Conflict

US designates Hizbul Mujahideen as a ‘foreign terrorist organization’

World: The United States state department on August 16 designated Pakistan-based Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) as a ‘foreign terrorist organisation.’

The US designation bans its citizens and residents from dealing with the group and any assets found to belong to the HM in areas under US jurisdiction will be frozen.

HM, after remaining a depleted organisation for most of the late 2000s, acquired a renewed vigour post-2012 and specifically after the period of mass protests in Kashmir between 2008 and 2011.

Syed Salahuddin, was in the past designated as a global terrorist ‘under the radar of Western Intelligence agencies’.

The designation also comes at a particularly difficult time for the HM as it is trying to maintain its recent ascendancy in the Valley and protect its turf from other terrorist groups such as the LeT, JeM and the recently formed Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, an affiliate of Al-Qaeda, a report in Firstspot, an online news agency, said.

But this is where the designation, combined with the recent crackdown by the National Investigation Agency on the resistant funding nexus will hit the HM where it hurts, the report added.

 

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