Al-Qaeda announces jihad in India Subcontinent
Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah
4 Sep 2014
India put several provinces on heightened alert on Thursday after al Qaeda announced the formation of a wing of the militant group in India and its neighborhood, a senior government official said.
al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahari released a videotape Thursday announcing plans for a new wing of the terrorist group dedicated to waging jihad in the Indian subcontinent.
In the 55-minute video, which was posted on jihadist forums, Al Qaeda’s commander, al-Zawahri, addresses listeners in parts of the region with large Muslim populations, assuring Muslims in Bangladesh, Myanmar and three Indian states with large Muslim populations: Assam, Gujarat and Kashmir, the northern territory that is the subject of a long-running dispute with Pakistan and said the new wing would rescue Muslims there from injustice and oppression.
The area “was once part of the lands of the Muslims, until the enemy occupied it and fragmented it and split it,” Zawahiri said.
Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, has a long history of violence between separatists and security forces, and has tens of thousands of troops stationed there.
A senior police official said that Gujarat has been high on the list of militant organizations, including al Qaeda, since the 2002 riots.
"It will be more so now because Narendra Modi is prime minister," the official said, requesting anonymity.
Al-Zawahari calls on Indians to "break all borders created by Britain in India, unite under the credo of the one god."
India is home to about 175 million Muslims, a population second only to Indonesia's. It has not traditionally been a major recruiting ground for Islamist militant groups.
A spokesman for India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party said the statement was "a matter of serious concern. But there is nothing to worry about. We have a strong government at the federal level."
Wilson John, a terrorism expert at the Observer Research Foundation, based in New Delhi, said “There is an ideological disconnect,” he said, because most Indian Muslims have little sympathy for the Wahhabi religious movement followed by some extremists. “They never had this support despite two decades of trying to find an anchor in India.”
Al-Qaeda, founded by bin Laden in 1988, has long claimed to be the undisputed leader of jihadists fighting to restore a caliphate in Muslim lands , Al-Qaeda has been increasingly overshadowed by the Islamic State ,Al Qaeda splinter group that has drawn followers from across the world to lands it controls in Iraq and Syria, where it has declared a caliphate.
Sources
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-al-qaeda-threatens-india-prompting-20140904-story.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/05/world/asia/al-qaeda-announces-new-branch-on-indian-subcontinent.html?_r=0
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/04/us-india-qaeda-idUSKBN0GY2EM20140904
4 Sep 2014
India put several provinces on heightened alert on Thursday after al Qaeda announced the formation of a wing of the militant group in India and its neighborhood, a senior government official said.
al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahari released a videotape Thursday announcing plans for a new wing of the terrorist group dedicated to waging jihad in the Indian subcontinent.
In the 55-minute video, which was posted on jihadist forums, Al Qaeda’s commander, al-Zawahri, addresses listeners in parts of the region with large Muslim populations, assuring Muslims in Bangladesh, Myanmar and three Indian states with large Muslim populations: Assam, Gujarat and Kashmir, the northern territory that is the subject of a long-running dispute with Pakistan and said the new wing would rescue Muslims there from injustice and oppression.
The area “was once part of the lands of the Muslims, until the enemy occupied it and fragmented it and split it,” Zawahiri said.
Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, has a long history of violence between separatists and security forces, and has tens of thousands of troops stationed there.
A senior police official said that Gujarat has been high on the list of militant organizations, including al Qaeda, since the 2002 riots.
"It will be more so now because Narendra Modi is prime minister," the official said, requesting anonymity.
Al-Zawahari calls on Indians to "break all borders created by Britain in India, unite under the credo of the one god."
India is home to about 175 million Muslims, a population second only to Indonesia's. It has not traditionally been a major recruiting ground for Islamist militant groups.
A spokesman for India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party said the statement was "a matter of serious concern. But there is nothing to worry about. We have a strong government at the federal level."
Wilson John, a terrorism expert at the Observer Research Foundation, based in New Delhi, said “There is an ideological disconnect,” he said, because most Indian Muslims have little sympathy for the Wahhabi religious movement followed by some extremists. “They never had this support despite two decades of trying to find an anchor in India.”
Al-Qaeda, founded by bin Laden in 1988, has long claimed to be the undisputed leader of jihadists fighting to restore a caliphate in Muslim lands , Al-Qaeda has been increasingly overshadowed by the Islamic State ,Al Qaeda splinter group that has drawn followers from across the world to lands it controls in Iraq and Syria, where it has declared a caliphate.
Sources
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-al-qaeda-threatens-india-prompting-20140904-story.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/05/world/asia/al-qaeda-announces-new-branch-on-indian-subcontinent.html?_r=0
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/04/us-india-qaeda-idUSKBN0GY2EM20140904
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