Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri launched a new branch of the global Islamist extremist movement yesterday to reinvigorate and expand its “struggle” in the Indian sub-continent.
In a video spotted in online forums by the SITE terrorism monitoring group, Zawahiri said the new force would “crush the artificial borders” dividing Muslim populations in the region.
Al-Qaeda is active in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where its surviving leadership are thought to be hiding out, but Zawahiri said “Qaedat al-Jihad” would take the fight to India, Myanmar and Bangladesh.
“This entity was not established today but is the fruit of a blessed effort of more than two years to gather the mujahedeen in the Indian sub-continent into a single entity,” he said.
By launching “Qaedat al-Jihad in the Indian sub-continent,” Zawahiri may be attempting to recapture some of the limelight for his group lost to even more radical outfits like ISIL and Boko Haram as well as to exploit existing unrest in Kashmir and Myanmar.
He said the group would recognize the leadership of the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, and be led day-to-day by senior militant Asim Umar.
