From jail, ISI looks to Sajid Mir to drive ‘Karachi Project’, unified command push

New Delhi, March 20 (IANS) With the terror infrastructure largely in tatters, Pakistan is likely to bring back Sajid Mir to fix the problem. Mir, who played a major role in executing the Mumbai 26/11 attacks, was handed over charge of Pakistan’s ambitious ‘Karachi Project’.

Mir’s existence was always denied by Pakistan. However, to get out of the Grey List of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), he was detained by Pakistan in 2022 and sentenced to 15 years in jail by a Lahore court.

Although he remains in jail, he has been told to oversee some important projects that the ISI wants to implement.

An Intelligence Bureau official said that he is currently in charge of reviving the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s Muridke camp, which was destroyed during Operation Sindoor. Prior to his arrest, he lived at the Ganda Nala lane in Lahore. There are Intelligence inputs suggesting that Mir gets many visitors. These visits are all linked with the revival of the Lashkar-e-Taiba and other terror groups.

The ISI did not want to use Mir for any of its operations immediately. However, the process to revive the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, which faced immense losses during Operation Sindoor, has been harder than Pakistan expected. The ISI had even decided that operations by these two terror groups, and also the Hizbul Mujahideen, would be carried out under a unified command.

An official said that when all these terror groups have one common goal, and that is the destruction of India and the Kashmir issue, the ISI must have felt that it was a good idea to have these groups operate unitedly. Who better for the ISI than Sajid Mir to oversee the structural changes in these terror groups, which the ISI wants to implement.

Inputs suggest that the ISI has directed Mir to coordinate from jail. For Mir, coordinating operations from jail is no big task. He has access, and there are many times that he has been allowed to leave jail and meet with operatives covertly, another official said.

When India sought his extradition in 2020 in connection with the Mumbai 26/11 attacks, Pakistan had long denied his existence, with shifting claims about his status. Pakistan said that he was dead. However, the Pakistanis brought him back to life in 2022 to lower the heat it was facing from the FATF.

Pakistan also floated a rumour that Mir had been poisoned, but Indian agencies can confirm that the news is false. The official added that roping Mir in to oversee these changes and shape the revival also fits perfectly into the larger plan of undertaking the Karachi Project.

If Mir is able to get these terror groups under one command and ensure they’re seamlessly functioning, then implementing the Karachi Project becomes easier. Another official said that reaching out to Mir is a risky move, but Pakistan is ready to take it.

It is Mir’s experience and expertise, coupled with the fact that he is highly respected in terror circles, that led the ISI to take such a risk.

Owing to free access, he can summon anyone to jail and hand out instructions and also implement the plan.

The Karachi Project is an ambitious one which involves carrying out terror attacks at multiple locations in India. The project has been in the making for many years now. The first time the project was being discussed in Pakistan was when the Indian Mujahideen was very active. However, with the collapse of the Indian Mujahideen, work on the project also slowed down.

The idea was to have a strong homegrown terror network carry out attacks in India. For the attacks from Pakistan, the ISI had roped in the Lashkar-e-Taiba to undertake this project. Officials say that if Hizbul Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba are able to work together, then this project would become much stronger.

Another aspect is the homegrown terror network. The ISI has been working on nurturing a homegrown network in various parts of India. It would want one to undertake operations in the North and the other in the South. If this plan goes through, then the three Pakistan-based terror groups would put all their efforts into Jammu and Kashmir.

Another official said that the ISI has also roped in (Retd) Major Hashim and the head of the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s naval wing, Abu Yukoob, to be part of this project.

Earlier, the plan for the setting up of homegrown operations in India involved recruiting youth from Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Kerala, Delhi and Tamil Nadu. The recruited youth were meant to travel to Pakistan, undergo training and then return to India and carry out attacks. Today, the ISI has dropped the plan of moving these recruits to Pakistan, as borders are on high alert and undertaking such an operation would be risky. The recruited youth will be trained online, and modules will be set up on the lines of the one that was busted at Faridabad, officials say.

–IANS

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