1993-99: Disappointed by the results achieved by the indigenous Kashmiri groups, Pakistan started relying on Pakistani and Afghan nationals and other foreign mercenaries for achieving its strategic objectives. For this purpose, it infiltrated into J&K trained Pakistani and other foreign cadres of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and the Al Badr. Subsequently, since the beginning of 2000, the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) has also been infiltrated. The Al Badr, an armed wing of Pakistan's JeI, was originally created by the ISI in the then East Pakistan in 1971 and used by it for the massacre of Bengali intellectuals in Dacca and other places. It consisted largely of Pashtun tribesmen and some Punjabis of Pakistan. It was withdrawn from Dacca into Pakistan after the defeat of the Pakistani Army in the war of December,1971, and became practically dormant till the early 1980s, when it was re-activated, trained, armed and infiltrated into Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet troops. After the overthrow of the Najibullah Government in Kabul in April,1992, the Al Badr was withdrawn by the ISI from Afghanistan and infiltrated into J&K. The Al Badr is presently not active anywhere else in the world except in India. It does not advocate a pan-Islamic ideology. The HuM and the LeT, both of Wahabi orientation, came into existence in Pakistan during the Afghan war of the 1980s. They are Pakistani organisations, with largely Pakistani office-bearers and have their entire administrative, logistics and training infrastructure in Pakistan and, before September 11, 2001, they had their training infrastructure in Afghanistan too. Both advocate a pan-Islamic ideology and defend their right to go to the assistance of Muslims anywhere in the world, who, in their perception, are suppressed. Thus, they have not only been indulging in acts of terrorism in India, but also assisting terrorist groups in the Southern Philippines, Myanmar, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Chechnya and Dagestan. They also provide moral and material support to fundamentalist elements in Islamic countries such as Algeria, Tunisia and even Saudi Arabia. By the end of this period, these three Pakistani organisations, two of them of Pan-Islamic orientation, practically took over the control of the terrorist movement in J&K, almost totally marginalising the indigenous Kashmiri organisations, except the HM. Indigenous organisations such as the JKLF gave up violence during this period and started focussing on propaganda and other political means for projecting their demands.Since this period, there is no longer any Kashmiri terrorism to any significant extent. It is almost exclusively Pakistani terrorism in the name of Kashmiris. After the Taliban captured power in large parts of Afghanistan in 1994-96, these organisations shifted many, if not most, of their training camps to Taliban-controlled territory. Most of the ground infrastructure in Afghanistan destroyed and people killed in the US Cruise missile strikes of August,1998, belonged to the HuM and the LeT and not to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. In October,1997, the USA designated the HuM as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation under a law of 1996.
1999-September 11, 2001: In 1998, the HuM and the LeT became members of bin Laden's International Islamic Front for Jehad Against the US and Israel. The leader of the HuM signed bin Laden's first fatwa against the US. In 1999, the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment used the trained cadres of the HuM, the LeT, the Al Badr and the Al Qaeda of bin Laden to facilitate its occupation of the Kargil heights which led to fighting between the Indian and Pakistani military and the ultimate ejection of the Pakistani military and terrorist groups from the Indian territory occupied by them clandestinely by taking advantage of the 1998-99 winter. The influence of bin Laden's teaching and tactics on the HuM and the LeT became increasingly evident since July, 1999. Before that, there was hardly any suicide terrorism in J&K. Since July,1999, the Pakistani terrorists, influenced by the modus operandi (MO) of the Al Qaeda, have increasingly shifted to suicide attacks on the security forces and military and civilian installations. Since July,1999, there have been 43 acts of suicide terrorism, of which only two were committed by indigenous Kashmiri organisations. The remaining 41 were committed by the LeT and the JeM. The influence of the MO of the Al Qaeda has also been evident in the increasingly ferocious attacks on religious minorities reminiscent of the massacre of the Shias (Hazaras) of Afghanistan by the Taliban, the Al Qaeda and the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP). The JeM came into existence in the beginning of 2000 by a split in the HuM engineered by Maulana Masood Azhar, a Pakistani national of Bhawalpur in Pakistani Punjab, who was released by the Government of India in December 1999, to secure the release of the passengers of an Indian Airlines plane hijacked to Kandahar. Till now, Pakistan has not honoured repeated Indian requests for the arrest and handing over of the hijackers, all Pakistani nationals. It has been saying that they will be tried in Pakistan according to Pakistani law, but none of them has so far been arrested or even questioned even more than two years after the hijacking. Pakistan has also not honoured the red corner notices of the Interpol. Azhar, who has been identified by the December 2001, issue of the "Herald", the prestigious monthly journal of the "Dawn" group of Karachi, as an ISI-trained terrorist, started his career in terrorism in the SSP, an extremist Sunni organisation, which has been fighting for the proclamation of Pakistan as a Sunni state and for the declaration of the Shias as non-Muslims, gravitated to the HuM and, as an HuM office-bearer, assisted the Al Qaeda in Somalia and Yemen before entering India in 1994 with a Portugese passport, when he was arrested. Since the middle 1990s, the HuM and the LeT have been proclaiming their objective as not only the merger of J&K with Pakistan, but also as the "liberation" of Muslims in the rest of India from Hindu rule and re-establishment of the Mughal rule over the Indian sub-continent. With this objective, the LeT and, subsequently, the JeM have been trying to spread their terrorist infrastructure to New Delhi and other parts of India. The LeT carried out an act of terrorism in the Red Fort of New Delhi in January 2001.
Since September 11, 2001: The JeM joined bin Laden's International Islamic Front. A large number of trained cadres of the HuM, the LeT, the JeM, the SSP and the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), an extremist organisation of the tribal areas of Pakistan adjoining the Durand Line, infiltrated into Afghanistan with the complicity of Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment and fought along with the Taliban and the Al Qaeda against the Northern Alliance and the allied forces led by the USA, suffering large casualties. The "Herald" of December 2001, has estimated the number of Pakistanis belonging to these organisations, who are missing in action, at 6,000 plus, but other independent reports indicate that at least 8,000 Pakistani members of these organisations were killed by the US air strikes or in the fighting against the Northern Alliance. The surviving members of these organisations have since returned to Pakistan with redoubled anger against the US and India for the casualties suffered by them and for the humiliation heaped upon them by the Afghan people after the collapse of the Taliban. The recent ban on the LeT and the JeM by Gen.Pervez Musharraf was intended more to prevent an anti-US and anti-military backlash by them in Pakistani territory than to prevent their acts of terrorism against India.