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| A jihadi battle of brands | | | Bernard Haykel
On September 3, al-Qaeda’s media arm, al-Sahab Media, released one of the strangest videos in the movement’s history, announcing the formation of a new branch of “al-Qaeda in the South Asian Subcontinent.” Strange, because of the panicked tone of the three separate statements in the video, and because its content has very little to do with South Asia. The first statement in the video is by al-Qaeda’s notably uncharismatic leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who essentially rehashes the virtues and importance of armed struggle (jihad) against the United States, which he labels “the global order of unbelief,” and reaffirms, repeatedly, loyalty to Mullah Umar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban. The video betrays a deep anxiety among al-Qaeda’s original leadership about its future as the guiding movement in the global jihad.
Competition for relevance
This anxiety is no doubt due to the stiff competition al-Qaeda now faces from the newly established Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a self-proclaimed caliphate occupying territory in Iraq and Syria and until recently notching up a series of spectacular military successes. One should not take al-Qaeda’s video’s claims at face value: it has little to do with India or even South Asia, and consists of a cheap propaganda effort to maintain relevance in the dynamic world of jihadism and the competition for relevance, recruits and funding. More specifically, the video represents the latest salvo in a fierce conflict between jihadi groups as to which of these is the true heir to Osama bin Laden’s political and ideological legacy. Is it to be the hyper-violent ISIS that deliberately targets fellow Muslims along with all others, or is it the older al-Qaeda movement with its branches, which assert that violence must be measured and calculated and mostly directed at non-Muslims? “For al-Qaeda, as for any fundamentalist religious movement, India’s diversity will always represent a bitter pill to swallow”
At nearly 56 minutes in length, the recent video release actually consists of three separate statements in two language versions — one in Arabic and one in Urdu — and both have been posted on YouTube.com, which is the main medium for their distribution. Aside from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the two other speakers are Ustadh Usama Mahmud and Shaykh Asim Umar, respectively al-Qaeda in South Asia’s “official spokesman” and “military commander.” The latter two are South Asians, but little else is known about them other than that they master spoken classical Arabic, which indicates that they are seminary educated and have probably spent considerable time studying in the Arab world. The video begins with a short speech by the late Osama bin Laden about al-Qaeda redrawing the map of the world with the aim of creating a unitary Islamic state under the caliphate — a Utopian political order that ceased to exist formally in 1258 when Baghdad was sacked by the Mongols. Bin Laden’s clip is intended to underscore that al-Zawahiri and his followers are indeed the true heirs of the global jihadi movement, and not the upstart ISIS. The video then announces and celebrates the formation of a new branch: Al-Qaeda in South Asia (AQSA) whose full Arabic name translates literally as “The Base for Armed Struggle in the South Asian Subcontinent.” This is an odd name because the purist jihadis prefer traditional geographical labels, such as al-Sham for Syria, Khorasan for Iran and Central Asia, Bilad al-Haramayn for Arabia, al-Hind or Hindustan for India, and not those of British vintage such as “the South Asian Subcontinent.” One suspects the choice has to do with the jihadis not wanting to use anything that approximates the word Hindu, or a name that would offend radical Pakistani sensibilities, and thus opted for the British designation instead. Courtesy: The Hindu |
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