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A jihad in new clothes

Praveen Swami

How credible are the claims that Al-Qaeda has surfaced in India?

— PHOTO: NISSAR AHMED.

An unidentified militant claiming to represent Al-Qaeda is shown in this photo-grab from a video CD.

"WE ARE here," said a man who identified himself as Al-Qaeda operative Abu al-Hadeed in a call to a Srinagar-based news agency last summer. Just two days earlier, terrorists had bombed seven trains in Mumbai. Al-Hadeed congratulated the perpetrators of the maximum terror bombings, which he said were a "consequence of Indian oppression and suppression of minorities, particularly Muslims." "We appeal to Indian Muslims to wage their holy war of freedom and Islam," he said, adding that, under the leadership of an until-then unknown commander named Abu Abdul Rehman Ansari, "Al-Qaeda starts its operations in Kashmir from today."

Al-Qaeda, in fact, did nothing — and investigators soon lost interest in the Srinagar claim. On June 8, though, a small child handed out free compact discs to worshippers at the Jamaat Ahl-e-Hadis mosque in Srinagar's Gawkadal area. Most thought that the discs would contain religious sermons. What they found was the videotape of a masked man, Kalashnikov in hand, announcing the formation of a new organisation: al-Qaeda fil' al-Hind, or Al-Qaeda in India.

Identifying himself as Abu Ibrahim al-Aasim, the Al-Qaeda spokesperson in the videotape describes Jammu and Kashmir as the "gateway for jihad against India." On behalf of Al-Qaeda fil' al-Hind chief Ansari, Aasim calls for Islamists in the State to focus on a "change in system, erasing the borders and installation of Caliphate."

Lashing out at political secessionists and terror groups such as the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Aasim argues in Kashmir-accented Urdu that "some black sheep are also beating the drum of dialogue along with the heretics and their lackeys. People who, until the other day, eulogised the mujahideen for fighting the occupational forces now have no hesitation in saying that the role of the gun was over."

Declarations of war

Ever since the CD became available, a vigorous debate has broken out on its credibility and significance. Some have characterised Al-Qaeda fil' al-Hind as a publicity-seeking hoax — manufactured, by various accounts, by dissidents within Islamist groups, India's covert services, and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence. As things stand, there is no way to know for sure.

What we do know for a fact is this: in an April 23, 2006, audiotape broadcast on al-Jazeera television, Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden declared war on India. For the first time, Osama made reference to a "a Crusader-Zionist-Hindu war against the Muslims." "It is the duty of the ummah," he said, "with all its categories, men, women and youths, to give away themselves, their money, their experiences and all types of material support, to establish jihad, particularly in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Sudan, Kashmir, and Chechnya." He also lashed out at the United States for pressuring Pakistan to end cross-border terrorism, "thus affirming that it is a Zionist-Hindu war against Muslims."

Osama's calls for action against India had been preceded by similar polemic from his key lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri. India and Hindus figured in a September 2003 speech broadcast on al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera, during which al-Zawahiri lashed out at the regime of General Pervez Musharraf. He asked Muslims to "unite and cooperate to topple this traitor and install a sincere leadership that would defend Islam." Al-Zawahiri also warned Pakistani armed forces personnel that their President would "hand you over to the Hindus and flee to enjoy his secret accounts."

Al-Qaeda demonstrated its anger against General Musharraf soon after, using supporters in the Hizb-ut-Tehrir to stage a near-successful assassination attempt at Rawalpindi in December 2003. In India, however, the organisation did nothing.

Perplexing? Not quite. When Osama set up the International Islamic Front for the Crusade Against Jews and Crusaders in 1998, four anti-India jihadi groups — the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami, the Jaish-e-Mohammad, and the Lashkar-e-Taiba — were among its founder-members. American and Pakistani investigators have found a mass of evidence that illustrates the deep linkages between these groups. In India, though, the affiliates themselves were well-equipped to work independently.

Some evidence does exist, however, to suggest that Al-Qaeda reached out to its affiliates for help for operations in India. Six years ago, police in Jammu broke up an Al-Qaeda-linked terror group that had been planning strikes against U.S. and Israeli targets in New Delhi.

Qamar Ayub, a Harkat-ul-Mujahideen operative from Mirpur in Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir, had been despatched across the Line of Control with orders to help equip a new Al-Qaeda cell that was to carry out strikes in New Delhi. Ayub succeeded in obtaining a fake Andhra Pradesh driver's licence, and finding work with People's Democratic Party politician Abdul Rahim Wani. Using this cover, he recruited supporters who included a Surat-based cleric, a Jammu restaurant worker, and two police constables.

Before the plot could gather momentum, however, intelligence operatives in New Delhi were able to detain both the Al-Qaeda operatives Ayub was to assist. Highly placed security sources told The Hindu that two men — a Saudi national and a Palestinian — were quietly handed over to the U.S. by the National Democratic Alliance government.

Old wine, new bottle?

Since then, there has been no real evidence that Al-Qaeda is active in India. However, there are good reasons to believe that jihadi groups in Jammu and Kashmir might be seeking to use the label; to pour, as it were, old wine into new bottles.

Groups such as the Lashkar and Harkat are apprehensive that a deal between political secessionists, the Hizb, Pakistan, and India could render them irrelevant in Jammu and Kashmir. Severing the Jammu and Kashmir jihad from its traditional dependence on Pakistan, and looking instead to a wider global war, could prove a useful tool to galvanise their demoralised cadre. Interestingly, Islamist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani recently held a religious service to commemorate the death of north Kashmir resident Aijaz Ahmad Malla, who died fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan this summer.

Islamist elements in Pakistan's ISI also have reason to use the Al-Qaeda label. Under intense pressure from the U.S., Pakistan has been forced to cut back support for Islamist terror groups operating against India. Not a few in the ISI have been incensed by this about-face. Using the Al-Qaeda label would allow jihad supporters in the ISI to argue that terror groups operating against India were outside their control. Interestingly, General Musharraf himself seems concerned about Islamists inside the ISI, and has increasingly turned to the Military Intelligence Directorate to secure his regime-survival interests.

Symbol of defiance?

Finally, it appears that Osama has become a symbol of defiance and anger among some sections of urban Indian Muslims — a fact groups such as the Lashkar might hope to leverage. On May 27, for example, riots broke out after police in Vadodara arrested 15 persons who carried posters of the Al-Qaeda chief during a protest march. The march itself had been called after pamphlets derogatory to the Prophet Mohammad had been thrown in Muslim quarters of the city. Posters of Osama are also available at some footpath markets in New Delhi and Mumbai — display of support fuelled not by Al-Qaeda's global agenda, but anger at the Indian state's frequent failure to deliver even-handed justice.

Significantly, Islamist terror groups in the region have increasingly used the Al-Qaeda name. Last month, metal plates placed near low-intensity bombs that went off at Dhaka, Sylhet, and Chittagong in Bangladesh bore the name of Zadid al-Qaeda, Bangladesh — the new Al-Qaeda. However, the text on the plates called for the dissolution of non-governmental organisations and the adoption of normative Islam by members of the heterodox Ahmadi sect — long standing demands of the local Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami.

Is the Lashkar, then, just seeking to cash in on the Al-Qaeda brand? It could be significant, in this context, that the Al-Qaeda fil' al-Hind video was handed out outside an Ahl-e-Hadis mosque, for the Lashkar has drawn much of its cadre from the neoconservative religious grouping. Al-Qaeda fil' al-Hind's conception of the jihad in Kashmir as a platform for a larger war against India has long been a core part of the Lashkar's ideology. In an interview to Nida-e-Millat magazine, published on August 18, 2004, Lashkar chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed had argued that Pakistan was "incomplete without Hyderabad, Junagarh and Munabao because these states had announced accession with Pakistan but the Hindus subjugated them. That is why it is our duty to free these states from the Hindus' subjugation and assure their Muslim population that they will become part of Pakistan."

Is Al-Qaeda the future? Perhaps — but, if so, its new jihad will look identical to the old one, bar its brand-new clothes.

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