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Osama’s lieutenant

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By K.N. Pandita

India could be one of several new theatres targeted by al-Qaeda’s newly-appointed chief Ayman al-Zawahiri ”to establish his authority over the jihadist group and its allies,” intelligence sources say. Hatred against India runs deep amongst Pakistan’s Islamists, and targeting it could prove a means for leaders like Fakir Muhammad to win domestic legitimacy, as well as draw cadre away from organizations like the Lashkar-e-Taiba that Pakistan claims to have reined in since the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. Fears that al-Qaeda will choose India as a theatre to expand have been mounting since last summer, when al-Zawahiri’s former deputy released an audiotape claiming responsibility for the  2009 bombing of a café in Pune. “I bring you the good tidings,” al-Masri said in the audiotape, “that last February’s India operation was against a Jewish locale in the west of the Indian capital.” Muhammad Ilyas Kashmiri, a Pakistani jihadist, reported — but not proven —to have been killed in a drone strike earlier this year, was announced to have set up a special unit to stage the Pune bombing and future strikes. Al-Zawahiri was among the first international jihadist leaders to mention India, writing in a manifesto published in 2001 that his cadre had “revived a religious duty of which the [Muslim] nation had long been deprived, by fighting in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Chechnya.”  Continue Reading…

Home for militancy

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By K.N. Pandita

The US Congressional Research Service report defining Pakistan as the home of terrorist outfits is of much significance to India. It formally mentions one of the five main Pakistani militant groups targeting India including Kashmir for terrorist attacks and subversion. The report sets at rest a two decade long ambivalence of the United States over India’s repeated allegations of terrorism being sponsored and abetted on Pakistani soil. Although Pakistan has been vehemently denying that her soil is used for terrorist attacks on India, yet the US Congress has now a clear report that should dispel all her doubts. CRS said India-and Kashmir-oriented militants, especially the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), and Harakat ul-Mujahideen (HuM), are based in both the Punjab province and in Pakistan-held Kashmir. This repudiates Islamabad’s plea that there could be non-state activists running the militancy training camps in Pakistan.  Continue Reading…