inconclusively after the United Nations man-
dated a cease-fi re. Six years later, in 1971, Paki-
stan suff ered a territorial loss of its own when it
failed to quell an uprising by its Bengali-speaking
population in what was then East Pakistan. The
movement, backed by Indian forces, culminated
in the creation of Bangladesh as a new country.
The dismemberment — with its imagery of
Pakistani troops surrendering to the Indian Army
in Dhaka, the East Pakistani city that became the
capital of Bangladesh — left a deep wound in Paki-
stan’s psyche, one that time has not easily healed.
The national idea, of Islam as a holy glue binding
its people together, had once again come undone:
the Bengalis who carved a new country out of
Pakistan were predominantly Muslim. Accepting
such a defeat to India was unimaginable for Paki-
stan’s military leadership, which vowed revenge.
On Dec. 17, 1971, the day after the surrender in
Dhaka, the front page of the newspaper Dawn
made no mention of it, instead running a banner
headline that said: ‘‘War Till Victory.’’
Pakistan remained as determined as ever to
cleave Kashmir from India. The defeat in 1971,
however, drove home the realization that India,
with its larger military and greater resources,
could not be defeated in a conventional war.
Husain Haqqani, who was Pakistan’s ambassador
to the United States from 2008 to 2011 and is now
a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, told me this
is what led Pakistan to adopt jihad — or the use
of proxy warriors fi ghting in the name of Islam
— as a strategy against India. ‘‘It is a paradigm of
unconventional warfare,’’ he said.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in
1979, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence over-
saw the recruitment and training of jihadists from
Pakistan, Afghanistan and other Islamic countries
to fi ght against Soviet troops. The Soviet Army’s
withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, at the end
of a decade-long war, was seen as a major victory
for jihadi fi ghters and for the I.S.I., which came
to view it as proof that jihad was viable as a mil-
itary strategy. At the I.S.I.’s direction, accordingto Indian offi cials as well as Pakistani scholars,
jihadi groups in Pakistan shifted their attention to
a new, supposedly Islamic cause: liberating Kash-
mir from Indian rule. Their goal was to embolden
Muslim separatists in Kashmir by carrying out
terrorist attacks against India. A prominent group
assigned to the task was the Harkat-ul-Mujahe-
deen, and one of its new members in 1989 was a
bright 20-year-old son of a government school-
teacher who had graduated from a seminary in
Karachi. His name was Masood Azhar.THE HARKAT-UL-MUJAHEDEEN sent Azhar
to train at a camp in Afghanistan. The instructors
discovered that his physical capabilities didn’t
quite match his ideological fervor. Despite being
in his early 20s, he was soft around the middle,
not quite cut out for the rigors of jihadi boot
camp. And so, after he was there for a week and
learned the basics of fi ring a Kalashnikov, the
trainers exempted him from the remainder of
the 40-day course. Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen’s lead-
er decided that Azhar’s talents would be better
exploited in producing a monthly magazine on
behalf of the organization called Sadai-e-Mujahid
(Voice of the Mujahid).
With a print run of about 1,000, nearly all of
which were distributed free at mosques, the
magazine detailed the heroic accomplishments
of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, inspiring a
reverence among mosque-goers that translated
into a steady stream of new recruits for the group.
And the publication of the group’s bank account
number in each issue helped bring in substan-
tial donations every year. The magazine’s success
quickly propelled Azhar into Harkat-ul-Mujahe-
deen’s leadership ranks. He was also proving
himself to be a gifted orator. On trips to Saudi
Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Zambia and
Britain, he delivered passionate speeches exhort-
ing audiences at mosques and seminaries to do
their part for jihad, which brought funds pouring
into the group’s coff ers. An account of his British
tour in the September 1993 issue of Sadai-e-Mu-
jahid describes a series of sermons at mosques
across Britain, with titles like ‘‘Virgins Yearn
Badly for Martyrs.’’
By this time, Azhar had begun working directly
on the cause in Kashmir, where India’s eff orts to
crush a popular uprising through brute force were
backfi ring. Indian soldiers, seen by many in the
Kashmir Valley as an occupying force, had been
accused of large-scale abuses — rape, torture and,
in some cases, disappearing men suspected of
having links to militant groups. The brutalities left
many seething. Azhar visited towns in Pakistan-
administered Kashmir (also referred to as Azad
Kashmir) to deliver public lectures urging young
men to join the fi ght against Indian security forces
across the Line of Control.
In 1994, Azhar, using a Portuguese passport,
traveled to Srinagar and met with a militant
commander in Kashmir named Sajjad Afghani,Illustration by Karolis Strautniekas The New York Times Magazine 43