close associate of LeT’s chief operational commander, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, who is being tried by a court for allegedly masterminding the Mumbai terrorist attacks. Haroon had left the LeT in 2003 over differences with Zaki Lakhvi, joining Commander Ilyas Kashmiri, the ameer of his own faction of the Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HuJI) a few years later. He was arrested in 2009 for the murder of Maj Gen (retd) Amir Faisal Alvi, the first general officer commanding of the elite Special Service Group, on the orders of Kashmiri, but subsequently acquitted.
Maj Gen Alvi had led some successful military operations against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in the tribal belt of South Waziristan, including the Angoor Ada operation in North Waziristan where many Arab and Chechen militants were killed or arrested and turned over to the Americans. Alvi was shot dead in Islamabad on November 19, 2008 while driving his car. The police blamed Kashmiri for the murder, alleging that Haroon was the shooter. A 12-page charge sheet submitted against Haroon in an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi stated that Alvi was killed to avenge the role he had played in the fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants. The charge sheet prepared by the Koral police station in Rawalpindi said Haroon and two others - Nawaz Khan and Ashfaq Ahmed - were involved in the murder.
Major Haroon’s subsequent disclosures during police custody about the links and the activities of Kashmiri sent a chill of fear down the spine of his interrogators. Haroon was commissioned in the army in 1987. However, he sought premature retirement in 2001. Hailing from the Bhimbar district of the Pakistani-Administered Kashmir, Major Haroon was a resident of the Taj Bagh locality in Harbanspura, Lahore. In 2000, when an army officer, Haroon along with his younger brother (Captain Khurram Ashiq, also an army officer), met Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and eventually joined Lashkar-e-Toiba. He soon became a trainer of the LeT fighters who were dispatched to Jammu & Kashmir to wage jihad against the Indian security forces. But he had to leave the LeT in December 2003 after developing differences with commander Lakhvi.
Haroon’s younger brother, Captain Khurram Ashiq, was an assault commander of the elite anti-terrorist Zarrar Company of the Special Service Group of the Pakistan Army. In December 2006, Haroon and Khurram went to Wana in South Waziristan where they met Pakistani Taliban commander Mullah Nazir. They later traveled to Miramshah in North Waziristan, met with Ilyas Kashmiri and finally joined hands with him. In 2007, Captain Khurram went to Afghanistan’s Helmand province to fight against Western forces and eventually lost his life in March 2007 while fighting alongside the Afghan Taliban.
Slain journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad writes in his book titled ‘Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11’ that the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai which brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war were scripted by al-Qaeda commanders to distract Pakistan Army from the Waziristan tribal region and focus on fighting India instead. They nearly succeeded as the Indo-Pak tensions soared following these attacks.
Saleem Shahzad wrote: With Ilyas Kashmiri’s immense expertise on Indian operations, he stunned al-Qaeda leaders with the suggestion that expanding the war theatre was the only way to overcome the present impasse. He suggested conducting an operation in India massive enough to bring India and Pakistan to war and with that all proposed operations against al-Qaeda would be brought to a grinding halt. Al-Qaeda excitedly approved the proposal. Kashmiri then handed over the plan to a very able former Army Major Haroon Ashiq, who was also a former LeT commander who was still very close with Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi. Haroon knew about a plan by Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence that had been in the pipelines for several months with the official policy to drop it as it was to have been a low-profile routine proxy operation in India through LeT. Haroon, with the help of Kashmiri’s men in India, hijacked the ISI plan and turned it into the devastating attacks that shook Mumbai on November 26, 2008 and brought Pakistan and India to the brink of a war.
