SRINAGAR: Even as India lobbies with the international community to get Masood Azhar designated as a global terrorist at the UN, another terror outfit, Al Badr, on Thursday conducted its recruitment drive in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), the Pakistani province where Indian Air Force (IAF) had bombed Jaish-e-Mohammad’s training camp.

Operational in Kashmir since 1998, Al Badr incidentally shares a close relationship with Jamaat-e-Islami, the religio-political organisation which was banned by Centre on Thursday.

One of the sister organizations of JeM, Al Badr has gone in a frantic mode to accommodate Azhar’s old cadres and recruit new ones in Dir district of KPK, 400 km from Jaish’s Balakot training facility that was destroyed on Tuesday.

The recruitment drive went on even as Pakistan premier Imran Khan announced on Thursday in parliament that IAF Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman would be released as a “gesture of peace” towards India.

A video exclusively accessed by TOI showed three armed terrorists of Al Badr inviting people to Dir Chowk to join the outfit in support of the Pakistan army. The video was shot and released on Wednesday and a local source in KPK confirmed that the recruitment drive was conducted on Thursday in Dir.

In the video, an Al Badr spokesperson, flanked by two others, is seen speaking in Pashto, the native language of KPK. Indian intelligence officials who translated the speech said the spokesperson praised the Pakistani army for “giving a befitting reply” to Indian strikes in Balakot by capturing an Indian pilot. “Pakistan army and Mujahideen are one,” says the Al Badr spokesperson.

The spokesperson also claimed that its “mujahideen were hanging out in the mountains of Kashmir and ready to launch terror attacks on India”.

Intelligence officials said the Al Badr recruitment drive indicated that Pakistani army and ISI were exercising the old ploy of changing the nomenclature of terror groups ahead of any crackdown on the Jaish by the international community.

Azhar, for example, was a member of Harakat-ul-Mujahideen before he set up JeM. In 2001, when the US State Department was considering declaring JeM a global terrorist outfit, the group renamed itself Tehrik-ul-Furqan and transferred its funds from its bank accounts to little known cadres to nullify any freeze on its assets. Two years later, the group divided itself in two sub-groups— Jamaat ul-Furqan (JUF) and Khuddam ul-Islam (KUI).

“Harkat ul Jihad al Islami, Harkat ul Ansar, Harkat ul Mujahideen, JeM, Al Badr— all these groups are one and the same, ideology and agenda wise. They keep changing their names as and when there is a financial or legal crackdown,” a police officer in Srinagar said.

The group was one of the several terror J&K groups which attended Osama bin Laden ’s conference in Khost , Afghanistan, in February 1998.

Sources said Al Badr is headed by Bahkt Zameen Khan whose deputy goes by the name of Zahid Bhai. The commanders for launching terrorists and communication are Irfan and Abu Mawai, respectively. The group exerts massive influence in KPK, sources in Pakistan said.

A counter-insurgency official in Srinagar said that security agencies in Kashmir were certain that Al Badr would assume prominence, now that Jaish is under global scanner.

