Jaish-e-Mohammed

Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) is a Pakistani Deobandi jihadist Islamist militant group active in Kashmir. The group's primary motive is to separate Jammu and Kashmir from India and integrate it into Pakistan.

Since its inception in 2000, the group has carried out several terrorist attacks on civilian, economic, and military targets in India. It portrays Kashmir as a "gateway" to the entire India, whose Muslims it deems to be in need of liberation. It maintains close relations and alliances with the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hizbul Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, Indian Mujahideen.

JeM was allegedly created with the support of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which is using it to carry out terrorist attacks in Kashmir and rest of India. Due to sustained international pressure against Pakistan sponsored terrorism, JeM was banned in Pakistan in 2002 as a formality. However, the organization was never seriously disrupted or dismantled. Its arrested leaders were subsequently released without any charges and permitted to re-form under new names. Its variants openly continue operations under different names or charities in several facilities in Pakistan.

According to B. Raman, Jaish-e-Mohammed is viewed as the "deadliest" and "the principal Islamic terrorist organisation in Jammu and Kashmir". The group was responsible for several attacks: the 2001 attack on Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly, the 2001 Indian Parliament attack, the 2016 Pathankot airbase attack, the 2016 attack on the Indian Mission in Mazar-i-Sharif, the 2016 Uri attack, and the 2019 Pulwama attack, each of which has had strategic consequences for India–Pakistan relations. The group has been designated as a terrorist organisation by Pakistan, Russia, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, the United Arab Emirates, the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the United Nations.

In 2016, JeM was suspected of being responsible for an attack on the Pathankot airbase in India. The Indian government, and some other sources, accused Pakistan of assisting JeM in conducting the attack. Pakistan denied assisting JeM and arrested several members of JeM in connection with the attack, who were then released by the security establishment according to a report in Dawn. Pakistan called the report an "amalgamation of fiction and fabrication". In February 2019, the group took responsibility for a suicide bombing attack on a security convoy in the Pulwama district of India that killed 40 Indian security personnel, named as one of the largest attacks in recent years.

In April 2025, a terrorist attack in Baisaran Valley near Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, resulted in the deaths of 26 civilians, primarily Hindu tourists. The Resistance Front (TRF), believed to be an offshoot of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), initially claimed responsibility for the attack but later retracted the claim. Indian authorities implicated JeM in the attack. The incident led to heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, with the beginning of 2025 India–Pakistan conflict which ended in a ceasefire on 10 May 2025.