his orders to serve under him. Jaish-e-Mohammed once even targeted Kashmiri. Having fallen out of favour with the Pakistani military, he was taken into custody and tortured in late 2003, after an attempt to assassinate Musharraf. He was released in February 2004. From then until the siege of Lal Masjid in 2007, he apparently did little. Afterwards he returned to the 313 Brigade within HuJI, which is closely tied to Al-Qaeda. He rebuilt its strength while working with the Taliban. This fit a broader movement of Kashmir militants into Waziristan. Kashmiri reportedly moved personnel from his Kotli training camp in Azad Kashmir to a new camp in Razmak, in North Waziristan district. A US indictment later said he was "in regular contact with al Qaeda" and in particular with Mustafa Abu al Yazid. In early 2010 he was reported to be the new leader of Lashkar al-Zil, Al-Qaeda's Shadow Army, after a drone killed its former leader, Abdullah Said al Libi. The journalist Amir Mir cited Pakistani security sources saying Kashmiri was then assigned to organise attacks on Western targets. This came after Saif Al-Adel, a former Egyptian army colonel newly released from Iran, took the regional command.

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• 5. Alleged Plots

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  The 2008 Mumbai attacks, the 2010 Pune bombing, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the killing of Ameer Faisal Alavi have all been linked to Kashmiri. Shahzad wrote that Kashmiri proposed the Mumbai attacks to Al-Qaeda leaders as a way to start a war that would halt operations against Al-Qaeda. According to that account, the plan was approved and handed to Major Haroon Ashique, a former Lashkar-e-Taiba commander. Asia Times Online reported another 2008 plan, to assassinate Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani as he stepped out of his car on his daily gym visits. Al-Qaeda's leadership rejected it on strategic grounds. The News International accused Kashmiri of organising the December 2009 Camp Chapman attack against the CIA. The United States was seeking his arrest and extradition. A column by David Ignatius, based on documents seized in the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, said bin Laden had asked Kashmiri to plan an attack on Barack Obama. Bin Laden was killed on the 2nd of May 2011 in Abbottabad. After that, NBC News said US officials had mentioned Kashmiri as a possible successor. Terrorism analysts offered his name as one of several candidates. Years earlier, a man from Chicago had already linked Kashmiri to a different set of plans.

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• 6. Headley and the Blacklist

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  On the 27th of October 2009, a US Department of Justice press release named Kashmiri as a conspirator to whom David Headley, an American citizen from Chicago, had allegedly reported. Headley had been arrested on terrorism-related charges. The release also noted that Kashmiri had issued a statement that month saying he was alive and working with Al-Qaeda. A report on the investigation said Kashmiri had been in regular contact with Headley and that they appeared to be plotting fresh attacks in India. Headley was reportedly distraught at news of Kashmiri's death. He then received confirmation that Kashmiri was still alive and set off for Pakistan, where the FBI arrested him. Kashmiri was indicted on two counts. One was conspiracy to murder and maim in Denmark, aimed at the newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The other was conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism in Denmark. In court testimony on the 31st of May 2011, Headley said he had done preliminary research for Kashmiri on a plot targeting Robert J. Stevens, the CEO of the defence contractor Lockheed-Martin. On the 6th of August 2010, the United States labelled Kashmiri a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. The label lets the US freeze his assets and bars US persons from transactions with him. The United Nations added him and HuJI to its sanctions blacklist under Security Council Resolution 1267. That resolution requires member states to freeze assets, ban travel and ban arms sales to both. By then, reports of his death had already come and gone once.

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• 7. The Disputed Death

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  Machikhel, in North Waziristan district, was the scene of a US drone strike on the 7th of September 2009. Kashmiri was reported killed there, along with Hanifullah Janikhel and Kaleemullah. In mid-October he reportedly gave Shahzad an interview. A senior American official told The Washington Times there was now reason to believe he could be alive. One rumour among militants held that Kashmiri had been outside urinating when the house he was staying in was hit. The final strike came on the 3rd of June 2011, on a compound in the Ghwakhwa area of South Waziristan district, a Taliban stronghold. Nine jihadists, including Kashmiri, were reportedly killed, and three more were badly injured. Local officials said the men in the compound were all members of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. Kashmiri had moved to Wana from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa ten days earlier. Lala Wazir, a spokesman for the Taliban commander Mullah Nazir, confirmed his death. So did Qari Muhammad Idress, a close aide and senior HuJI commander. Al-Qaeda eulogised him in the August issue of the magazine Nawai Afghan Jihad. On the 7th of July 2011, CNN quoted an unnamed US intelligence official who was 99 percent certain, though the officials who decide were not ready to say so definitively. The US Rewards for Justice Program, which had offered US$5,000,000 for information leading to his capture, removed him from its list. Doubts persisted. A Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan spokesman said in June 2011 that he was alive and well, and on the 30th of July 2011 India listed him among its five most wanted fugitives. In March 2012 the Daily Times cited reliable sources who said he had been seen meeting Hakimullah Mehsud, though journalists could not verify it. Only days later, on the 16th of March 2012, Al-Qaeda's lead spokesman in Pakistan, Ustad Ahmad Farooq, confirmed the death in an audiotape. On the 10th of May 2012, the UN Security Council listed Kashmiri as reportedly deceased and said it would treat him as dead until shown otherwise. In mid-July 2016, Dawn still reported that he was alive and active in the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. A few weeks later, Asia Times reported that a well-known Taliban commander named Shah Sahib had replaced him as commander of the 313 Brigade. His story also reached film. An Indian spy thriller duology, Dhurandhar and Dhurandhar: The Revenge, features a character inspired by him. The actor Arjun Rampal plays that character, called Major Iqbal.

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