By Jordan Olmstead
The terrorist outfit looks to be playing a long game.
On September 3, Ayman al Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda Central (AQC) announced the establishment of a new branch: al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). Zawahiri, often described as “long on words and short on charm” delivered a characteristically ambling and inchoate message. He explained how the new group was the “blessed result” of a two-year effort to consolidate various Al-Qaeda affiliates in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Baluchistan and India into one organization with the (ostensible) purposes of serving embattled Muslims in the region by establishing sharia law and “freeing the occupied land of Muslims.” The Indian states of Kashmir (the site of a six decade long secession struggle), Gujarat (where an infamous pogrom (PDF) against Muslims occurred in 2002), and Assam (a state where Muslims are persecuted for allegedly being parasitic Bangladeshi immigrants), along with Burma and Bangladesh, are mentioned as loci for potential operations.
Analysts are portraying this administrative re-shuffling as a desperate response to the existential challenge posed to AQC by the upstart ISIS, whose seizure of Northwestern Iraq and swaths of Eastern Syria has seemingly rendered al-Qaeda impotent and irrelevant in the eyes of many potential recruits (especially valuable Western ones) along with formerly dependable donors. Most of these analysts were underwhelmed by the prospect of a branch of al-Qaeda in India; in a representative statement, Peter Bergen deemed the idea of AQC opening a branch in India as “just crazy” given the previous inability of al-Qaeda to establish a presence in the country.
Certainly, the likelihood of AQC attracting a meaningful following from India’s Muslims because of this move is low. Muslims only account for 13.4 percent of India’s population, so even if al-Qaeda wanted to establish a (counter)caliphate there, it would simply not be feasible. Also, the pan-Islamist ideology of al-Qaeda is unlikely to gain much traction in light of the hostile sentiments that most Indians, including the country’s Muslim population, generally harbor towards Pakistan, its neighboring Islamic state. Instead, India’s Muslim population is preoccupied with extremely particularized struggles: Kashmiris are concerned with wrangling independence or greater autonomy, while the Assamese are focused on fighting discrimination and persecution within the framework of the existing state.
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