Masood Azhar lying low, but is quite active

He is avoiding attention in the wake of the US Financial Action Task Force move against Pakistan earlier this year.

Jaish-e-Mohammad leader Maulana Masood Azhar is very much alive and he is not only interacting with the cadre, but also continues to give his anti-India speeches from his headquarters in Bahwalpur in Punjab province of eastern Pakistan. A section of the media had earlier reported that the 50-year-old chief of the banned terrorist outfit was seriously ill.

Many Pakistan-based sources have confirmed to The Sunday Guardian that Azhar, who along with Lashkar-e-Tayyaba chief Hafiz Saeed was one of the reasons for Pakistan being put on the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in June earlier this year, is just lying low to avoid attention in the wake of FATF action against Pakistan.

Jaish is one of the most potent organisations that is used by the Pakistani deep state to carry out terror attacks against Indian forces in Jammu and Kashmir as well as against Baloch freedom fighters.

In the second week of October, a nine-member delegation, comprising members of FATF’s Asia Pacific Group (APG), that included experts from the British Scotland Yard, US Department of Treasury, Financial Intelligence Unit of Maldives, Indonesian Ministry of Finance, People’s Bank of China and Justice Department of Turkey, had visited Pakistan to oversee the steps taken by the Islamic state to curb terror financing.

Sources said that Azhar’s security has been drastically increased earlier this year over fear that Indian agencies might try to assassinate him because of the numerous high profile attacks, especially on Indian military establishments, that he had carried out.

He mostly spends his time in the garrison town of Bahawalpur in a well-protected madrasa under the watchful eye of armed security escorts that also include government officials in plainclothes. The high-walled madrasa, Usman-o-Ali, is less than 5 km from the XXXI Corps headquarters of the Pakistani army that has close to 70,000 Pakistani soldiers, including an infantry and armored division.

In order to create a smoke screen that they have taken action against him, the Pakistan army’s notorious intelligence arm ISI has asked Azhar not to address people publicly and make sure that when he does so, no recording instrument, either video or audio, is allowed near him. “He has always been someone who shies away from leaving any kind of footprints. That makes it more difficult for any security agency to track him. His latest picture that is available with the agencies was taken many years ago and for many of the agency officials, he is considered as more damaging to India than other terror leaders who are operating from Pakistan,” an official of a security agency said.