In her recent essay, ‘I Shall be Waiting for You at the Door of Paradise: the Pakistani Martyrs of the Lashkar-e-Toiba’, Mariam Abou Zahab, an expert on Pakistan at Paris’s Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales, says that Saeed’s “personal history is highly relevant for understanding his world view”.

When Saeed founded Lashkar in 1987, its entire top brass came from non-Kashmiri speaking belts on either side of the divided Jammu and Kashmir and were essentially Gujjars and Mirpuris. According to sources, Mohammad Ashraf of Mirpur, Tahir-ul-Islam of Rawalakote, Mohammad Ibrahim of Poonch and Molvi Ubaidullah of Sadluti district in PoK have been key members in the Lashkar hierarchy.

And although Lashkar’s recruits generally came from rural Punjab in Pakistan, sources say its base has been traditionally strong in areas in Pakistan where migrants from Jammu settled after Partition. With Saeed’s roots in Surankote, Lashkar had set up its network in the hilly districts of Rajouri, Poonch and Doda in 1995, establishing its foothold in non-Kashmiri-speaking Muslim populations across Jammu. In a way, Lashkar provided a platform for militants from across the linguistic and cultural divide on either side of the LoC, thus widening the reach of militancy beyond the scope of Kashmiri militant groups. The majority of Gujjar and other non-Kashmiri-speaking Muslim tribes in J&K have otherwise been traditionally pro-India.

Lashkar claims to have begun its Kashmir mission on January 25, 1990. But according to the J&K Police’s records, the earliest known Lashkar group arrived in the Valley in August 1992 but remained confined to the mountains of north Kashmir. For years, Lashkar worked to create a network across Kashmir. The group’s first Pakistani commander Abu Hafs was killed in Baramulla in 1993.

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