Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Kashmiri (10 February 1964-3 June 2011) was a Pakistani terrorist leader who was a high-ranking Al-Qaeda operative, also leading the Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HUJI) movement. He was named as a potential successor to Osama bin Laden, but was killed a month after Osama by a US drone strike in South Waziristan.
Biography[]
Ilyas Kashmiri was born in Mirpur District in Pakistan-administrated Kashmir in 1964, and spent a year studying communications at Allal Iqbal University. Joining the Special Service Group (SSG) during the Soviet-Afghan War, he was responsible for training Mujahideen fighters to fight the Soviet Union when they invaded Afghanistan in the 1980s. During the fighting Kashmiri lost an eye and an index finger, and after the war he joined the Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami Islamic fundamentalist group. After disagreements with leader Qari Saifullah Akhtar, he founded the 313 Brigade faction in 1991.
In 1995 Kashmiri and Nasrullah Mansoor Langrial were captued by the Indian Army near Poonch and the two were put in prison, but in 1997 he escaped from prison and fled to Pakistan. He continued to operate against India, Pakistan's rival, and General Pervez Musharraf gave him 100,000 rupees ($1,164) for the head of an Indian soldier that was presented to him.
Later, he refused to join Jaish-e-Mohammad, another terrorist group in Pakistan, and was once targeted by the group. In 2003 he was imprisoned by the Pakistani government after an attempt to assassinate President Musharraf, and was released in February 2004, with little operations going on until 2007. Collaborating with the Taliban, he rebuilt the 313 Brigade's strength and was behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks, 2010 Pune bombing, and the assassination of Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto. He was also responsible for the Camp Chapman attacks of 2009, killing several CIA personnel. Osama bin Laden, leader of 313 Brigade's ally Al-Qaeda, asked Kashmiri to plan an attack against United States president Barack Obama, but was killed on 2 May 2011. Kashmiri was considered a possible successor to Bin Laden.
In 2010, a year after being charged with planning to murder and maim in Denmark, the United States and United Nations blacklisted Kashmiri as a terrorist. The USA and UN banned the sale of arms to Kashmiri and HUJI, and on 7 September 2009 the CIA launched a drone attack on Machikhel in North Waziristan in an assassination attempt. Hanifullah Janikhel and Kaleemullah were killed and Kashmiri was reported as dead, but he was outside urinating at the time the house was hit.
On 3 June 2011, a month and two days after the death of Osama bin Laden, Kashmiri was targeted in the Gwakhwa area of South Waziristan by a US drone. The American drone strike killed 9 Punjabi Taliban in the strike, including Kashmiri.