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Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
Defunct terrorist organisation From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) Urdu: لشکر جھنگوی, Army of Jhangvi) was a Deobandi terrorist organisation[17] that was driven by a Takfiri Anti-Shia ideology[18] which operated in Pakistan, while being based in Southern Afghanistan.[19] LeJ was an offshoot of anti-Shia party Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP). LeJ was founded by former SSP activists such as Riaz Basra, Malik Ishaq, Akram Lahori, and Ghulam Rasool Shah.[20] LeJ operated in Pakistan and Southern Afghanistan until 2024.[21]
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi had claimed responsibility for various mass casualty attacks against the Shia community in Pakistan,[22] including multiple bombings that killed over 200 Hazara Shias in Quetta in 2013. It had also been linked to the Mominpura Graveyard attack in 1998, the abduction of Daniel Pearl in 2002, and the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore in 2009.[23][24] A predominantly Punjabi and Pashtun group,[25] Lashkar-e-Jhangvi had been labelled by Pakistani intelligence officials as one of the country's most dangerous terrorist organization in the country.[26]
Riaz Basra, the first Emir of LeJ, was killed in a police encounter in 2002.[27] He was succeeded by Malik Ishaq, who was later killed, with Ghulam Rasool Shah, in an encounter in Muzaffargarh in 2015.[28] LeJ was banned by Pakistan in August 2001.[29] LeJ remained active until 2024, and had been designated as a terrorist organization by Australia,[30] Canada,[31] Pakistan,[32] United Kingdom,[33] United States,[34] Iran, NATO, the European Union, and the United Nations.[35]
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Formation
Basra, along with Akram Lahori and Malik Ishaq, separated from Sipah-e-Sahaba and formed Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in 1996. One source stated that "Almost the entire leadership" of the group, wad made up of "people who had fought in Afghanistan".[36] The newly formed group took its name from Sunni cleric Haq Nawaz Jhangvi who led anti-Shia violence in the 1980s, and one of the founders of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP).[20] Lashkar-e-Jhangvi's founders believed that the SSP had strayed from Jhangvi's ideals.[22][37] Jhangvi was killed in an attack by Shia militants in 1990. Malik Ishaq, the operational chief of LeJ, was released after serving 14 years by the Supreme Court of Pakistan on 14 July 2011, after the Court dropped 34 of the 44 charges against him, involving the killing of around 100 people, and granted him bail in the remaining 10 cases due to lack of evidence.[38][39][40][41] In 2013, Ishaq was arrested at his home in Rahim Yar Khan of the Punjab province.[42]
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Activities
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LJ initially directed most of its attacks against the Pakistani Shia Muslim community. It also claimed responsibility for the 1997 killing of four American oil workers in Karachi. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi had attempted to assassinate Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999.[43] Basra himself was killed in 2002 during a failed attack he was leading on a Shia settlement near Multan. Basra was killed due to the cross-fire between his group and the police who assisted by armed local Shia residents.
- In April 1999 the nephew of the then Qadiyani Caliph Mirza Tahir Ahmad was assassinated. Some have since alleged the attack was carried about by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.[44]
- In March 2002 LeJ members bombed a bus, killing 15 people, including 11 French citizens.[45]
- On 17 March 2002 at 11:00 am, two members of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi bombed the International Protestant Church in Islamabad during a church service. Five people were killed, including two American women, two Pakistanis and an Afghan man. Forty-one more people were injured, including 27 foreigners. In July 2002 Pakistani police killed one of the alleged perpetrators and arrested four Lashkar-e-Jhangvi members in connection with the church attack. The LeJ members confessed to the killings and said the attack was in retaliation for the US attack on Afghanistan.
- The Pakistani government Interior Ministry said that the suicide bomber involved in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto,[46] along with the death of 20 others in Rawalpindi, belonged to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, on 27th December 2007.[46]
- Pakistani authorities believed that Mohammed Aqeel, an LJ member, was the mastermind behind the March 2009 attack on the Sri Lanka national cricket team.[47]
- Claimed responsibility for 2011 Hazara Town shooting in Pakistan killing 8 people.
- LJ claimed responsibility for the 2011 Mastung bus shooting which killed 26 Shia pilgrims on 20 September 2011 in the Mastung area of Balochistan. The pilgrims were travelling on a bus to Iran.[48][49] In addition, 2 others were killed in a follow-up attack on a car on its way to rescue the survivors of the bus attack.
- Afghan President Hamid Karzai blamed LeJ for a bombing that killed 59 people at the Abu Fazal shrine in the Murad Khane district of Kabul on 6 December 2011. Most of the dead were pilgrims commemorating Ashura, the holiest day in the Shias.[50][51]
- Lashkar-i-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for 13 lives lost in brutal attack on Shia pilgrims in Quetta on 28 June.[52] At least 13 people including two women and a policeman were killed and over 20 others injured on in the bomb attack on a bus mainly carrying Shia pilgrims returning from Iran. Most of the pilgrims belonged to the Hazara community.[52]
- Claimed responsibility for January 2013 Pakistan bombings in Pakistan killing, 125 people.[53]
- Claimed responsibility for February 2013 Quetta bombings in Pakistan, killing 81 and wounding 178, mostly Shia people.[54]
- Claimed responsibility for 15 June 2013 Quetta attacks in Pakistan.[55]
- Claimed responsibility for the failed January 2014 attempted bombing of a school which killed one of its students, Aitzaz Hasan in Pakistan.[56]
- Claimed responsibility for January 2014 Mastung bus bombing in Balochistan, killing 28 people from the Hazara Community.[57][58]
- Claimed responsibility of assassination of Pakistani politician Shuja Khanzada in August 2015.[59]
- Claimed responsibility for 23 December 2015 Parachinar bombing which killed 25 people and injured another 62.[60]
- Claimed responsibility for attack on Police training center Quetta in Balochistan on 24 October 2016, killing at least 61 people including cadets and army officers and injuring more than 165.[61][62]
- Claimed responsibility for the 12 April 2019 Quetta bombing killing 21 people including at least ten Hazaras, nine of whom were Shias, and 2 paramilitary soldiers.[63]
- Alleged to have play a role in an attack on a Pakistan Army check post in the Makin district of South Waziristan in December 2024.[64] Despite this, other groups such as the TTP (Pakistani Taliban), claimed responsibility.[65] This attack led to an escalation in the already violent 2024 Afghanistan–Pakistan clashes.
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Headquarters
Officials from Zabul province had claimed that Lashkar-e-Jhangvi had a sanctuary in southern Afghanistan.[5] Early on in 2016, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi leader Yousuf Mansoor Khurasani had survived an insider attack in southern Afghanistan.[6] After the groups dissolution or desolation in 2024 its remnants had fled to Southern Afghanistan. In 2025 following the crackdown by the Afghan government against the anti-Pakistan elements inside the Afghan soil its remnants withdrew from Southern Afghanistan after several arrests of its former members as Pakistan and Afghanistan agreed to not allow terror attacks from their territories against each other soil.[66]
Affiliations
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi had ties to the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Sipah-e-Sahaba (SeS), Ahle Sunnat Wal jamaat (ASWJ), Islamic State – Khorasan Province (IS-KP), Al-Qaeda and Jundallah.[67] An investigation found that Al-Qaeda had been involved with the training of LeJ. [citation needed]
Upon the death of Riaz Basra in May 2002, correspondence between Al-Qaeda and LeJ seemed to have stopped.[22]
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Designation as a terrorist organization
The Government of Pakistan had designated LeJ as a terrorist organisation in August 2001, and the U.S. had classified it as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under U.S. law in January 2003.[34] As a result of this its finances were blocked worldwide by the U.S government.
Decline
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The organization came to decline in the early 2020s with much of its leadership killed, executed or captured by Pakistani Security Forces and rivalry from Shia militant groups (such as Sipah-e-Muhammad and Tehreek-e-Jaffaria), which contributed to its decline.
The last Leader of the group, Akram Lahori (also known as Muhammad Ajmal) was arrested in Southern Iran in February of 2024. Before his arrest, he was granted bail by a Pakistani anti-terrorism court in October 2023. In Iran, he had been pronounced guilty of terrorism for his involvement in an anti-Shia terror group, attending bomb-making training courses and plotting terror attacks in Iran. He was sentenced to death by Iranian authorities under the anti-terror law.[68]
The last official major incident with organization was in July 2024, when its four senior members were killed by Security forces during an intelligence based Counterterrorism operation in Jhang.[69]
On the 3rd of August, 2024, the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of Punjab arrested 3 people who were associated with 3 separate banned organizations from 3 separate locations, in order to thwart what they called "a significant terror plot".[69] These were:
- Abdul Wahab from Chakwal who was associated with LeJ (Lashkar-e-Jhangvi).[69]
- Saifullah from Faisalabad who was associated with ISPP (Islamic State – Pakistan Province).[69]
- Khurram Abbas from Khushab who was associated with SMP (Sepah-e-Muhammad Pakistan).[69]
The CTD recovered large caches of prohibited materials from the arrested, including 1,625 grams of explosives, three hand grenades, two IED bombs, three detonators, eight feet of safety fuse wire, 12 pamphlets, 10 stickers, and Rs 22,250 in cash.[69]
In a media statement on the 7th of October 2024, officials of Pakistan's Counter Terrorism Department, including Deputy Inspector General Sheikh and CTD In-charge Raja Umar Khattab, identified the murderers of a CTD officer as 30-year-old Usman Qureshi, son of Ayub Qureshi, and 35-year-old Hafiz Qasim Rashid, son of Abdul Rashid Hazravi. Both were suspected members of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which operated in conjunction with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). They were prime suspects in the killing of DSP Ali Raza, who was gunned down near Faisal Market, Karimabad, in July, 2024.[70]
After this, the organization has claimed no attacks and non have been reported by Pakistani authorities and is considered to be defunct. Experts have described the decline of organization as a significant boost for the Government of Pakistan against Terrorism.[71][72]
In December 2024 an attack took place in the Makin district of South Waziristan on a Pakistan Army check post. Several media sources claimed that the attack was carried out by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.[73] Although despite this, responsibility of the attack was officially claimed by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Pakistani security officials believe that the former members of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi were also allegedly involved in this attack. According to the officials, following the dissolution of terror group, its various clandestine cell systems have joined either the TTP or ISPP.[74]
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