Masood Azhar, the chief of the terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed, is starting a new women’s brigade. In a 21-minute audio recording, he said this new wing, called “Jamaat-ul-Mominaat,” is being created to fight back against his enemies. He claims his enemies, meaning India, are using Hindu women in the Army and female journalists against him, so he is now mobilising women to compete with them.
In the speech, reportedly given at Markaz Usman-o-Ali Bahawalpur, Pakistan, Azhar explained exactly how he plans to train and indoctrinate these women. He said the women recruits will be trained just like the men. They will start with a 15-day “Daura-e-Tarbiat” course, so the women joining Jamaat-ul-Mominaat will be part of “Daura-e-Taskiya,” which is an induction course.
Daura-e-Taskiya is just like the men’s first course, which is designed to radicalise them and convince them that terror attacks against India are the path to heaven. Azhar made a big promise, saying any woman who joins “will go straight to paradise after death.” After this, they’ll move to a second phase, Daura-Ayat-ul-Nisah, to learn how Islamic texts “instruct women to conduct jihad.”
The plan is to set up branches of this women’s group in every district of Pakistan. Each branch will have a muntazima or manager, whose job is to recruit more women. But the terrorist leader also gave a strict warning to the women who joined.
They are banned from speaking to any “unrelated men on the phone or by messenger”, and the only men they are allowed to talk to are their husbands or immediate family members.
This is a family affair
Azhar has put his own sister, Sadiya Azhar, in charge of the whole women’s brigade. His other sister, Samaira Azhar, is also in the leadership, along with Afeera Farooq, who is the wife of the terrorist mastermind Umar Farooq, behind the Pulwama attack. Azhar said the group already has 4-5 women whose relatives were killed by the Indian Army.
Azhar mentioned that his fourteen family members, including his elder sister, Hawa Bibi, were killed in “Operation Sindoor,” India’s counter-attack for the Pahalgam terror attack, and says he had planned this women’s wing with her before she died.
This move to create a new women’s terror wing shows a very clear picture that terror groups are still growing and flourishing in Pakistan. This is happening even though the Pakistani government of Islamabad makes tall claims in front of the world that it is fighting terrorism.
