Hizbul Mujahideen poised for brutal infighting after the death of Sabzar Bhat

Hizbul commander Sabzar Bhat the self styled successor to Burhan Wani was gunned down by security forces on Saturday in South Kashmir’s Pulwama District. This encounter was accompanied with further success after the armed forces also killed 7 terrorists in various encounters in the state.

Now according to reports, the terror organization Hizbul Mujahideen might be in for a brutal infighting after there are at least three terrorists vying for that now vacant commander post. Reports claim that former commander Riyaz Naiko and Saddam, who till 2014 was part of the Lashkar-e-taiba, are staking their claim.

They are being challenged by Saddam Paddhar and Yasin Ethu and this is leading experts to believe that an infighting is on the cards. There are also claim that a terrorist named Zakir Musa an ex-Hizbul man has decided to form his own terrorist organization which will be openly stating its intent to establish sharia and make it an Islamic fight.

This move by Zakir Musa does raise eyebrows as normally the separatist organizations have tried to appeal to Islamic Radicals while pretending to be involved in a political struggle in order to justify their actions to the rest of the world. It remains to be seen if Zakir Musa’s outright proclamation of carrying out an Islamist movement might mean that those who have silently supported the ‘movement’ might finally wake up to face the facts.

The report also claims that an even bigger inter-terror organizational fight can soon break out due to a dispute over resource sharing. Reportedly there are currently 200 terrorists active in South Kashmir out which 110 are homegrown. The two major organizations they are attached to are the Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-taiba.

Security agencies have claimed that they have been successful to a large extent in stifling the funding from Pakistan which these organizations get. They used to split up the funds from Pakistan among themselves but with the resources quickly dwindling they have tried to focus on indigenous sources which too haven’t yielded results. Hence this is leading people to believe that the terrorists might indulge in an outright conflict to grab whatever resources are available.

Such an infighting is not a new thing. We had recently reported how 6 Naxals of the Tritiya Prastuti Committee (TPC) had ended up killing each other over a dispute in sharing of their illegally earned money.

Hemant Bijapurkar: Contributor at OpIndia.com, Wish to write a great trilogy someday!