Al Qaeda and ISIS in India: The size of the problem

India, home to the world's third largest population of Muslims numbering about 14 per cent of the population, used to boast that among all those who planned and executed a string of al Qaeda attacks all round the world 9/11 onwards, there was one Bangladeshi, several Pakistanis but not a single Indian national.
 

• It had to revise this claim following the November 2008 Mumbai attacks mounted by al Qaeda franchisee in Pakistan, Lashkar e Taiba. The sole perpetrator of the attack captured alive, Pakistani national Ajmal Qasab, not only confessed how the attack was planned but also revealed a network of local contacts comprising radicalised Muslim youth.(The youths who Qasab said were his contacts were acquitted of all charges: in other words, even then, Al Qaeda did not have a significant Indian presence).

• Earlier this year, a videotaped announcement was circulated by Al Qaeda that it was opening an office of its organisation in India which would spread Islamic rule and "raise the flag of jihad" across the South Asian subcontinent.

• In a video spotted in online "jihadist" forums on 4 September, Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri said the new force would "crush the artificial borders" dividing Muslim populations in the region. Qaeda is active in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where its surviving leadership are thought to be hiding out, but Zawahiri said the group would take the fight to India, Myanmar and Bangladesh.

• "This entity was not established today but is the fruit of a blessed effort of more than two years to gather the mujahedeen in the Indian sub-continent into a single entity," he said.

• Founded by Osama bin Laden, who was killed in Pakistan by US commandos in May 2011, Al Qaeda has long claimed leadership of the self-declared jihadists fighting to restore a single caliphate in Muslim lands.

• Security agencies feel the Zawahiri video could be an attempt by Al Qaeda to carry out fresh recruitments in the sub-continent as it stares at diminishing influence vis a vis the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

• The context of Zawahiri's announcement is the growing competition between Al Qaeda and Abu Bakr al Baghdadi's ISIS. Building an Islamic caliphate has been an Al Qaeda dream. Unfortunately, competition has taken the title over. This June ISIS declared a "caliphate" and Baghdadi took the title of Caliph Ibrahim, posing a serious threat to Al Qaeda. From its stunning military successes in Iraq and Syria to the shocking killings of US journalists, ISIS turned its rival's business model on its head. This February, Al Qaeda expelled ISIS from its fold.

• In August, parents of three Muslim boys in three different Indian states reported to the police that their sons – aged between 18 and 30 – had left home, leaving notes behind that announced they were joining the ISIS to fight in Iraq and Syria.

• Interestingly, existing Al Qaeda fronts in the subcontinent – for instance, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – have taken a dim view of the activities of the ISIS. The formation of the Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, an al Qaeda splinter group which announced it was moving to the ISIS has been sharply criticised and the leader of the set up, expelled from the TTP. This suggests internecine war among these groups cannot be ruled out.

• There is a view that given the benign form of Islam followed by such Indian Islamic hotspots as Kashmir, Al Qaeda will not get very far. But it was an Al Qaeda affiliate that launched an attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001. It was a Muslim of Kashmiri origin who was hanged for that attack.