Manoj Joshi
08 September 2014
No one is clear as to why Ayman al Zawahiri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as the chief of the Al Qaeda, has decided to create a new South Asian wing of his organisation. For years, the Al Qaeda has been effectively based in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Even in his most recent announcement, al Zawahiri has declared his Bait (oath of allegiance) to Mullah Omar, the chief of the Taliban.
Out of necessity, Osama bin Laden and Al Zawahiri saw Afghanistan as the centre of the global Islamic Caliphate, Mullah Omar as its Caliph. Al Qaeda and its leaders saw their own role as keepers of its ideological faith. But they had no doubts about the fact that their goal was to conquer the Arab world. But with the US attack on Afghanistan in 2001, all three became hunted figures and maintaining contact with the outside world became difficult. Even so, they were able to maintain their hold in the Arab world by creating direct and indirect affiliates. In the 2000s they used the chaos in the Arab world to franchise their ideology first to Abu Musab al Zarqawi and then to the Al Nusra Front in Syria, the al Shaabab in Somalia, al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula ( a merger of the Saudi and Yemeni groups), the Islamic Jihad in Egypt, and the al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (north Africa).
The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (Syria) or the ISIS is threatening its self-image as the leading edge of the Islamist movement in the world. The declaration of the creation of a Caliphate by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi and his projection of Iraq and Syria as the ultimate Muslim battlefield against all the enemies of faith—Shias, Jews Christians and so on-- has mirrored what the al Qaeda had once achieved in Afghanistan. But where Afghanistan may be the mythical Khorasan where the end of times battle will be fought, Syria and Iraq were the territory of the first Caliphate and Baghdad its capital.
Equally important is the fact that getting to Syria is much easier for Arab and European fighters than it was to go to Afghanistan. And unlike Afghanistan, they do not face the kind of isolation and hardship that they have in Syria which is still wired into the global internet, something the militants use to good effect.
According to reports, there are some 12,000 fighters from 81 nations in Syria/Iraq with 3,000 from the west, mainly UK. The bulk of the fighters are from neighbouring Jordan and Lebanon, as well as Tunisia. The numbers are only growing and are way beyond what the Al Qaeda was able to attract in its heyday. They are a mixed bag and their motives equally diverse. Some are in it because they believe that they are at last in an environment where Islamic laws prevail, others, especially the European Muslims are there to discover their own confused identities.
That the ground has been shifting from beneath the Al Qaeda's feet was apparent when, earlier this year, nine al-Qaeda emirs from Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Iran declared their allegiance to al Baghdadi in what was termed as the "Khorasan pledge," and al Zawahiri was attacked for deviating from the true faith. This brought the local al Qaeda affiliate the al Nusra front into direct confrontation with the ISIS.
Anyone who has followed the Al Qaeda movement knows that they take their role as religious leaders and mentors very seriously. But it would appear that the ISIS' tactics of brutality, and more brutality, to push their version of Islam has outflanked the appeal of the al Qaeda among the more radical young Muslim youth across the world.
India has never figured very high in the al Qaeda scheme of things. True, Kashmir has often been mentioned as a Muslim cause, on par with Bosnia, Chechenya and Palestine, but there has been little evidence of al Qaeda recruitment or activity related to Indian Muslims. Perhaps this has been out of worries of their ISI handlers about penetration by Indian intelligence operatives. One factor that could aid the Indian Muslims participation will be the fact that travel to Iraq or Turkey and thence Syria is much easier than crossing the ISI hurdle and reaching the Afghan badlands. Though, Pakistani groups fighting in Kashmir like the Harkat ul Mujahideen and more recently, the Lashkar -e-Taiba have had good relations, and some operational cooperation with the al Qaeda, this has not been in relation to targets in India.
But now two interests may be coinciding—that of the ISI to stoke up terrorist activity in India, and that of the al Qaeda to regain its edge as the leading Islamist group in the world. Instead of having young Indian Muslims being attracted to some jihad in al Sham and Iraq, the ISI and al Qaeda may want to give fresh wind to a jihad in the subcontinent which is more easily controlled by them. Undoutedly they will use the services of Indian terrorists who live in Pakistan courtesy the ISI— Yasin and Riyaz Bhatkal, Amir Reza Khan and, of course, Dawood and Mushtaq (Tiger Memon), as well as the Hizbul Mujahideen leadership, especially Syed Salahuddin.
Al Zawahiri's statement speaks of the new al Qaeda unit to protect the "vulnerable" Muslims in the Indian subcontinent "in Burma, Bangladesh, Assam, Gujarat and Ahmedabad and Kashmir." Clearly he has singled out Gujarat because of the 2001 massacres, but it is curious as to why he has left out states like UP or Maharashtra which have also known communal violence directed against Muslims.
Significantly, al Zawahiri has called for Indian Muslims to abandon their faith in the "secular democratic method" which he says is a mirage and take up the true path of governance based on Sharia. In his view, secular democracy had "spoiled" the Muslim communities and weakened them.
This is where he has hit the nail on the head. One of the wonders of the Islamist radical movement in the last 15-20 years has been the immunity of the Indian Muslims to the Islamist virus. As is famously known, no Indian Muslim was among the prisoners in Guantanamo, which saw Muslims from countries like the US, Australia, Germany, UK and others. Even in Syria, the recent reports speak of 100 Indians having joined the jihad. But direct evidence points to the four youth from Kalyan and even now it is not quite clear just how they landed up there. Anyway, the more important point is that if you take all the terror incidents involving Indian Muslims, they are statistically negligible given the size of the Muslim population in the country. And you must take into account that some of the incidents have taken place at the instance of the ISI and that Indian Muslims have faced communal violence in the country.
This indicates that like the ISI, Lashkar-e-Tayyeba or the Indian Mujahideen, the al Qaeda will not meet much success in India because the Indian Muslims are happy with their lot in a secular, democratic country and even al Zawahiri understands that. Hopefully our new ruling dispensation will think long and hard before they try to disturb the basic balance on which this country's diverse populations have thrived.
(The writer is a Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi)
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