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Al-Qaida wants Islamic rule in Indian subcontinent
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PROMISING to “storm your barricades with cars packed with gunpowder,” al-Qaida announced yesterday it had created an Indian branch that the terror network vowed would bring Islamic rule to the entire subcontinent.
The announcement by al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri brought few signs of increased security in India even after the government ordered states to be on alert. Instead, al-Zawahri’s announcement by online video appeared directed more at his own rivals in the international jihad movement, analysts said.
“This is really very personal,” said Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East expert at the London School of Economics. “You cannot understand this announcement without understanding the fierce rivalry between Islamic State and al-Qaida central.”
Al-Qaida has been increasingly overshadowed by the Islamic State group, a renegade al-Qaida offshoot that was expelled amid internal divisions and which has gone on to capture vast territory in Syria and Iraq, including oil wells and other income-generating resources, and has inspired thousands of fighters to join its jihadist mission. Al-Zawahri, in turn, has found his own influence pale beside that of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
In India, where the government said that terror threats have largely come from Pakistan and Kashmir, the disputed Himalayan region where al-Qaida’s influence is thought to be minimal, many derided the creation of the group — Qaedat al-Jihad in the Indian Subcontinent — as a publicity stunt.
Al-Qaida “is struggling for its legitimacy in the eyes of the radicalized Muslim world,” said Ajai Sahni, a top Indian security analyst with the Institute for Conflict Management. “Osama bin Laden has been killed and (al-Qaida’s) entire top leadership, apart from Zawahri and a few others, one by one have been decimated by the American drone attacks. This statement is meaningless.”
India, with its badly underfunded and desperately ill-trained security infrastructure, can also be a tantalizing target for terrorists. In 2008, a small group of Pakistani militants attacked Mumbai, India’s financial hub, effectively shutting down the city for days and killing 166 people.
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