Osama’s demon seed, al-Qaeda, seeking fertile grounds to reap its bloody harvests, wants to turn the Indian subcontinent into its new killing field. At the behest of the ISI—as according to Indian intelligence—its favourite student al-Qaeda has declared war on India, with the terror outfit’s figurehead Ayman al-Zawahiri saying that “al-Qaeda in the Indian sub-continent” would “raise the flag of jihad across South Asia,” a task given to the newborn Qaedat Al Jihad. The terrorist group’s headquarters are based in the lawless frontier of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Radical Sharia preacher Aasim Umar has been designated its head. Indian Intelligence believes that the reason no major terror attack has happened in India after 26/11 Mumbai bloodshed could be that Islamist radical outfits are preparing for the next big strike that could shake the world. And Aasim Umar could be the architect who will baptize the subcontinent in rivers of blood.
PAKISTAN’S FRANKENSTEIN: Aasim Umar was considered by Indian intelligence as one of al-Qaeda’s low-key operatives in Pakistan, but Zawahiri’s video has catapulted him as the most dreaded player in the subcontinent’s terror theatre. He is thought to have played a major role in bringing many insurgent groups together, including thousands of Mujahideens from shadowy HuJI which was on the verge of collapse after the assassination of their leader Ilyas Kashmiri in a drone attack on the Pak frontier.
“The assorted Mujahideen numbering around 2000 are looking for a fertile ground to operate in, which is why the new outfit has chosen the Indian subcontinent. Since 1996, they have been trying to organise an Afghan-kind of operation in India” said former Research & Analysis Wing Special Secretary Amar Bhushan.
Though Umar is listed as a most wanted terrorist by Indian agencies, officials believe he is an ISI asset and therefore it would be difficult to persuade Pakistan to act against him.
The Intelligence dossier on Qaedat al Jihad chief Aasim Umar suggest that he is linked with the Taliban and enjoys the tacit support of the Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence which has been covertly funding IM, LeT and SIMI operations in India. The dossier further added that Umar has been behind many of the indoctrination videos, which infiltrated social media platforms in early 2013, and that his unit engages in interactive sessions with potential Jihadis using internet chat rooms. He is widely known as a preacher of Islamic Sharia in Pakistan and is suspected of planning some of the most sophisticated bombings in AfPak.
“A preacher is more dangerous than the man with his hands on trigger,” former Senior R&AW officer Jayadev Ranade pointed out. Anwar al-Awlaki, the man Western intelligence believes is the real leader of al-Qaeda, is a preacher too. The cleric of Yemeni descent hiding in Yemen is believed to have inspired the massacre at Fort Hood, Texas and is the only wanted terror suspect named by MI6.
SURVIVAL GAMES: For Qaeda, it’s a struggle for survival; to counter the rising popularity among radical Islamists of its arch-enemy in the jihad game, The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), it has opened franchises in many places. For India, Qaedat al Jihad threatens to open up another fault line, with the battle hardened Mujahideen ready to infiltrate and regroup with domestic terrorist groups as US troops plan their withdrawal from Afganistan. The al-Qaeda franchises so far are Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), Al-Shabaab, Islamic Front, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Al-Nusra Front Syria, Lebanon. Experts believe that after bin Laden’s killing, Al Qaeda’s core strength has diminished considerably. Experts say that only the ideological centre of al-Qaeda consists of 300-400 people. Islamism researcher Guido Steinberg of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) told a Western news agency that Ayman al Zawahiri, has always been controversial among many non-Egyptians within al-Qaeda. But different al-Qaeda bosses are bound to him by oath. Zawahiri and his long time associates market al-Qaeda through videos and speeches, which charts the outfits’ ideological direction. Sources said some of the top operational guidelines of al-Qaeda are kidnapping foreign tourists and nationals of counties they deem inimical, using suicide bombers and explosives to attack embassies and vital economic centres of countries they are hostile to.