TM: "Ansar-ut Tawhid and the Transnational Jihadist Threat to India"

May 15, 2014

Transnational Islamist terrorist groups have recently made sporadic attempts to lure India’s Muslim population towards global jihad, frequently urging them to fight the democratically elected secular government. India-specific incitements have issued from al-Qaeda chief Ayman al Zawahiri and al-Qaeda ideologue Maulana Asim Umar through audio-visual messages that directly target Indian Muslims. A similar anti-India campaign was unleashed by a hitherto unknown group calling itself Ansar-ut Tawhid fi Bilad al-Hind (AuT – Supporters of Monotheism in the Land of India) through its media arm, al-Isabah Media. Its messages highlight the issue of government atrocities against Muslims in India and encourage Indian Muslims to join the ongoing Afghan or Syrian jihads and to carry out attacks inside India.

The AuT has issued at least four videotapes since October 2013, the most recent of them surfaced on May 17, when the group called for attacks against Indian targets worldwide. The ten-minute video featuring AuT leader Maulana Abdur Rahman al-Hindi urges other prominent jihadi leaders such as the Taliban’s Mullah Omar, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Nasir Abd al-Wuhayshi of al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula, al-Shabaab’s Abdi Godane and Abd al-Malik Droukdel of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb to come forward to attack Indian Government interests and its economic centers in India and elsewhere as a means of “protecting the Muslims of India.” [1]

The AuT’s call appeared to resonate immediately when suspected Taliban militants attacked the Indian consulate in Afghanistan’s Herat Province on May 23, with the aim of embarrassing the newly-elected Indian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of Narendra Modi, who is prominently attacked in the AuT’s propaganda materials (AP, May 23). Islamists have long blamed the BJP and its leadership for demolishing Ayodhya’s 16th century Babri Mosque in December 1992, an act that fanned countrywide communal tensions that left 2,000 dead and fuelled an enduring schism between India’s Hindu and Muslim communities. Numerous episodes of sectarian violence, including the Gujarat riots of 2002, have a direct connection to the mosque’s demolition. The AuT’s May 17 message attempted to exploit the socio-religious divide prevalent in India.

For complete article,  Ansar-ut Tawhid and the Transnational Jihadist Threat to India, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 12 Issue: 12, June 13, 2014.Read Here.

Source
Animesh Roul (Terrorism Monitor, Jamestown Foundation, Washington DC)