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While al Qaeda’s affiliates in North Africa, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen continue to grab headlines, the terrorist network has surreptitiously expanded eastward, entrenching itself throughout the Indian subcontinent. Al Qaeda in the India Subcontinent was officially born in September 2014 when al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri released a video announcing the creation of an al Qaeda affiliate spanning Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. Zawahari said the objective of AQIS is to “raise the flag of jihad, return the Islamic rule, and empowering the Shariah of Allah across the Indian subcontinent.” Zawahiri also appointed Asim Umar, a former commander in...

NEW DELHI: Terror does leave a calling card. As the enormity of the attack on Mumbai sank in, it seemed like the arrival of al-Qaida in India, a version of 9/11 designed to attract a global audience given the scale of violence and the planned targeting of westerners. With the capture of a terrorist, the actual authors were revealed. It wasn't the al-Qaida. But the jihadi credentials were not much less impressive with Lashkar-e-Taiba named as the suspect. Given the operation's obvious planning, few doubted it was the deadly firm of LeT-ISI in action yet again. Yet the difference between...

NEW DELHI: The repeated Predator air strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas are beginning to show results, say Indian security officials closely following the operations. The US strikes "have succeeded in cracking the networking capabilities of al-Qaida", said sources here. But since Pakistan's ISI is the primary sponsor of both al-Qaida and Taliban, India's concerns are that the ISI could "re-deploy" these jihadi fighters from the FATA areas into the Kashmir zone or in other parts of India for surgical suicide strikes. In Washington last week, CIA director Michael Hayden detailed the US strategy against al-Qaida in Pakistan. "It is no...

Once again, suspected Al Qaeda commanders claimed its presence in India, declaring jihad (Holy War) against the country and Kashmir as the gateway of Jihad against India’ for the first time ever. In a video message, [received by a Jammu and Kashmir based local news agency Current News Service (CNS) on June 08], a masked man identified himself as Abu Abrahim Al Asim voiced the statement (in Urdu) on behalf of Abu Abdul Rehman Al Ansari, the suspected chief of the Al-Qaeda for India (Al-Qaeda-fill-Hind-AQH). Similar CDs were reportedly distributed byan unidentified man during Friday prayers at a Mosque at...

NEW DELHI: The media organisations in Srinagar on Friday received a CD statement, allegedly from Al Qaeda, stating that the militant organisation was declaring a war on India. The fifteen-minute CD comprises the speech of Abu Abdul Rehman Ansari, who claims to be a top Al Qaeda leader. Ansari appearing in a mask speaks in Arabic and Urdu while announcing ‘Jihad’ (holy war) against India, and lashes the Hurriyat leaders and United Jihad Council’s (UJC) chief Syed Salahuddin for supporting Jammu and Kashmir’s ongoing peace process. He even did not spare the hardliner, Syed Ali Geelani, and the UJC, accusing...

This photograph taken from a CD purportedly by al-Qaida militants in India shows a masked man sitting beside an automatic gun reading a statement by Abdul Rehman al-Ansari, purportedly the chief of al-Qaida Fil Hind or al-Qaida in India, received by Current News Service in Srinagar, the main city of India's Jammu-Kashmir state, on Friday, June 8, 2007. A group claiming to represent the al-Qaida terror network declared a holy war on India over its control over part of the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir, Indian officials said Saturday, adding that they were taking the threat seriously. Word at the...

NEW DELHI -- The U.S. Embassy in New Delhi warned Friday that foreign militants, possibly al-Qaida members, may be planning to carry out bombings in India's two major cities in the coming days. In an e-mail sent to American citizens living in India, the embassy said New Delhi, the capital, and Bombay, the country's financial and entertainment hub, were the likely targets, and the attacks were believed to be planned for either before or on India's Independence Day, Aug. 15. The embassy confirmed that it had sent the e-mail, although Indian officials refused to comment on the warning.

NEW DELHI (XFN-ASIA) - Two cities in India may be targetted for attack by Al-Qaeda militants ahead of next week's Independence Day celebrations, the US embassy in New Delhi warned. There may be attacks by Al-Qaeda in 'New Delhi and Mumbai (Bombay) in the days leading to the Independence Day,' embassy spokesman David Kennedy told CNN-IBN news channel. Kennedy said the information is based on intelligence gathered along with the Indian government. Serial train bombings in Bombay on July 11, blamed by the government on Islamic militant groups, killed 183 people and injured almost 900.

The recent train bombings in India have intensified the scrutiny of the Pakistan-based, al Qaeda affiliated terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. In particular, one key question is being asked: What role does LET play in the war against Islamofascists and their allies? The al Qaeda-linked Wahhabi group, formed in 1989, has been blamed for a number of attacks on Indian officials and civilians. It was added to the U.S. terrorist list in December 2001. LET’s agenda, as announced in one of their pamphlets and detailed by MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base, is to wage jihad with the goal of imposing their narrow version...

Al Qaeda & India URL: http://www.india-defence.com/reports/214 Date: 13/8/2005 In the periodic messages generally attributed to Osama bin Laden and his No.2 Ayman al-Zawahiri and their organisation Al Qaeda, they generally give an indication of their likely future targets. Such targets have included the US, other Western countries collaborating with the US in Afghanistan and Iraq and Muslim countries perceived by them as collaborating with the US. In the past, these messages were free of critical references to India and the so-called Kashmir issue. The Al Qaeda had once criticised the US for allegedly supporting India on the so-called Kashmir issue,...

BOMBAY (AFX) - An Indian court has jailed a man for plotting to crash passenger jets into the House of Commons and the Tower Bridge in London on Sept 11, 2001, Agence France-Presse reported. The court here handed down a seven-year prison term to Mohammed Afroze, who had also confessed to plotting with a group of Al-Qaeda operatives to attack Melbourne's Rialto Towers and the Indian parliament in 2001. Afroze told the police in Bombay after fleeing from Britain to India four years ago that he and seven Al-Qaeda terror cell operatives planned to hijack the passenger jets at Heathrow...

There is a little known intelligence fact about the Ayodhya attack which can be revealed without distressing anybody, and it bolsters the point made by Manmohan Singh in Washington - and incidentally first analysed by this magazine soon after 9/11 - that no Indian Muslim has been caught involved in the Al-Qaeda terrorist network. The exception would probably be Haroon Rashid Aswat, born of Gujarati parents in the UK, who is being questioned for the London bombings after his arrest in Sargodha, Pakistan, but he would still make an extraordinary exception. The intelligence fact is simple and straightforward. The Lashkar-e-Toiba...