Al Badr
Al Badr is an Islamic terrorist group operating in the Kashmir region and has been proscribed by the Government of India on April 1, 2002, under the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance-2001, which became the Prevention of Terrorism Act on April 28, 2002. It is also designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States. The current Al Badr leadership is also opposed to the United States, Israel and the regime of Saudi Arabia.
History of Al Badr
The group was allegedly formed by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in June 1998. The group was encouraged by the ISI to operate independently from their previous umbrella group, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. Prior to the group’s separation from Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, they participated in the fighting in Afghanistan in 1990 as part of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-l-Islami alongside other anti-Soviet Afghan mujahedeen.
The Al Badr was formed with the goal of strengthening the Kashmiri freedom struggle and to liberate the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir and merge it with Pakistan. The group’s main purpose is to liberate the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir so that they can be merged with Pakistan. Al Badr opposes any negotiations to end the violence in Kashmir and opposes the Line of Control and calls for the strengthening of the jihad. The outfit had opposed the cease-fire on the Line of Control in 2003 and consistently opposes any dialogues between India and Pakistan.
The origins of Al Badr can be traced to 1971 when a group of the same name carried out attacks on Bengalis in what was then known as East Pakistan (present day Bangladesh).
Operations of Al Badr
Al-Badr operates covert Al Badr training camps in Pakistan to train Pakistani civilians to serve as fighters in the conflict in Kashmir. The outfit is headquartered at Mansehra in Pakistan and the terrorist group has training camps in the Mansehra area of North West Frontier Province in Pakistan, and in Kotli and Muzaffarabad in Azad Kashmir. Militants are trained at the Al Badr camps in the use of RDX and C4 explosives. Al-Badr took responsibility for grenade attacks in Pulwama injuring 23 people, including eight security personnels.
Recent news about Al Badr
It is believed the group has been weakened in recent years due to increased presence of Indian security forces along the Line of Control. Indian security forces gauge the present strength of Al Badr to be between 200 with 120 of those forces being foreign mercenaries. Al Badr is currently one of the only two Kashmiri separatist groups that employ suicide squads as a tactic, the other being Lashkar-e-Tayyeba.
On 6th of May 3 Al Badr militants were killed by the security forces and 1 surrendered in pre-dawn operation held in South Kashmir’s Shopian.
